1.3.0.1 beta - HQX Filter Test

[lenne]

Hi the filters are not so good. can you add please internal 3DO resolution 2x Native 3x Native 4x Native 5x Native 6x Native and 7x Native, anti-aliasing 0x 2x 4x 8x, anisotropic Filtering: 0x 2x 4x 8x and 16x this is better as the filters.

thanks for the great 3DO emu

[Mister Negative]

Lenne,

Johnny is looking for testers for the HQX filters. Why not focus on testing them out, and maybe other options could be included in the future? I can't imagine how much work went into getting these filters working and they really do improve the look of the emulation.

Did they function for you? Did you notice any stability or other issues when switching back and forth?

Thanks!

[BryWI]

1.3.1.0 appears to be good. I also switched between all of the modes constantly with no crash or anything. The memory is being properly released when turning off hqx modes. Screenshots are working too. I am not seeing any problems so far.

[Johnny]

Oh okay. I wasn't expecting that anybody would get time for testing until tomorrow. I'd found no problems either, so I'll release it tonight. Thank you very much for your time and help!

The performance problems bother me a bit, even though I am convinced the performance is not worse than before. Even without HQX or double-rendering, there are some games on my machine that occassionally exceed its capabilities and always have (I also double-checked through previous revisions). Full-screen images (like the pause/menu screen in Killing Time, surprisingly) can push my computer over the edge into the "red" health indicator that I've added. Long ago I assumed it was an issue of some emulation inaccuracy, but it's definitely that the emulation is just too CPU intensive at present. It's possible something 4DO specific is adding unexpected overhead too; I haven't done a full-blown audit. Oh well, I'll have to take it one step at a time.

By the way, Viktor has more more core changes for the version following 1.3.1.0 which should simplify many of the "timing fixes" made previously and eliminate a lot of the game-specific logic. For testing that out I'll paste the list of games that previously had specific logic that we ought to try out. I suspect that some of the games with random freezes (like Wing Commander 3) will be the most time consuming to test.

Meanwhile, I'll be trying to get the 3DO mouse emulation to work.

[Mister Negative]

Great stuff Johnny. I'm really liking the health indicator because it lets me know if speed issues are an issue with my computer or if it's just an accurate emulation of how the real hardware would behave under those conditions.

I'll keep an eye out for that list and will spend some time with the games you need tested out. Maybe some volunteers can divvy up the list so we can each be responsible for spending a few hours on a couple of games.

[BryWI]

Something I didn't notice until I was updating the wiki. In 4DO Settings, the tab with the scaling options is named advanced. This creates two tabs named Advanced. Was this intentional to signify that they are both Advanced options? Or was this a slight oversight? It seems a little weird with them both named the same thing. Maybe it's just me. Anyways, nothing big. Just a cosmetics issue.

[l_mcgregoruk]

Another slight thing other than the 2 "Advanced" tabs in the GUI/Frontend, is that if you go into the 2nd advanced tab under settings and change the CPU clock speed from 12.5Mhz(100%), then change it back 12.5Mhz is now (99%) instead of 100%(12.6Mhz now is), until you click "Reset to Defaults", I don't know if it's like that in ALL versions, but certainly has been in the last few.

[Johnny]

Oh, the tabs were supposed to be "Display A", "Display B", and "Advanced". Thanks for spotting that, and I've got it fixed.

My meticulous nature knows no bounds. I have also fixed the CPU setting not being able to set back to 100% exactly. The solution is not entirely ideal. The maximum was increased to 400%, but now the number of pixels for the control do not "match up". I wanted to keep pretty significant granularity on this setting (pressing the right and left arrow keys), so I didn't want to limit the control in this way. However, as a quick workaround users can go all the way to the left, then do 2 "big jumps" to the right using the mouse. Hooray! Well worth the effort!