N64 Emulation future Prospects

[grufty]

Hello there, I wanted to make a general discussion on the future of N64 emulation. It would be good to see what people would like to see and what developers think to be possible. So what one thing would everyone like to see intergrated into n64 emulators, any particular new feature anyone is hoping for.

I personally would like to see game optimised emulators. I know that for instance in project 64 the rdb file optimises some options for the running of a game but wouldn't it be nice to be able to download highly specific game emulators. I am thinking along the lines of Bleem!, a terriffic program which when developed for dreamcast was game specific. Are problems inherent in perfect Dark such as the lens effect ever going to be solved? There were a lot of poor games released on the N64 which no-one really cares whether they are emulated or not, I know more choice is a good thing but it's just a matter of opinion.

My N64 had a lot of good games stufed into its slot, wouldn't it be nice if by next year extremely optimised emulators for

goldeneye
perfect dark
mario
mario kart

existed? I know that Mario is damn near perfected, as seen first on UltraHLE, what happened since back in the day? When it comes to a choice between 10's of poorly emulated games and one perfectly emulated game, what would you choose...i know what my choice would be!

[Dabba_Deh]

AFAIK, the new build of Nemu (Author's private build) has greatly improved Perfect Dark. This is based on screen shots. As for the lens effect, I don't remember any shots of the lens effects. But, Nemu might be the only thing to fix that...whenever the authors feel like releasing it. Having optimised emulators would be a very good thing to see. Imagine playing a game like Perfect Dark, without any errors, and without having to buy a 64! That would be damn sweet. Hopefully, some emulators like this will surface in the future.

[Smiff]

bollox

[Slougi]

Heh, as soon as some plugin has the lens efects they work, I don't see why we should need a whole new emu for that.

[Doomulation]

I don't think emulators would be optimized for special games. They put the work on getting more games to work.

[pj64er]

afaik, the lense effects use the frame buffer (copy dlist turns on motion blurr, sorta see the lense of the alien rocket launcher). Before the frame buffer emulation problem can be solved, ie work fast (authors mention something about diff between pc and n64 architecture), the lense effects will not work.

[zorbid]

In the N64, The CPU can directly read the frame buffer, and work on it, because the ram is shared between the cpu and the gpu.

Because of (or thanks to, it depends how you see it) the hle, In a PC, the n64 gfx are created by the gfx card.
If some work is needed on the frame (after it has been created by the gfx card), it must be sent from the gfx card to the main ram, and then the CPU can process it. Sending data from the gfx ram to the main ram is slow on current PC.

A faster CPU (that will allow lle at good speed), or a faster gfx ram reading process would solve this. The best is yet to come

[Smiff]

lle doesn't help, you are still using the graphics card as the rasterizer, you've still got to copy the frame from graphics card ram to system ram. Unless you code a software rasterizer, that would be staggeringly slow (like 10Ghz+ or something needed)

[Slougi]

About framebuffer emulation, would it not be possible to copy it over just every 30 frames or something? As far as I know it is not dependant on having the exact same data that is curently being processed.

[zorbid]

Unless you code a software rasterizer.

That was included in what I meant by lle, ie do everything in the CPU.

Copy 1/30 frames is ok for some effects, but not for the spycam in PD (every frame must be processed), or any kind of motion blur.