Software Render Plugins?

[mightyrocket]

Hey, if Duke Nukem Forever runs on the Atari 2600, I don't think N64 on the NES would be too hard.

Do you think if the makers the game 6-7 years back has begun with development, do you think that will be an advanced game?:happy:

 

[Tagrineth]

Re: Re: Re: Software Render Plugins?

Wrong! PSX emulation requires only 500 mhz for the
most demanding PSX games, such as
Final Fantasy VIII . Even at 900 mhz, most Nintendo 64 games
with Project64 play at very good speeds with a GeForce and
Direct3D.

Even 2.5 ghz don't matter much for software emulation.
Probally still be slow at no more than 10 FPS, if very lucky.

And frequency don't matter when it compares a Pentium 4
2.5 ghz to a Athlon XP Barton or Athlon XP T-Breds at
2.0 ghz, because an Athlon can still possibly whoop a
Pentium 4 2.5 ghz, because of it's powerful FPU.

His 1.3GHz for PSX estimate was for software rendering - i.e. NO GEFORCE, NO D3D.

 

[zorbid]

I posted a pic of OoT a while back, running with software OpenGL via Mesa3D. 2 vi/sec on an Athlon XP 2400+...

IIRC, the shots were 1024*768. Did you try to run it at a lower resolution (320*240, for example)?

 

[euphoria]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Software Render Plugins?

His 1.3GHz for PSX estimate was for software rendering - i.e. NO GEFORCE, NO D3D.

I don't know what this is about, but using epsxe and peops software gfx plugin i get full speed on my 800 duron... no geforce no d3d
or was this another LLE vs. HLE debate?

 

[ScottJC]

In my opinion

Software render plugins would be of no use, as many of you have stated it takes a hell of a machine to run one of those.

Secondly, they look rubbish, i useda psx software render once... never again... you can't compare a 320x240 to 1024x768... lol

as far as i'm aware this conversation isn't anything to do with hle or lle

 

[Tagrineth]

In my opinion

Software render plugins would be of no use, as many of you have stated it takes a hell of a machine to run one of those.

Secondly, they look rubbish, i useda psx software render once... never again... you can't compare a 320x240 to 1024x768... lol

as far as i'm aware this conversation isn't anything to do with hle or lle

OK, well I suppose if you kept the resolution pretty low, software raster could be reasonable.

But it isn't about 320x240 versus 1024x768. Some people would prefer the original image to the enhanced one.

To that end, NO hardware could reproduce exactly what N64 outputs without a really spiffy pixel shader.

I suppose it all depends on what you're trying to do with it.

Oh, by the way, N64 would be a good deal harder to do software raster on than PSX because of its AA algorithm and super-convoluted display lists. AFAIR, PSX display lists are bot a. more efficient than N64 and b. HLE'd just like N64 emus.

 

[ScottJC]

Yes but, on my computer, any image above or equal to 640x480 is slow as heck, I tried ff7 (for the pc) in software mode at that resolution, its much slower than if i use my geforce 4's video acceleration, Ie When the game scrolled it had a visable lag... dunno if that makes any sense.

You're right its impossible to reproduce exactly what an n64 video produces but you can get it near to correct. Banjo-Kazooie for example, looks pretty good with quite a few video plugins, in my opinion better than it did on the real n64 because its much clearer and sharper.. but thats me.

Software render would be possible to reproduce accurate video I suppose, but at the cost of alot of cpu time, and current processors just aren't able to do it well at the moment.

 

[Tagrineth]

You're right its impossible to reproduce exactly what an n64 video produces but you can get it near to correct. Banjo-Kazooie for example, looks pretty good with quite a few video plugins, in my opinion better than it did on the real n64 because its much clearer and sharper.. but thats me.

Well, yes, it is clearer and sharper.

But technically the texturing will always be a little different, unless you set up a manual texture filter via pixel shaders.

Standard bilinear filtering uses four samples. N64's bilinear filtering uses three samples.

 

[Cyberman]

It's also an old thread (Mar 13) that was revived.. I think it was a DOA issue IMHO. As for software rendering being useful, YES as a matter of fact it would be. Software rendering would be to get it too look 100% acurate to the N64's output. Now that isn't thrilling to you people because you want better, however it might be hard to know if your GL/D3D or glide plugin emulates the output good enough unless you look at what it should look like first.

Software plugins have there uses, it's not necessarily to be fast either.

Cyb

 

[Reznor007]

OK, well I suppose if you kept the resolution pretty low, software raster could be reasonable.

But it isn't about 320x240 versus 1024x768. Some people would prefer the original image to the enhanced one.

To that end, NO hardware could reproduce exactly what N64 outputs without a really spiffy pixel shader.

I suppose it all depends on what you're trying to do with it.

Oh, by the way, N64 would be a good deal harder to do software raster on than PSX because of its AA algorithm and super-convoluted display lists. AFAIR, PSX display lists are bot a. more efficient than N64 and b. HLE'd just like N64 emus.

PSX display lists are LLE in current emu's(ePSXe, VGS, Zinc).

 

[euphoria]

In my opinion

Software render plugins would be of no use, as many of you have stated it takes a hell of a machine to run one of those.

Secondly, they look rubbish, i useda psx software render once... never again... you can't compare a 320x240 to 1024x768... lol

as far as i'm aware this conversation isn't anything to do with hle or lle

Well you ought to take a look at the latest peops soft plugin (1.12), since using it (= is far more correct emulation of psx's extensive use of framebuffer effects such as motion blur than any hw-accel. plugin...) with 2xSaI, Super2xSai, SuperEagle or Scale2x filters smoothing the screen. That's sweet. Once i tried it i couldn't use hardware-accel. plugins no more
i rather look those half-screen sized pixels but thats just me.
And you don't have to use 320x200 res, you can use 1024x768 aswell if you have tha powa!

 

[loay]

you can use gldirct it can an ogl from none even if you dont have d3d or ogl suport in your card get it from here
www.scitechsoft.com/

 

[The Khan Artist]

PSX display lists are LLE in current emu's(ePSXe, VGS, Zinc).

Yeah, but the rasterization is HLE.

 

[Reznor007]

Yeah, but the rasterization is HLE.

In a way, but hardware acceleration would be viable in MAME if it was very close to the original.

 

[The Khan Artist]

In a way, but hardware acceleration would be viable in MAME if it was very close to the original.

Somehow, I don't think the MAME team would ever agree to that. It might make it into an unofficial MAME build, though.

 

[Reznor007]

Somehow, I don't think the MAME team would ever agree to that. It might make it into an unofficial MAME build, though.

The dev who did the System22 driver(Prop Cycle) originally wanted to do a hardware rasterizer for it, but decided to do a software version.

Also, in the System22 driver source file is this:

* future optimizations:
* - unpack texel data on startup
* - get zbuffer working with fixed point
* - consider depth sort as alternative to zbuffer
* - consider optional hardware acceleration

 

[MikeX]

Actually, I have considered starting a software video plugin. More as a testing platform than for actually playing though. In a software plugin many of the more difficult things to emulate on the N64 would be easy (perfect frame buffer emulation, for instance, would be a no-brainer).

Orkin

Orkin What happened with this idea?

You can implement a higher resolution limit.

I think yours it's a great idea.

Btw I really like your plug-in.

 

[Smiff]

afaik nemu's "software renderer" is just Dx's software emulation, it's not a real hand-written from-the-ground up software render... having said that, i've used a software renderer (that was written from scratch for the n64) and it's not something end users would want... graphics cards are massively parrallel for a reason

bi/trilinear filtering in software.. yum!

also.. if you're still using HLE for display lists.. you're kinda getting the worst of both worlds

just buy a GF3/Radeon8500 + !

 

[Reznor007]

afaik nemu's "software renderer" is just Dx's software emulation, it's not a real hand-written from-the-ground up software render... having said that, i've used a software renderer (that was written from scratch for the n64) and it's not something end users would want... graphics cards are massively parrallel for a reason

bi/trilinear filtering in software.. yum!

also.. if you're still using HLE for display lists.. you're kinda getting the worst of both worlds

just buy a GF3/Radeon8500 + !

Well, that could be optimized a bit. N64 doesn't actually do bilinear, it's a cheap hack that looks like bilinear.

 

[Turtleneck]

So, is the Software Driver "All Systems Go"?

loay, I tried your idea, but Super Smash Bros ran slow, and I couldn't see anything 3-D. Maybe it was just a bad rom, perhaps.