The way Dolphin handle frames...

[jobauma]

Hi!



I just wondered in a later version of Dolphin if there could be a solution to the problem of the games that is still running very slow. Here I'm not talking about framerate (fps), but the way Dolphin handle frames...

Dolphin is allways trying to catch each and every frame no matter how low the framerate is. In this case, with a framerate as for example 1, a game would be a hundred times slower to play in time! It would be much better if Dolphin could run a game in correct speed, even with a low framerate, and leave som frames and jump over them instead

This is the salvation for a happier life and will be the next step for us to experience this kind of games with Dolphin in a total new way!

 

[Agozer]

Frameskipping can easily break games. Many feautures in the hardware and in the emulated games require that absolutely no frames are skipped. Ever.

On the other hand, frameskipping doesn't affect some games, but it also isn't accurate emulation.

 

[jobauma]

Do you mean since these games actually never were ment to be this slow, they never were ment to support frameskipping?

 

[Agozer]

Do you mean since these games actually never were ment to be this slow, they never were ment to support frameskipping?

Yes. No home computer can emulate a GameCube at full speed.

 

[M[u]ddy]

Even if frameskip was added, the emulator wouldn't run faster.
Frameskip only makes the video simulation faster, but the video-plugin is already fast enough.
It doesn't matter for example if you use 320x240 pixel or 1600x1200 pixel; the speed doesn't change.
The slow speed is caused by the slow emulation of the gamecubes cpu and cpu operation can't be skipped.

 

[jobauma]

Isn't Dolphin ever going to get rid of these problems in the future?

 

[Agozer]

Isn't Dolphin ever going to get rid of these problems in the future?

They the emulator's problems.

 

[Danny]

Buy a gamecube! Watch out for Shizzy's new Gamecube emulator called "Gekko" as well. Its the only Gamecube emulator still in development

 

[BlueFalcon7]

First of all, the dolphin is still in development, Second of all, The CPU is what determines how fast it runs, unless you crank up the graphics, with a bad graphics card, and have a super fast CPU, (like way faster than whats on the market today) then frame skip might be needed.

 

[jobauma]

I play powerful games, like Doom 3, Quake 4 and Half-life 2, all the time and doesn't have any problems with that at all. Therefore I have difficulties of thinking that my computer ever was too weak, so I really hope it's like that

Actually, I really didn't know that this project was dead, and I will never buy a gamecube in my life! But thanks for the advice, Zion I will stay tuned with Gekko, my last hope!

 

[jobauma]

Well, then it's still realistic to be optimistic about playing gamecube on a computer!

 

[Clements]

I play powerful games, like Doom 3, Quake 4 and Half-life 2, all the time and doesn't have any problems with that at all. Therefore I have difficulties of thinking that my computer ever was too weak, so I really hope it's like that

Then you have no concept of how emulation works whatsoever.

 

[Agozer]

Well, then it's still realistic to be optimistic about playing gamecube on a computer!

Not really. Sure, you can play if you don't mind the slowness.

 

[Coco]

It's absolutely realistic that gamecube games will be playable on a PC some day. That day just isn't today. It will most likely show sometime in the next decade. To be quite honest I wouldn't be at all suprised if an emulator came out in 1 year which played everything fairly well and at decent speeds (On a high end computer). That being said I also wouldn't be suprised if it took another 7 years for something like that to happen.

It will happen though, it's really just a matter of time. Although I wouldn't quite recommend waiting for an emulator if you wanted to play some games. It's quite likely the games you're waiting to play will be considered quite old by the time they get correct emulation.

 

[Agozer]

Yes, in 7 years most likely, but certainly not in the near future.

 

[ChaosCode]

See there is a differnce from Doom3 and gamecube games. Doom3 is suppost to run on a x86 processor core. Gamescube games are not.

 

[SeymourOmnis]

I certainly still think that the problem might not be the CPU, the problem might be the emulator's core and how they work. I'll bet that a nearly perfect GC emulator would run perfectly on an athlon 3600+ with a good graphics card.

Why do you think that the GC can emulate at full speed the N64? Their CPUs are completely different (MIPS VS PPC) and still the GC can emulate the N64 at 100% speed. It is not because the GC has a very powerful CPU, it is because the inside N64 emulator has an almost perfect core.

I'm almost positive that if Nintendo give us that emulator then every N64 game could run in 100% speed with a PIII 800mhz.

 

[BlueFalcon7]

Actually, for the N64, low level emulation is the newest thing, and its not much faster than the GC, its very straining on the CPU. However, Accoarding to the project 64 team, it can get up to 30 FPS

 

[Toasty]

Unless you're actually a programmer with a little experience, it's hard to understand just how complicated emulation is. Just because the Gamecube's CPU runs at 450MHz (or whatever it is) does not mean that a PC with a 450MHz processor can emulate it at full speed. Aside from the overhead of translating code into something usable on the target platform, the architecture of a Gamecube's CPU is completely different from that of an x86 (PC) CPU. This means the Gamecube's CPU is capable of carrying out much more complicated instructions far quicker than an x86 counterpart of the same clock speed.

This is why frame-skipping won't gain you much. Think of the CPU as an author, and the graphics device as an artist. As the author writes a story, he sends his progress to the artist, who in turn draws illustrations to match the story. If the author gets writer's block, it doesn't matter how fast the artist can draw new pictures - the progression of the story screeches to a halt until the author can come up with new content. It's not the same as if the artist were too slow to keep up with the author, in which case he could simply skip a few pages and draw fewer illustrations to keep up.

Likewise, you can have the fastest graphics card (artist) in the world or skip frames (draw fewer illustrations), but if the CPU (author) can't furnish the graphics device (artist) with new content to draw, there's nothing that can be done to speed up gameplay (progression of the story).