Support for special framebuffer stuff in plug-ins?

[Doomulation]

Hmmm. Looking at the pj64 dev board, I see no such mention, but Jabo has mentioned he uses DX8 for his plugin. And well... DX8 is... ancient. Lacks features such as the possibility of custom shaders, etc, etc. I think it's a DX limitation that hinders jabo from even attempting this at this time (NOT saying he WILL do it, however).

 

[squall_leonhart]

yeah, maybe after 1.7 is out he can start work on a Dx9 when he has some spare time..

and afaik Dx8 also has a programmable shader engine.. its just not long enough...

 

[F-3582]

How about utilizing OpenGL2 instead? I don't know if it is comparable, but as someone already pointed out, the PSX uses pretty complicated FB effects, too and those are pretty well-(and fast)-emulated since Pete brought his new OpenGL2 plugin line out. The FB effects the N64 uses don't look that much more complicated (except for the cool jigsaw texture effect in Banjo-Tooie).

I think, asking the man himself (Pete) wouldn't hurt, either. He might give some good explanation about how to accomplish such goals.

P.S.: I just read on Pete's site that OpenGL2 has some sort of hardware-accelerated rendering-to-texture. This is quite worth looking at, I guess.

 

[Agozer]

IIRC, hactarux's wrapper uses OpenGL, not Direct3D.

 

[Doomulation]

How about utilizing OpenGL2 instead? I don't know if it is comparable, but as someone already pointed out, the PSX uses pretty complicated FB effects, too and those are pretty well-(and fast)-emulated since Pete brought his new OpenGL2 plugin line out. The FB effects the N64 uses don't look that much more complicated (except for the cool jigsaw texture effect in Banjo-Tooie).

I think, asking the man himself (Pete) wouldn't hurt, either. He might give some good explanation about how to accomplish such goals.

P.S.: I just read on Pete's site that OpenGL2 has some sort of hardware-accelerated rendering-to-texture. This is quite worth looking at, I guess.

I doubt there is *anything* that OpenGL has that DirectX does not. And the problem with OpenGL is that it isn't truly standardized, so it creates messy code to support many cards. AFAIK, at least.

 

[Tesla]

I doubt there is *anything* that OpenGL has that DirectX does not. And the problem with OpenGL is that it isn't truly standardized, so it creates messy code to support many cards. AFAIK, at least.

I agree. OpenGL crahes a lot on every card I've seen.

 

[Poobah]

I agree. OpenGL crahes a lot on every card I've seen.

That sounds pretty ignorant to me, unless you have somehow avoided using any decent graphics cards.

 

[Tesla]

That sounds pretty ignorant to me, unless you have somehow avoided using any decent graphics cards.

I did not avoided using decent cards. Here, youre really lucky if you have GeForce4, like me.

 

[squall_leonhart]

Opengl is and always will be more stable then Dx
the reason for this is that Opengl is not intergrated into the OS so bugs can be directly worked out i nthe icd file.

if your opengl is crashing.

its your own fault.. and not opengl's

Doomulation
Opengl.org has stated that by the time vista is released, the new icd model will be faster then Dx10.

Also, Opengl specs are pretty widely used, and they aren't messy at at, opengl is a very standardised API, if you would search for all the 3d modelling, and CG companies that use it.

the only problem with Opengl is that crappy chipset graphics like intel extreme and via unichrome doesn't support it... also. ati still hasn't got an efficient icd.. its still slower then nv's.. which isn't surprising, considering that alot of ogl extensions were made by NV,.

trust me though, if opengl 1.5 - 2.0 was supported, video emulation would be so much faster.

i can claim this coz playing UT GOTYE in opengl, i can run AA all the way at 8x without slowdown,.. but in D3d it makes it very slow

Tesla, i've used opengl for along time.
(Homeworld looks the best in opengl)
i have used it over many cards
from geforce 2mx 200 (32 and 64mb cards) (max ogl is 1.4.5)
Geforce 4mx 440 SE (max opengl is 1.4.5)
Geforce 4 TI 4800SE at 4600 clocks (coz the 4600 is faster ) (max ogl is 1.5.3)
Geforce FX+ (ogl 2.0.3+) geforce fx is limited to 133 extensions.. i believe 6 and 7 series has up to 145.

it has always been a quicker and more stable api then Dx

 

[Tesla]

Opengl is and always will be more stable then Dx
the reason for this is that Opengl is not intergrated into the OS so bugs can be directly worked out i nthe icd file.

if your opengl is crashing.

its your own fault.. and not opengl's

Doomulation
Opengl.org has stated that by the time vista is released, the new icd model will be faster then Dx10.

Also, Opengl specs are pretty widely used, and they aren't messy at at, opengl is a very standardised API, if you would search for all the 3d modelling, and CG companies that use it.

the only problem with Opengl is that crappy chipset graphics like intel extreme and via unichrome doesn't support it... also. ati still hasn't got an efficient icd.. its still slower then nv's.. which isn't surprising, considering that alot of ogl extensions were made by NV,.

trust me though, if opengl 1.5 - 2.0 was supported, video emulation would be so much faster.

i can claim this coz playing UT GOTYE in opengl, i can run AA all the way at 8x without slowdown,.. but in D3d it makes it very slow

Tesla, i've used opengl for along time.
(Homeworld looks the best in opengl)
i have used it over many cards
from geforce 2mx 200 (32 and 64mb cards) (max ogl is 1.4.5)
Geforce 4mx 440 SE (max opengl is 1.4.5)
Geforce 4 TI 4800SE at 4600 clocks (coz the 4600 is faster ) (max ogl is 1.5.3)
Geforce FX+ (ogl 2.0.3+) geforce fx is limited to 133 extensions.. i believe 6 and 7 series has up to 145.

it has always been a quicker and more stable api then Dx

So, it means that I only need a proper ogl and it won't crash anymore, right?

 

[Poobah]

i can claim this coz playing UT GOTYE in opengl, i can run AA all the way at 8x without slowdown,.. but in D3d it makes it very slow

That would most likely be because of some sort of incompatibility. UT GOTY runs so slowly on modern computers like mine and yours in D3D that you'd think that it's doing software rendering!

So, it means that I only need a proper ogl and it won't crash anymore, right?

The crashing would probably be related to your drivers and the software that is utilising OpenGL. With a slightly old Glide64 release (with Gonetz' experimental modification of Hacktarux's wrapper), I often encountered crashes that occured within "nvopengl", but that doesn't mean that "OpenGL crashes a lot"; it means that a bug must be fixed in the program that is rendering through OpenGL.

 

[Tesla]

The crashing would probably be related to your drivers and the software that is utilising OpenGL. With a slightly old Glide64 release (with Gonetz' experimental modification of Hacktarux's wrapper), I often encountered crashes that occured within "nvopengl", but that doesn't mean that "OpenGL crashes a lot"; it means that a bug must be fixed in the program that is rendering through OpenGL.

Well, I don't know. Every OpenGL plugin I tried on few computers has no speed (about 20FPS), major depth problems, transparency problems and sometimes it crahes as soon as the ROM is loaded. How can I fix this?

 

[squall_leonhart]

That would most likely be because of some sort of incompatibility. UT GOTY runs so slowly on modern computers like mine and yours in D3D that you'd think that it's doing software rendering!

serious, its always run so well for me! i've never had a problem running in D3D or OGL (unless you count d3d being slightly slower)

i also use the updated Opengl dll file

 

[Poobah]

serious, its always run so well for me!

That only occurs in 32-bit colour modes. I'm not sure why. I thought that was what you were talking about when you said OpenGL is a lot faster.

Tesla, if the only OpenGL problems that you have are related to plug-ins for N64 emulators, then the problem is probably with the plug-ins. The OpenGL modes for Rice's plug-ins, for example, work horribly for me, while as Squall said most games' OpenGL implementations seem to be faster than the Direct3D ones. Half-life and UT are good examples of this.

 

[squall_leonhart]

That only occurs in 32-bit colour modes. I'm not sure why. I thought that was what you were talking about when you said OpenGL is a lot faster.

Tesla, if the only OpenGL problems that you have are related to plug-ins for N64 emulators, then the problem is probably with the plug-ins. The OpenGL modes for Rice's plug-ins, for example, work horribly for me, while as Squall said most games' OpenGL implementations seem to be faster than the Direct3D ones. Half-life and UT are good examples of this.

i had the same issues with rice's video in opengl... but for some reason its ok now, it looks almost as good as jabo's

and i run UT in 32bit colour, and my performance is fine

i play at 1280x1024 with all details high with 4xAA and 16xAF

 

[Poobah]

i had the same issues with rice's video in opengl... but for some reason its ok now, it looks almost as good as jabo's

and i run UT in 32bit colour, and my performance is fine

i play at 1280x1024 with all details high with 4xAA and 16xAF

I just tested it again, and the frame rate is about .2 FPS with D3D, but 100 FPS with OpenGL with 16xAA, 16xAF and Triple Buffering, in 1152x864.

For some reason Rice's plug-in works fine in OpenGL for me aswell. (It still causes a crash on exit, though.) How odd!

 

[squall_leonhart]

I just tested it again, and the frame rate is about .2 FPS with D3D, but 100 FPS with OpenGL with 16xAA, 16xAF and Triple Buffering, in 1152x864.

For some reason Rice's plug-in works fine in OpenGL for me aswell. (It still causes a crash on exit, though.) How odd!

you get that to?.. the crash that is.. i don't always get it though.

i used rice video to check out the high res texture packs for LoZ

 

[F-3582]

Yup, I second that. I've been messing with OpenGL plugins in PSX emulation for years, now and I'm still impressed by its performance and stability. Okay, nowadays I use the PEOpS Soft plugin instead, because of its retro factor (and the better atmosphere, too), but in the field of PSX emulation nothing beats OpenGL. Furthermore, I've been playing Quake3 for an even longer time without a single crash.

By the way: In my opinion D3D is much more unstable than OpenGL, because D3D plugins crash Project64 pretty often on my computer.

 

[squall_leonhart]

D3D is only as stable as windows

 

[Tesla]

Hey, squally, you were right! I updated my driver, and Jabo's ogl is a little buggy. But not as close as before!!! Which ogl plugin is better then Jabo's?