Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?

[GreenHawk84]

OK, so I went the Source update route again for FBAlpha and it appears I have the latest build. However, the jittery movement (tried Goldenaxe) is still there.

[barbudreadmon]

@greenhawk84 What's written in the bottom left of the retroarch menu ?

[GreenHawk84]

@barbudreadmon 1.6.9 - FB Alpha v0.2.97.42 54ee769

[barbudreadmon]

@greenhawk84 Hmm that's weird, last time i checked, my rpi1 was able to run those games at full speed with lr-fbalpha, so that can't be related to high cpu usage. I can't say those drivers had drastic changes over the last few years either. The only things that come to mind are setup related (cpu governor not set to performance, programs running in the background, sd in a bad state, bad combination of settings in retroarch, ...), and i don't think i'll be able to help you with that.

[GreenHawk84]

@barbudreadmon still odd that Mame2003 running Mortal Kombat 2/3 is fine, Sega Genesis/SNES emus are fine, and Mame2010 running the games I noticed issues with was fine.

[GreenHawk84]

I uninstalled FBAlpha totally and installed from Source. The issue was still there. Loaded Goldenaxe on Mame2010 for a sanity check and it was very smooth.

@caver01 let me know if you find anything.

[caver01]

@greenhawk84 well, I am in the process of a total software rebuild on my mini NESPI where I saw this. My thought was along the line of video settings to improve input lag. I know I was playing with dispmanx, and a handful of settings from here. I am not sure if you were exploring similar settings, but it might explain why one emulator is having issues and not everything else if adjustments were made to its retroarch.cfg.

[barbudreadmon]

@caver01 said in Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?:

dispmanx

I wouldn't recommend using dispmanx with lr-fbalpha, from my experience it prevents screen rotation, which is a big issue with arcade emulators, i don't know if there are other side effects though.

[coldnpale]

Just for the record, yesterday I updated from binary. So far I tried some mslug games and street fighter third strike, they all seemed to run full speed, no issues.

[mediamogul]

@greenhawk84

You might try running top to see exactly what is taking up the most resources. Perhaps something is running that shouldn't be.

[GreenHawk84]

@caver01, no I haven't adjusted anything, I keep everything stock except I run integer scale on some games and an overlay. I tried without those options and I saw the performance issue. I am not too savvy on how to confirm the game is running at full speed but displays some jittery movement anyway.

[mediamogul]

@greenhawk84 said in Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?:

I am not too savvy on how to confirm the game is running at full speed

In the RetroArch menu, under 'Video' there's a selection to turn the FPS display on/off.

[GreenHawk84]

@mediamogul after enabling frame rate display I am seeing 60fps (with a dip to 59.X) once a while but mostly 60fps. I observed the jerkiness at the same time observing solid 60fps.

[mediamogul]

@greenhawk84

Does lr-fbalpha have a frame skip feature? If so, it may be enabled. That, or something similar, would cause visual stuttering while technically still emulating at full speed.

[barbudreadmon]

@mediamogul said in Some games feel stuttery (FBAlpha)?:

Does lr-fbalpha have a frame skip feature?

No

[barbudreadmon]

@greenhawk84 I just tried all the games you mentioned on my rpi3@1.2Ghz :

• cps1/neogeo games use 35~45% cpu usage
• golden axe uses 45~70% cpu usage(i think you can lower the cpu usage a lot by playing around with the 3 core options related to sound for this one)
• turtle in time uses 80-85% cpu usage

I can imagine turtle in time stuttering from cpu usage on a non-overclocked rpi3, the others definitely won't.
Also, the dip to 59.X has been there since the old fba core (now named lr-fbalpha2012), and i'm pretty sure it doesn't affect anything (most likely a bad rounding issue with how retroarch compute this).

All tests done with latest commit of lr-fbalpha, retroarch 1.7.0, gl video driver, alsa sound driver, scanline shader, core provided aspect ratio, threaded video on, and integer scale off.

[GreenHawk84]

Tried Turtles in Time, Golenaxe on FBA 2012, very smooth motion.

Here are some settings in FBAlpha photos from my setup:

[barbudreadmon]

@greenhawk84 Only differences i can see with my setup :

• i don't use integer scale (i don't think this is needed when using simple shaders like scanline.glsl)
• i have vertical sync on (which is the recommended setting, it is mentioned when using the xmb menu driver)
• i have the core option cpu overclock at 100 (using higher value will impact cpu usage on games benefiting from this setting, which include all neogeo games and a few others)
• i use alsa instead of alsathread (i never noticed the difference, and now i notice i have a new "tinyalsa" choice, what's this ?)
• i use xmb instead of rgui (i prefer beautiful menu with tips, even if it's not totally smooth on raspberry)

You didn't mention the shaders you are using

[barbudreadmon]

@greenhawk84 Also, you should probably consider updating retroarch to the latest stable version (the 1.7.0 release, which is the commit 0a2b44273da17d1b2372cd16469bb74791f7ac95, i don't know if you can force a commit when rebuilding something in retropie though), using retroarch versions outside of the official releases can sometimes lead to unexpected issues.

[Rion]

@barbudreadmon
This was apparently added in 1 6.3.

RetroArch 1.6.3

General changelog

LINUX: Add a tinyalsa audio driver. Doesn’t require asoundlib, should be self-contained and lower-level.