Will Bezel/Overlay cause slowdown?

NightRune

I have decided to try the Retrorama Overlay pack on my Pi 3B (with Retropie) and noticed that games like Sonic or Super Mario (fast side scrolling games) you can notice small stuttering on screen (without the overlay games are super fluid).

Is it normal for Bezels/Overlays to cause slowdown in games?

Thanks

ChuckyP

@nightrune I haven’t seen any slowdown caused by overlays. If it’s a.png file it should be fine. I would check to see if there are any active shaders that get added with the overlay, certain shaders do cause slowdown.

NightRune

If i just use the Retrorame oberlay (or any other) everything runs smoothly.
If i just use ZFast CRT Shader everything runs smoothly.
If i run both together i get slowdown in all games (very visible on Sonic 1 where the clouds on the background stutter)

ChuckyP

Just to be clear. Does the symptom of slowdown happen with that shader and ANY overlay? Because I have overlays along with a few various shaders (mostly crt-pi & gameboy-grid) and have not had many problems. Crt-pi Curvature makes things twitchy sometimes...

NightRune

@chuckyp If i use Crt-pi shader alone, everyting runs perfect. If i use any overlay/bezel alone, also perfect.

As soon as i use Crt-pi shader with any overlay i notice microstuttering that didn't exist before.

Are you running your pi 720p or 1080p? Do you have the latest version (4.3.5)?

ChuckyP

Yes I’m on the latest version but running 1080p. I could see an issue possibly if you are running a 1080p overlay at 720p... the scaling involved in that may use some processing power. But I’m not sure about that.

NightRune

@chuckyp said in Will Bezel/Overlay cause slowdown?:

Yes I’m on the latest version but running 1080p. I could see an issue possibly if you are running a 1080p overlay at 720p... the scaling involved in that may use some processing power. But I’m not sure about that.

I am also running everything 1080p, so that cannot be the issue.

Are you able to confirm the shader and overlay that you are using so that i can test this on my Pi?

I have tried this on 2 different Pis today and have exact same issue on both )one with Retropie 4.2.18 and the other with latest version (4.3.15).

When you play a game like Sonic (Genesis/Megadrive) can you just confirm that you get the exact same fluity in game with or withour the overlay? In terms of FPS it doesn't change at all, you just notice that as soon as you apply the overlay (any overlay) on top of the CRT-Pi shader or Zfast CRT shader the background movement (clouds, trees) are not smooth.

ChuckyP

I’ll try to replicate your issues a little later. I really only run overlays on the handhelds because I keep the resolution smaller on them.

ChuckyP

Can you provide a link to the overlay pack you are using? I’m getting a 404 error on the few retrorama links I’ve found.

NightRune

@chuckyp Here is the link for the Retrorama Overlay Pack that i am using:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14ciQ2AVoZ6gLNoQHd9FYH1pK0_AS8k1B

Thanks for your help on this! I really apreciate it :)

ChuckyP

OK, I just played Sonic the Hedgehog, with the following settings without any stuttering or slowdown.

1080p
No Overclock
lr-genesis-plus-gx
video_shader = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/shader/crt-pi.glslp"
input_overlay = "~/.config/retroarch/overlay/retrorama/genesis.cfg"
input_overlay_opacity = "1.000000"

There is a readme included which mentions these overlays are meant to be used with crt-curvature, which does give me slowdown. So if you installed these with a utility it may change the shaders as well. By just dropping the config and .png into my overlays folder, and running crt-pi.glslp, I get no lag that I can see.

Also in the readme, it wants the user to change "input_overlay_opacity =" to "1". Mine was set to 0.70, and although I don't think that would create any problems, I did change my value to 1.

dishins

@chuckyp can you please post your retroarch.cfg? i'm having slowdowns with the same configurations as yours, maybe is something in general config.

ChuckyP

@dishins I ran these test on a stock installation of RetroPie. My Retroarch config is “hard coded” for my Xbox 360 wireless 4 player setup. It doesn’t play well with other setups unfortunately.