Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo

Darksavior

@barbudreadmon One thing's for sure, you need to oc the pi3b+ to get rid of the fps drops when doing supers. Audio starts to crackle when that happens and the ~58fps confirms it.

dankcushions

@GreenHawk84 to diagnose we really need your full set of configs.

ie
/boot/config.txt
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/fbn/retroarch.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg (if you run it via the arcade folder)

and also run the game with verbose logging turned on and show us /dev/shm/runcommand.log

grant2258

@barbudreadmon said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

No, you are wrong, my pi3+ run a game like rtype (55Hz) or tapper (30Hz) at exactly the same pace than my desktop (with freesync enabled), the only difference is the frame duping. Setting the refresh rate is working properly on pi3+.

anything between 57 and 59 will not dupe you know this 30 and 50 are outside the audio skew so i would say im not worng

barbudreadmon

@grant2258 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

anything between 57 and 59 will not dupe you know this

No, i don't know any of this. I tried tagteam (57Hz), it was running at the proper speed on both my desktop & pi3+, as far as i can tell you probably just have some bad setting.

Edit : apparently, it's working as you said if you leave default settings, however i've those settings in both my setups, they make refresh rate working properly for me :

vrr_runloop_enable = "true"
video_adaptive_vsync = "true"

grant2258

yea you can do that or change the audio skew it will fix it as well requires a restart though its a design choice by ra. I thought you where aware of this after the journey topic. Iy is fixable but users will need guidance if they want it working properly it isint an obvious setting

GreenHawk84

@dankcushions

Please review my files as you requested:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AluYjzvuXNufjUqJRHVSrdq9wANF?e=4qUecg

Let me know if you can access these properly. I appreciate your effort to see if my setup is faulty.

WeirdH

@barbudreadmon said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

vrr_runloop_enable = "true"
video_adaptive_vsync = "true"

Are these recommended settings? And if so, should I set them in the Fbneo folder, or in the Retroarch one?

mitu

@WeirdH said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

Are these recommended settings? And if so, should I set them in the Fbneo folder, or in the Retroarch one?

These settings would be useful if you have a Variable refresh rate (VRR) monitor:

dankcushions

@GreenHawk84 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@dankcushions

Please review my files as you requested:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AluYjzvuXNufjUqJRHVSrdq9wANF?e=4qUecg

Let me know if you can access these properly. I appreciate your effort to see if my setup is faulty.

thanks!

well, here's one curio:

[INFO] [Overrides] core-specific overrides found at /home/pi/.config/retroarch/config/FinalBurn Neo/FinalBurn Neo.cfg.
[INFO] [Overrides] game-specific overrides found at /home/pi/.config/retroarch/config/FinalBurn Neo/sfiii3.cfg.

so it looks like you have both a core and a game override in play. can you please upload those, also? the locations are listed above.

EDIT: and also /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg

the rest of the configs look good to me.

barbudreadmon

@mitu said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

These settings would be useful if you have a Variable refresh rate (VRR) monitor

A gsync/freesync monitor isn't required, tagteam is showing 57fps whether i connect it to a freesync monitor or a normal monitor. In the first place i doubt freesync/gsync monitors would do something about VRR without a compatible gpu, and i doubt the VC4/VC6 are such gpus.

My guess would be that this setting enable the real VRR thing when hardware is compatible, and will do the duping thing otherwise.

Anyway yeah, it might make sense if fbneo had those 2 settings turned on by default in retropie.

GreenHawk84

This post is deleted!

GreenHawk84

@dankcushions said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@GreenHawk84 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@dankcushions

Please review my files as you requested:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AluYjzvuXNufjUqJRHVSrdq9wANF?e=4qUecg

Let me know if you can access these properly. I appreciate your effort to see if my setup is faulty.

thanks!

well, here's one curio:
[INFO] [Overrides] core-specific overrides found at /home/pi/.config/retroarch/config/FinalBurn Neo/FinalBurn Neo.cfg.
[INFO] [Overrides] game-specific overrides found at /home/pi/.config/retroarch/config/FinalBurn Neo/sfiii3.cfg.
so it looks like you have both a core and a game override in play. can you please upload those, also? the locations are listed above.

@dankcushions I uploaded the additional files. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AluYjzvuXNufjUqJRHVSrdq9wANF?e=IodYJo

Riverstorm

None of these settings apply to the Pi right? They would be more PC based? You would need a adaptive sync/VRR monitor and a video card that with display port 1.2a or HDMI 2.1. I think the Pi 3 is HDMI 1.3 not sure on the Pi 4. That alone is a show stopper unless it's some type of software implementation in Libretro?

vrr_runloop_enable = "true"
video_adaptive_vsync = "true"

gsync is Nvidia's implementation of adaptive sync and freesync is AMD's. Both are adaptive sync implemented differently. Gsync requires both monitor and GPU proprietary hardware. Even though freesync is "free" in many monitors now I think the needed drivers are closed source. I can't remember exactly but I remember reading some dispute on whether AMD's freesync is actually a VESA standard open source implementation. Regardless it seems none of the settings apply to RetroPie on a Pi?

barbudreadmon

@Riverstorm As i said those settings work with my pi3 on a normal monitor, i guess it's using frame duping to emulate VRR, it's still better than nothing to get proper game speed.

dankcushions

@GreenHawk84 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@dankcushions said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:
@GreenHawk84 said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

@dankcushions

Please review my files as you requested:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AluYjzvuXNufjUqJRHVSrdq9wANF?e=4qUecg

Let me know if you can access these properly. I appreciate your effort to see if my setup is faulty.

thanks!

well, here's one curio:
[INFO] [Overrides] core-specific overrides found at /home/pi/.config/retroarch/config/FinalBurn Neo/FinalBurn Neo.cfg.
[INFO] [Overrides] game-specific overrides found at /home/pi/.config/retroarch/config/FinalBurn Neo/sfiii3.cfg.
so it looks like you have both a core and a game override in play. can you please upload those, also? the locations are listed above.
@dankcushions I uploaded the additional files. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AluYjzvuXNufjUqJRHVSrdq9wANF?e=IodYJo

run_ahead_frames = "1"

i'm not sure if this is enough to turn run_ahead on but it's certainly an unsupported setting. i don't know why you would have these two large override files on a default, untweaked retropie setup? i am not sure i am going to be able to parse them completely but i would delete them, if you don't have a reason to have them.

fbneo-cyclone = "disabled" - maybe this is the default but i wonder if this optimized CPU driver affects sfiii... not sure

GreenHawk84

@dankcushions noted, I did not set those settings myself. I am not sure why they are set the way they are. The only override files I truly want in place are the game overrides for the overlays.

SFIII is running smoothly except for the audio issues which I have noticed ever since FBNeo was the new FBA. It gets pretty scratchy at times.

Riverstorm

@barbudreadmon - I agree "simulating" VRR is better than nothing. I can't seem to find those options in any RA(?) documentation. Would you happen to know a link to read up on them? I don't quite understand what those options do in relation to frame duping, using a static or VRR monitor.

I guess I can see frame duping as what is making it work correctly for FPS but I don't understand how that works on a "normal" monitor of say a static refresh rate like 60Hz. I am guessing when you say a normal monitor you're referring to a static refresh rate monitor.

It seems like if you're duping frames you would have lag somewhere basically trying to slow the frames on a static refresh rate. It seems a normal monitor of 60Hz is always going to refresh at 60Hz regardless of what RA is doing. Which you would think would have to create issues somewhere from the graphics to the audio to possible input lag.

I know @grant2258 has explained it a few times and I think he's done it well but sometimes it's a challenge to wrap my head around the concept as whole and how the devs "trick" the hardware into appearing to run correctly but I'm getting closer. :)

On a side note it just seems that gsync/freensync are not really part of Pi world in any capacity. For freesync you need a Freesync capable monitor, an AMD graphics card, display port 1.2a and the drivers. It's basically the same for gsync but they tote they are taking it to the next level by refining adaptive sync which requires special hardware in the monitor that raises the price by several hundred dollars.

If using HDMI vs Displayport I don't know the exact HDMI version that supports gsync/freesync but I believe it's newer than the 1.3a this SoC supports. Anyway the thought being it seems like gsync/freesync wouldn't really do anything unless you're running RetroPie on a PC with the minimum requirements for gsync/freesync.

Also should we turn those option on when running on a Pi with a normal monitor vs. a VRR monitor? If one way is better than the other I would like to tweak my settings for the core and possible other cores.

barbudreadmon

@Riverstorm

turning those options on doesn't seem to affect performance either (apart from the games now running at the right & slower speed), so i'm not sure there is any good reason to keep them off
to render a 57 fps content on a 60Hz screen VRRless, i guess they are evenly duping 3 frames each second, actually some people might be sensible to that so i guess it would be one reason to keep it off
afaik nvidia gpus work with both gsync & freesync (there was a nvidia update about this, might have been last year)
HDMI VRR requires 2.0

dankcushions

personally i would always want smooth gameplay with slightly different game speed/audio pitch (via the default audio skew tolerance of 0.05), than judders with correct game speed/audio pitch.

also, i kinda think that it sounds like this vrr option just has a side effect on non-vrr devices of ignoring retroarch's default 60fps speed compensation. i wouldn't expect that to be guaranteed across retroarch versions. it almost sounds like a bug, really. if you want to favour correct game speed over smooth 60hz, then i would do it via adjusting the audio skew tolerance.

Riverstorm

@barbudreadmon said in Goodbye fbalpha, welcome fbneo:

turning those options on doesn't seem to affect performance either (apart from the games now running at the right & slower speed), so i'm not sure there is any good reason to keep them off

I appreciate the help in understanding some of these things. It's good to have options but they can get confusing at times!

afaik nvidia gpus work with both gsync & freesync (there was a nvidia update about this, might have been last year)

Nice, I haven't looked in a while but that's a huge green check in Nvidia's corner to be able to use either monitor type with an Nvidia graphics cards vs. locked into one vendor for the life of the card and monitor!

@dankcushions - Yeah I suppose that's subjective. I don't mind the change in audio pitch but I'm not as keen on the speedup part. For example a 57Hz game re-sampled up to 60Hz would be a 5% increase in speed if doing the math correctly.

If I'm understanding what you're saying. Turning on vrr_runloop_enable or video_adaptive_vysnc or both shouldn't be making games run at the right & slower speed on a VRRless monitor? You're thinking it's a bug?

I guess somehow those options seem to be overriding/ignoring audio skew on VRRless monitors. The default of .05 gives you +/- 3Hz to work with and should re-sample up to 60Hz it seems vs. maintaining the slower correct speed with those options.

If audio skew is off does it automatically start using "frame duping" to fake it or you just get screen tearing due to the shortage of frames?

You prefer to leave those options alone due to a potential bug and just change the audio skew to 0.01 or something below the range that would re-sample it up to 60Hz? The closer the game to 60Hz the lower you need to adjust the skew.