Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4

George Spiggott

How does it handle N64 Shadows of the Empire? It is a good example of a game that nearly runs well on a Pi4 but not quite. Does the extra speed available benefit other areas like sound cutting out?

Picard

I can't get RetroPie to build here. Is there something I need to do to manually first compile Mesa or such, or any additional packages I need to install?

Clean Raspbian Buster install on RPi 4.
RetroPie Setup 4.5.18 (3a95bc6).
Kernel: 5.4.29-v8+ #1302 SMP PREEMPT Thu Apr 2 18:05:46 BST 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux
Added to /boot/config.txt:

dt-overlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4
arm_64bit=1

Returned error:

Could not successfully build retroarch - RetroArch - frontend to the libretro emulator cores - required by all lr-* emulators (/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/build/retroarch/retroarch not found).

First error details in log:

/usr/bin/ld: obj-unix/release/gfx/drivers_shader/shader_gl_core.o: in function `gl_core::Framebuffer::init()':
shader_gl_core.cpp:(.text+0x8a0): undefined reference to `glTexStorage2D'
/usr/bin/ld: shader_gl_core.cpp:(.text+0x9f0): undefined reference to `glTexStorage2D'

(Going to try to go back to the old / stable kernel for now.)

mitu

This post is deleted!

mitu

@Picard We don't support running on the 64bit kernel.

Picard

@mitu Thanks, I'll undo that. (Mistaken assumption from GigaCat's response above.)
Edit: No immediate help after going back to 32-bit kernel, then uninstalling and attempting to re-install RetroPie. Going back to a clean re-image to re-attempt...
Edit: Worked after reverting to a clean re-image.

quicksilver

@George-Spiggott can you give an example of a level that plays poorly on SOTE? Which emulator are you using specifically? I feel like this game ran fullspeed last I played it.

Darksavior

Noob question, does rpi-update offer kernel headers now? I need them to build the gamecon pad driver.

mitu

@Picard then the error could be from a source Mesa install and not from the kernel upgrade.
@Darksavior I don't think so, you'll need rpi-source, but it downloads the full kernel sources and not just the headers.

Darksavior

@mitu Thanks, but not sure what to do with the instructions on that page.

George Spiggott

Thanks @quicksilver. The fps drops to around 45 at times during the Hoth missions but this may be the normal frame rate for the game as the game doesn't seem that slow. I understand that some slowdowns can be expected with high end N64 games even on native hardware. The sound cuts in and out from the intro sequence onwards into at least as far as the Hoth missions. I'm using lr-mupen64plus-next.

I'm overclocked with the specs in my sig and running the emulator unmodified.

Rascas

@Darksavior To install 5.4 kernel headers, run the rpi-source to get the kernel source, go into the kernel dir (should be /home/pi/linux-xxxxx) and run:

make headers_install INSTALL_HDR_PATH=/usr

quicksilver

@George-Spiggott Without getting too far off topic. Try mupen64plus-gliden64. It seems to run full speed for me. Generally it is faster than lr-mupen64plus-next.

Darksavior

@Rascas said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

make headers_install INSTALL_HDR_PATH=/usr

Thanks, but that did not work.

Rascas

@Darksavior Works fine here. With that command, headers are installed to /usr/include/ like it is normal but you can change the path to where you want to install them.

Darksavior

@Rascas There might be an issue with the pad driver compiling with it, I really have no idea what I'm doing. I'll create a new thread and see if anyone can help.

Darksavior

Ignoring my gamepad problem, I briefly tried these drivers.
It doesn't support 4k60? 4k30 makes ES's menu glitch out and it eventually crashes to the terminal. 1080p seems fine and smooth.
No audio since it defaults to this new hdmi audio driver. I found some way to make the old driver the default in alsamixer, but it didn't last.

Swampy

First tests with raspberry pi 4 and kernel 5.4 and no problems so far.
I can confirm, that emulationstation runs in full speed now.

Till now, I didn't test all emulators. I will post again, if I find any problems.

saccublenda

Does ES work with kms driver, that is setting dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4 in /boot/config.txt?

Swampy

@saccublenda, for me it only works with the fake kms - driver dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d. I tried it with kms, but I only get a never ending black screen.

Brunnis

@saccublenda Yes. It works right away and seems to fix all tearing issues in both ES and RetroArch.

EDIT: Actually, with latest firmware you can use vc4-kms-v3d. No need for ”-pi4” at the end.

EDIT: If you have boot issues, try removing any overclock.