Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

dankcushions

@George-Spiggott said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

Is it ever worth using the 16:9 screen resolutions and the two settings for it? Do any games actually make use of it?

some games had anamorphic widescreen modes, so i guess it would be worth it for that: https://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41744

George Spiggott

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

@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.

Thanks @quicksilver. I hope you don't mind me replying here instead. I tried mupen64plus-gliden64 but the game seems sluggish and the sound is distorted. IMO lr-mupen64plus-next definitely plays SotE better as only the sound is affected.

As an aside I tried running SotE with the CPU overclock turned off. It made no difference to the game speed whatsoever.

quicksilver

@George-Spiggott Yes this seems a better place for this conversation. It plays full speed for me with gliden64. Can you post the contents of /opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg and /opt/retropie/configs/all/autoconf.cfg? Perhaps our settings are different?

George Spiggott

Thanks @quicksilver. Here they are.

mupen64plus.cfg

[edit] new link

autoconf.cfg

"8bitdo_hack = "0"
es_swap_a_b = "0"
disable = "0"
mupen64plus_audio = "0"
mupen64plus_compatibility_check = "0"
mupen64plus_hotkeys = "1"
mupen64plus_texture_packs = "1""

quicksilver

@George-Spiggott are you sure that is your mupen64plus.cfg? It's not fully populated. That looks more like mupen64plus.cfg.rp-dist.

George Spiggott

@quicksilver Oops yes it is. Fixed the link above.

quicksilver

In the audio-sdl section change resample to "trivial" that should help with the audio issues.

Are you running in 4k mode?

George Spiggott

@quicksilver Will check the audio settings. TV is 1080p. Mupen is running in 320x240.

I don't understand why the audio cuts out when there is so much spare processing time. I assumed that audio is processed by the CPU.

dankcushions

@George-Spiggott said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

@quicksilver Will check the audio settings. TV is 1080p. Mupen is running in 320x240.

I don't understand why the audio cuts out when there is so much spare processing time. I assumed that audio is processed by the CPU.

if the gpu can't deliver frames in time, it bottlenecks everything else. cpu power is mostly irrelevant with n64 on raspberry pi. even the rpi 2 has enough grunt most of the time.

George Spiggott

@quicksilver I went for a variation on your suggestion, I had a look at the audio settings for lr-mupen64plus-next and increased Audio Latency (ms) to 512 (from 64). It seems to have smoothed out most of the audio issues I have. The game still doesn't run at 100% speed but it is well playable.

I have also pretty much completely turned off my CPU overclock. I am tempted to see how far I can push the GPU to iron out the frame rate issues on N64 and PSP.

@dankcushions thanks for the explanation.

George Spiggott

@dankcushions I found a list of the games that dk benefit from 16:9. There seems to be about half a dozen of them.

https://www.google.com/amp/gametyrant.com/news/n64-games-that-had-widescreen-support-part-1-anamorphic-widescreen%3Fformat=amp

The only one I have is Perfect Dark. It will take advantage of 16:9 adjusted. You have to have a fairly sharp eye to notice the difference e.g the moon is actually a cirle at the start of level 1. Nice to find a game with that option though.

George Spiggott

Does anyone know how to gwt Mario Cart 64 to run in 640x480 without the graphics breaking up on the character select screen?

quicksilver

@George-Spiggott can you post a screenshot? Often times there are issues with 2D objects having lines in them when you increase the resolution beyond the original render resolution of that system. This happens with a number of emulators, not just mupen64plus.

dankcushions

@George-Spiggott i belive:

# Render 2D texrects in native resolution to fix misalignment between parts of 2D image. (0=Off, 1=Optimized, 2=Unoptimized)
EnableNativeResTexrects = 0

to

# Render 2D texrects in native resolution to fix misalignment between parts of 2D image. (0=Off, 1=Optimized, 2=Unoptimized)
EnableNativeResTexrects = 1

in /opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg

or the equiv core option in lr-mupen.

quicksilver

@dankcushions I had not noticed that option before. Do you know if there a performance hit for using it?

dankcushions

@quicksilver there presumably will be otherwise it would default on.

George Spiggott

@dankcushions Thanks that solved it. There were a few N64 games that ran well on a stock Pi3B+ I think most of these will be good candidates to run at 640x480 on a Pi4. So far Mario Cart 64 and Donkey Kong Racing are the only ones I have tried. I also managed to fix my Worms Armageddon problem by running the game in Mupen64plus in 640x480.

This is the graphical error in Mario Cart 64 so people know what to look out for.

Mario Kart 64 (U)-200426-182759.png

Pi-nerd84

Hello together,

First of all, thanks for the efforts to bring a first release out for the RPI4.
I tried to run Goldeneye and Pilotwings 64 on first official RPI4 release.
Currently, I got weaker performance as on my RPI3 with old rice core for these two titles.

Pilotwings rans nearly at 100 per cent on RPI3.
On RPI4, i tried all cores. At most of the time it stuckes and there are artefacts and glitches on the screen.

Goldeneye rans also i would say only 70 per cent of speed.

Addititional, I tried also lakka in the past on RPI4, with nearly same behaviour.
I guess the emulator cores and/or gpu drivers are currently not very optimized so far.

I will ask some questions in the round, which I currently do not know, maybe one of you have here already more background info:

Are there any improvements possible, what could be said by today?
Would a coming vulkan gpu driver help for better N64 performance?
is there any ongoing optimization for the N64 emulators/cores, especially for the RPI4?

dankcushions

@Pi-nerd84 said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

Hello together,

First of all, thanks for the efforts to bring a first release out for the RPI4.
I tried to run Goldeneye and Pilotwings 64 on first official RPI4 release.
Currently, I got weaker performance as on my RPI3 with old rice core for these two titles.

Pilotwings rans nearly at 100 per cent on RPI3.
On RPI4, i tried all cores. At most of the time it stuckes and there are artefacts and glitches on the screen.

Goldeneye rans also i would say only 70 per cent of speed.

i can definitely see some nasty regression in goldeneye speed. i'm bisecting right now to see where it changed.

dankcushions

tagging @quicksilver - I just compiled standalone mupen64plus-GLideN64 from the beginning of the year and it's getting hammered in the intro (spinning nintendo logo) and presumably beyond, whereas lr-mupen64plus-next seems fine. not sure what the discrepancy can be? has it always been like this? very strange!