Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

quicksilver

@Jste84 yes I believe the defaults have changed

quicksilver

@dankcushions so I tested with my overclock off and performance definitely went down. However the spinning Nintendo logo at the begining was fullspeed. Then I remembered that I always lower the display res in runcommand to 640x480 for the n64 emulators. Once I reset to the default 1920x1080 the Nintendo logo became very choppy. So the upscaling to 1080p is causing a big performance hit.

dankcushions

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

@dankcushions so I tested with my overclock off and performance definitely went down. However the spinning Nintendo logo at the begining was fullspeed. Then I remembered that I always lower the display res in runcommand to 640x480 for the n64 emulators. Once I reset to the default 1920x1080 the Nintendo logo became very choppy. So the upscaling to 1080p is causing a big performance hit.

thanks, that was enough for me to figure it out! the issue is this setting:

EnableHybridFilter = True

It's a recent addition to GLideN64 that allows better upscaling (less uneven pixels), but appears to be a major performance hit. if you set this to False the performance issues go away (even at 1080p). PR incoming to fix this for future installs, but those of you running current, paste the following into a command line session:

source ~/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/inifuncs.sh 
iniConfig ' = '
iniSet "EnableHybridFilter" "False" "/opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg"

thanks again @quicksilver - you've helped so much with n64!

dankcushions

PR: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/3124

quicksilver

@dankcushions is this something that needs looked into for lr-mupen64plus-next? I know that it follows gliden64 closely but I don't see the setting exposed in the retroarch menu.

quicksilver

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

I find that Pilotwings goes to a black screen when I enter a level on anything except GLide-N64. Is this normal?

No it's not normal, I'm able to run pilot wings with gles2rice and levels load normally (gles2rice needs it's screen update settings tweaked in the mupen64plus.cfg otherwise you'll get a really strange jitter effect on screen on the pi 4. I'm using setting 7 as it seems to be the least problematic but not of the settings seem to perfectly resolve the issue). This may be another setting that needs changed for pi 4 users @dankcushions. I know you aren't a fan of the old plugins but there are still some games that just don't perform well using gliden64 or mupen64plus-next.

dankcushions

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

@dankcushions is this something that needs looked into for lr-mupen64plus-next? I know that it follows gliden64 closely but I don't see the setting exposed in the retroarch menu.

they will expose the option in later releases, but right now it looks like it's always enabled, unless i'm reading the code wrong.

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

This may be another setting that needs changed for pi 4 users @dankcushions. I know you aren't a fan of the old plugins but there are still some games that just don't perform well using gliden64 or mupen64plus-next.

other than some horrible slowdown in the menus, pilotwings 64 seems to perform ok for in-game for GLideN64?

George Spiggott

I can play Pilotwings N64 on GLide-N64 just not any others. On gles2n64 it opens in a tiny square in the bottom of the screen and in gles2rice the screen has an odd off-putting jitter.

quicksilver

@dankcushions it may not be the best example but there are other games where the difference is more pronounced, excitebike 64, crusin USA, clayfighters etc. for example. Either way, without changing the screen update setting gles2rice is useless on the pi 4.

@George-Spiggott see my post above on how to fix the gles2rice jitter issue for the pi 4.

Stevewp

@dankcushions Unfortunately the games I’m trying to improve performance with, Cruis’n USA for example, doesn’t even work with that emulator...

It seems like we are half way there, I can run many N64 games on the Pi 4 that I couldn’t on the Pi 3 but they have issues. Either the emulators will need to improve, which probably won’t happen, or maybe a Pi 5 will run them properly

George Spiggott

There are still improvements to the GPU drivers like Vulcan implementation that may have benefits for N64 (also PSP and Dreamcast) performance.

dankcushions

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

@dankcushions Unfortunately the games I’m trying to improve performance with, Cruis’n USA for example, doesn’t even work with that emulator...

just tried it - works fine for me? some slowdown but it 'works'

quicksilver

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

Cruis’n USA for example, doesn’t even work with that emulator...

For that particular game use gles2rice. You'll also need to modify the mupen64plus.cfg located at /opt/retropie/configs/n64/mupen64plus.cfg at the bottom under the video-rice section change screen update setting to 7 and it will get rid of the strange "jitter" issue that gles2rice has on the pi 4. The game is still a little slow here and there but it's certainly "playable".

rittnasty

@George-Spiggott Where did you edit this for mupen64plus-next? I cannot find the config file or the option to edit this setting like I could find for mupen64plus. I am only experiencing the 'line' when I use mupen64plus-next.

quicksilver

@dankcushions https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64/commit/438bcc460f07ad3c9e25b8bd4e72581a443c2a7c

I'll test this out and see if it fixes our slowdown issues with the hybrid filter.

Edit: looks like youre already aware of this change, sorry for pinging you :p

janderclander14

Is there anything specific that is needed to run the standalone Mupen64plus? I've installed the latest binary and source versions from the Retropie setup but it keeps giving this error (even though this file is available at: /opt/retropie/emulators/mupen64plus/lib/mupen64plus)

UI-Console Error: Specified Video plugin not found: mupen64plus-video-GLideN64.so

George Spiggott

@rittnasty Hotkey + X takes you to the menu to change the settings, there is no file to edit.

@quicksilver I fixed Pilotwings, thanks.

shavecat

Hey,
So whats the news about the n64 ?
any moves to make it better ? (pi4 )

akamming

Hi,

mupen64plus (not the libretro core, but the normal one) runs quite OK on my PI4. Most game work quite OK on 640x480 with no sound issues.

Just a few settings i found to tweak performance on pi 4

Resample set to "trivial"
resolution (in runcommand menu) set to 640x480 or 720x480. Some games can go higher, but on this resolution till now i got every game to work.
Skipframe=true
Screenupdate setting = 7 (otherwise rice plugin will not work)
Video plugin: I decide per game which works best...
switch off hybrid filter

on lr-mupen64plusnext i am still struggling and i hope to get bettter performance, cause i want to use gamebezels for the better look, whic . i found almost all games to be working on 320x240. But i don't like the lower resolution. I want to run at least on 640x480. So here are my settings which increased performance the most. Hopefully people can give me hints on how to better performance in lr-mupen64plus next:

sound: changed latency to 512 reduced a lot of sound issues, but not all.
Could not find the trivial resampler. it is default on sinc. If i change to CC or null i have no audio. if i change to nearest i experience the same issues (stuttering sound in a lot of games).
Video: In lr set to 4:3. In runcommand: Set resolution to 640x480 or 720x480
i think the biggest performance draw is on the hybrid filter. I could not find this option in libretro

Who can help me to tune the libretro core further?

dankcushions

@akamming the resolution and hybrid filter issues with -next will need to wait for code changes. we will have to wait for the developer, but they are aware.