lr-duckstation - Experimental new PlayStation 1 emulator

[nemo93]

@dankcushions so far I've tested ~550 games and it went very well as stated earlier. I've updated my first post with some findings but the emulator perfectly works (at least on pi4 - stock). I've deleted lr-PCSX-ReARMed from the system given all games play fullspeed and without glitches (except for the 1 or 2 games reported).

I'm taking a 2-week break now. If you're interested I leave to your hands what I reported in my 1st post, if you want to report the "issues without fix" to the author please feel free to do so. I'd prefer somebody else to confirm these issues first to be 100% sure it's not my setup.

Settings-wise I've used pretty much default values. As discussed the most important for now on pi4 is to be sure Renderer is "Software", "alsathread" has to be enabled (sorted as per your PR) and Apply Compatibility settings must be switched "ON". I've used mostly the Crop "All borders" which works 95% of the time. The remaining 5% are usually 2D games, FMVs or still images (loading screens) that will flicker. For these the Crop "only overscan" will do just fine. For max compatibility the Crop setting should be set on "none" so up to the users to decide what's best for their setup. I just set Log level to "none" instead of the default. Bios I've been using for the whole test session is "scph101.bin".

To be fair lr-PCSX-ReARMed did also a pretty good job for many years (thanks to authors/maintainers) and still does but in term of stability, compatibility, sound and image quality lr-duckstation is superior on pi4.

This emulator is really an amazing piece of software and I'm so glad to have a fully working PSX emu now. What's nice is there will be improvements hopefully soon when it'll be possible to fully rely on Vulkan/OpenGL backends. But even without it's so great to be able to play some old goodies exactly the way they were back in the days :-)

[stoo]

The only thing I'm really missing from lr-PCSX-ReARMed is the internal FPS counter that shows the actual FPS rate from the emulated GTE. It's good for seeing whether a CPU overclock helps stabilise the framerate in certain games. Apart from that, lr-duckstation is a clear winner. I look forward to the day the accelerated graphics options are really usable on the Pi4.

[Cornervizion]

@dankcushions Thank you and the RetroPie team for finally providing this build after so much waiting...

I'm having a great time seeing games like "Jumping Flash 2", "Tobal 2", "Airgrave" and "Tomba 2" work perfectly for the first time since I started using RetroPie back on the Pi2 in 2015.

Keep up the great work. 👍

[MrPacMan17]

Hi all.

I followed all the steps but it doesn't work for me. I am just thrown back to ES. No matter what I do.

I run Retropie 4.7.1 on a HP laptop running Xubuntu. See pastebin for the verbose log of Run Command: https://pastebin.com/vQ5pLxqm

My guess is that hardware rendering is tried which doesn't work. But since no ROM is started I can't get in to the RGUI of lr-duckstation and change it. I already tried to manually edit the config file but I don't know the proper syntax nor what file to edit manually.

Any advice is welcome, many thanks in advance.

[dankcushions]

@mrpacman17 try forcing software mode by editing file /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg

replace line

duckstation_GPU.Renderer = "OpenGL"

with

duckstation_GPU.Renderer = "Software"

[dankcushions]

@nemo93 @Genos98 et al

do you have any particular examples which slowdown with the default hardware (OpenGL) renderer on pi4? ideally with a way i can quickly verify them.

in lieu of vulkan i can be tempted to make software the default renderer for pi4 (and pi2 and 3?), but i haven't seen any performance issues in my (limited) testing of the default hardware renderer - open to ideas!

i note that a few of the PGXP enhancements are on by default - i'm not sure if they are applicable to software mode, but if they're not i would be tempted to turn those off by default if i can provide full performance.

[MrPacMan17]

@dankcushions Hi there.

Thanks for the advice but it doesn't work :(. What is strange that the file you mentioned contains NO other entries for Duckstation what so ever.

See pastebin for the verbose log of Runcommand: https://pastebin.com/LXzAgGwS

And pastebin for the retroarch-core-options.cfg: https://pastebin.com/e8p3jr7E

Guess something is not okay here. And thanks a lot for your help here, much appreciated.

[stoo]

@dankcushions I've tested a handful of games on the Pi4 (arm 2000/v3d 700) and found:

OpenGL
All tested games seem to run full speed at 1x native with or without PGXP enhancements tested more and it seems PGXP can cause slowdown in certain scenes. It's not terrible, but it's definitely there.
1x native with any form of antialiasing introduces slowdown in certain scenes, with or without PGXP.
2x native and higher introduces slowdown
Some of the time the emulator fails to initialise the OpenGL renderer, simply trying a second time with identical settings seems to fix it.

Vulkan
AFAIK, Vulkan is not officially available in RetroPie yet, at least on RPi platforms.
[ERROR] Requesting Vulkan context, but RetroArch is not compiled against Vulkan. Cannot use HW context.

Software
Everything seems to run full speed.
Scaling, antialiasing and PGXP are not available in software.

[stoo]

@mrpacman17 Turn on logging in retroarch and post that log. Settings - Logging - Log to file.

Logs should appear here:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/logs

[dankcushions]

@mrpacman17 can you please show your config files:
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg

[dankcushions]

@stoo said in lr-duckstation - Experimental new PlayStation 1 emulator:

Vulkan
AFAIK, Vulkan is not officially available in RetroPie yet, at least on RPi platforms.
[ERROR] Requesting Vulkan context, but RetroArch is not compiled against Vulkan. Cannot use HW context.

that's right - it's nether included in raspi pi OS yet, nor does retropie compile retroarch for vulkan on pi platforms

[MrPacMan17]

@dankcushions Hi there.

See here: From ALL folder: https://pastebin.com/VAHGAUQk
From PSX folder: https://pastebin.com/yJqykEM0

Cheers,
Marnix

[MrPacMan17]

@stoo Hi there. Thanks a lot for your efforts, much appreciated. Please see here: https://pastebin.com/mNe4uETa

[dankcushions]

@mrpacman17 said in lr-duckstation - Experimental new PlayStation 1 emulator:

@dankcushions Hi there.

See here: From ALL folder: https://pastebin.com/VAHGAUQk

this is a non-default config, unfortunately. i would reset it by updating retroarch, which will generate a retroarch.cfg.rp-dist default file in th same folder. delete/rename your old retroarch.cfg and then rename retroarch.cfg.rp-dist to retroarch.cfg

that said, the line i was curious about is

video_driver = "gl"

try instead with

video_driver = "glcore"

From PSX folder: https://pastebin.com/yJqykEM0

looks fine

[MrPacMan17]

@dankcushions Thank you, will do as advised. Many thanks again for your hard work and time.

[MrPacMan17]

@dankcushions I did as requested. The file is default now and I changed the videodriver to glcore as requested. But the issue persists, see Runcommand log: https://pastebin.com/YcmcpvLM

[mitu]

@mrpacman17 glcore is not supported on a Pi4. Use gl as the video driver. Also, RetroPie doesn't support running it in a desktop session on a Pi, you should run it outside the desktop environment.

[MrPacMan17]

@mitu I am running Xubuntu on an HP laptop (ProBook 6550B). I did as adviced but still the same issue is at play.

[mitu]

@mrpacman17 said in lr-duckstation - Experimental new PlayStation 1 emulator:

ProBook 6550B

I see, even this way glcore would not work. According to HP's spec page, the GPU included doesn't support OpenGL 3.3, which is needed for glcore.

[MrPacMan17]

@mitu Okay, video is set back to GL. Still no luck though. I am doing something wrong but I don't know what. Sorry for my basic level of understanding here.