lr-duckstation - Experimental new PlayStation 1 emulator

nemo93

@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.

=> Ape Escape appears to run fullspeed but as soon as you press Start in-game the Options menu will cause slowdown. Gran Turismo 2 (Arcade) will slowdown as soon as you enter a race. Spyro 3 also suffers from slowdown.

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!

=> All the above were tested with hardware (OpenGL) renderer, default PGXP settings, 1x resolution (2x is slowing down everything) and either Nearest-Neighbour/Bilinear or Jinc2 antialiasing (xBR is super slow). I definitely second @stoo's post above.

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.

=> same as @stoo here. PGXP and other image quality refinements are available only with the Hardware renderer.

On a stock pi4 I still recommend to stick with renderer on "Software", "alsathread" to be enabled (sorted as per your PR) and Apply Compatibility settings to be switched "ON". For max compatibility the Crop setting should be set on "none" then up to the users to decide what's best for their setup. I've found out setting Crop to "All borders" will work 95% of the time. The remaining 5% are usually 2D games, FMVs or still images (loading screens) that will flicker. Last I've set Log level to "none" instead of the default.

@stoo thanks a lot for confirming and further testing. I've updated my very first post thanks to your findings! Much appreciated.

@dankcushions my testing is now over and I've got nothing else to add at that point. lr-duckstation is simply the best PSX emulator available on pi4 for now. Apart from Captain Commando all games are running fine on first launch without fiddling with the settings. For obvious reasons I'm unable to test nearly ~600 games in full extent hence I can't comment on the accuracy/compatibility with games like FF7/8/9 etc and on the long-run. But from what I saw I'm more than pleased! Last note: not a single crash to report, this emu is rock-solid.

lostless

@dankcushions not sure if this is the right place for a feature request, and no hurry on it, but I do miss the the rumble from pcsxRearmed.

ecto

@lostless IIRC there is rumble... Maybe you have to select the right controller in the Retroarch input settings: analogue (dualshock)?

dankcushions

@nemo93 said in lr-duckstation - Experimental new PlayStation 1 emulator:

=> Ape Escape appears to run fullspeed but as soon as you press Start in-game the Options menu will cause slowdown. Gran Turismo 2 (Arcade) will slowdown as soon as you enter a race. Spyro 3 also suffers from slowdown.

interestingly, i am unable to recreate slowdown in these two scenarios on my pi4 + aarch64 + kms + latest mesa drivers setup

on my stock (albeit updated) pi4 + arm32 setup i couldn't recreate slowdown in ape escape's menu (only tried the tutorial level, though), but i could get it in GT2 (just X'd through the menus to get to the first race).

i tried fkms (ie, retropie/raspi pi os's default) on my aarch64 setup: still no slowdown. i don't think aarch64 should make a difference since this a GPU bottleneck. it could be the latest mesa drivers (which allegedly have some performance improvements).

anyway, i will default it on software for now but this might be something we can review when raspi os is updated.

nemo93

@dankcushions FYI I'm about to finish Castlevania SOTN (190%) and I've not got a single issue during gameplay (roughly 20h). The emulation is flawless and super stable on pi4.

Crush

I don't seem to find any resolution options but some have mentioed them in this thread, how do i enable or find them?

dankcushions

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

I don't seem to find any resolution options but some have mentioed them in this thread, how do i enable or find them?

i'm not entirely sure what options you're referring to but all upscaling options are available via https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Core-Options/

Chupachups

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

I also tried some lightgun games, but sadly there is still no crosshair for now.>

You can't imagine how much I would like to use an AIRMOUSE in Point Blank / Time Crisis Psx games as I do now in Mame or lr-Flycast

Crush

@dankcushions thanks but i'm refering to rendered resolution, like the enhanced resolution option in lr-psx-rearmed.
Right now my psx games look like mud in duckstation, so it's not really a viable replacement for psx-r for me pesonally.

dankcushions

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

@dankcushions thanks but i'm refering to rendered resolution, like the enhanced resolution option in lr-psx-rearmed.

so am i :) those options are available in core options, as per my link. in duckstation the option is called 'internal resolution scale'. note that you'll have to switch the renderer option to 'hardware (auto)' (with the caveat in the my first post in this thread), and restart the core for it to appear.

that said, i just tested it and it appears to cause quite a bit of slowdown on my test game (tekken 2) at 2x resolution, but other games might be fine. you may also get better performance disabling all the PGXP enhancements.

Crush

@dankcushions ooooh for some reason i completely misunderstood, thanks i've got it sorted now :-)
time to try some games again ^_^

Crush

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

that said, i just tested it and it appears to cause quite a bit of slowdown on my test game (tekken 2) at 2x resolution, but other games might be fine. you may also get better performance disabling all the PGXP enhancements.

yes t does seem to struggle with hardware rendering, but it does seem to work well with some games that run in lower resolution like Midnight Run Road Fighter 2.
Games that already render in 480p don't really require it.
This emulator certainly has allot of potential, but needs some optimisation first.
And it is nice to have the widescreen available at least for the games that already look decent in software mode.

dankcushions

@crush my impression is that it's already pretty well optimized, but unfortunately it's a more demanding (accurate, compatible) emulator than pcsx_rearmed, and that comes at a cost to very weak devices like raspberry pis.

the latest mesa drivers seem to provide a small bump (and also permit the vulkan renderer), so next version of raspbian should be a bit better.

IGA

Hello)
Could somebody help me with 2 questions?

Could duckstation show internal fps?
2)What about saves? - Original retroarch pcsx-reloaded save.srm not supported by duckstation? And the only way is rename old save like GameName.SRM to GameName_1.MCD ?

lostless

@iga to answer your second question. You can change duckstation to to use libretro save format. Then saves can be used across pcsx and duckstation.

IGA

@lostless Yup, i saw it - Memory Card Type\ choose Save RAM (libretro .srm) - but my old saves won't be loaded...

And about first question - could i suppose that maybe parameter frameskip=auto is sewn into the duckstation core by default, to increase more speed?

sleve_mcdichael

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

Yup, i saw it - Memory Card Type\ choose Save RAM (libretro .srm) - but my old saves won't be loaded...

I literally just renamed my existing .srm files to the _1.mcd scheme when I switched over (I didn't know "libretro format" was an option until just now) and they all seem to have worked. -- Does this also work in reverse (after they've been saved in .mcd format I mean. I'm sure any that haven't been modified in the new format could just be named back. But can one saved natively as .mcd be renamed to .srm and expected to work?)

dankcushions

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

And about first question - could i suppose that maybe parameter frameskip=auto is sewn into the duckstation core by default, to increase more speed?

it’s not. it’s full speed on a pi 4 in software mode anyway.

there’s no internal FPS option, although duckstation is an accurate emulator so you can safely presume that the internal emulated fps is accurate.

EDIT: actually stand-alone DOES have an internal fps option, so maybe it does - check the core options.

IGA

@dankcushions OK, if it that, then great. This what i wanted to know! Thanks.

Just confused by the retroarch's fps readings ( which is not internal) and which constantly 60....

dankcushions

@iga RA's fps are how fast the emulator is updating to retroarch, which will should be at your display hz (typically 60hz) if it is constantly 60 it means the emulator is running at full speed. it shouldn't be affected by the internal frame rate of the emulated game.