PSX stuttering in some 3D games

pjft · 4 Jun 2017, 20:56

Ok, so wonderful news: R4 on a wired controller runs smooth as butter.

It might be bluetooth + vibration.

I'm trying now Colin McRae with the same wired controller, just to double check.

Then I'll run both again with the DS3 Sixaxis over bluetooth.

Well done team! (yes, I mean all of us in the thread :) )

EDIT: so, yes, Colin McRae runs smooth as butter as well.
@TMNTturtlguy where do you disable vibration, though? Is there a controller setting in RetroArch for that?

EDIT 2: Hah. What would you know?

@dankcushions you might be familiar with this, actually. See this thread from 8 months ago when this was introduced and someone commented on this exact problem. :)

And this one as well.

Are you aware of a core option for vibration that I may be missing? Or what was the outcome of those discussions?

Thanks!

edmaul69 · 4 Jun 2017, 21:05

Deleted

edmaul69 · 6 Apr 2017, 20:07

@pjft ok you might be right. I am having issues now on wireless. I think i was playing wired charging my controller at first. I am going to test wired on the flash drive. I will get back to you on it.

Capeman · 6 Apr 2017, 20:12

I don't use any bluetooth controllers with my setup, i find the lag to be too heavy for retro games, i save my 8bitdo controllers for my mac.

Wired controllers give the least lag and the best experience.

I use wireless via a logitech wireless rumblepad sometimes, no negative effects there, its faster than bluetooth and has none of the quirks because it runs from usb, but the bulkiness and analog sticks just dont feel authentic.

TMNTturtlguy · 6 Apr 2017, 20:23

@pjft I spent a lot of time on this last night and only came up with the fix in this thread, I decided not to test it out as I don't want to slow down the speed of my usb drives. Link
For the xbox 360 controllers there is no core options or boot configs to allow you to turn off the vibration. You have to go to the games menu, go to the controller setup for the game and turn off the rumble/vibration. For most games, if you have a saved game, it will remember the setting. Otherwise you will have to change this setting in game every time you play. It is not ideal, but it fixes the stutter! Any further testing? Did this fix most of the issue? Thanks

pjft · 6 Apr 2017, 20:29

@TMNTturtlguy Yes, completely.

I am indeed setting those one by one on the games, but I agree a core option would be nicer.

Thanks for the pointer!

edmaul69 · 4 Jun 2017, 21:33

@pjft @TMNTturtlguy ok so i can confirm that it is actually wireless bluetooth is the issue not the powered hub as i stated previously. I was having issues with joystick selection and found out it wasnt enabled. So i must have switched to wireless when i switched to the flash drive plugged directly into the pi. It is weird, in rr4 the music continues to play but crashing sounds crackle, with vibration on when playing wireless. When wired the crashing sound is kind of "turned down" and vibrate still works. Playing wireless with vibration turned off, no issues.

So i am going to try to disable on board bluetooth and use a usb one and see what happens

edmaul69 · 4 Jun 2017, 23:14

@TMNTturtlguy @pjft i didnt disable the onboard bluetooth. I did however hook up the usb bluetooth and went into retropie setup to pair my ps3 controller since it stops being paired to the onboard bluetooth when a usb one is hooked up. So i paired it to the usb one and the sound issues are gone. Works perfect with a usb bluetooth. And i am using a usb bluetooth device that is 9 years old

TMNTturtlguy · 6 Apr 2017, 23:03

@edmaul69 great!

pjft · 7 Apr 2017, 07:38

@TMNTturtlguy @edmaul69

Thanks for checking - it's great that we narrowed this down!

I'll probably try to fix this for good by adding a proper core vibration option to lr-pcsx-rearmed, was looking at the code and it didn't look particularly daunting (famous last words).

I'll see where that takes me in the coming days.

Best.

TMNTturtlguy · 7 Apr 2017, 10:40

@pjft that would be really cool! Would you have to write the code to kill it for each specific controller type though? I am assuming it would be a core option that could be saved for all games? This would be really cool if you could figure it out! Good luck!

edmaul69 · 7 Apr 2017, 19:10

I am just going to use a usb bluetooth so i can keep the rumble. I wish the rumble was stronger though. It is really weak on my ps3 controller.

pjft · 7 Apr 2017, 20:53

Submitted a PR for adding a Core Option for this.

https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed/pull/115

Best.

TMNTturtlguy · 7 Apr 2017, 22:29

@pjft thanks for figuring this out so quickly! I am not an expert on Themis coding, but it appears the code will work for all controller types correct? Xbox 360 and PS4? The pr states it will fix it for PS3 controllers...thanks

pjft · 7 Apr 2017, 22:39

@TMNTturtlguy ah, sure, apologies. It'll allow you to disable vibration for any kind of controller.

I was under the impression, from this and the other threads, that this only happened on PS3 controllers over the RPi's on board Bluetooth.

Hence the description.

Would love it if you can test it afterwards - as well as if someone who does have vibration can test it as well to make sure it works as intended. I don't have a controller with vibration so can't test, other than noticing the stutters:)

TMNTturtlguy · 7 Apr 2017, 22:43

@pjft I will definetly test it! Unfortunately the Xbox 360 build I have now is going to my nephews tomorrow and they are taking it 4 hours away....so if I am able to get the update in time we will test it. Otherwise my next project is for myself with PS4 controls, so I will test that as well!

TMNTturtlguy · 8 Apr 2017, 03:03

@pjft The PR was accepted and merged. I had to update from source. I tested it out with the xbox 360 controllers and it appears that it fixed the situation. I was only able to implement the change and test for a short time, but I think it works well. I did notice some inconsistencies in saving the change to core. Could be that i have several games that have their own game core changes, but it appeared when I made the change and saved to core, it only saved to about half of the games....the other half i had to set manually and create a game core for. I didn't have time to test further, as it was a gift that I have now give away :( Bottom line, looks like it worked well on my build. I will be sure to test on my next build as well. Thanks for the hard work!

pjft · 8 Apr 2017, 07:21

@TMNTturtlguy Not a problem, it should be good to the best of my testing abilities. I did not make a lot of changes as well, so its impact should be fairly self-contained. As such, I don't see how it would have affected the saving.

There's an option to have game-specific core options saved, maybe you had some of those set? I don't see why that would be the case, but it is a possibility. If you do have created a game core for some of your games, then yes, the is the case. If you don't, then saving the option will affect all the games (as all read from the default options).

Cheers! Thanks for helping narrow down the cause for this!