The state of N64 emulation
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It's far, far, far from perfect. It heavily relies on plugins and on (very) high level emulation. The updates keep fixing incompatibilities and create new ones.
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Man, I wish every emulation team was like Dolphin's. Those guys are incredible.
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@matchaman said in The state of N64 emulation:
Nintendo 64 emulation is in a pretty bad state even on PCs. In times when even the Wii U is getting good emulation in a fast pace (with the PS2 and the Wii having near perfect), it's really awkward that the N64 cannot be properly emulated in any platform and specs.
n64 emulation is way closer to perfect than ps2. angrylion is more or less pixel perfect on a decent pc. GLideN64 is getting large amounts of development and is increasingly accurate even on lower spec/mobile.
I believe that the problem lies in the way emulators for it are written - based upon plugins and written on top of really, really old code. I believe that it's time for a brand new, accurate, lightweight, portable open source emulator to be created.
i think maybe in an ideal world, but most plugins are nearing perfection and seems like a sensible split in terms of the workload/expertise.
n64 emulation is hard
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While almost perfect in accuracy, Angrylion's plugin frequently stutters on my i7 4770K. It's on the far low-level side and it will "shine" in a few years along with CEN64 once there's enough computing power.
I would rather see Mednafen have a take on N64 emulation. Beetle (as well as PCSX-ReARMed) seems to be well balanced with near-perfect compatibility. Mednafen's guys even managed excellent Saturn emulation on PCs, featuring even more exotic architecture than the N64.
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@matchaman said in The state of N64 emulation:
While almost perfect in accuracy, Angrylion's plugin frequently stutters on my i7 4770K. It's on the far low-level side and it will "shine" in a few years along with CEN64 once there's enough computing power.
i think that's the reality of where the N64 is positioned in the console timeline. it has 3d accelerated graphics so to emulate it via CPU takes huge computational force (emulating GPU functions via CPU is very inefficient), but to do it via a GPU takes less power but needs fiddly open GL and shader work to emulate ancient graphics hardware via modern graphics APIs and hardware. even something as trivial as texture filtering is done in a baffling way on the n64.
emulating graphical functions on something like the GC or Wii is perhaps "easier" because their graphics hardware was relatively close to modern GPU standards (although they have their own complexities with shaders, etc)
I would rather see Mednafen have a take on N64 emulation. Beetle (as well as PCSX-ReARMed) seems to be well balanced with near-perfect compatibility. Mednafen's guys even managed excellent Saturn emulation on PCs, featuring even more exotic architecture than the N64.
it was a gal, not guys :) but i don't think the saturn is neccesarily 'more exotic' than the n64. it didn't have proprietary ancient accelerated graphics. no per-game microcode, etc.
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The idea behind CEN64 is what n64 emulation should have been from the beginning. A single emulator that accurately reproduces the N64 hardware and all of its core functions - versus all of the current N64 emulators that operate on the "let the emulator do the core work but offload all the graphic and sound rendering to plugins" method.
This is like Windows and it's driver system, it's prone to incompatibilites and errors especially when the plugins try to do a bunch of functions that the original hardware wasn't designed for - like upscaling polygonal graphics, smoothing out edges, removing fog, increasing draw distance and all the other unnecessary additions that detract from the nostalgic experience (dont hate on the pixels).
If there was a plugin that focused on outputting the original resolution of an N64 and not trying to add in any effect or function not intended by original hardware, n64 emulation would probably work fine, but its all these "improvements" that are actually ruining it as a whole.
Hopefully they can get CEN64 as optimized as psx-rearmed or beetle, their idea of faithfully emulating the hardware will make compatibility amazing if they end up getting that far.
Vector Artist, Designer and Maker of Stuff: Laser Cut Atari / Pixel Theme Bartop
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@Capeman said in The state of N64 emulation:
The idea behind CEN64 is what n64 emulation should have been from the beginning. A single emulator that accurately reproduces the N64 hardware and all of its core functions - versus all of the current N64 emulators that operate on the "let the emulator do the core work but offload all the graphic and sound rendering to plugins" method.
This is like Windows and it's driver system, it's prone to incompatibilites and errors especially when the plugins try to do a bunch of functions that the original hardware wasn't designed for - like upscaling polygonal graphics, smoothing out edges, removing fog, increasing draw distance and all the other unnecessary additions that detract from the nostalgic experience (dont hate on the pixels).
If there was a plugin that focused on outputting the original resolution of an N64 and not trying to add in any effect or function not intended by original hardware, n64 emulation would probably work fine, but its all these "improvements" that are actually ruining it as a whole.
Hopefully they can get CEN64 as optimized as psx-rearmed or beetle, their idea of faithfully emulating the hardware will make compatibility amazing if they end up getting that far.
Yes, I agree with you that CEN64 should be supported, after all it isn't one of these emulators that relies heavily on plugins to make sure it runs.
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@Capeman said in The state of N64 emulation:
If there was a plugin that focused on outputting the original resolution of an N64 and not trying to add in any effect or function not intended by original hardware, n64 emulation would probably work fine
that's exactly what angrylion does :) it's essentially pixel perfect, but that comes at a MASSIVE processing cost. GPU type operations just weren't meant to be run on a CPU.
Hopefully they can get CEN64 as optimized as psx-rearmed or beetle, their idea of faithfully emulating the hardware will make compatibility amazing if they end up getting that far.
cen64 has a goal of being optimized to run on "modest systems" which is awesome, but i think that would rule out any SOCs like the raspberry pi systems, at least for many years, but who knows!
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@dankcushions said in The state of N64 emulation:
cen64 has a goal of being optimized to run on "modest systems" which is awesome, but i think that would rule out any SOCs like the raspberry pi systems, at least for many years, but who knows!
Well, lets hold out hope that SOC's get massive upgrades in the next few years to the point where putting in one that is double or quadruple the power of the pi3 costs the same (since their main goal is cost efficiency)... it's not a stretch, Pi 5 will likely be really quick, haha.
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As for now, the only true alternative to a physical collection are flashcarts along with an a mod like UltraHDMI.
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