PSX Short Draw Distance, specifically in Crash Team Racing

langest

Hi!

I have noticed that the draw distance on the PSX emulator is not as far as original hardware. Is this because of emulation limitation or is something misconfigured?
Did anyone else notice this? It is especially noticeable on the airship level where the airships aren't fully rendered in the background.

pjft

While I'm not saying that that doesn't happen, it would strike me as weird. Would you have screenshots to compare? Could it be a PAL vs NTSC version thing?

I'd struggle to see why the emulator itself would do it and how it would even go about it, but everything is possible. It call also just be a bug for that specific game on the emulation front.

You can try the vanilla pcsx emulator and see how it goes.

Edit: is this in single player or multiplayer mode? If the latter, it's common for multiplayer modes to reduce model fidelity and number of polygons on the screen to keep up the speed. I remember having a similar reaction in another 3D game the first time I played it in split screen multiplayer. Just a note.

George Spiggott

I posted a thread about with screen shot examples a few weeks ago. Papu's Piramid and Tiny Arena are also badly affected. Link to thread and pics: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/20088/issues-with-psx-games-soul-reaver-crach-team-racing

I'm running the NTSC version but I have the original disc for the PAL version.

pjft

@George-Spiggott I see. In my case, turning off Dynamic Recompiler seemed to do the trick, though I’m not sure if it will have other side effects (it likely will). Also, unsure if it’ll have an impact on the speed. If it works, you can create a per-game save file and save it for CTR.

Let me know if it works. Happy new year!

langest

@George-Spiggott
Yes, this is the same problem.

@pjft
That fixed the rendering distance. However, it introduced a lot of lag. The framerate got way too low. Maybe it is possible to tweak performance settings to fix this. Did you notice any performance loss when changing this option?

Happy new year!

George Spiggott

Tried it with the recompiler turned off. Much too laggy to be playable on my Pi3B+. I usually play CTR with enhanced graphics on and speed hack off. I get a bit of slowdown with that but it is worth the improvement in the graphics. This looks like something I'll be learning to live with until there is an update to either the emulator or the hardware.

Ranma

I usually play PSX without the speed hacks or any improvement to resolution as I prefer the original look, but I still get the problem you have here too. Anyone figure out a workaround or is this a genuine bug and an issue should be reported? Thanks.

pjft

@Ranma This is likely a genuine bug and an issue. However, development on the actual source emulator stopped a while back, so while a bug report would be helpful, I'm not sure it'll be addressed soon.

Ranma

Ah I see. I imagined the core still had some development and a bug report would help us. Never mind, thanks for replying.

pjft

@Ranma I mean, it might - hope is never lost.

This is the original emulator's repository (last commit October 2017).

https://github.com/notaz/pcsx_rearmed

This is the libretro core we're talking about:

https://github.com/libretro/pcsx_rearmed

Try running the game on the original pcsx_rearmed (non-libretro) version. If the error is there, it's less likely, but try it out. If it's not there, then it's on the libretro core and it's more likely that someone will look into it.

George Spiggott

@pjft I tried running this in the non libretro emulator but it crashes after the Sony USA presents... screen.

langest

I tried disabling the dynamic compiler on my RPi4 and the game runs smooth and the draw distance issue is gone.

George Spiggott

Does it still do so with the double resolution hack?

langest

@George-Spiggott
One caveat I forgot to mention. I have a small overclock on my RPi4.

code_textover_voltage=2
arm_freq=1840
gpu_freq=600
core_freq=600

I haven't tested the double resolution hack. How do I enable it?

George Spiggott

Just follow this video.

Note that when he says 'select' he means 'hotkey'.

langest

@George-Spiggott
Seems to work perfectly fine on my machine.
And wow(!), the game looks like a new HD release. I'm not sure I like it, but it is fun to look at how clear the image can look.

George Spiggott

Sewer Speedways is a great track to test the speed of the game on. If slow down is is only slight you won't notice the graphics lag but you will probably notice the music slow down.

Are you using the speed hack? That speeds things up a little but also causes missiles to glitch.

Darksavior

Interesting, didn't know a dynarec used for so long could have issues like this. Beetle psx is getting a dynarec sooner or later so I'll be testing the draw distance on that.

langest

@George-Spiggott
I tested on the airship level without speedhack.
I'll test on sewer speedways as soon as I get the time.

langest

@George-Spiggott
I played through Crystal Cup on resolution hack without speed hack.
The sound went silent a few times but the frame rate seemed constant. Sewer Speedways was without any issue. Roo's Tubes and the Dingo Canyon were the ones where sound went for a couple of seconds.
Worth noting is that I'm good at the game relative to the AI, so I rarely see multiple racers on the screen or items being used. That could be a cause of the better results. That being said, I have not over clocked my pi to the limit so you could crank up the clock speed even more and you probably wouldn't have the sound issue.