Announcing Pegasus Frontend

[lilbud]

I may have brought it up before (can't really remember), but would it be possible to add support for the how long to beat website as a metadata tag? The site shows how long each game takes to beat, normally and completing everything.

I found this searching around, it is an api wrapper for the site, not sure if it'd be of any help though.

https://github.com/ckatzorke/howlongtobeat

The Python one is a little more up to date: https://github.com/ScrappyCocco/HowLongToBeat-PythonAPI

[fluffypillow]

@lilbud that's a good idea, I could imagine seeing that at the game details. However getting the metadata for a particular game would have to be handled by a scraper, as that can't be done in Pegasus without guesswork (as games can be present in multiple collections, can have multiple files, etc.). [I wonder if there's someone who'd like to write a modular scraper?]

[Darksavior]

@fluffypillow Have you tried the latest dev image? https://files.retropie.org.uk/images/weekly/retropie-buster-4.5.8-rpi4.img.gz

It now supports hdmi modes/groups where it previously didn't. So the boot process, emulators, and ES now use the resolution that's set in config.txt.
Well, pegasus doesn't :). It ignores those settings and will still display at 4k30hz.
I've been using hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080 for a few months now to force it all to 1080p.

[fluffypillow]

@Darksavior hm what exactly happens? Pegasus shouldn't change the current resolution, just use whatever currently is active. Does it happen on Pi 4 and non-4 too? Will see if I can try it the afternoon.

[Darksavior]

@fluffypillow So if I set the resolution on my pi4 to 1080p in the config.txt, boot and emulators are 1080p, Pegasus will change to 4k on my 4k TV.

I haven't tried it on a pi3.

[mitu]

@Darksavior Does tvservice -s still lists the 4k video modes ?
Try adding to config.txt:

hdmi_max_pixel_freq:0=200000000
hdmi_max_pixel_freq:1=200000000

This should exclude the 4k video modes from being included
(from https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=255970&p=1579140&hilit=4k+disable#p1579140)

[Darksavior]

@mitu I'll try that, but the point that I'm trying to make is, ES will change what res is in config.txt. Pegasus does not. I bet if I try it on my 1440p monitor that Pegasus will change to that res as well. It's ignoring it.

[mitu]

My guess is that QT picks the first video mode (as detected by KMSDRM, which gets it via EDID from the display) instead of using the current video mode - while SDL2 (which EmulationStation uses underneath) will keep the current video mode.

Try running with QT_QPA_EGLFS_DEBUG=1 from the command line and see if you get some information on how QT picks the current video mode.

[Darksavior]

@mitu

[i] EGL_BUFFER_SIZE: 24
[i] EGL_ALPHA_SIZE: 0
[i] EGL_BLUE_SIZE: 8
[i] EGL_GREEN_SIZE: 8
[i] EGL_RED_SIZE: 8
[i] EGL_DEPTH_SIZE: 24
[i] EGL_STENCIL_SIZE: 8
[i] EGL_CONFIG_CAVEAT: 12344
[i] EGL_CONFIG_ID: 20
[i] EGL_LEVEL: 0
[i] EGL_MAX_PBUFFER_HEIGHT: 4096
[i] EGL_MAX_PBUFFER_PIXELS: 0
[i] EGL_MAX_PBUFFER_WIDTH: 4096
[i] EGL_NATIVE_RENDERABLE: 1
[i] EGL_NATIVE_VISUAL_ID: 875713112
[i] EGL_NATIVE_VISUAL_TYPE: 12344
[i] EGL_SAMPLES: 0
[i] EGL_SAMPLE_BUFFERS: 0
[i] EGL_SURFACE_TYPE: 4
[i] EGL_TRANSPARENT_TYPE: 12344
[i] EGL_TRANSPARENT_BLUE_VALUE: 0
[i] EGL_TRANSPARENT_GREEN_VALUE: 0
[i] EGL_TRANSPARENT_RED_VALUE: 0
[i] EGL_BIND_TO_TEXTURE_RGB: 0
[i] EGL_BIND_TO_TEXTURE_RGBA: 0
[i] EGL_MIN_SWAP_INTERVAL: 1
[i] EGL_MAX_SWAP_INTERVAL: 1

I also tried tvservice-s with hdmi_group=1 and hdmi_mode=16 (1080p60) and it lists state 0xa [HDMI CUSTOM RGB lim 16:9], 1920x1080 @ 60.00Hz, progressive

[fluffypillow]

@Darksavior tried out the image you linked, for my 1080p TV I've set the resolution to 720p through raspi-config for the testing. For me this makes the image appear only at the upper left corner of the screen (ie. no resolution change), ES displays a black screen and Pegasus' UI doesn't appear (log says Failed to commit atomic request (code=-22)). Terminal works fine though.

As for logging, you can get even more details if you run it with QT_LOGGING_RULES="qt.qpa.eglfs.kms=true". This prints out the HDMI info and KMS details too for me.

[Darksavior]

@fluffypillow Odd. No issues here. I add the resolution manually from config.txt I do tend to update the retropie-setup script to latest before testing anything. I also tend to update core packages from source too.

Here's the log. This is with forcing raspbian to 1080p. I tested beforehand and boot,emulators, and ES boot to 1080p (or 720p, whatever res I choose it's used)
https://pastebin.com/P8r0QsSK

[mitu]

@Darksavior If you're up-to-date, you should have a new package used by runcommand installed - mesa-drm. This provides a cli utility that prints the video resolutions supported and the current one - /opt/retropie/supplementary/mesa-drm/modetest. Can you run it and post also the output on pastebin.com ?

[Darksavior]

@mitu
https://pastebin.com/YYVLzQYk
This is using the res of 1080p set in config.txt.

[mitu]

@Darksavior yes, it looks like QT is picking the first preferred video mode (which is 4k@30). Looks similar to https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=250677 (minus the EDID part probably).

[fluffypillow]

@Darksavior you can affect the mode selection like this:

Create a JSON file somewhere with the following content:

{
  "outputs": [
    {
      "name": "HDMI1",
      "mode": "1280x720"
    }
  ]
}

Then set QT_QPA_EGLFS_KMS_CONFIG to the path of this file, eg . QT_QPA_EGLFS_KMS_CONFIG=/home/pi/egl.json.

With this Pegasus actually changes my TVs resolution to 720p and does show the UI. According to the Qt docs, "When mode is not defined, the system's preferred mode is chosen. The accepted values for mode are: off, current, preferred, skip, widthxheight, widthxheight@vrefresh, or a modeline string."

[Darksavior]

@fluffypillow So it can't be made to read the boot's config.txt. I mean, I can always use mitu's suggestion or what I've been using hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080

[mitu]

@Darksavior if you don't have anything configured in config.txt, then there's no indication (in the config) of the current resolution - so you can't rely on that file to have the information about the current video mode.
Maybe using mode: current in the config file would use your current resolution instead of switching to preferred ?

[Darksavior]

@mitu I'm setting it to 1080p in config.txt with all of these tests. I thought it was something that could be fixed in pegasus so it could read it as well. I guess only sdl2 stuff can read it.

[mitu]

@Darksavior said in Announcing Pegasus Frontend:

I guess only sdl2 stuff can read it.

SDL2 doesn't read anything, it's just not doing any mode settting to another video mode (by default) when initializing the KMSDRM video backend.

[fluffypillow]

It's been a while, about time to have a weekly update! So during the holidays I've started experimenting with a new tool, and I think it might be usable enought for a release.

In short, the script can convert all ES themes into Pegasus themes.

Now this thread is quite large already, so for more details look into this thread.

In other news, this week I've fixed a possible crash caused by having too many themes :)