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Hardware 3D Acceleration In Mame
ark_ader:
There is a great danger of the MAME team wrapping things up. :cry:
The major portion of popular emulated games have pretty much been assimilated.
With comments like Fozzy's (which is to his credit, a reasonable request) can tick someone off and just make the whole scene go underground. Besides they are doing these efforts for their own ends right?
And we are living in Disneyland in the process. When we were 12 years old playing Donkey Kong, did we ever imagine we would have a whole arcade with 4000+ machines? The mamedevs made it possible, so we should respect that and let this thread die away..........
hbm*rais:
--- Quote from: Fozzy The Bear on February 24, 2008, 08:41:50 pm ---To be honest the games in the arcade do get to a point where no emulation is required, when they start running the original hardware on PC's and Linux Boxes. The downside here is that we will at some point end up having to emulate obsolete 3D graphics cards in order to get it to run. Then I suspect, we'll be back in the same boat again.
--- End quote ---
I don't know about no emulation being required for x86 based arcade machines. You'll still have problems with drivers and protection devices. The situation must be akin to trying and running MacOS X x86 on a generic PC. Yes, it runs natively on your CPU, but it cannot speak to your Brand X NIC/HDD Adapter/GPU..., because Apple never used a Brand X NIC/HDD Adapter/GPU... on a real Mac.
You'll end up with a kind of VMWare environment with every NIC/ATA/SATA/GPU/Chipset... ever used on an arcade either emulated or mapped to an abstraction layer.
brandon:
well.. if Mamedevs have already emulated nearly all of the classics, and can't or wont try to emulate more modern games for fear of legal ramifications, then what else is really left for them to do? Sure there are tweaks and bugfixes for existing games but in general is there anything significant left? I remember when I used to go to the WIP page every month and get excited about new games coming out. They havent done that since 2004 because I guess there really isnt anything to get excited about in the way of new, playable games. I'm not saying that's the Mamedevs faults or that they've let anyone down because they havent by any means! I just think maybe PC power will have to catch up before emulation can proceed. HEck, look at console emulation. Consoles from the last 10 years are just too complicated to emulation at full speed. When do you think we'll see a PS2 or gamecube emu with the compatibility and speed of the 16-bit console emulators? It will be a while.. and there really isnt any point since you can go right out and buy last gen consoles for nearly nothing. Maybe what we should be doing is pressuring the original developers of more modern games to make arcade perfect PC ports.
OTOH, I really do like the idea of a HLE, plugin based emu like PJ64... but I dont know if anybody out there wants to tackle that with all the different arcade hardware out there...
purpledrillmonkey:
I'm obviously a new guy in this world of MAME, but I have a few points I would like to counter and table in this debate...
--- Quote from: taz-nz on February 24, 2008, 02:03:56 am ---everyone get to play the game as it was in the arcade no matter their hardware, their PC may run it slow but it looks and works just like it did in the arcade.
--- End quote ---
First off, this statement kind of surprises me. Without even debating whether or not 3d acceleration should be used, this statment , to me, is just incorrect. My prime example is NFL Blitz. MAWS currently suggests that this game is supported and is well emulated in MAME, which by your logic suggests that everyone is getting to play the game as it was in the arcade. I personally do NOT recall chopped up sound and an unplayable frame rate in the arcade release, but perhaps I am mistaken. Blitz doe NOT "look and work just like it did in the arcade." because it was playable in the arcade, and it is NOT playable in MAME without very high-end hardware. Perhaps the emulated hardware functions much like the arcade hardware, but this is not the same as the game running as it did in the arcade.
--- Quote ---Now even if you overlooked the fact that no two 3D graphics card models produce the same results, and didn't care that a few things we a little of with some hardware setup, and you went the way of 3D acceration, do you have any idea how complex it would be to design a wrapper for each and every custom graphics chip used in the arcade
--- End quote ---
no I do not have any idea how complex it would be, but i would also be willing to bet it is not simple to emulate every custom graphics chip used in the arcade with software. Perhaps someone more knowledgeble should weight the costs and benfeits of such an endeavor? Incidentally, you are correct that two different 3d card models can produce different results, but by that same train of thought, two different CPU's also do not produce the same results. Somehow we have managed to run MAME on everything from Pentium 166's to Athlon X2 5000+'s. I would doubt graphics cards would pose too much of a problem in this department since Direct X and OpenGL can handle some of the compatability issue you are referring to here. I could, of course, be wrong on this point as 3d acceleration is not my line of work ;) .
--- Quote ---Then you have to realise that you just done twice the work to get the same result, you still have to map the entire original harware, emulate multi chips, process all the graphics commands, and then translate them to another set of command and hand them off to the GPU, then check that the GPU stays in step with the rest of the emulation, it doesn't fix anything in just make for more problems.
--- End quote ---
so you are saying that by dumping 3d rendering to the GPU and saving CPU cycles, there will be no increase in performance? I guess I can unplug my videocard and play Crysis with my onboard graphics processor.... good to know. I'm not saying that it isn't less work to use 3d acceleration, but assuming it is done in a fashion comparable to 99.99% of the 3d software avaliable, it is guaranteed to increase performance.
--- Quote ---Most of the games that are unplayable are not because of preformace, overclocked Core 2 Duo's fixed that issue, it's because the mapping and emulation of the original hardware is incomplete, atleast a third of what is in MAME runs on undocumented or barely documented custom hardware, the fact the Dev's manage to work this stuff out as fast as they do is incredable.
--- End quote ---
As i mentioned earlier, Blitz is apparantly emulated well in MAME, its not an incomplete piece in MAME at all. Yes the OC'd C2D processor will work to play it decently, but how is this any different than using a GPU in the grand scheme of things? The power of that processor is unparalleled by anything avaliable from the mid to late 90's, yet it is fine to use to emulate the arcade machine, while using a 3d accelerator is considered taboo to use because the original arcade game didnt use it? please....
--- Quote ---I challage anyone here that wants 3D hardware acceleration to write a Directx wrapper for any of the custom 3D graphics chip used in the arcade.
--- End quote ---
im not sure that is the point here, nor is your comment constructive.
now, all of that being said, I can't say I would support or denounce 3d acceleration in MAME. To me there are two sides to this, and only a MAME dev could clear up which side MAME truely sits on.
1: MAME is meant to duplicate arcade HARDWARE. ie- MAME code is an exact replica of arcade machine code. In this case, 3D Acceleration is a no-go.
2: MAME is meant to duplicate arcade GAMEPLAY. ie- The sounds, colors, controls and overall experience of the arcade machine are exactly replicated. In this case 3d acceleration can/should be used ONLY to better duplicate the play experience.
Option 1 is what I believe the currently promoted goal of MAME is, although in most of the official statements I have read, there is some grey area.
Anywho just my 2 cents.
brandon:
I think that the Mamedevs could accurately emulate arcade hardware and still offload some of the processing to the GPU. Mame already has Hardware stretching and filtering.. and the sound effects in game make use of APIs right? so why not do the same with the graphics in 3D games? Perhaps some programmers will come along to create an offshot of Mame that could focus on such games. ??? Hell, I large percentage of people play Mame on a PC monitor and a keyboard.. How accurate is that? seems if Mamedev were so concerned about duplicating arcade hardware then Mame wouldnt even have keyboard or mouse support, especially for light gun games, since that should be considered an unauthentic "hack"
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