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Hardware 3D Acceleration In Mame
Jdurg:
--- Quote from: brandon on February 25, 2008, 03:44:50 pm ---
--- Quote from: Jdurg on February 25, 2008, 02:46:18 pm ---
--- Quote from: hbm*rais on February 25, 2008, 02:14:26 pm ---That doesn't seem to be true at all. Most of the games you mention aren't much more complex than an N64 or DC, and I can emulate both of these systems on my Athlon X2 3600 + onboard GeForce 6150. That's CPU, GPU, sound and all.
Hell, I could emulate a Dreamcast on my old AthlonXP 2200+ + FX5200 (although with frameskip) pretty decently. And a DC is a basically a Naomi with less memory.
Prop Cycle runs on a 24Mhz 68EC020. That should be 3 or 4 times more cpu power than a Neo Geo, tops. That's not a lot.
There is nothing impossible about emulating these "modern" CPUs on today's 2Ghz+ dual core host CPUs. Most of them are under 100Mhz anyway.
GPUs on the other hand are highly specialized. How many modern dual core CPUs you'd think it would be necessary to emulate even the most basic Voodoo or Riva128? I'm not talking about implementing software rendering, but actually emulating the GPU, register by register. That's a HUGE amount of processing power we're talking about. General purpose CPUs were never meant to that king of task.
--- End quote ---
If the version of Blitz on your Dreamcast and N64 used the exact same code as that in the arcade, then your point would be valid. The versions of Blitz being played on your N64 and DC have been COMPLETELY rewritten from the code that is used in the arcade. Therefore, the language they use is much easier to "translate" than that of the arcade. What you said makes absolutely no sense at all.
--- End quote ---
I doubt the dreamcast versions of Arcade ports are that different than the original arcade games. Dreamcast is basically a Noami. sure they may have had to use lower res textures or something because they had less memory but the point hbm*rais was making is that if you can emulate DC on a low to mid range PC then Naomi could be emulated on the upper end PCs.
--- End quote ---
True, but how accurately is it emulated? I've also seen the specs of the DC Emulators out there (And I've yet to find one that actually works fully quite yet) and the minimum specs aren't really what I would call a "low to mid range" PC. You have to realize that a lot of the people who really want to run these fancy games on low end hardware actually have REALLY low end hardware they want to run it on. ;D
hbm*rais:
It's accurate enough for me to have a blast playing with these emulators. How accurately is Naomi emulated on MAME right now?
Notice that I'm not bitching about MAME's supposed inefficiency. What MAME does, it does well. It emulates a huge amount of 2D games. It does it accurately and it does it using affordable hardware.
What it doesn't do is playing modern 3D games in a way that is fun and using sensible hardware. That's OK, as I understand it was never supposed to.
Emulators that do play this kind of games tend to do so using things like dynamic recompilation and plug ins that map GPU calls to native APIs. They do it at the expense of accuracy, as MAME once did lots of things.
I'm not saying that MAMEDevs should do this or should do that. What I'm saying is that, if people want to play those games without waiting for 10Ghz processors to be readily avaiable, that's what would be required, either inside or outside the MAME framework.
purpledrillmonkey:
sorry, but I can't be bothered to go through and quote a bunch of crap again, as the responses are too big and detailed to justify it ;) good responses tho! very interesting topic...
anyways,
In response to Taz: your post does make alot of sence, and I have to assume you know what you are talking about being that my knowledge is quite limited in the area, but I still can't accept that offloading rendering to the gpu wouldn't increase performance. This point was again reiterated (by Jdurg i believe) and it just doesnt make sense to me. I'm reluctant to say it would be worth doing based on how difficult it may or may not be, but in my mind it would have to increase performance in some way. The CPU is relieved of stress, and the GPU (which I am assuming to be basically unused until now for simplicity's sake) bears some of the brunt of running these games.
Also, you are correct about Crysis being un-fun :)
In response to Jdurg:
--- Quote ---This is like saying that playing in an orchestra would be easy if you had a better trombone. Granted, the music you put out might sound a little bit better with a good trombone and there is a very minimal percentage of people that could put out something nice, but the truth of the matter is that the reason you aren't playing in an orchestra right now is NOT because of your trombone.
--- End quote ---
this isn't quite my view of the situation. If you like the orchestra analogy, here's my take: the situation is more like all of the members are playing the trombone, and they are spending all of the energy trying to collectively sound like a full orchestra. What needs to happen is selective parts of the orchestra need to be given the proper instruments so that the orchestra can focus on what matters (in my opinion): the resulting output.
Basically, why would you use an orchestra of trombones to play a symphony poorly, when it's logical and more pleasing to hear a full orchestra play it? In the case of MAME, using all parts of the computer (CPU + GPU) just makes sense. If it didn't, nVidia and ATI/AMD would find themselves in a fruitless market.
And if my computer can emulate Dreamcast games, theres very little excuse in my opinion for not being able to play the arcade games the Dreamcast is based on. Sure it's not identical hardware, but its damn close.
Now once again, the argument of whether or not 3d acceleration would/wouldn't work is moot if it is out of the question to use the GPU for rendering in MAME.
My question is, whats the point of preserving arcade hardware if we can't use it to PLAY arcade hardware? The example of a 'backup' of sorts for the pcb's and hard disks of the machines of yester-year has been brought up, but to be 100% honest, I really don't see that as valuable.If that is what the MAMEdevs are wanting to do, then i say go for it, but the appeal of such a thing is, i assume, VERY limited and will only become more limited in the future. In the next few years, does anyone truely believe that a significant portion of the population will be scrambling to repair their NFL Blitz cabinet using MAME data? Sure there might be a couple, but for the 99.99% of the rest of us, we would just be happy to PLAY Blitz and experience the past again.
Again, I don't think the MAMEdev's care why I want MAME, and if they are truely looking to perfectly preserve arcade hardware, then so be it. I think it's a waste of energy, but I also don't understand why anyone would want to watch basketball or baesball. I'm told those sports are somewhat popular so what do I know ;)
Xiaou2:
a) you dont know what Hacks they use to make Dreamcast emulation run faster on your
PC. Such hacks may cause gameplay differences that you are not aware of.
b) a Hack is not documentation. Its a means to an end. If you dont have the original
formula.. only educated guesses... then all you have is a guess, and no way to get the
original behavior.. which is time may be lost forever.
c) Being 'LIKE' a Dreamcast means nothing.
A Naomi has double the sound hardware capability right off the bat. Sound alone is
responsible for a huge chunk of power needed to emulate something.
It also has twice the memory. And unlike a pc, arcade hardware is generally pushed
to the absolute limits of capability. This means, that in any one second,
there are more polygons on screen, more sound data, more characters, more AI..etc.
Any ports are major downgrades weather you can tell or not. Every cycle is reduced in details
and sound quality. And even possibly mathematical simplifications in the actual re-programmings.
While the specs may seem the same... most all games can never push the full specs
of any system. They have to make a choice of how much per cycle can handle. Some will
cut polygon detail. Some will cut number of sound effects or sound quality. On a DC,
there is more need to cut things. Where as the original hardware is designed to handle
every bit without compromise.
The DC is like a factory that has 2 sick people out of work. The compromise is that the
factory has to cut corners to make the work get out the door on time.
Now, all that said, Sure.. Id love to be able to fire up certain games and play
them full rate. But there are many more things that Id rather see done before that..
such as support for actual arcade shifters, force feedback output, surround sound,
and even stereoscopic 3d lcd glasses. Ohh, and realtime 3d perspective tracking
for the artwork system. Also, better support for discreet emulation such as
in the fantastic game Monaco GP. (which is a tragedy that such a classic is not emulated yet)
MOST of the new 3d games are pure and utter crap anyways. Compared to the 2d realm,
they cant hold a candle in lasting gameplay and actual challenge... and in many cases look awful,
as low poly doesnt hold up well compared to Real pixel art.
Most of the popular 3d games also have decent ports and or sequels.
Eventually, CPU power will quadruple. Running any of these games will be trivial.
purpledrillmonkey:
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on February 25, 2008, 10:36:18 pm ---a) you dont know what Hacks they use to make Dreamcast emulation run faster on your
PC. Such hacks may cause gameplay differences that you are not aware of.
--- End quote ---
this is basically my point - I personally don't care about any dissimilarities that the player doesn't and/or cannot detect
--- Quote ---b) a Hack is not documentation. Its a means to an end. If you dont have the original
formula.. only educated guesses... then all you have is a guess, and no way to get the
original behavior.. which is time may be lost forever.
--- End quote ---
this is the other point i'm kindof torn on.... in future years, when all of these game are (presumably) forgotten, will anyone care how the machines functioned? we are talking about GAMES here... when you boil it down, arcade games are just not that important in the grand scheme of things. I care more about preserving the playability of these games, not how the machines functioned.
--- Quote ---c) Being 'LIKE' a Dreamcast means nothing.
A Naomi has double the sound hardware capability right off the bat. Sound alone is
responsible for a huge chunk of power needed to emulate something.
--- End quote ---
even more reason to get the 3d rendering off the cpu
--- Quote ---It also has twice the memory. And unlike a pc, arcade hardware is generally pushed
to the absolute limits of capability. This means, that in any one second,
there are more polygons on screen, more sound data, more characters, more AI..etc.
--- End quote ---
I find it hard to believe that a game like Blitz has more sound, polygons and AI than Call of Duty 4..... the bottom line is that IS possible to do if we are really looking for playability
--- Quote ---MOST of the new 3d games are pure and utter crap anyways.
--- End quote ---
sorry but a major portion of the 2d games could also be considered 'crap'. Just because they are old, doesn't mean they are classics ;)
--- Quote ---Eventually, CPU power will quadruple. Running any of these games will be trivial.
--- End quote ---
true, but the big question is why do we have to wait? why is the requirement of 4x more cpu power ok, while offloading to the GPU is not?
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