Project: Dedicated computer running Sega emulator

[ThugsRook]

No offense but IMO those genesis/SMS games look horrible with all those filters, stretching and odd resolutions, thats not the way those games were ment to look like.
The Xbox + Emotia scan converter final result is much more faithfull to the real hardware and is cheaper

i understand. personally i prefer full screen to borders, but thats the kind of options you get when using KEGA, at least i have a choice.

if i had to play using normal original 320x240 rendering... id prolly stop playing


here's a normal vs scale4x comparison...





EDIT: aspect ratio....
SMD's actual rendering resolution is 320x224 (scaled up 4x= 1280x896), thats not really too far off from my 1440x900 monitor.

thats nothing but a matter of choice tho, and at least we get that choice.
if you would like different screenshots using different aspect ratios/resolutions/filters/scanlines/plugins id be glad to snap some for ya.

[Chilly Willy]

Remember that the 320x224 is 4:3 aspect ratio... this is NTSC ratio. For a proper computer monitor display using 1:1 pixels, you need to scale 320x224 to 320x240 first, then scale larger. Otherwise the display will be stretched.

[chinitosoccer]

pics taken from GensX for the Xbox running at 240p 15hz true low resolution on 21" tv crt through component, if you put this with a real Genesis side by side you wouldn't notice any difference

[David J.]

I'm oh so close to building that emubox... if I had more room, it'd be built by now.

[ThugsRook]

Remember that the 320x224 is 4:3 aspect ratio... this is NTSC ratio. For a proper computer monitor display using 1:1 pixels, you need to scale 320x224 to 320x240 first, then scale larger. Otherwise the display will be stretched.

you mean it wont be stretched

yes, 320x224 rendering is expected to be stretched to 320x240 on a TV, if you enable NTSC. if you dont enable NTSC youll get the raw unstretched aspect ratio.

youll never get 1:1 pixels with any Genesis emulator because genesis doesnt render square pixels, neither does the Master system.

however, KEGA can do raw square pixel rendering via plugin, if you wanted it to. but the screen will be square aspect.

[tomaitheous]

this is what my games look like using the scale4x plugin...

Yuck. that's got to be the ugliest filters ever. Why do people like those filters?!

http://pcedev.net/sf2_hack/tech/ssf2_1.png <-- much better looking.

you mean it wont be stretched

No, it will be stretched if you don't correct for aspect ratio. The Genesis high res mode has a ~0.9 pixel aspect ratio. That means if you use a square pixel aspect ratio on a monitor for the emulator, the screen will be wider than on the real system.

Also remember, the viewable area might be 320x224 (NTSC) but the frame will *always* be 320x240 regardless if you can see the blanked upper and lower scanlines. The pixel aspect ratio needs to be applied when dealing with the full frame height, not just the viewable scanlines. Scaling the vertical viewable scanlines from 224 to 240 still doesn't get you the correct ratio, but it comes close (you'd need to stretch 320x224 to 320x249 to be almost exact).

Genesis low res is ~1.125 pixel aspect ratio (IIRC, I have my charts somewhere around here...).

[Chilly Willy]

you mean it wont be stretched

Depends on which way you mean - horizontally or vertically.

[ThugsRook]

Yuck. that's got to be the ugliest filters ever. Why do people like those filters?!

http://pcedev.net/sf2_hack/tech/ssf2_1.png <-- much better looking.

TV scanline emulation FTW!

nothin wrong with that, looks pretty good actually, almost looks like im looking thru a real glass screen

[kool kitty89]

sounds like youre running on an old laptop. my p4 1.6ghz laptop aint so great either


using an Intel Core2 Duo and an nVidia GF7100...
scale4x plugin needs 600mhz, hq4x needs 1700mhz, to keep a constant 60fps.
these plugins offer extreme quality, but i personally think hq4x is very overrated especially concidering how much extra cpu power it needs.

Nope, it's an old homebrewed PC that's well over 6 years old (can't remember when we switched to the current motherboard, it's been something we've been upgrading since my Win98 PC my dad and I built in Jan 2000), I know the previous mobo had a 1.3 (maybe 1.1) GHz Tualatin 256 Celeron at the end. (before switching to the Athlon's current board)
I think I got upgraded to the 180 nm Athlon XP 1600+ about 6 years ago. 60 GB HDD, along with 512 MB DDR and a Radeon 9600 SE. (recently bumped it up to 1 GB -dual channel- with another 512 MB stick from a recently incapacitated PC at home)
Also nothe that the Athlon XP, unlike P4 (or coresponding Celeron), lacks SSE2. (don't know if this matters in this context, it certainly sucks for some things though, I think these include flash player and definitely Silverlight)

Anyway, that's the old PC, I've also got a newer laptop (just over a year old) with a 2 GHz AMD Turion 64 X2, 160 GB HDD, 2 GB DDR2, and a GeForce 7150 with shared memory. (the latter obviously being the weak point, though not really an issue for emulation, which is also important for the DOS gaming I like, particularly with my old set-up struggling with anything meant for more than a fast 386 in DOSBox -maxes out ~11,000 cycles)


As for the plug-ins, I don't like the look of that Scale4x at all, the one tomaitheus posted looks great though. I actually like the stock "TV-mode" filter a bit, but it really seems to blur things a bit more than I'd like, and more impotantly, the scanlines are far too pronounced. (again, I really like tom's example) Though for games without a lot of dithering, I don't care too much about filters, maybe something to sofeten things a little bit like an S-Video connection on an SD CRT. (maybe like the composite output of the 32x or Genesis 2/3 with CXA1645, though I don't think I've actually seen these, they're supposedly sharper and brigher than the HD Model 1's CXA1145, but still a bit softer than S-Video) Of course, you could have a defacto filter by hooking your video card up to an SD TV via S-Video.

There's a lot of stuf that looks great in raw, unfiltered display though, even with the dithering visible. (again, a very slight/gentle filter might be nice)

[ThugsRook]

i know what you mean about the bilinear filter, its really only good for the plugins. with a 4x plugin bilinear gets crisper, not blurry. hopefully KEGA will update it to trilinear someday.

luckily for you there are a lot of TV emulation options, you should be able to find something that suits you.

...your newer lappy should be able to run KEGA just fine full screen in normal or TV modes.

[kool kitty89]

Oh, Fusion wors fine on my old PC too, so long as there's little background stuff going on, even for 32x stuff. For whatever reason sound seems fairly taxing as well though. (running TmEE's sound engine demo for example) It seems to max out the CPU even when it can still push a bit further.

But yeah, it's perfectly acceptable, still planning on making a full shift to the laptop though. (pretty much all files got transferred a while ago) Plus my dad's planning on converting my old PC into one for my little brother. (lots of parts floating around, that extra 512 MB came from my bro's old computer, probably switch to a faster CPU -maybe an XP 2500+ and possibly a better video card) We had a Sempron 3300+ that would have become a cantidate, but it recently burned out unfortunately. (started giving errors, running hotter than it shoud have, and then stopped working at all)

[tomaitheous]

I really like tom's example

Fusion: 25% scanlines, brighter on(because scanline mode tends to dim the screen a little), filtering on, aspect ratio on(gives a little vertical filtering which goes great with scanline mode). Simple but clean. 25% scanline mode is nice because full black scanlines is just too dark (and doesn't look like a real TV). The "filter" is nice for 3x res (960x720) because it only filters a little. I don't use the "TV" mode filters much. I wish Mr. Snake would add a svideo filter (composite filter just looks more blurry than a real TV - although it's close).

[David J.]

This topic is being bumped to save some bandwith: I'm thinking of building a low profile emu box for Genesis, Saturn... maybe emulate DC if I can. What does that require for processor and video power? I know emulators for that system are (just now?) playable and it's exciting stuff!

Should I use my already lying around Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (non black edition) or buy another AMD AM-whatever CPU? I was thinking of a Sempron 140 2.7Ghz when they come out like in a few days and overclocking it to 3ghz (prolly multiplier locked, but come on it should be possible to get at least 300mhz) but its single core, and the specs look good, just wish it was 10-20w lower (it's going to be a 45W part) so decisions, decisions... Probally a passive HD4350 for video (the only passive HD4550's i've seen are full profile and no component out)

Hell, I don't even have the friggin room right now and I REALLY want to do it!

[nathanallan]

Update, I have the machine built. It's a 1.8Ghz Intel with 512mb ram and a 20GB hdd, all in a slim black case. This is the final phase, I was just working at first with what parts I hd, and I got these now.

I want to do the same thing, david, and with the added proc speed and maybe more ram soon, I might do Saturn and DC as well.

Coming soon, large SEGA logo on top diagonally on top. In stark white, and loosing any logos on front. I think I found the ultimate case. It was already black and everything.

[David J.]

I'm looking at a case like that... but I'd want two hdd bays. Thankfully I found a decent looking lowprofile case with the options. It just boils down to the room and money, which I don't have.