Stella 3.6 released

[Trebor]

Regarding 16:9?? That's some kind of Hollywood thing that just happens to be the most efficient proportions when cutting the glass plates at factory where LCD's are made.

http://www.displaysearch.com/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0A424DE8-28DF6E59/displaysearch/hs.xsl/070108_16by9_PR.asp

[Keatah]

Stephena sorry to hijack the thread..

 

The new 16:9 panels provide an opportunity for PC brands to further diversify their products.. WTF??

 

Diversification and diversity means variances and differences. If everything keeps going 16:9 I see a series of repetitive look-alike products with no diversification. This is all marketing speak in the name of cost cutting. Next we'll be watching TV and playing games with an aspect ratio like this:

And they'll be telling us it's razor sharp from left to right! Unbeatable! As long as they can save 26 cents per panel they'll do it. And blow millions of dollars trying to convince you it's a good thing.

 

Pray tell what is an individual consumer? When it comes to technology business there are two things, the manufacturer and consumer. Consumers see manufacturers all the same and manufacturers see consumers as the same. And why are we confused about someone else wanting us to want something that isn't the best possible. Fucking corporations I hate them all!!

 

Begin intermission

Just to say there's a bit of this post related to emulation and 3.x releases, don't stop support for 4:3 ratios. As it stands right now, at this current version of 3.7 beta-3, it's all working. I'm a 4:3 and 16:10 guy for all my computing needs. And classic gaming is based around 4:3 anyhow. If anything, we need to make sure that 4:3 of classic CRTs are represented properly. That means filling the screen from top to bottom and leaving those gay side-bars right where they are. They're black, so don't worry about it. It's like with MAME, MAME does the vertical monitors in a similar fashion. Fill the screen top to bottom and don't worry about the Don't stretch the image to fill them!

End intermission

 

One more thing, the article implies all current display processors, i.e. graphics chips, are legacy.. Excuse me, but is there some new display technology coming out that's going to be so radically different that all GPU's will be rendered inoperable? Legacy? Pffagghh! Legacy my ASS!

 

Misuse and twisting of meanings of words is common in business-analyst writing today; you've got a bunch of morons dangling carrots in-front of dims and making them do things that make sense only by some fucked up methodology. Everything's alright as long as it looks good to the higher-ups.

 

Excuse me now while I go play some Moon Patrol before I blow my stack here!

Ohh one more thing, how do I center that?? Demon Attack is centered and so is Air-Sea Battle for example. I can use my monitor hardware controls to do it, but then my desktop is off as is the rom selection menu. I suppose it isn't that bad a deal, in the old'n days we had to fuck with all sorts of drifting analog controls like Horiz and Vert. and hue and color and saturation. I swear everytime we turned on the TV {{SOMETHING}} had to be tweaked just so.

 

NTSC = Never The Same Color

Edited May 24, 2012 by Keatah

[+stephena]

The black area to the left is because of HMOVE blanking, and is exactly what would happen on a real system and TV. As such, the image is centered, it's just that part of the image is blanked out. Making this look visually centered would actually be much more work, since what you're asking is to place it off-center. If you press Alt-m, you'll see the 'garbage' that a real system would generate if it showed that area.

 

Since we're aiming for accurate TV emulation here, having the area blanked (and the resulting image slight off-center) is exactly what should be happening.

[+stephena]

OK, I've run into some problems with phosphor (I kind of thought things were going too well). It seems that blending several frames together won't work with Blargg effects, since there are subtle gradients that make the image like the real thing, but don't look very nice when blended. Or more to the point, I don't think the effects were ever designed to be blended that way. And I don't really have the time (or knowledge) to dive into understanding the Blargg code, some of which is pretty complex.

 

So, I have two options:

1. Release 3.7 without phosphor mode while using TV effects (it will still be present when TV effects are turned off)
   
2. Scrap the blending/32-buffer approach entirely, go back to 16-bit, and pre-compute colours/approximate phosphor effect, just like the currently released version
   

Option 1 obviously doesn't fix anything, just pushes the problem to later. Option 2 has two major drawbacks. First, it doesn't accurately represent phosphor effect (but it's no less accurate than the current implementation). And second, it will take an extra 200KB or so of RAM (but shouldn't be any slower than currently).

 

I have to think a little more about this. I think option 2 is best in the short term until I can figure out a way to more properly emulate phosphor effect (that may not even involve blending at all).

[Keatah]

Talk to Blargg and make him implement a real phosphor persistence effect.

[Trebor]

Option 2 sounds best to me. You're not 'going backwards' so to speak as it is no less accurate than cuurent implemented. 200KB or more RAM...LOL...Even 2MB of RAM should be a non-issue for most users. I only have 8GB on my desktop and 4GB on my laptop.

 

But it's your baby, stephena. You do what is best for you.

[Keatah]

Just do #2 and wrap it up for the summer. You've done enough as it is by adding in the filters and all the tweaks and shit.

[+stephena]

Talk to Blargg and make him implement a real phosphor persistence effect.

 

Three problems with that. One, it may not even be possible, two, I can't make him do it, and three, even if it is possible and he can do it, there's no timeframe on when it will happen. This may be something for the future, but it definitely won't be for 3.7 (or even necessarily for a major release or two after that).

 

Option 2 sounds best to me. You're not 'going backwards' so to speak as it is no less accurate than cuurent implemented. 200KB or more RAM...LOL...Even 2MB of RAM should be a non-issue for most users. I only have 8GB on my desktop and 4GB on my laptop.

 

But it's your baby, stephena. You do what is best for you.

 

That attitude comes from my learning to program on the Amiga, where you had to conserve every resource that you could. Contrary to popular opinion, there are still C++ programmers out there that care about performance usage That being said, I agree I'm probably being ridiculous worrying about 128KB RAM. My main development system has 16GB RAM, soon to be 32GB!

[Keatah]

That attitude comes from my learning to program on the Amiga, where you had to conserve every resource that you could. Contrary to popular opinion, there are still C++ programmers out there that care about performance usage That being said, I agree I'm probably being ridiculous worrying about 128KB RAM. My main development system has 16GB RAM, soon to be 32GB!

 

We as users don't give a shit about all the hemming and hawing that goes into a piece of work. We don't understand it and we don't care. We only complain when something isn't right or when we want it to do something it doesn't already do. That's fact.

 

This is your gig and you do what you think is best.

[Keatah]

I found these articles that would be interesting to the layman:

 

http://www.tested.co...it-games-on-pc/

http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/

http://board.byuu.or....php?f=10&t=147

 

While I think the hardware is pretty cool, especially the FPGA options, I like the software iterations - there's tons of adjustments that can be done.

Edited May 24, 2012 by Keatah

[+stephena]

You're right about the back-and-forth. I just decided to include my thoughts in addition to the snapshots here, to give an idea of how development really works. But I agree that it might be extraneous info for most people.

 

EDIT: About the links provided, these use pixel shaders, which would have greatly complicated the code and bumped the minimum version of OpenGL to 2.1 or so. There's all kinds of things that can be done to simulate a TV, and it can be a research area in itself. I agree with what you said above. I just want to get this done and released at this point, and worry about potential improvements in the future. There are other parts of the emulator that I want to move on to ...

[+stephena]

Arrgh, I need a vacation. I miscalculated the extra RAM I'd need to implement software-mode phosphor TV effects, and it's a whopping 3.5MB (vs. 14KB, or an increase of 257x). That's just too much of a burden. So I'm going to do a release very soon without phosphor in TV mode, and pursue option (1) for the future.

[Keatah]

I think I said #2 was my choice, but being drunk off my ass I'm sure I said it because someone else said it in the first place!

 

In retrospect, doesn't it make sense to stick with 32 bits? Why would we(you) want to regress back to a 16-bit routine? That's like going back to 16-bit uP's ain't it? I'm sure solutions to whatever problems come up will present themselves sooner or later.

[+stephena]

I'm still thinking about all this, and haven't fully decided what to do. I've come up with a way to 'only' use 1.8MB extra RAM, which I guess is acceptable.

[israelg]

Are you going to release a test version with the phosphor effect ?

[Trebor]

I'm still thinking about all this, and haven't fully decided what to do. I've come up with a way to 'only' use 1.8MB extra RAM, which I guess is acceptable.

 

stephena,

 

You do what is best for you, but just my humble 2 cents... Whether it is an extra 1.8 MB or 18 MB the difference is insignificant with any machone from the last several years. If it was 180MB, that may be cause for concern. However, I think even if you need that 3 or 4 MB more it really is not an issue.

 

I saw your post from before...and yeah, if you go back 15-20 years ago every KB counted. But heck, on startup alone with mymachine running Windows 7 64-bit, with no additional services, the OS itself take nearly 2 GB.

[+stephena]

I'm working on this now, and I'm pretty confident I can do it with about 2MB extra RAM usage. However, to achieve that I have to drop PAL colour-loss in the Blargg effects, which means that if you're running a PAL ROM with an odd # of scanlines, the screen won't go black and white. I think it's an acceptable trade-off for now, since (a) most people probably don't use colour-loss mode anyway, and (b) it only happens on buggy PAL ROMs.

 

As for doing a test release, probably not, since I don't really need feedback. I plan on doing the final release on June 1. Either I'll have it sorted as just explained, or I'll have phosphor mode disabled in Blargg mode. EIther way, I'm not holding up this release any further.

[israelg]

I must agree with Trebor, 2MB more or less on today's machines is not significant,

 

And it more important to add the missing features...

 

No one (but you) will feel the difference (in memory) but everyone will enjoy the added value (phosphor)...

 

This is my opinion anyway...

[Keatah]

Just wondering if there is even a need to release it? Some programs are released weekly, and others..?? Well, I have one that I consider regularly updated, and that has gone through 7 revisions in 12 years!!

 

So there is no rush.

 

As far as the memory requirements - I load iTunes, Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator, Word, Outlook, Foxit PDF Reader with several manuals, dual mouse driver, and sometimes Firefox and Stellarium all at the same time. So with all that going on a 2Gb machines ram can get kinda stuffy and scarce. But so far so good!

Edited May 27, 2012 by Keatah

[+stephena]

Stella 3.7 is now released. Please move all discussion to that thread.