FPGA Based Videogame System

[retro_fan]

Yeah it was interesting reading about the CRT stuff! I wasn't really planning on any "crt emulation" since doing that on the FPGA can be... tough. [...]

 

This might have been so cool for the HDMI output! But you would keep improving the Z3K even after launch, right? Maybe then... In the meantime, check out this awesome Micro64 emulator CRT simulation menu, one can even tweak noise and glitches!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1qEP2vMe-I

 

[...]

 

Ethernet: leave it in, even if it's just an unpopulated footprint. On the one hand, people are working on ethernet expansions for old consoles (there's ethernet for the famicom being worked on). Homebrew games will be able to connect to the internet! Fairly exciting. On the other hand, maybe you can then get roms from a network share (if someone is so inclined to write support for that). Finally, people who want to use this as a dev board will be able to do this.

 

[...]

 

Maybe not only homebrew games, but commercial ones as well. See for yourself what the creator of Everdrives is experimenting with, Battle City on-line co-op!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6OeJYWAJ6c

 

Actually, in the past there was this thing called XBAND. An official modem enabling on-line multiplayer on the Sega Genesis and the SNES!! With cool menus (this music and art style!), messages, avatars, and other community stuff. When I first learned about it, I could not believe it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnnND_UTU6Y

 

Yup, SNES Doom deathmatch

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P3JGxBNUyM

 

If it was possible then... Are you writing down ideas, kevtris?

 

So yeah, some kind of the internet connectivity would be USEFUL. Not to mention that the Z3K could also possess RetroAchievements support.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Hahahaha it was only a joke, I'm sorry. It's just in my case, the most comfortable setup I could have for it was to connect it to my PS4's USB cause I wasnt gonna disconnect other stuff from the wall. Sorry!

I am well aware of that, just playing along!

[Andromeda Stardust]

My question about the electrons was more to ask where do they go after they hit the phosphors and force it to emit a few photons?

The phosphors do not get to keep a few extra electrons so they must go somewhere, afaik there's no closing "wire" so to speak, so they have to bounce and get captured somewhere on their trip to higher voltage (remember they are electrons they go towards the + as they are charged -).

I believe the conductive CRT mask acts as the "drain" for those electrons, assuming it is connected to a ground source. Not sure how it works on B/W tubes which generally lack any sort of conductive mesh under the screen.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Yeah it was interesting reading about the CRT stuff! I wasn't really planning on any "crt emulation" since doing that on the FPGA can be... tough. but I was hoping to do a convincing vector monitor simulation for vectrex and the vector arcade machines (which I really want to play). I have most of how it would work figured out I think. vector simulation seems to be a fairly tough thing to get right, especially if you want to simulate things like the beam bumping off the inside walls of the CRT!

Vectrex over FPGA sir, and you have a sale!

[cheater]

kevtris: i know you didn't want to do any fancy output processing but this might be somewhat important. the effect blows my mind:

 

[cheater]

 

This might have been so cool for the HDMI output! But you would keep improving the Z3K even after launch, right? Maybe then... In the meantime, check out this awesome Micro64 emulator CRT simulation menu, one can even tweak noise and glitches!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1qEP2vMe-I

 

 

Wow, this is so cool. I wish he had a page that displays what all the settings do with screenshots or short videos.

[veelk55]

 

Wow, this is so cool. I wish he had a page that displays what all the settings do with screenshots or short videos.

 

How many years do I have to wait until something similar is doable for an FPGA based videogame multi system?

[Great Hierophant]

kevtris: i know you didn't want to do any fancy output processing but this might be somewhat important. the effect blows my mind:

 

What effect were you talking about in particular?

[cheater]

What effect were you talking about in particular?

 

watch the video from 4:55 to 6:40. He first shows CGA graphics on an LCD and compares them to EGA. EGA looks pretty good and CGA looks crap, it's basically shades of pink. Then he takes out another computer and shows CGA via composite output and it looks just as good as EGA did, with the same colors as EGA had on that other computer. So basically, CGA has to be played via component to be enjoyable. Using it with RGBI (which is a digital 1 bit per channel version of RGB explained in another part of the video) really makes it look crap because it's missing the smoothing that component provided due to limited signal bandwidth and crt smearing.

 

https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc?t=295

[Great Hierophant]

watch the video from 4:55 to 6:40. He first shows CGA graphics on an LCD and compares them to EGA. EGA looks pretty good and CGA looks crap, it's basically shades of pink. Then he takes out another computer and shows CGA via composite output and it looks just as good as EGA did, with the same colors as EGA had on that other computer. So basically, CGA has to be played via component to be enjoyable. Using it with RGBI (which is a digital 1 bit per channel version of RGB explained in another part of the video) really makes it look crap because it's missing the smoothing that component provided due to limited signal bandwidth and crt smearing.

 

https://youtu.be/niKblgZupOc?t=295

There are better, more colorful examples than the ones 8-Bit Guy used. As impressive as is, it aartifact composite colorlly is of only marginal relevance to this project. Few, if any of the proposed consoles Kevtris is going to be emulating on the Zimba 3K rely on artifact composite color. The MiST FPGA computer emulator is a better fit.

Edited September 22, 2016 by Great Hierophant

[Andromeda Stardust]

7800 and many 8-bit computers used artifact colors in certain games...

[Great Hierophant]

Only Tower Toppler for the 7800 really uses artifact color, so I would not expect it to be implemented until kevtris starts tackling the computers.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Only Tower Toppler for the 7800 really uses artifact color, so I would not expect it to be implemented until kevtris starts tackling the computers.

Yes, and people who S-Video modded their 7800s needed to downgrade to composite to get acceptable picture quality when playing this game. How difficult would it be to simulate chroma blend in the digital domain via FPGA?

[Great Hierophant]

According to Blargg, author of the NTSC filter library :

 

All filters use an optimized algorithm that does all math-intensive calculation during initialization, leaving just a minimal integer-only 14-point RGB convolution and clamping to be performed for each input pixel during filtering. Running the filter at 60 frames per second uses 8% CPU on a 2.0 GHz Athlon PC and 40% CPU on a 400 MHz PowerMac G3, making it suitable for use on almost any system. The pixel output format can be set to 15/16/24/32-bit RGB

http://slack.net/~ant/libs/ntsc.html

 

This would suggest that a fair amount of logic elements would be required for an FPGA to replicate this type of filtering.

 

Of course, if kevtris added support for analog video standards as he is doing for the Analogue Nt Mini, he generate a composite video signal directly and let the TV handle the decoding to obtain the desired effect.

Edited September 23, 2016 by Great Hierophant

[Newsdee]

This would suggest that a fair amount of logic elements would be required for an FPGA to replicate this type of filtering.

Not necessarily; FPGA do not need a fast CPU to achieve similar effects.

 

HQ2X has been done but this NTSC filtering looks more complex.

https://github.com/mist-devel/mist-board/blob/master/cores/nes/src/hq2x.v

[veelk55]

Well in the case that Kevtris' FPGA system has no room left for such fancy effects in the end, I think I can at least hope for something like this which is the simplest option I could think of, now that I've played with the AVS NES long enough to know what I would have liked for it. Of course all of this is still optional to the player, so in my case I don't mind a bit of darkness in favor of making the image look a bit more like a CRT.

The scanlines in the AVS NES aren't noticeable enough to make it CRT-like from a distance for me. Ironically, it just looks like square pixels with thin lines separating them, where my preferred method only leaves only 1 line with full visibility, which is what makes it look a bit more authentic in this case (3x).

The AVS also doesn't blur the image horizontally when you expand it, but I think Kevtris' HDMI NES has this option already. Anyway, just mentioning it cause it helps make the image a lot better for TV aspect.

Sadly the 3DS tried to do this, but because the screen is only 400x240, the blurriness ruined it

 

[Flojomojo]

FPGA in the news

 

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/microsoft-bets-future-chip-reprogram-fly/

[Andromeda Stardust]

@veelk55 great idea, however my testing suggests that Bilinear scaling to 1080p will soften these edges without creating unsightly artifacts.

 

AVS sample 720p:

http://sta.sh/02bb7cc9dt06

 

AVS sample zoomed out and scaled to 1080p:

http://sta.sh/03asg71xf25

 

Zoomed in view:

http://sta.sh/0nkzp4jtcw8

 

@Flojo: great things will come out of FPGA enabled CPUs once these things get mainstream. I just hope Microsoft don't find ways to lock users out of accessing these features (ie only signed or approved apps could utilize it).

[veelk55]

Wow, really? Is that what the AVS looks like when you play in a 1080p monitor?

That would be great with me actually. Not ideal, but still, all those lines look very even.

In my computer monitor (1600x900) those scanlines dont look that good, I will notice lots of uneven bars.
On my HDTV (1024x768) I will also notice the same thing.

I'm planning to get a 1080p monitor whether it looks like that or not but that would be a great bonus.

[Gentlegamer]

@Flojo: great things will come out of FPGA enabled CPUs once these things get mainstream. I just hope Microsoft don't find ways to lock users out of accessing these features (ie only signed or approved apps could utilize it).

 

That's exactly what MS will do. FPGA will give it even more control over your system.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Wow, really? Is that what the AVS looks like when you play in a 1080p monitor?

That would be great with me actually. Not ideal, but still, all those lines look very even.

In my computer monitor (1600x900) those scanlines dont look that good, I will notice lots of uneven bars.

On my HDTV (1024x768) I will also notice the same thing.

 

I'm planning to get a 1080p monitor whether it looks like that or not but that would be a great bonus.

Think of my screenshot mockups as a "best case" senario. They were created from FCEU screenshots edited in GIMP. 256x240 screenshot integer scaled to 1024x720, matted to 1280x720, then a 50% overlay applied with every third line darkened. From there, I used bilinear filtering to scale the result to 1920x1080. Non-1080p displays not outputting a clean 1.5x scaler (ie 720p video upscaled to 1366x768 display w/ overscan) may have less than stellar results. I imagine the scanlines will look less pretty on the 2006 26 inch "720p" Sanyo LCD (768 native) compared to the ultra low latency 23 inch 1080p ASUS monitor I use in my bedroom setup for HD gaming.

 

 

That's exactly what MS will do. FPGA will give it even more control over your system.

More reasons for people to switch over to Linux.

[RGBSource]

The UltraHDMI with the latest FW (v1.05) can produce a nice 1080p scanlined image (Integer+ with Hybrid scanlines). The on screen area of a pixel appears in part to be a function of its intensity, rather than a fixed/simple scanline "overlay". It would be nice if other devices could do this!

Edited September 28, 2016 by RGBSource

[R.Cade]

I have run the NES core in RGB/15Khz on the MiST FPGA and it is gorgeous on my Sony PVM. It would be great if this new proposed device could also output to that standard.

[Andromeda Stardust]

The UltraHDMI with the latest FW (v1.05) can produce a nice 1080p scanlined image (Integer+ with Hybrid scanlines). The on screen area of a pixel appears in part to be a function of its intensity, rather than a fixed/simple scanline "overlay". It would be nice if other devices could do this!

What system is that?

[phoenixdownita]

What system is that?

I believe it is this:

http://ultrahdmi.retroactive.be/