A little lower frame rate than expected in some games

[scelbi8h]

I got my 2600+ today. I'm located in Spain, so my whole collection of 3 shoe boxes full of cartridges are PAL (all but one, I have an NTSC Pitfall II... but never mind that, it can't be used anyway).

 

Emulation works fine - no lag, great colors, etc, but when I plug my JawBreaker or H.E.R.O. games I notice a little low frame rate. It's not too low, but really noticeable. Things move around with little jumps on the screen. 

 

So far, I could only find this issue with these two games (Still didn't try out every game I own). I compared side by side with my old light-sixer (game loaded from the Harmony cart) how the character from H.E.R.O. moves around and the issue is clearly there. Quite annoying. 

 

Just to compare, Pitfall works fine. I chose to compare H.E.R.O. with this one because it's too from Activision, and the character runs in a similar way. No problem with this one, that little guy runs smoothly.

 

Did you guys noticed this too?

Edited November 18, 2023 by scelbi8h

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I suppose the problem is that your cart is PAL (50 Hz) and the console outputs (60 Hz). Which means every 5th PAL frame has to be displayed twice. This causes a little jerky movement.

[Beatley82]

Super Breakout suffers from jerkiness, but I am not sure it is just limited to the PAL one as I have seen an American YouTuber testing his original carts and he reports a similar thing with the game (which I am assuming is an NTSC copy). It's not unplayable but its not optimal and is certainly quite off-putting.

[scelbi8h]

On 11/19/2023 at 8:48 AM, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I suppose the problem is that your cart is PAL (50 Hz) and the console outputs (60 Hz). Which means every 5th PAL frame has to be displayed twice. This causes a little jerky movement.

 

That's weird, because some PAL games go smooth... So I think some of them as detected as PAL, and others not. In the post "Verified Atari 2600+ FAQ - WIP" they say this:

 

Quote

- So will PAL region 2600 / 7800 carts run in 60hz the same as NTSC region carts?
For the 2600 : They will run at the framerate they were programmed for. So PAL-50 carts will run @ 50Hz.

 

Anyway I did a test - I recorded how Breakout works from the cart that came with the paddle set, and then I plugged my PAL Breakout cartridge. The second one clearly shows lots of jerkiness in the movement of the ball and racket.

 

I hope PAL mode will be upgraded in a future firmware update.

 

 

Please, ignore the annoying clock in the background 😅

Edited November 21, 2023 by scelbi8h

[Thomas Jentzsch]

28 minutes ago, scelbi8h said:

That's weird, because some PAL games go smooth... So I think some of them as detected as PAL, and others not.

If that would be the case, the wrong detected games would show wrong colors.

 

And, yes PAL games will run @ 50 Hz, but (obviously) display @ 60 Hz.

28 minutes ago, scelbi8h said:

Anyway I did a test - I recorded how Breakout works from the cart that came with the paddle set, and then I plugged my PAL Breakout cartridge. The second one clearly shows lots of jerkiness in the movement of the ball and racket.

That proves it, right? The cart which came with the paddle set is NTSC, so it runs @60 Hz and thus shows no jerkiness. 

 

Can you check your TVs output? Usually there is an option to display the current resolution and frame rate.

28 minutes ago, scelbi8h said:

I hope PAL mode will be upgraded in a future firmware update.😅

@Ben from Plaion That's something which should be fixed. Can your HDMI output hardware create 50Hz output?

[Ben from Plaion]

6 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

If that would be the case, the wrong detected games would show wrong colors.

 

And, yes PAL games will run @ 50 Hz, but (obviously) display @ 60 Hz.

That proves it, right? The cart which came with the paddle set is NTSC, so it runs @60 Hz and thus shows no jerkiness. 

 

Can you check your TVs output? Usually there is an option to display the current resolution and frame rate.

@Ben from Plaion That's something which should be fixed. Can your HDMI output hardware create 50Hz output?

Yes, I've got two beta builds. A fixed 50hz and an Auto Detect Cart 50hz and 60Hz. Do you want me to send you them?

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

15 minutes ago, Ben from Plaion said:

Yes, I've got two beta builds. A fixed 50hz and an Auto Detect Cart 50hz and 60Hz. Do you want me to send you them?

Sure.  

[scelbi8h]

42 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

If that would be the case, the wrong detected games would show wrong colors.

 

And, yes PAL games will run @ 50 Hz, but (obviously) display @ 60 Hz.

That proves it, right? The cart which came with the paddle set is NTSC, so it runs @60 Hz and thus shows no jerkiness. 

 

Can you check your TVs output? Usually there is an option to display the current resolution and frame rate.

@Ben from Plaion That's something which should be fixed. Can your HDMI output hardware create 50Hz output?

 

Now I get it 🙂 I was understanding that when a 50Hz cart was inserted, the output was also changed to 50Hz.

 

I'm testing this on a HDMI monitor. I can see it says the input is a 60Hz one. I suppose it could accept a 50Hz input... I *think* when I plugged my TheC64 in PAL mode, this monitor was working in 50Hz, but I should confirm this. 

 

It would be great if the 2600+ could output a 50Hz signal, by auto detecting or maybe by selecting it with a switch combination, for example.  

 

Thanks for your reply!