Need opinions on 2600 emulation

[Cynicaster]

I've got some console emus running on my MAME cabinet, including Stella for Atari 2600.

 

I like Stella, but the graphics are really blocky and ugly looking. It looks like there are video filters available that can be applied to take the harshness down and make it more closely resemble an old CRT screen, but it says something along the lines of "OpenGL required for this" and I have no idea what that is. An NVIDIA technology I think? Anyway, my emulation rig is an old POS WinXP machine I bought in the local classifieds for a few bucks, and apparently it does not have OpenGL because the option is grayed out in Stella. I checked the hardware and it in fact does have some sort of onboard NVIDIA video adapter, but when I went to the NVIDIA site and downloaded the latest drivers for my model number, it screwed the system up royally, and it would only boot into that 4-color "safe mode" deal. I had to roll back the driver to make the system usable for anything at all.

 

I have used MESS in the past for Atari 2600, and it did apply a nice "softening" effect to the display that was pleasing to the eye and did not require fancy hardware/software, but the emulator was too hit and miss on the games that worked with it, which was frustrating. Beamrider is one I know for sure didn't work.

 

What would you guys recommend for something that works smoothly, works with all games, and doesn't have the harsh/ugly/blocky look to the graphics?

[Rex Dart]

Sounds like you need to sort out your software/driver issues and get up-to-date chipset and video drivers installed. What specific (not 'some sort') hardware do you have?

[+FujiSkunk]

You're not going to get much better than Stella, really, as far as both 2600 emulation and good video presentation goes.

 

OpenGL is not an NVIDIA-specific technology, but rather an open-source, cross-platform alternative to DirectX. Like DirectX, OpenGL provides a way to use a video card's 3D and other hardware-based capabilities without having to write code specifically for that video card. Naturally, you must have OpenGL support installed on your system, which means having a video card able to do what OpenGL wants, and an OpenGL-supporting driver for that video card. Windows XP by default supports OpenGL 1.1, wrapping it around a translator to equivalent DirectX calls. However, Stella requires at least OpenGL 1.2.

 

If the latest NVIDIA drivers don't work, you may look for something at least newer than what you currently have, but still not the latest and greatest. OpenGL 1.2 has been around for a while, so even an older driver might still have what you need for Stella.

 

You can read more about OpenGL on the OpenGL website. This is a good place to start.

[+Gemintronic]

yeah. I'd get OpenGL working for the nice TV filters in Stella rather than switching to something else.

[+stephena]

The next major release of Stella (4.0) will support the TV effects in OpenGL, Direct3D, OpenGLES, etc. Whatever type of video hardware is installed on your system, it will take advantage of it.

 

That being said, if you have an Nvidia card then you definitely have the ability to use OpenGL. You just need to download the right drivers. Look here for more information.

 

EDIT: Incidentally, the major reason why I'm moving to the latest version of SDL2 in Stella is to have proper Direct3D support in Windows, and not require OpenGL at all (which as you've seen, isn't always set up correctly in Windows).

[rxd]

Stella is awesome....

[almightytodd]

This is video shot from an LCD screen on a computer running Stella with CRT video effects enabled. It's definitely worth figuring out the right drivers for your system...

 

http://youtu.be/njr4ZJEPahU

 

[Keatah]

..and in real life it looks even better! I have my TV effects set like so for my monitor:

 

TV MODE CUSTOM

Contrast 50

Brightness 50

Hue 46

Saturation 77

Gamma 44

Sharpness 38

Resolution 34

Artifacts 31

Fringing 25

Bleeding 18

 

Scanline Intensity 5

Interpolation ON

 

My general video settings are like so:

OpenGL

TIA Filter Zoom 3x

Tia Palette Standard

Fullscrn Res Auto

Timing Sleep

GL Filter Linear

GL Aspect N 90

GL Aspect P 100

Framerate Auto

GL FS Stretch ON

GL Vsync OFF

PAL Color Loss OFF

Fast SC/AR BIOS OFF

Show UI messages ON

Center Window OFF

 

Depending on your monitor size and aspect ratio you might want to manually select the fullscreen res and adjust the TIA Filter. GL Aspect can also help getting things proportioned right.

 

And with that I leave you to experiment around.

[Keatah]

It is important to know the name of the chip you have, not just who makes it. And then you need to get drivers specific to that chip. And what speed is your processor?

 

I've got an old intel integrated graphics chip on one of my emulation machines. Gotta be 11 years old. And it works. I also run stella perfectly on a system I put together back in 1998 or thereabouts.

 

[Cynicaster]

 

Thanks guys. Admittedly, my process went kind of like this:

 

“hey graphics are blocky, but it looks like I need this OpenGL business to fix it”

Open control panel, get name of video adapter

Go to NVIDIA website, look up device name, download driver

Install, system screws up

Roll back driver, raise white flag

Post here

 

In other words, I was looking for a zero-effort solution.

 

But, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and it looks like Stella is the premium 2600 emu experience. So, Stella it is. I’m confident I can get it running if I try a bit harder.

 

To be clear, I was not bagging on Stella in my original post, I hope it didn’t come across that way. Stephena, if you’re the man behind Stella, you’re doing an enormous service to this hobby and I’ve got nothing but gratitude.

 

As for my system, I’ll check when I get home, but I know it’s a dual-core Intel 64-bit system with 2GB RAM and 2.xx GHz. Sounds like that’s far more than adequate. The video adapter showed up as NVIDIA nForce something-or-other, and I recall I had to look under “legacy” drivers on the NVIDIA site to find it, but with 10 million products listed maybe I grabbed the wrong one. Maybe I should try the “autodetect” feature on the site and see what that suggests? I didn’t want to connect this system to the internet at all because I’m running lean and mean (no security software, etc.), but I suppose a few minutes won’t hurt.

 

PS—that DK VCS looks incredible! Pie Factory FTW!