FPGA Based Videogame System

[narshe]

 

 

 

Called it!

 

Why do you say this? It would raise the price and increase the level of complexity, which means more things to break. There are plenty of ways to play SNES on an analog TV already, it's not like the original hardware is hard to find. I would think that anyone willing to pay the asking price probably already has a SNES. What problem would adding analog out to a modern FPGA solve? I'm genuinely curious.

 

Preservation of the console. Those who want to play it exactly as it was before. Yes, you could get all those consoles still, but having a single console that plays them all on a CRT or HD TV would be great.

[Tusecsy]

You can't know that. Some of the fx chips are literally double the power of the snes with added ram and all kinds of things.

 

For example the St-011 requires 54kb of Block Ram and the ST-018 chip requires an ARMv3 core with 128kB of embedded program ROM, 32kB data ROM, and 16kB RAM. Specs that are out of reach for the fpga in the $200 sd2snes which is cart only and costs more than this console does.

 

​Smart money would say that unless Analogue is using a more powerful AND more affordable chip or bought in such volume it became discounted enough to offer it at this pricepoint then we won't receive snes rom support for all fx chips.

 

And as for nt mini cores being able to be run on the super nt; that is entirely possible however the hardware differences could require some tweaking to be done. It certainly is not something you can claim will be available immediately.

 

We won't have any 100% answers until Kevtris posts so don't treat anything as "confirmed" or "fact" without neither confirmations nor facts until then.

You're right we don't know for sure about the fx chips. I would be shocked if kevtris didn't make the core 100% though. He is a perfectionist afterall.

 

You're also right we don't know anything for sure, technically, but I can see the future Chances the NT mini cores aren't available for this near release? zero.

 

And btw I predicted all of this months ago in this very thread (even the name), not that others didn't also of course.

 

That's really good news about the neo geo btw, figured it would be more complicated than the snes, but seems like it's not even close. If kevtris releases a neo geo core for this thing he's basically handing me 1000$ (omega + cart).

Edited October 16, 2017 by Tusecsy

[Flojomojo]

Specs that are out of reach for the fpga in the $200 sd2snes which is cart only and costs more than this console does.

Looking at the FAQ and comments on the SN2SNES site, it would appear that device is from 2014 at the latest. Isn't it likely that things have improved since then?

 

The Analog marketing material says 100% compatibility. Some people have already pointed out that the Super Scope titles won't work, not because of the FPGA but because of the display type. I hope SuperFX titles aren't "asterisked" in the same way.

[Daschewie]

 

I can't speak to it on all that technical of a level, but the NeoGeo is basically a Sega Genesis on steroids (both are a 68k processor with a Z80 for sound) with a monster sprite engine attached. There are obviously many differences, but it does mean that a significant chunk of the work implementing a Genesis FPGA core could be used to jumpstart a NeoGeo core. If nothing else, you wouldn't need to re-implement the 68k or Z80.

There is a lot more to a console than CPUs. Kevrtis already has a Z80 core he can leverage from his Master System work, and there are plenty of opensource 68k cores. However, the sound chips, custom graphics chips, memory mappings, and timings need to be reverse engineered.

[Tusecsy]

 

 

 

Called it!

 

Why do you say this? It would raise the price and increase the level of complexity, which means more things to break. There are plenty of ways to play SNES on an analog TV already, it's not like the original hardware is hard to find. I would think that anyone willing to pay the asking price probably already has a SNES. What problem would adding analog out to a modern FPGA solve? I'm genuinely curious.

for PVMs basically. original snes hardware is pretty much garbage video-wise.

 

all of the special chip games will work 100% off the real games, because the chips are in the games and so don't need to be emulated. the trouble comes in when trying to run the games off an actual SD card, since the hardware chips aren't there.

 

and hell, if superfx is gonna eat up a lot of your time kevtris, then just abandon it and spend your time on other cores, i don't mind owning starfox the only playable game.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Tusecsy

[Guspaz]

Kevtris wouldn't use an opensource 68k core. For one thing, the reason he does FPGA cores is because he enjoys it, for another thing, he can't afford to use a viral license that would force him to opensource his own work.

 

I'm not saying that there isn't a ton of work to do the NeoGeo, just that he's got a significant chunk already done just by the fact he doesn't need to re-implement everything from scratch. This is, after all, how he was able to pump out a bunch of those 8-bit cores so quickly, they had a lot of shared hardware. Of course, a lot of those systems tended to have very little hardware outside of their CPU, some of them weren't much more than a CPU directly driving DACs...

[Wolf_]

You're right we don't know for sure about the fx chips. I would be shocked if kevtris didn't make the core 100% though. He is a perfectionist afterall.

 

You're also right we don't know anything for sure, technically, but I can see the future

I'm hoping the same thing. I just don't want a false confirmation to get started because eager people got carried away.

 

Looking at the FAQ and comments on the SN2SNES site, it would appear that device is from 2014 at the latest. Isn't it likely that things have improved since then?

 

The Analog marketing material says 100% compatibility. Some people have already pointed out that the Super Scope titles won't work, not because of the FPGA but because of the display type. I hope SuperFX titles aren't "asterisked" in the same way.

It is entirely possible the super nt uses a more powerful fpga that costs less and Krikzz simply hasn't adjusted his pricing or has a higher markup. The alternative is also entirely possible as well because the console is being sold as a console and not for its ability to play roms. In other words as long as it can play every snes CARTRIDGE it would still have "full compatibility" with every snes game and accessory.

 

And light gun games MAY still be playable over hdmi out as long as it is converted to an analogue signal and displayed on a crt. I've never tried that so I can't say for certain but if the limitation is how lightguns read lcd dispalys getting it on a crt could be a workaround.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Wolf_

[Sbeehive]

I hope they tell us whether or not they release an actual analogue version of this console as well soon (hopefully pre-February).

 

Honestly I get the extra cost involved but I'm willing to pay the extra cost for the ease of use. It is nice to have a console that can capably do both and to avoid having to RGB mod what you have is a nice bonus.

 

If it stays HDMI only I wonder if Kevtris could come up with a capable motion blur filter like ULMB (*gives monitors "almost" CRT motion clarity in terms of pixel persistence).

[+eebuckeye]

You know Kevtris is reading all these speculations and enjoying himself..

[Guspaz]

If it stays HDMI only I wonder if Kevtris could come up with a capable motion blur filter like ULMB (*gives monitors "almost" CRT motion clarity in terms of pixel persistence).

 

That's a feature of the monitor, not the video source. The video source can't control the monitor's backlight, which is what ULMB is: turning off the backlight while the LCD pixels are in the process of changing.

[gulps]

 

 

Why do you say this? It would raise the price and increase the level of complexity, which means more things to break. There are plenty of ways to play SNES on an analog TV already, it's not like the original hardware is hard to find. I would think that anyone willing to pay the asking price probably already has a SNES. What problem would adding analog out to a modern FPGA solve? I'm genuinely curious.

 

Yes we know, but a few of us still use it...

.. due there are a lot of "Replicants" (TFT lovers) doing the "Nexus6" (CRT) retirement, but we want it until the last will die.. because they are the "purism" (and the origin*).

* I love PLASMA and OLED, but they was programmed for CRT as others said here

The question is... ok, let's go digital. Why not 4K output resolution?

[Sbeehive]

 

That's a feature of the monitor, not the video source. The video source can't control the monitor's backlight, which is what ULMB is: turning off the backlight while the LCD pixels are in the process of changing.

 

Yeah that is true... Maybe blank frame insertion than?

 

Just throwing ideas out there! We have lag and upscaling figured out basically. I wish motion clarity would get there too.

 

It kills me that I have a monitor that does ULMB but no retro-upscaler (OSSC) can use the displayport input which allows that (and than there's refresh rate.... which ULMB doesn't even work at 60hz).

[Keatah]

RIP Zimba 3000 (1999-2017)

 

Not really. It's being spread across several physical consoles.

[Wolf_]

The question is... ok, let's go digital. Why not 4K output resolution?

Retrorgb and Game-tech did a cost comparison for a version of the ossc (fpga upscaler) that could handle 4k and they found out it would cost $500 minimum. I'm betting that as most people don't have 4k displays (let alone good 4k displays) yet they figured the added cost was best avoided. Also they probably wouldn't want to then have to deal with the fact that many customers don't have 4k displays and if they bought into it could probably support future cores like n64 at 1080p and would have no reason to upgrade to the n64 console when it came out until they got a 4k display.

[gulps]

Retrorgb and Game-tech did a cost comparison for a version of the ossc (fpga upscaler) that could handle 4k and they found out it would cost $500 minimum. I'm betting that as most people don't have 4k displays (let alone good 4k displays) yet they figured the added cost was best avoided. Also they probably wouldn't want to then have to deal with the fact that many customers don't have 4k displays and if they bought into it could probably support future cores like n64 at 1080p and would have no reason to upgrade to the n64 console when it came out until they got a 4k display.

 

That means we have to play at 720p at 4K TV or use the 4K TV internal "hardware" scaler for 1080p... not so good.

 

I expected that 4K scaler on the FPGA console is far more easy to implement (duplicating pixel or putting black dots for "CRT" scanline emulation) that an OSSC as an ADC (analog-to-digital converter and..) scaler.

 

[Wolf_]

 

Yeah that is true... Maybe blank frame insertion than?

 

Just throwing ideas out there! We have lag and upscaling figured out basically. I wish motion clarity would get there too.

 

It kills me that I have a monitor that does ULMB but no retro-upscaler (OSSC) can use the displayport input which allows that (and than there's refresh rate.... which ULMB doesn't even work at 60hz).

Imo ULMB, any kind of motion prediction nonsense, and blank frame insertion are more trouble than they are worth. I'd definitely rather stay away from it. Especially in fast paced games that have random images appearing on screen like explosions and enemies and ect. ULMB is just bad when it comes to gaming.

 

Also 60fps on a crt vs digital display is not going to have any kind of difference in smoothness because the refresh rate is the same. If Kevtris could make it so that we got 120fps but the game clock remained the same, now that would be some bad mammajamma

[+5-11under]

Kevtris, if you could confirm that the "Core Store"^TM will be open for this new system, that would be great. I'm hoping this will be my ideal "living room" system.

[Wolf_]

 

That means we have to play at 720p at 4K TV or use the 4K TV internal "hardware" scaler for 1080p... not so good.

 

I expected that 4K scaler on the FPGA console is far more easy to implement (duplicating pixel or putting black dots for "CRT" scanline emulation) that an OSSC as an ADC (analog-to-digital converter and..) scaler.

 

The problem you are thinking of is only with 720p content upscaled to 1080p, both 1080p and 720p upscale perfectly fine to 4k. 720p x 1.5 = 1080p, the .5 is the problem because you can't have half a pixel so that can lead to pixel rounding and that god awful shimmering optical illusion MLiG like to show. 720p and 1080p can both be scaled directly into 4k with only minor adjustment.

[Tusecsy]

Analogue just confirmed this will have 5x line multiplier, gamma boost option, and 64 sprite mode. Gas.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Tusecsy

[Sbeehive]

Imo ULMB, any kind of motion prediction nonsense, and blank frame insertion are more trouble than they are worth. I'd definitely rather stay away from it. Especially in fast paced games that have random images appearing on screen like explosions and enemies and ect. ULMB is just bad when it comes to gaming.

 

Also 60fps on a crt vs digital display is not going to have any kind of difference in smoothness because the refresh rate is the same. If Kevtris could make it so that we got 120fps but the game clock remained the same, now that would be some bad mammajamma

 

I'll have to respectfully disagree in terms of ULMB. It makes a huge difference in terms of games on my rig at least. Of course, between monitor makers there could be some large quality differences. I know BENQ makes a gaming monitor that does 60hz ULMB (their equivalent) but it sounds like there is a lot of flicker. I know at least in terms of my DosBox games the motion clarity on pixel based games is a lot better with it enabled. I don't know if the random images you have seen are from different technologies but my ASUS PG279Q does not do that.

 

http://www.blurbusters.com/ That site makes a pretty good workup of the different technologies.

 

But hey. In all honesty I'm not the patron saint of ULMB (nor am I trying to flame you). I just wish we had some kind of retro solution for motion clarity. I always get pissed off when I see sprites blur to the point of absurdity where they move across the screen. I can live with an upscaled image but I hate how current day tech handles motion.

[cacophony]

5x scale, gamma boost, and 64 sprite mode confirmed by Analogue on twitter

[Wolf_]

 

I'll have to respectfully disagree in terms of ULMB. It makes a huge difference in terms of games on my rig at least. Of course, between monitor makers there could be some large quality differences. I know BENQ makes a gaming monitor that does 60hz ULMB (their equivalent) but it sounds like there is a lot of flicker. I know at least in terms of my DosBox games the motion clarity on pixel based games is a lot better with it enabled. I don't know if the random images you have seen are from different technologies but my ASUS PG279Q does not do that.

 

http://www.blurbusters.com/ That site makes a pretty good workup of the different technologies.

 

But hey. In all honesty I'm not the patron saint of ULMB (nor am I trying to flame you). I just wish we had some kind of retro solution for motion clarity. I always get pissed off when I see sprites blur to the point of absurdity where they move across the screen. I can live with an upscaled image but I hate how current day tech handles motion.

Totally fine, everyone has widely differing opinions on what looks good. Although I will say that I would be extremely surprised if the issue with your sprites was related to motion blur and not the way your emulator was running or some strange processing done by the monitor. 60fps is 60fps after all, while crts may be faster if they drew more than 60 frames per second then it wouldn't be 60 frames per second.

 

There is a lot of other stuff that could potentially cause an issue like how some manufacturers assume they are selling displays to the mouth breathing public and leave some video processing on even in game mode to prevent someone from turning it on by mistake and thinking they had a poor quality display, a flaw in the emulation (dosbox has to do a lot of witchcraft to get things running so it is understandable some things might not output perfectly), and issues with things like how the image is upscaled. Is the emulator doing it or the display and how each of those responds and ect.

 

It is a whole big can of worms.

[z3razerviper]

I just caved and ordered the black one I hope it gets jail broken and genesis support

[Toth]

Analogue just confirmed this will have 5x line multiplier, gamma boost option, and 64 sprite mode. Gas.

Can you explain why this is good?

[hexcode99]

Assuming we get jail-broken firmware, I would like to know if we can expect MSU1 enhancement supprt on the Super Nt or would we still need an SD2SNES?