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FPGA Based Videogame System


kevtris

Interest in an FPGA Videogame System  

682 members have voted

  1. 1. I would pay....

  2. 2. I Would Like Support for...

  3. 3. Games Should Run From...

    • SD Card / USB Memory Sticks
    • Original Cartridges
    • Hopes and Dreams
  4. 4. The Video Inteface Should be...


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I got an NT mini for Xmas and love it.

 

I am having one strange issue and am wondering if anybody else has experienced this. When using the a2600 core I have been experiencing bugs/glitches across different games. In Pac-Man Jr, ghosts become invisible randomly. In Missle Command missles and their trails will randomly pop into and out of existence. In Yars revenge the screen will randomly alternate between showing me the shield and projectiles but never at the same time. It seems like its an issue showing the sprites but I dont see any options to use to fix this. I also changed SD cards and roms thinking maybe this was a storage issue but this did not fix anything. Anybody have any thoughts on a fix? I searched as best I could and couldnt find any similar complaints from anybody else so am a tiny bit worried its something wrong with my NT mini. (Only a little though because I havent seen any issues with other cores)

Edited by Loukey
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I got an NT mini for Xmas and love it.

 

I am having one strange issue and am wondering if anybody else has experienced this. When using the a2600 core I have been experiencing bugs/glitches across different games. In Pac-Man Jr, ghosts become invisible randomly. In Missle Command missles and their trails will randomly pop into and out of existence. In Yars revenge the screen will randomly alternate between showing me the shield and projectiles but never at the same time. It seems like its an issue showing the sprites but I dont see any options to use to fix this. I also changed SD cards and roms thinking maybe this was a storage issue but this did not fix anything. Anybody have any thoughts on a fix? I searched as best I could and couldnt find any similar complaints from anybody else so am a tiny bit worried its something wrong with my NT mini. (Only a little though because I havent seen any issues with other cores)

sounds like your TV is only showing 30fps. if you're using composite or s-video this is typical. all those problems are because those games flicker that stuff at 30fps. It's definitely a TV/monitor issue though and not an nt mini issue.

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sounds like your TV is only showing 30fps. if you're using composite or s-video this is typical. all those problems are because those games flicker that stuff at 30fps. It's definitely a TV/monitor issue though and not an nt mini issue.

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. It’s connected via HDMI, but through my receiver so maybe it’s not just passing the signal through and is messing with the frame rate. I’ll play around with it or connect it directly.

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4k HDTV's handle 720p and 1080p upscaling just fine with minimum lag. So if something is interesting you enough into getting a 4k tv, I really wouldn't worry about your non-4k sources any.

I'm OCD about input lag because I love old school fast twitch games like Punch Out, and I love that the NT mini outputs native 1080p with no lag. The idea of adding extra input lag and blurriness to the NT Mini's gorgeous lag-free output makes me wince.

Edited by RabidWookie
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I'm OCD about input lag because I love old school fast twitch games like Punch Out, and I love that the NT mini outputs native 1080p with no lag. The idea of adding extra input lag and blurriness to the NT Mini's gorgeous lag-free output makes me wince.

Not sure about other TVs but for my LG 4k OLED the difference in input lag between 1080p @ 60Hz and 4k @ 60Hz is only 0.1 millisecs (21.5 ms vs 21.6 ms). Also, the upscale from 1080p to 4k doesn't add any blurriness because it's a perfect integer scale.

Edited by cacophony
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Not sure about other TVs but for my LG 4k OLED the difference in input lag between 1080p @ 60Hz and 4k @ 60Hz is only 0.1 millisecs (21.5 ms vs 21.6 ms). Also, the upscale from 1080p to 4k doesn't add any blurriness because it's a perfect integer scale.

Unfortunately, Sony 4K sets add a frame of lag in 1080p vs 4K, even in game mode. In PC mode, it doesnt seem to have that issue (which requires not using 1080p over HDMI), but it does suck that there are some 4K sets out there that apply additional processing to 1080p during upscaling...

 

Yeah, my thinking exactly, keeping my expectations within the scope of what is actually being advertised but I'm still low-key hoping I can play SA-1 and Super FX rom hacks like SMW2+2 and Super Mario Central's Vanilla Level Design Contest 9. :grin:

I wish, but these two are the ones that would pose the biggest demands on FPGA space. The SA-1 in particular would require more space than the main CPU would. Without knowing the details on kevtris SNES core, I obviously cant say for sure, but Id be pretty impressed if there was the room on the Super NTs FPGA for the SA-1. Edited by Kaide
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It really shouldn't, since 4K resolution is a multiple of 1080

 

 

An upscale from 1080p to 4k just involves turning each pixel into a square block of 4 pixels, so it will look exactly the same assuming you don't have some sort of interpolation enabled.

 

These are faulty and usually incorrect assumptions. It's true that it's possible to do a perfect integer nearest-neighbour scale from 1080p to 4K, but that doesn't mean that televisions actually implement that. Nearest-neighbour interpolation is a terrible algorithm to use for photographic content, and so most 4K TVs are going to scale 1080p to 4K much like a 1080p TV might scale 480p to 1080p. You're also unlikely to get any control over what interpolation algorithm is used for upscaling.

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These are faulty and usually incorrect assumptions. It's true that it's possible to do a perfect integer nearest-neighbour scale from 1080p to 4K, but that doesn't mean that televisions actually implement that. Nearest-neighbour interpolation is a terrible algorithm to use for photographic content, and so most 4K TVs are going to scale 1080p to 4K much like a 1080p TV might scale 480p to 1080p. You're also unlikely to get any control over what interpolation algorithm is used for upscaling.

Well RabidWookie's concern was whether it would look blurry or washed out, which I don't think would be the case regardless of how the TV does the upscale. All the examples I've seen of 240p (or other pixelated) content on a 4k TV look great.

Edited by cacophony
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Checkboard rendering works by rendering alternating blocks of pixels at full resolution such that only 50% of total pixels are rendered, and then trying to fill in the unrendered blocks using a combination of spatial and temporal extrapolation. It's not an upscaling technique, it's a rendering technique. It doesn't "render one pixel as a block of four", it typically renders a 2x2 block of pixels as four distinct pixels. Which is why it has nothing to do with upscaling, since it requires the input data be a sparse but already at 4K image.

Edited by Guspaz
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These are faulty and usually incorrect assumptions. It's true that it's possible to do a perfect integer nearest-neighbour scale from 1080p to 4K, but that doesn't mean that televisions actually implement that. Nearest-neighbour interpolation is a terrible algorithm to use for photographic content, and so most 4K TVs are going to scale 1080p to 4K much like a 1080p TV might scale 480p to 1080p. You're also unlikely to get any control over what interpolation algorithm is used for upscaling.

 

Fortunately my 4K LG OLED makes 1080p look even better than it did on my 1080p Kuro plasma. Ditto for 720p. I have no desire for 4K FPGA systems until they are powerful enough to do shaders.

 

Some people I've talked to don't believe me, and say that 1080p will always look better on a 1080p panel. They are forgetting about things like subpixel structure and temporal dithering. 1080p is at least as sharp on my 4K set as any 1080p panel I have ever seen. And there are definitely no artifacts, or softness, when I feed it 720p or 1080p from the NT Mini (or even windowboxed 960p from the OSSC).

 

Funny thing is I wouldn't mind a little softness when playing 240p games on a 65" screen.

Edited by Beer Monkey
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Changing the subject for a minute back to the Super NT. I recently bought a Hyperkin laser SNES mouse. Obviously the mouse should work in game, but I was wondering if there are plans to add mouse support to the main UI when using the mouse accessory. Someone did an extensive review of the console but he didn't specify whether or not it had mouse support built in. Obviously an apples to oranges comparison, but Hyperkin added mouse support to it's Retron5 menu, so there's that.

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Changing the subject for a minute back to the Super NT. I recently bought a Hyperkin laser SNES mouse. Obviously the mouse should work in game, but I was wondering if there are plans to add mouse support to the main UI when using the mouse accessory. Someone did an extensive review of the console but he didn't specify whether or not it had mouse support built in. Obviously an apples to oranges comparison, but Hyperkin added mouse support to it's Retron5 menu, so there's that.

 

Have you tried the Hyperkin mouse on an SNES? Is it any good?

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It isn't upscaling. It requires the PS4 to render to a 4K framebuffer with the same pixel density as a native 4K image for the parts that it does render.

 

Wow, has anyone measured the input lag on a PS4 or Xbox One? The fighting game community especially requires zero input lag, might be why fighting games don't seem to be as popular this generation.

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Wow, has anyone measured the input lag on a PS4 or Xbox One? The fighting game community especially requires zero input lag, might be why fighting games don't seem to be as popular this generation.

 

Fighting games are like seven frames lagged these days (Street Fighter 5, Tekken 7). The community has adapted, though lots of purists only want to play the classics now.

 

Smash Brothers tournaments are typically played on CRTs only because lag affects the game so much.

 

PS2 Classics like 'Psychonauts' on PS4 lag over ten frames. I did a 60fps camera test the other night (record pressing the jump button, count the frames until the jump animation starts on-screen). Two frames on PC (with 'max prerendered frames' set to 1 in Nvidia control panel), 14 frames on PS4. This is on a display with 21ms so 1.5 frames of lag, so the rest comes from the source (PC or PS4).

 

Killzone Shadow Fall for PS4 lags over 100ms. https://youtu.be/NqOsaC2Sfz8?t=15

Edited by Beer Monkey
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Fighting games are like seven frames lagged these days (Street Fighter 5, Tekken 7). The community has adapted, though lots of purists only want to play the classics now.

 

Smash Brothers tournaments are typically played on CRTs only because lag affects the game so much.

 

PS2 Classics like 'Psychonauts' on PS4 lag over ten frames. I did a 60fps camera test the other night (record pressing the jump button, count the frames until the jump animation starts on-screen). Two frames on PC (with 'max prerendered frames' set to 1 in Nvidia control panel), 14 frames on PS4. This is on a display with 21ms so 1.5 frames of lag, so the rest comes from the source (PC or PS4).

 

Killzone Shadow Fall for PS4 lags over 100ms. https://youtu.be/NqOsaC2Sfz8?t=15

 

Wow, that's crazy! How much did Xbox 360 fighting games lag?

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