Stella & Input Lag

[hizzy]

Hi!

 

I've played around with emulators for NES, SNES, Sega, Commodore 64, and I've noticed joystick input lag on all of them. The lag was bad enough that I gave up on emulation for those systems. Stella, though, feels perfect, I mean identical to the OG. Is there any input lag in Stella that I'm not noticing? If there isn't any lag, is it because Atari games are relatively simple? Is it because Stella is better than other emulators? Why are other emulators so slow in comparison?

 

I can't wait for 6.1 so I can finally try out Epic Adventure!

 

Thanks to the Stella crew!

[+stephena]

I'm glad to hear that Stella is working well for you. AFAICT, there's nothing special in Stella that allows it to process events faster than other emulators. It's pretty simple, really: process a frame, read the events, and process them. I don't think it can be made simpler than that, unless you have direct access to the controller pins and can poll them directly.

 

TBH, I never noticed much lag in other emulators either, so I can't really say what's going on. One area that can be improved is paddle support in Stella. There is still some lag in certain cases. The Stella team is working on this, and we hope to have something to present for 6.1.

[+TwentySixHundred]

Input lag is more of an issue with the monitor rather then emulation vs original hardware. I have never really noticed much of a difference from other good emulators but rather the monitors i have used them on.

 

I have been hunting down the "best" emulators for each system over the past 15 years or so. The qualities i look for are accuracy, continuous development and performance in that order. Some authors have spent more time refining their projects then others.

 

Personally from my experience the top emulators are:

• Stella - Atari 2600
• A7800 - Atari 7800
• Nestopia or Higan - NES
• Higan or SNES9X - SNES
• Kega Fusion 3.64 - Sega SMS and Genesis/Megadrive
• VICE - c64
• EPSXE - Playstation
• Project64 - N64
• DOSBox - DOS

 

My thoughts:

• Stella - Development updates are frequent, the emulator is accurate, faithful and the closest to the real deal IMO.
• A7800 - This is a fork of MAME and by far the most user friendly and accurate 7800 emulator i know of.
• Nestopia - Development updates for Nestopia have been non existent since around 2010 i think. Still a very accurate emulator though.
• Higan - As accurate as you get for SNES emulation however you need a beefy machine to run it at full potential.
• SNES9x - Still accurate but sacrifices some for performance and a good alternative if struggling to run Higan.
• Kega Fusion 3.64 - No current development updates and is still regarded as one the best Sega multi-emulator. It's a shame Steve Snake hasn't continued development.
• VICE - Active development and one the best i know of that's free.
• EPSXE - Active development, accurate and lightweight.
• Project64 - Development is slow but one the better n64 emulators.
• DOSBox - Development is also slow and well one the only i know of for DOS games.

 

Other systems im not to worried about as i don't play them as much as those mentioned above. Hope this helps a little. But yeah if you played these emulators on a CRT you would be hard pressed to notice the difference from original hardware besides the obvious physical presence.

Edited May 11, 2019 by TwentySixHundred

[hizzy]

Is there a monitor that you would recommend?

[+TwentySixHundred]

Is there a monitor that you would recommend?

I just use an Samsung TV as my monitor for my desktop PC and i think it's something like 17ms with a gaming setting that supposedly lowers the input by a few milliseconds. So i haven't really a specific recommendation other then to look for a low input delay time. Most advertisements these days seem to list the lag ms now. Also after a quick google search many are claiming a 1ms delay time anyway from within that search i netted this site https://turbofuture.com/computers/Top-Gaming-Monitor.

[hizzy]

I'm glad to hear that Stella is working well for you. AFAICT, there's nothing special in Stella that allows it to process events faster than other emulators. It's pretty simple, really: process a frame, read the events, and process them. I don't think it can be made simpler than that, unless you have direct access to the controller pins and can poll them directly.

 

TBH, I never noticed much lag in other emulators either, so I can't really say what's going on. One area that can be improved is paddle support in Stella. There is still some lag in certain cases. The Stella team is working on this, and we hope to have something to present for 6.1.

 

I find lag in other emulators is very game dependant. Barbarian on C64 doesn't play smoothly. Metal Gear on NES. With Stella, I haven't noticed a thing

[+stephena]

I suspect Kaboom for the 2600 is one such game. While we try to get it right, Kaboom is one of those games that kind of demands the real thing. Or so far, at least.

[hizzy]

I've never tried a paddle game. I will let you know!