Emulation vs the Real Thing

[TCD]

Post moved and you might want to read up to your post

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by Usagi_No_Neo

I'm kind of leery of some emulated systems since two Sega Genesis emulators haven't exactly "agreed" with my main computer and laptop.

So, my question is "Is it better to own the actual physical hardware or is it better to go with emulation?"

"I emulate therefore I am" :-)

Which Megadrive emulators did you try? There are quite a lot, and some are very good. I use Fusion and KGen.

[TheBilgeRat]

I love having a physical Amiga, that I can worry over and feed great gobs of my cash

That said - is my Amiga experience better on it than on UAE? Sometimes. It really depends on your pain threshold. If tweaking old hardware is something you enjoy - go for it! lay down some dough on an actual comp and tinker. If that sounds like torture and you just want to run apps, emulate!

Also realize that there are new hardware solutions out there, such as the minimig, or FPGA Arcade or soon to be the Natami. Lots of fun choice! Or, even Next Gen solutions like a SamFlex and AOS4 or a re-appropriated MacMini running MorphOS.

[Skope]

Nothing beats having a real live A500 under the beard, but WinUAE is a wonderful wonderful tool! I take it the OP sorted all this already but it's just my 2c.

[r0ber7]

e-uae on linux does all i need it to do, i'm very happy with it.
plus, i don't have to use windows!

[Dot77]

I prefer emulation. Superior sound and image quality. I was never a fan of the muffled sound of my old OCS A500. In WinUAE i can disable filtering and get crystal clear sound. The difference in fidelity is massive. Sure there might be some small playback accuracy problems with some titles (?), but that's no biggie for me.

Graphics wise it's awesome to run Turricans in 1920x1080 full-screen resolution on a 50Hz/100Hz display, with graphics filling the screen (keeping correct aspect ratio of course) and null-filter output (Amiga's pixel art graphics should not be ruined with any ugly filtering effects imo).

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Dot77

I prefer emulation. Superior sound and image quality.

[Minuous]

I should point out, though, that it's important to have substantial numbers of real Amigas in use, since there are compatibility differences between UAE and a real Amiga (mostly, stuff running fine on UAE that crashes on a real Amiga).

[Skope]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

indeed.

[Dot77]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Funny as it may be, there is no way in hell i can get my A500 to sound as good or look as good as what i get from WinUAE. I only have RF modulation on my Amiga Amiga RGBtoSCART would improve a bit sure, but i'd still get PAL graphics scaled to LCD native resolution at best (?), so there goes sharpness. The other option would be displaying the image without scaling, but who wants to look at post stamp-sized image on a 42" 1080p screen? (i'm not entirely sure if my TV even has such option - prob not). Flicker fixer? Don't know much about those and whether they would help or not.

Black Crypt in 1920x1200
A screenshot from a fullscreen WinUAE output. You have to save the image and watch it in 1920x1200 resolution display to get the best effect. Could my A500 do that?

Sound? What possibly could one do to improve A500's sucky sound fidelity? A1200 seemed to have it far better, based on what i hear in SOAMC real recordings. It didn't have that horrid permanent RC filter circuit anymore, which explains the greatly improved higher frequencies.

Real A500 vs. WinUAE sound
The difference in clarity is just massive (high frequencies are totally butchered in a real A500). Of course if you like music that sounds like it comes from under a stack of pillows or something, then the real sound is for you

But it think it all comes down to one thing: i'm not a purist. Therefore i @WinUAE.

[Hewitson]

The audio filter on the A500 is not permanent. Sounds like you need to replace the electrolytics in your audio section.

You are right in saying the Amiga doesn't look the best on an LCD/Plasma. But surely you're using an LCD monitor on your PC? Either way, I'd strongly recommend using a CRT TV if you have one.

Emulators will never be able to reproduce the incredibly smooth scrolling of the Commodore machines. That to me is the main reason why the real thing will always be better.

[Dot77]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The audio filter on the A500 is not permanent. Sounds like you need to replace the electrolytics in your audio section.

You are right in saying the Amiga doesn't look the best on an LCD/Plasma. But surely you're using an LCD monitor on your PC? Either way, I'd strongly recommend using a CRT TV if you have one.

Emulators will never be able to reproduce the incredibly smooth scrolling of the Commodore machines. That to me is the main reason why the real thing will always be better.

My 14" CRT against my 42" / 24" LCDs? No thanks I have a fast PC (i7 920 @ 3.4GHz). With its help i can get virtually the same smooth scrolling that a real Amiga has, as long as i use 50Hz desktop. The only thing worse is the effect every LCD brings to the picture: ghosting due to slow pixel response times (vs. CRT).

My information on the RC filter was based on UADE documentation. Direct quote:

"The Amiga output circuitry contains a fixed low-pass filter on most models, and a dynamic lowpass filter connected to the power LED (known as the "LED filter"), which can be toggled on and off. On the Amiga 1000, which was the first Amiga computer, the LED filter was permanently enabled. In the succeeding models, such as the Amiga 500, the LED filter was made optional, but another, permanent RC filter circuit was added on the audio output. Finally, for Amiga 1200, the static filter was removed altogether, and only the LED filter remains. ...

...The Amiga 500 output path was found to contain a 6 dB/oct lowpass RC filter circuit with cutoff at 5000 Hz. (Some early Amiga 500 revisions may have had 4500 Hz tuning for this filter.) The LED filter was found to be a 12 dB/oct Butterworth lowpass filter with cutoff value at approximately 3300 Hz."

My original statement about video and audio superiority in emulation was admittedly a bit provocative. I was basically comparing my own A500 experience to my WinUAE experience. In my case WinUAE wins hands down.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Dot77

I have a fast PC (i7 920 @ 3.4GHz). With its help i can get virtually the same smooth scrolling that a real Amiga has, as long as i use 50Hz desktop.

I don't believe that for a second. I've tried running emulators for all sorts of systems at 60hz, and the scrolling is terrible.

I won't argue with the UADE documentation, however I'm unable to tell any difference in the audio between my 1200 and 2000.

[s2325]

Scrolling is really smooth on 60Hz when you use Steem emulator with vsync and 15'' CRT monitor.

[Dot77]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I don't believe that for a second. I've tried running emulators for all sorts of systems at 60hz, and the scrolling is terrible. ...

Oh i wish i could prove it, but i don't have a cam that can record at 50i. My Finepix F31fd can only do 30p, and that doesn't help in this case.

If WinUAE is running in its default framerate of 50, 50Hz desktop (or a higher multiple of it) is absolutely mandatory to get smooth scrolling. VSync should also be avoided. You can try adjusting WinUAE's fps to 60 for 60Hz desktop, but that causes sound to speed up too, which is not good.

While letting Pinball Dreams run its demo of a table (it scrolls it up and down as you know), i monitored around 2-3 frame drops/minute. The rest of the time the scrolling was absolutely perfectly smooth. Can't get any smoother than that. WinUAE output was 32-bit 1920x1080 to a 1080p LCD-TV with 50Hz Windows desktop. Null filter was enabled in WinUAE filter settings to scale graphic content to fill the screen more efficiently. I also enabled bilinear filtering (null filter defaults to point sampling). Point sampling can cause anomalies if there's smooth moving graphics on screen (which is definitely the case for Pinball Dreams). Bilinear filtering does cause "fuzzy pixels", but it looks fine when TV is viewed from proper distance. Black Crypt was definitely better with point sampling.

Btw, what is you definition of "terrible scrolling"? Is 2-3 frame drops/minute terrible? Windows being Windows, i think it's the cause of those drops, not WinUAE emulation itself.

[Hewitson]

There is many more factors to consider than just frames being dropped.

Saying vsync should be avoided proves you don't have a clue what you're talking about. How the hell is anything going to scroll smoothly when it's not synchronised to the refresh rate of the monitor?

[Dot77]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

There is many more factors to consider than just frames being dropped.

Saying vsync should be avoided proves you don't have a clue what you're talking about. How the hell is anything going to scroll smoothly when it's not synchronised to the refresh rate of the monitor?

Only reason to enable Vsync is to eliminate tearing effect, which has nothing to do with how smoothly graphics can move. And as my WinUAE fps equals to my desktop refresh rate, and therefore my video card is not pushing more frames/sec than refresh rate can handle (the cause of tearing), it actually shouldn't matter anyhow what Vsync state is tbh.

It was smooth. Cannot possibly get any smoother. Period. Perhaps i can someday provide a short 50p/50i video footage to prove it (my friend has cam equipment, but is a very busy person).

[ajk]

Recording a video of that is not easy either because then those will not be synced. You will almost certainly have the monitor update the picture while the camcorder is recording the frame, which leads to blended images. Check for example the Lotus II section [ Show youtube player ] which I recorded a while back, if you keep pausing the video a few times you can clearly see "ghost" trees or whatever whizzing by.

[Dot77]

Originally Posted by ajk

Recording a video of that is not easy either because then those will not be synced. You will almost certainly have the monitor update the picture while the camcorder is recording the frame, which leads to blended images. Check for example the Lotus II section [ Show youtube player ] which I recorded a while back, if you keep pausing the video a few times you can clearly see "ghost" trees or whatever whizzing by.

Ok what about Fraps recording with steady 50fps playback? (if provided raw and not via YouTube). With playback in 50Hz desktop (lol) using suitable player software (VLC works nicely), you get to experince the same thing i am - except with added compression artifacts depending on video compression settings. But even then you need the damn 50Hz desktop to experience is smoothly. It always comes down to that. No way to escape that fact

But even with those ghost-effects you mentioned, surely a 50i video material if provided raw via Dropbox and not via YouTube crap, can still show the smooth scrolling?

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Dot77

Only reason to enable Vsync is to eliminate tearing effect, which has nothing to do with how smoothly graphics can move.

Not true at all. Besides, if the image is tearing, it's obviously not moving smoothly is it?

Originally Posted by Dot77

It was smooth. Cannot possibly get any smoother. Period.

Absolute bullshit.