The different Amiga experience options?

[admiral]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

I'm not so sure I made the right choice ordering the Mister FPGA parts.

You've done right. The MiSTer is an awesome setup, be it for Amiga or for the many platforms it supports.

People say there is input lag in software emulation. I'm sure that's true but I can't notice it.

It bothers me. Try playing some hours of pinball dreams/fantasies or whatever your favourite is on the FPGA. Then switch to winuae. The latency there is a bad joke.

[manossg]

I have been trying to find this legendary input lag for months, playing games (incl. Pinball Dreams) almost side by side on my A500 and my Pi4 to see if anything there would justify my obtaining a Mister.
Guess what? No difference.

I also do not doubt that there "should be" input lag issues, but I cannot for the life of me feel any.

There are a lot of real things that cannot be perceived by humans (eg sound frequencies) above or below a certain threshold, so I guess some people are more sensitive to this legendary 'lag' than others (I don't know if there are any studies on input lag perception). Or have a very laggy monitor/controller setup. Or, more probably, they perceive what they expect that they should perceive.

[admiral]

Originally Posted by manossg

I have been trying to find this legendary input lag for months, playing games (incl. Pinball Dreams) almost side by side on my A500 and my Pi4 to see if anything there would justify my obtaining a Mister.
Guess what? No difference.

I also do not doubt that there "should be" input lag issues, but I cannot for the life of me feel any.

There are a lot of real things that cannot be perceived by humans (eg sound frequencies) above or below a certain threshold, so I guess some people are more sensitive to this legendary 'lag' than others (I don't know if there are any studies on input lag perception). Or have a very laggy monitor/controller setup. Or, more probably, they perceive what they expect that they should perceive.

The lag is there (fact). I just can't play the pinballs with it. Other people might simply be better at adjusting; I know it definitely is possible to adjust. Maybe I can, too. But I don't wanna.

Why would anyone want to settle for mediocrity?

[manossg]

Originally Posted by admiral

The lag is there (fact). I just can't play the pinballs with it. Other people might simply be better at adjusting; I know it definitely is possible to adjust. Maybe I can, too. But I don't wanna.

Why would anyone want to settle for mediocrity?

I, personally, feel no need to adjust/settle and that's why I took (and still take) my time to make such comparisons. I enjoy Pinball Dreams equally in A500 and Pi4, so there is no mediocrity/settling in Pi4. I am still in awe of the excellent Amiga (and retrogaming in general) experience it provides.

If both the Pi4 and the Mister provide with such a superb Amiga experience and the Pi4 is so much cheaper and easier to use, I feel we have a clear winner. Do not think I dislike the Mister, on the contrary, I just don't find much there to justify its purchase (aside from building a delicious setup like Novacoder's...yum!).

I do not doubt that this lag exists and certainly do not doubt your experience. But I cannot for the life of me reproduce/feel it. If there was any adjusting involved, don't you think I would feel the difference when playing the same game back to back on Pi4 and A500? Especially with games like kick off 2, even a suspicion of laggy controls would have killed the experience instantly. Are you sure your setup (monitor/controller) does not cause this lag?

[admiral]

Originally Posted by manossg

If both the Pi4 and the Mister provide with such a superb Amiga experience and the Pi4 is so much cheaper and easier to use, I feel we have a clear winner.

Yes, the miSTer. As a cheap yet powerful FPGA-based solution that's easy to use, miSTer has quite the ecosystem, with a load of cores and a huge community around it.

Whereas. in contrast, Pi4 It is just a weaker computer than most people's primary desktop/workstation computer. These can run WinUAE, which is currently the best emulator. Whatever available for Pi4 simply isn't anywhere as good.

It saddens me when people who have no FPGAs at all do instead buy these flavor-of-the-week SBCs. It's even sadder when they use them to do things their workstations do better. Advising against is about all I can do; ultimately it's not up to me.

[manossg]

Originally Posted by admiral

Yes, the miSTer. As a cheap yet powerful FPGA-based solution that's easy to use, miSTer has quite the ecosystem, with a load of cores and a huge community around it.

Whereas. in contrast, Pi4 It is just a weaker computer than most people's primary desktop/workstation computer. These can run WinUAE, which is currently the best emulator. Whatever available for Pi4 simply isn't anywhere as good.

It saddens me when people who have no FPGAs at all do instead buy these flavor-of-the-week SBCs. It's even sadder when they use them to do things their workstations do better. Advising against is about all I can do; ultimately it's not up to me.

Ok, mate, now you have stopped discussing and you are just preaching, ignoring facts. Not to mention that it is apparent you don't know (or refuse to acknowledge) much about the Pi4.

And, please, don't assume things about my experience with FPGA technology.

[Octopus66]

You can try lagless vsync mode in WinUAE to reduce lag to very low levels. Has anyone directly compared miSTer vs WinUAE lagless vsync?

[admiral]

Originally Posted by Octopus66

You can try lagless vsync mode in WinUAE to reduce lag to very low levels. Has anyone directly compared miSTer vs WinUAE lagless vsync?

I'll admit I have heard about but am yet to try lagless vsync. It's on the back-burner. These days, I mostly use winuae for development on top of wine. Trying that feature (properly, that is) will require me remembering about it on the next rare time I boot Windows.

I'm glad about any progress on the latency front, and still doubtful whatever port rpi4 runs is up to scratch. It's been a while since I tried that, but it couldn't really manage to emulate an accurate AGA machine at realtime.

[Fuzzball]

Originally Posted by manossg

I have been trying to find this legendary input lag for months, playing games (incl. Pinball Dreams) almost side by side on my A500 and my Pi4 to see if anything there would justify my obtaining a Mister.
Guess what? No difference.

I also do not doubt that there "should be" input lag issues, but I cannot for the life of me feel any.

There are a lot of real things that cannot be perceived by humans (eg sound frequencies) above or below a certain threshold, so I guess some people are more sensitive to this legendary 'lag' than others (I don't know if there are any studies on input lag perception). Or have a very laggy monitor/controller setup. Or, more probably, they perceive what they expect that they should perceive.

To be honest, I'm the same. I don't doubt for one second that the lag exists. I can understand the theory and I'm certainly not suggesting anyone is wrong. It's just for me personally, I don't notice a difference.

Along with the Mister FPGA, I bought a Pi4 for comparison and I really can't tell the difference. I would forget which one I was currently using. I guess I am just not sensitive to it. However, I prefer the Mister FPGA experience - the quicker boot, the simpler menus. I just find it generally simpler to use and more streamlined experience. Is that worth the difference in price? No probably not for me personally but it's bought now so I'm not going to worry about it. I have other plans for the Pi4 anyway.

The one area of the Mister's "accuracy" that is starting to wear thin on me though is for some of the other cores other than the Amiga. Nostalgia of some of those systems (Spectrum, CPC and Vic20 for example) is great but having to go through the accurate process of remembering how to load them (e.g on CPC inserting the disk, typing CAT to see the disk contents then RUN"filename on the correct file but then a different process on a different system) gets a bit tedious for me compared to just using RetroPie and selecting a game. So on the one hand I love accuracy of it and on the other I don't

Don't get me wrong though. The Mister is an incredible piece of kit and I prefer it over the Pi.

[manossg]

@Fuzzball

Some legit points there, mate.

I would disagree only on the simplicity of use point, since I haven't found yet a more easy, out-of-the-box, intuitive interface than Amiberry. Especially the option of just putting the unextracted .lha files in the roms folder and...boom, everything works, absolute WHDLoad goodness!

[Fuzzball]

I never got round to trying Amiberry to be fair. I only tried RetroPie and piMiga 1.5. I had planned on trying Amiberry and starting from scratch but as I have the Mister anyway I didn't get round to it. I'm sure I will at some point.

One issue I have with the Mister is longevity. How long will the DE10 boards be produced for example? What happens if they become hard to source and mine packs in? What about if Intel stop subsidizing the cost of those boards and the price rockets? (it's hardly cheap now when it is being subsidized). In comparison, the Pi has been around a long time and you would expect new versions to keep coming for a long time. They are also a lot cheaper so easier to replace. The Pi feels the better long term investment but only time will tell on that one.

[manossg]

@Fuzzball

If you are using RetroPie for Amiga emulation, chances are you are already using Amiberry. If not, you should try it. I have setup my Pi to boot up straight into RetroPie and Amiberry, so I have all the Amiga goodness straight away.

Let's hope both projects continue for a long time, providing us with cool options for Amiga enjoyment.

[Fuzzball]

Originally Posted by manossg

@Fuzzball

If you are using RetroPie for Amiga emulation, chances are you are already using Amiberry. If not, you should try it. I have setup my Pi to boot up straight into RetroPie and Amiberry, so I have all the Amiga goodness straight away.

Let's hope both projects continue for a long time, providing us with cool options for Amiga enjoyment.

That rings a bell now that RetroPie uses Amiberry under the hood. I recommend trying piMiga as well as that's another "plug and play" like experience. I got similar experience on Mister by using MegaAGS. Ultimately though I'll be installing ClassicWB from scratch when I get the time (which will probably be never but I like to kid myself)

[manossg]

Originally Posted by Fuzzball

That rings a bell now that RetroPie uses Amiberry under the hood. I recommend trying piMiga as well as that's another "plug and play" like experience. I got similar experience on Mister by using MegaAGS. Ultimately though I'll be installing ClassicWB from scratch when I get the time (which will probably be never but I like to kid myself)

I have been meaning to try Pimiga for some time now and I will definitely do so in the future. (I think Pimiga uses Amiberry as well)

Been hearing good things about MegaAGS as well on YT vids, so it sounds like a great option for Mister users.

We are definitely spoilt for choice!

[roondar]

Input lag is difficult to rate because everyone has a different level of tolerance for it. Some people note it at 1 frame, others not until it's closer to as much as 10 (with most somewhere in between). Lagless emulation and/or a variable sync rate monitor can help a lot here.

Actually, the same kind of goes for the whole topic of accuracy, it's really personal and a bit more subjective than we might want to admit. For instance, I still to this day don't like emulation/FPGA simulation without scanlines enabled because removing them just looks wrong to me. Other despise scanlines. Some want to go all the way and have the emulation do everything period accurate. Others don't have patience for that. Etc, etc.

To me it seems there's no one-size-fits-all approach here. Pick what best suits you and your budget. All the options out there can give very good results

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by manossg

If both the Pi4 and the Mister provide with such a superb Amiga experience and the Pi4 is so much cheaper and easier to use, I feel we have a clear winner.

Problem is "superb" means different things to different people...so it's not really so clear in the end

Pi4 is no doubt much cheaper, has a nice menu frontend, and also emulation perks, such as savestates. So if these things are important to an user, then it's a better choice. The downside is general sluggishness of the whole thing: the Retropie/Amiberry load times and menus in general. The in-game lag can be another factor, although I agree that its importance is vastly exaggerated because it's rather hard to detect. Other thing is that configuring the whole thing can be a nightmare....Retropie is full of little gotchas which you need to spend time finding how to solve and that can be annoying.

MiSTer's advantages are a bit harder to explain. The lack of lag is definitely a thing, but as said above it might not be that important. The other is the fact that the devs are trying to actually replicate/simulate/whatever the chip logic as close to 1:1 as possible, so you can imagine it's actually the real machine. It contributes to that general "feel", along with the superfast boot and load times, general responsiveness, simple menus, and the fact you have to use it as you would the real thing. It really does work, but is definitely an "in your head" thing , so it's hard to argue about. Some people might care about it, some don't, or will get this kick from emulators anyway.

So it's just different strokes, really. Pi4 is more of a mass-market solution (not a bad thing) while MiSTer, with its rather peculiar strong points, might appeal to a more niche enthusiast group, with specific needs. For example the main reason I use it is because it works so perfectly with CRTs, the other things are just a bonus. If not for that, I wouldn't be using it but also not a Pi - I'd stick with my powerful desktop which can run advanced shaders.

And, I must admit I was disappointed with @admiral's "arguments" in this thread...unfortunately this is the kind of FPGA zealotry which most likely actually pushes people away, because of its elitist approach.

EDIT: you can use MegaAGS in Winuae too. It's a good collection, but forces a lot of games into NTSC by default so the results can be a bit curious.

@roondar: I don't like emualtion without scanlines AND shadowmask

[Fuzzball]

Yes I'm a scanlines enabler too. It just too looks too "clean" otherwise.

I suspect not noticing the difference in lag between the Mister and Pi is down to the much bigger lag in my reaction times these days which are nowhere near what they used to be

[manossg]

@roondar & dreadnought

Some great, level-headed posts there, gentlemen, as usual.

@dreadnought

Could we agree on the definition of superb Amiga experience as: being identical to the machine being emulated and hassle-free?
This definition includes the shaders argument! :P

I had Retropie problems on the controller front (and, from what I read here, other people as well had similar problems). It became a nightmare after a while, but I somehow managed to make it work, after some headache. Other than that, I had no problems at all.

Originally Posted by roondar

Some people note it at 1 frame, others not until it's closer to as much as 10 (with most somewhere in between).

Is there a source for that?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by manossg

Is there a source for that?

Ah, nope, sorry
This is just my personal experience. I've seen people pretty much oblivious to it and I've seen people who are extremely sensitive to it. Reading it back, I do notice it looks more authoritative than it really was. Sorry, if that wasn't clear.

[manossg]

Originally Posted by roondar

Ah, nope, sorry
This is just my personal experience. I've seen people pretty much oblivious to it and I've seen people who are extremely sensitive to it. Reading it back, I do notice it looks more authoritative than it really was. Sorry, if that wasn't clear.

No problem, mate, I would have just loved to read some proper studies on this interesting issue.