Random emulation questions

[rhester72]

(Total props for the A2024 support BTW - golden, particularly for those of us who never saw it! Disagree that full emulation is useless, though - 8/16-color grayscale for "regular" screens would be a treat for the "real experience", not to mention possible NetBSD support!)

All of the above was observed in the latest beta, but none of them are beta-specific (I think!):

- A3000 softkick emulation...again never having actually owned a SK machine, it's not clear how it's supposed to work. From what I've read, once you choose 2.x or 1.3, it "locks" into that mode until you actually power-cycle the machine. On WinUAE, you can switch on every reboot, complete with a yellow power-LED-blinking Kickstart failure coming out of 2.x. Is this "normal"?

- The default A3000 use of "fastest possible" (with or without JIT) breaks the hell out of AmigaDOS 1.3 (gurus, transposed characters, etc.). Just an observation. =)

- If you use scanlines in the filter settings, aren't they supposed to be painted as an overlay on the final render? Instead of being every-other-scanline, they show up as that stilted/banded effect you get when you draw scanlines then scale.

- Display resolution (Lores/Hires/Superhires): Why the need to manually set this (i.e. what's going on under the hood)? If I turn on "resolution autoswitch", superhires still doesn't work (missing every other pixel). If I manually set it to Superhires, everything works (lores, hires, and superhires) normally _except_ A2024, which is missing the right third of the screen. Just confused about what's really happening in the emulation itself. =)

Rodney

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by rhester72

(Total props for the A2024 support BTW - golden, particularly for those of us who never saw it! Disagree that full emulation is useless, though - 8/16-color grayscale for "regular" screens would be a treat for the "real experience", not to mention possible NetBSD support!)

Thanks. "Regular" screen emulation won't happen until I know how the colors are mapped.

- A3000 softkick emulation...again never having actually owned a SK machine, it's not clear how it's supposed to work. From what I've read, once you choose 2.x or 1.3, it "locks" into that mode until you actually power-cycle the machine. On WinUAE, you can switch on every reboot, complete with a yellow power-LED-blinking Kickstart failure coming out of 2.x. Is this "normal"?

It only works enough to see the "KS 1.4" screen + loading of KS. The rest is undefined (1.4 requires 68030 MMU which isn't emulated, only faked enough to allow above to work)

- The default A3000 use of "fastest possible" (with or without JIT) breaks the hell out of AmigaDOS 1.3 (gurus, transposed characters, etc.). Just an observation. =)

Yes but as I said, only point of A3000 emulation is to see KS 1.4 screen

- If you use scanlines in the filter settings, aren't they supposed to be painted as an overlay on the final render? Instead of being every-other-scanline, they show up as that stilted/banded effect you get when you draw scanlines then scale.

Use D3D scan lines (or even better, D3D RGB masks), it is overlayed on top of screen. Normal scanlines are done by display emulation before scaling (as you noticed).

- Display resolution (Lores/Hires/Superhires): Why the need to manually set this (i.e. what's going on under the hood)? If I turn on "resolution autoswitch", superhires still doesn't work (missing every other pixel). If I manually set it to Superhires, everything works (lores, hires, and superhires) normally _except_ A2024, which is missing the right third of the screen. Just confused about what's really happening in the emulation itself. =)

Select superhires, then select resolution autoswitch. In autoswitch mode selected resolution selects max supported resolution.

It is performance optimization and affects low level display emulation. If lores is selected: display emulation only emulates and draws lores pixel, hires = 2x more pixels drawns and so on. Using superhires by default would mean display emulation would always need to draw ~1400 pixels/scanline. (=much slower)

Note that ALL scanlines, all the time will be drawn using current resolution setting. Current Amiga resolution is totally irrelevant.

[rhester72]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Select superhires, then select resolution autoswitch. In autoswitch mode selected resolution selects max supported resolution.

It is performance optimization and affects low level display emulation. If lores is selected: display emulation only emulates and draws lores pixel, hires = 2x more pixels drawns and so on. Using superhires by default would mean display emulation would always need to draw ~1400 pixels/scanline. (=much slower)

Makes sense. Why does Line Mode continuously default to "Normal" when you turn on Resolution autoswitch? It plays hell with things like A2024 that expect "Double"...shouldn't the current setting "stick" when you turn on autoswitch (like it does for Resolution)?

I'm less concerned about performance and more about ease-of-use, so for me, Double (if it persisted)+Superhires+Resolution autoswitch+Automatic scaling makes things "just work".

By the way, where is D3D scanlines? I had always thought that Settings/Host/Display/Line Mode=Scanlines was the one that would be screwed up by scaling but Settings/Host/Filter/Extra Settings/Scanline transparency would scale properly.

Rodney

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by rhester72

Makes sense. Why does Line Mode continuously default to "Normal" when you turn on Resolution autoswitch? It plays hell with things like A2024 that expect "Double"...shouldn't the current setting "stick" when you turn on autoswitch (like it does for Resolution)?

I'm less concerned about performance and more about ease-of-use, so for me, Double (if it persisted)+Superhires+Resolution autoswitch+Automatic scaling makes things "just work".

Autoswitch = Use smallest horizontal and vertical mode without losing pixels -> "double" is only selected if interlaced mode.

But there is a workaround (requested some time ago):

gfx_autoresolution_min_horizontal=[vertical,lores,hires,superhires] (vertical = mirror vertical mode)
gfx_autoresolution_min_vertical=[horizontal,single,double,quadruple] (horizontal = mirror horizontal mode)

Note that A2024 is very special and can work strangely.

By the way, where is D3D scanlines? I had always thought that Settings/Host/Display/Line Mode=Scanlines was the one that would be screwed up by scaling but Settings/Host/Filter/Extra Settings/Scanline transparency would scale properly.

Filter scanlines ignores scaling. It is just a transparent overlay (How could it scale without causing scaling artifacts? It would look horrible)

RGB masks make better looking scanline-like effect. (They come with shader filter download package from winuae.net)

[rhester72]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Filter scanlines ignores scaling. It is just a transparent overlay (How could it scale without causing scaling artifacts? It would look horrible)

And it does indeed. That's precisely what I expected - "old" scanlines would be pre-scale, filter scanlines post-scale via overlay, and RGB "scanlines" (or better yet grille masks) for an even better look.

However, at least when windowed (I haven't tried full-screen), filter scanlines _do_ appear to be pre-scale. Perhaps it's something to do with my display config?

UPDATE: How odd. Now I can't reproduce what I was seeing at all (switched from b3 to b4). I could *reliably* get filter-based scanlines to show up pre-scale, but not now. Ugh. Never mind.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

But there is a workaround (requested some time ago):

gfx_autoresolution_min_horizontal=[vertical,lores,hires,superhires] (vertical = mirror vertical mode)
gfx_autoresolution_min_vertical=[horizontal,single,double,quadruple] (horizontal = mirror horizontal mode)

Is there any special value for gfx_autoresolution when using these? Can't get them to do anything in my config file (not host-specific, old-school unified config file).


More specifically, this is making b4 crash on my machine:

gfx_autoresolution=true
gfx_autoresolution_min_vertical=horizontal
gfx_autoresolution_min_horizontal=superhires

If I change min_vertical from horizontal to hires, it seems to treat min_vertical like single - A2024 mode is definitely "half-pixeled" at that point (yes, I know it's a "weird" mode, but if manual SH+doubled works, it should do so in auto mode as well, no?)


And while I'm being properly annoying, I can't get Productivity-Interlaced to display as anything other than a flickering mess even with gfx_autoresolution_min_vertical=quadruple.

Rodney

[Toni Wilen]

quadruple probably won't work because line quadruple does not exist.. yet?

gfx_autoresolution_min_vertical=double should do exactly what you wanted. Do not use min_horizontal.