Not only am I always impressed by Dolphin, but by how interesting and detailed their blog posts are! If only other software projects could do the same. I don't even really play games much anymore, especially Nintendo games, but somehow I always come away with delight when I read the Dolphin progress updates and so on.
Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#12How well does dolphin run on Rpi 4 now?
Raspberry Pi hardware is way, way too weak.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is on the order of 10 - 20X more powerful than the Gamecube's 20 year old, single core ~400 Mhz 32-bit CPU. The GPU is a bit more difficult to compare, but I'd guess a well optimised emulator with JIT/code translation ought to run very well on Pi 4 hardware.
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look for a second hand Wii U. Plays GC wii and Wii U games with hdmi!
Does it upscale GameCube games? If not do the still look ok? Dreamcast VGA 480p still looks great.
Yes, Gamecube (and Wii) games are upscaled right up to 4K and they look great. Many games work in 16:9 widescreen also (Gamecube was originally 4:3).
For many games there are even community high-def texture packs that you can add to make them look even better.
[Edit: Sorry, was talking about Dolphin here, not Wii U!]
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raspberry Pi hardware is way, way too weak.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is on the order of 10 - 20X more powerful than the Gamecube's 20 year old, single core ~400 Mhz 32-bit CPU. The GPU is a bit more difficult to compare, but I'd guess a well optimised emulator with JIT/code translation ought to run very well on Pi 4 hardware. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor)
It actually struggles to hit 30 FPS in most GC titles still. Accurate emulation between vastly different platform stacks generally does not care about the raw performance ratio rather how "lucky" some of the hardware functionality can be efficiently mapped.
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#15Kudos to the team working on Dolphin. This stuff seems like witchcraft to me and their dedication to hunt down tiny bugs is amazing!
Yeah, they are wizards. I love reading emulator source code. It's helped me have a better understanding of electronics. I still don't know anywhere near enough though...
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#16How well does dolphin run on Rpi 4 now?
Not well. If you don't have a PC you'd be better off running it on your phone with HDMI out to a monitor.
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#17I recently wanted to play the original Paper Mario, but sadly it's not available on Switch, only Wii U. So I decided to go the emulator route. Dolphin is so good that Paper Mario runs better as a Wii U Virtual Console ROM under Dolphin than it does as an N64 ROM under Project 64.
Project 64 is pretty dated, though. Surprisingly, it looks like it's now open source, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't always the case, and it sat unimproved for several years. Someone can correct me on this, but that's my understanding. (that isn't to say there wasn't a time where PJ64 was hands down the best N64 emulator)
Mupen64plus, in my experience, has been far superior to PJ64 for a long time. These days the emulators have come along enough that the differences can be somewhat trivial, but a decade ago Mupen64plus ran better for me on lower-end hardware and had way fewer idiosyncrasies than PJ64.
Comparison:
https://youtu.be/W5alOzrL_Hw?t=556
Nevertheless, it wouldn't surprise me if Paper Mario ran better through Wii U Virtual Console on Dolphin than through Mupen64plus! ;)
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is on the order of 10 - 20X more powerful than the Gamecube's 20 year old, single core ~400 Mhz 32-bit CPU. The GPU is a bit more difficult to compare, but I'd guess a well optimised emulator with JIT/code translation ought to run very well on Pi 4 hardware. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor)
It actually struggles to hit 30 FPS in most GC titles still. Accurate emulation between vastly different platform stacks generally does not care about the raw performance ratio rather how "lucky" some of the hardware functionality can be efficiently mapped.
Yes, in terms of Dolphin's performance today, I don't doubt it. There are probably many more optimisations that can be made: Dolphin's AArch64 JIT is still pretty incomplete and inefficient compared to the x86-64 JIT, for example.
My point is in theory, given enough time and effort, the Pi 4 should have more than enough power to emulate a 20-year old device. I'd argue that it's certainly not "way way too weak" as the reply above suggested.
Re: Dolphin Emulator - Dolphin MEGA Progress Report: April and May 2021
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it upscale GameCube games? If not do the still look ok? Dreamcast VGA 480p still looks great.
Yes, Gamecube (and Wii) games are upscaled right up to 4K and they look great. Many games work in 16:9 widescreen also (Gamecube was originally 4:3). For many games there are even community high-def texture packs that you can add to make them look even better. [ Edit: Sorry, was talking about Dolphin here, not Wii U!]
[Edit: seems like you're talking about Dolphin. flatiron upthread mentioned a Wii U so that's what the question you replied to is about.]
Wii U's max HDMI output is 1080p. Also I have not seen any information that it does upscaling at all, so if you have a source for that, I'd like to know it.