Psx could work better with,

[drwhojoe]

I notest Psx use Render software mode only with is grate for final fantasy games but no good for game like tomb rider, Mabe you should make the emulator for each one like DirectX,opengl,render soft, voodoo glide cards drivers, witch works fantastc with project 64 emulators and epsxe,

Drwhojan,

[patrickp]

That would defeat the point of the emulator, Drwhojan, which is to emulate the Playstation as accurately as possible, rather than to enhance it, as most other Playstation emulators do.

If you want enhanced graphics, why not use ePSXe? Very good emulator, although I'm coming to enjoy using pSX emulator even more as it gets improved.

[castilho]

Yeah No plugins!!! That's why pSX is the best

[Ultima]

The fact that pSX uses software rendering doesn't explain why it doesn't work with Tomb Raider =|

[drwhojoe]

Using pure software tends to be grate with ff7 game, but tomb raider the graphics looks broken up, I have used ePSXe 1.6.0 each video plugin gose good for that game, thats what am saying the same emulator could use a diffrent video souce like PSx 1.5 for software render,3dfx render,or directx render, They is no way to run one perfect!,

Unless they is a way to make it look less pixled in software render?,

Drwhojoe,

[Truth Unknown]

Didn't you read patrickp's statement about the emulator?

patrickp said:

That would defeat the point of the emulator, Drwhojan, which is to emulate the Playstation as accurately as possible, rather than to enhance it, as most other Playstation emulators do.

If you want enhanced graphics, why not use ePSXe? Very good emulator, although I'm coming to enjoy using pSX emulator even more as it gets improved.

The accuracy he's speaking of is how exactly a PlayStation ran each game. The resolutions on the PS where all Mostly 320x240 and sometimes 640x480 for menus, cut-scenes and still shots. The PlayStation had no texture filtering so all textures are blocky.

Why does ePSXe have better quallity? It is the Video Plugins it uses, not the emulaor. The video plugins don't follow the PS hardware, they just follow the rendering code and redirect it to computer hardware. With this, todays features on videocards can be used like texture filtering and higher resolutions.

You need to rememeber that pSX Author just wants to "Emulate" the PlayStation, nothing more.

[chuck67]

yea this emu is fine just the way it is, just needs better game compatibility and its perfect ps1 emulation

[patrickp]

Well, there's still a ways to go for this emu, but it's showing better progress than any other Playstation emulator did at a similar stage; every release has been a landmark so far.

I guess the biggest problem, apart from there being no real documentation available on how a Playstation actually works, is that a lot of game producers seem to have worked in very idiosyncratic ways: the bottom line was, if it worked on a Playstation, it worked - sometimes not even that, completely.

There are two ways to write the perfect emulator - to copy a Playstation perfectly in software, which isn't possible without complete documentation, or to continuously modify the emulator until it plays every known game perfectly. This is what every Playstation emulator author has to do, and I doubt anyone will ever have the resources to complete the task.

But the other thing, it seems to me, is that other Playstation emulators have tended to get messed up with the continuous modification. I'm just hoping that that won't happen with this one - the deliberate imposition of a limit of accurate rather than enhanced emulation may help.

Personally, I like the approach of accurate rather than enhanced emulation for its elegance, but it does bring the possibility of achieving a really high level of compatibility that much closer.

[Gamesoul Master]

I agree. As much as I may like enhanced graphics at times, I will always take accuracy over extra enhancements. Introducing things like plugins and other types of enhancements would end up just making this emulator more like ePSXe, which is not the goal pSX Author has in mind, I'm sure.

[MotM]

I won't have any problems with playing games like FF7 on pSX. It does the job well, and thankfully not as choppy as it is with emus that use 3D gpu's. I've played these games before with good graphics, but that's not what I'm focussing on

[vesper8]

this is really hard for me to choose which side of the line I want to stand on. Perfect emulation is great and so far pSX is my favorite emulator. But at the same time it will never be the 'best' even if it does emulation perfectly if it doesn't intergrate better graphics.

why can't we have the best of both worlds ? isn't it possible, once the emulation is perfect, to add these filters to enhance graphics ? it wouldn't even have to be via a plugin chosen by the end-user. pSX Author could just intergrate one of the plugins to his emulator and the end-result would be perfect emulation with enhanced graphics and then everyone would be happy and this emu could be crowned the king of all psx emulators forever

[Firehawke]

There's three inherent problems with your idea here, and two that the 3D plugin authors have been wrestling with for a good long time.

Firstly, the PSX graphical system doesn't map 1:1 to a 3D API like Glide, OpenGL, or Direct3D. Things like framebuffer reads require *massive* extra resources to accomplish correctly or they drop the compatibility a lot (unfortunately, standard plugins let you tweak things enough to break a number of games; they're NOT newbie-friendly. pSX, conversely, is extremely friendly).

Secondly, graphical enhancements upset the delicate balance of how the PSX displays things. Games like Einhander use some 2D effects for such things as explosions and those explosions look *bad* with filtering or highres on-- meanwhile, the rest of the game just cries for the higher resolution. Others, like Gradius Gaiden, look like mud with ANY enhancements on.

FF7 is another notable game for an odd quirk of the PSX that's extremely noticible in this game: I *believe* (I may be talking out my ass here;. if I am, feel free to correct my errors-- but I'm pretty sure I remember this correctly.) that the lack of video ram makes for an extreme lack of sub-pixel positioning accuracy. This means that as the camera pans around in FF7 you see a lot of character popping motions since the system can't decide if some pixels are to be used or not. This also affects camera motion. Enhancing the 3D resolution makes it even more vivid, and doing enhancements to "fix" this can break other games badly as well, reducing us back to that which makes ePSXe setup such a pain: you have to tweak your settings per game when you get into enhancements.

Thirdly, if he wanted to use "standard" plugins, he'd have to redesign his entire video subsystem to handle them-- royal PITA to put it mildly, and then there would be a lot of questions on configuration and so forth-- support issues he REALLY doesn't want or need. Compatibility would PROBABLY end up significantly lower while plugin quirks were worked out, only increasing the number of people saying "Why use pSX? It doesn't work with X game; just stick with ePSXe."

Also, this talk of 'best' is assuming he's aiming at that-- everything I've read from the author suggests he's aiming for 'most accurate'. My analysis. personally, is that if he REALLY wants to do 3D acceleration, there probably won't be any plugins involved-- he'll write his own core and stick to that.. and it won't be any time before the existing software rendering and compatibility are perfected. Badgering him on it while the emulation core has as many issues as it does is somewhat pointless, I think-- the core simply MUST come first. Get it running RIGHT, then you can enhance it.

[patrickp]

Plus the fact that for many people 'most accurate' emulation _does_ mean 'best.'

In some ways, it's comparable to hifi, where better quality equipment often makes a lot of stuff sound worse - because, in fact, it was worse to start with, but enhancement both in the recording process and in the playback process makes it sound... not really better, but more impressive. But people expect their equipment to make _everything_ sound good...

If a game is fun to play, it'll be more fun with more accurate graphics, because you can play the game better. If it isn't fun to play, it'll need an emulator that enhances it, so you can look at the graphics instead.

One of the things I've noticed with pSX is that, while the graphics may not always be so impressive, there's usually more detail of the actual image revealed than with enhancing emulators. This means it's actually better for playing games with. For me, that's the definition of 'best' for emulator graphics.

[vesper8]

well.. i guess there was a lot i didn't know. but after reading the last two replies, in specific firehawke's explanation.. you have sold me and I am now on the same side of the line as psx author on this issue.

i guess i was confused by the fact that old NES and SNES emulators do such a wonderful job of cleaning up old graphics and making them look clear and crystal sharp.. but with the psx it seems it will never be this easy and so I much prefer an emulator that has the highest compatibility possible and the least gameplay bugs as a result of bad emulation.

so that said.. keep it up and keep up your aim at perfect emulation and if some enhancement comes somewhere down the line then more power to you!