Vote for pSX!

[kinghanco]

Well PCSX2 team doing it all wrong.

Plug-ins are worthless pieces of crap. Later on those will not work as good and become broken. People will be complaining about the graphics and sounds issues later on in life. Other hand pSX won't have any issues on graphics and sounds.

[Ultima]

Just because an emulator uses plugins doesn't automatically mean it will have graphical/audial issues. Just because an emulator doesn't use plugins doesn't automatically mean it will have graphical/audial perfection. As great as pSX is, you can absolutely not say its graphics and sound emulation are perfect. Absolutely not.

ZSNES and bsnes both don't use plugins. Do they have the same accuracy? No.

I don't enjoy using plugins just as you don't, but I can't honestly say plugins will make everything go wrong. Depending on how they lay the groundwork, there might not even be any graphical or audial issues at all -- it's not something you can predict simply based on the emulator's plugin-based nature.

[kinghanco]

Ultima, I wasn't saying pSX doesn't have any issues.

I'm saying plug-ins doesn't last very long.

[Ultima]

What I'm saying is that you can't base your judgement of an emulator's accuracy solely on the fact that the emulator uses a plugin system -- it's reckless, and the conclusions you jump to don't have any clear, factual evidence.

TBH, I'm not sure what you mean by plugins not lasting very long, or how they turn bad given enough time

In the end, though, I understand your distaste for plugins, and implementing things does sound much simpler without a plugin system than with, which can make things less error-prone. And stuff.[/rant]

[kinghanco]

Every plug-ins doesn't work very well on my machine. I read people having problems too.

That how come I never like those.

I will stop talking about it right here. End of my story.

[Gamesoul Master]

I suppose... the plugin system can be good and bad for nearly the same reasons. Good because it takes weight off the emulator author(s), allowing others to possibly provide better quality in areas such as sound and graphics... but also bad in that same way, considering the plugin authors may be less knowledgable and/or just not have a full grasp on what can/should be done. However... Kega Fusion is a good example of how plugins can be used in a good way. Besides, plugins can also be good in providing better compatibility for certain people. I'm sure most of us here remember many games/emulators that have serious problems with cards such as the Savage series of cards... but with plugins, a person could develop a plugin that works quite well with these cards, without messing with the whole graphics coding for the emulator.

Handled correctly, plugins can be a very good thing... especially in the area of graphics. And while pSX has done spectacularly without plugins, I think part of that reason is because of how it runs. pSX is basically software-rendered, which of course mostly eliminates the problems caused by certain graphics cards. Sound... is really hard to mess up, once you have it figured out. It's very rare with *any* game or emulator these days to see a problem relating specifically to the type of sound card the person is running. For control input... there is small need for plugins with dinput, but once again... it can be really helpful for those oddball controllers/adapters that don't fit the norm. For emulation of older systems, there is little need for plugins, as those systems are simple, and don't really require much out of the computer's hardware to properly emulate the system. But for newer systems, the use of plugins becomes much more practical.

But regardless, pSX Author has done a wonderful job of coding this emulator without any need for plugins, considering the hardware being emulated. I, too, am one for liking to keep things as self-contained as possible. And while I recognize all the good that plugins can provide, I will pick self-contained 10 out of 10 when given the choice.

[Ultima]

Indeed, I (too) very much prefer standalone applications as well, that being why I choose Opera over Firefox, µTorrent over Azureus, or pSX over [insert some other PSEmu Pro-based emulator here], etc. Even still, though, there are some exceptions... foobar2000, Miranda IM, and Evil Player being some examples off the top of my head -- they're awesome

kinghanco: I still don't see what your stated experience has to do with plugins not "lasting" very long. Additionally, you seem to think that the PSEmu Pro spec is the be-all end-all plugin spec that defines how all plugin specs are -- that simply isn't the case. Would you like to see Flash or Java built into your browser, or do they work just fine as plugins? What about extensions for Firefox? Winamp plugins or foobar2000 components? Those are examples of plugin systems that work very well, and they don't end up not lasting very long (whatever that means). Same with Gamesoul Master's example with Kega Fusion, which also came to my mind while reading your posts.

Once again, it's all about how you design the plugin spec. And yes, I know of the possible reasons as to why you dislike plugins (as I've seen such complaints before, and have some of my own complaints), but that still doesn't mean someone can't rewrite a plugin that works well on your machine, or write a plugin spec that just works.

In the end, I'm not trying to pick a fight or start an argument, nor am I advocating the use of plugins, but it just doesn't make sense to me for someone to blast plugins as "worthless pieces of crap" just because of a previous bad experience or two.

[stranger90]

I use both ePSXe, FPSE, SSSPSX and pSX. The first three uses plugins, the last not! But they don't make any differencr for me! ARE ALL EMULATORS!

[kinghanco]

Ultima, for example here. ATI always made changes on drivers and cards. It unsupported when things get out of hand on the graphics.

Nvidia have no problem on graphics? I haven't tested any of it drivers to see what problem it pickup. So I don't have it on my machine. Does it works better than ATI?

[pSX Author]

Hehe, thanks for voting guys

[patrickp]

The point of plugins is the choice and potential for optimisation they give you, kinghanco. However, you have to think about what you're doing. You need to think about what plugins are appropriate for your equipment and what you want to see from them.

Then you need to configure them: this isn't only a matter of selecting settings that you think will get you what you want, but also of trying your settings out and seeing how they perform.

Part of the optimisation is making sure that your system runs properly, as well. So many people think that because they've got such-and-such card, and so-and-so processor, they can use some particular plugin, and find it falls flat on its face. Actually, they probably could use the plugin successfully - if they ensured that they had the best drivers for the purpose installed (and not just for the device the plugin works with - chipset drivers, DirectX, Windows updates - all count) and their system running properly - unnecessary background processes shut down, no little nasties hogging processor time, it would be fine.

If you don't want to do all that, then you use a plugin-less emulator like pSX. But the fact that you don't get on with plugins doesn't mean that they're bad - it just means that you don't get on with them.

Edit: and, of course, you also use pSX because it works better than anything else!

[stranger90]

LONG LIFE TO pSX! LONG LIFE TO pSX!!!!!! ;D ;D

[Deleted]

Plugins have an expiration date, just like milk. Ultima, you must understand this!

But seriously though, I think I understand what "plugins not lasting long" might mean. For example, very few (none?) of the foobar 0.8.3 plugins worked with 0.9.x. Firefox extensions needs to updated as well for newer versions of the browser (though right now some of the extensions are supposed to work up to 3.0). Etc etc. This is not a problem in itself, but...

Problems arise when a developer of a Very Important Plugin™ (gfx plugin for an emulator, for example) vanishes from the face of the earth while the rest of the emulator is being developed. As so it's only a matter of time before the plugin is incompatible with the latest build of the emu, and in the worst case the plugin might have been closed source.

Or I could be just crazy and misunderstand everything anyone has said so far in this thread. ;D

As for PCSX2, I think it has some merits (someone mentioned the dualcore thing in the ngemu thread), but as has been mentioned, pSX in its pluginless nature is innovation on modern emulation.

[stranger90]

And it's better than EmuRayden, CVGS and Bleem!

[Ultima]

@mika: You have to understand that foobar2000's plugin spec is a moving target -- it's not 1.0 yet. PSEmu Pro is a spec that is set in stone, so it can't possibly be out of date without the emulator becoming a non-PSEmuPro-compliant emulator. I've never tried this, but I'm sure that you can use an old plugin with the latest emulator, and it'll still work (albeit, almost certainly with more glitches than its more recent counterpart).

As for Firefox... well, blame it on Mozilla Corporation, I don't know -- their fault for not stabilizing the extension spec (if one exists)... or whatever ;D

And about PCSX2: I still wouldn't consider taking advantage of dual-core an innovation. That's just taking up the latest technologies and putting them to their intended use