Homebrew Hi-Resolution DS Emulation

[Jayro]

As kick-ass as it looks, the framerate is too low, even with openGL helping. Cool concept though, I hope more optimized builds are to come.

 

[jurassicplayer]

-To everyone that watched my video and just decided based on that-

I realized something rather important that I forgot about in my excitement about how pretty everything looked. Obvious as it is to me now, I thought I would mention that since I was using a screen cast to record my demonstration, the performance of the emulator dropped by about 10-15 fps, thus the "performance" of the hi-res is actually better than you see in the videos.

I also tested a couple of the games a second time after taking the time to overclock my computer to see if there was a considerable performance increase or not (of course, desmume really doesn't benefit much from overclocking anyways...but meh, even a couple frames would be good enough at this point).
My computer's overclock specs:
Core Clock:1160 MHz
Memory Clock: 1350 MHz

Unfortunately, nothing really got better (maybe 1-3 frames at best), but there were some other things that could be done. Testing without the overhead of the recording and no overclocking, most of the games that I retried actually performed around 75%+ of full speed which is at around 45FPS. After that, changing the Sound synchronization mode from dual synch/asynch to synchronous sometimes helped (kind of more rare), BUT by giving in to living with around 3 frameskip, I could get most games running around 95% full speed with the 3D renderer at x4, meaning x3 was pretty much fullspeed with sometimes minor slowdowns. This means that x3 rendered Solatorobo is....amazing :3.

 

[T3GZdev]

hmm if they can make a hd emulator for DS games, whats stopping nintendo from releasing an update that makes DS/DSi games hd on 3DS? & wii u when ds vc is available?

 

[trumpet-205]

hmm if they can make a hd emulator for DS games, whats stopping nintendo from releasing an update that makes DS/DSi games hd on 3DS? & wii u when ds vc is available?

Console and handheld lacks the computation power to natively render at HD while in emulation. Even PS1/2 games on PS3 were rendered at 240p/480i then stretched to 720p.

 

[VMM]

How are you guys taking screenshots in 1024x768?
I still only get 256x192.

 

[heartgold]

Some games have higher quality textures that you never really notice because of the DS limitations. Amazing the amount of details you can see just in higher res.

 

[Satangel]

Sweeeeeeeet, gonna try this when I start emulating DS games, it's amazing. This is just why I love PC gaming really, you can emulate so many platforms, it's ridiculous. And even in higher resolutions, love it

 

[Silverthorn]

Someone care to show me what Solatorobo looks like with x4? I remember that the game was already quite beautiful for the DS, and I wonder how it would look with that.

 

[ieatpixels]

these screenshots are absolutely amazing. I never imagined DS games could be rendered in such quality.

It makes me think they should have games like this playable on the Wii U with it's touchscreen.
They could touch up the sprites if needed.

 

[p3rand0r]

would be nice if a linux build was made

 

[FAST6191]

Someone care to show me what Solatorobo looks like with x4? I remember that the game was already quite beautiful for the DS, and I wonder how it would look with that.

9:40 in jurassicplayer's video
http://gbatemp.net/threads/hi-resolution-ds-emulation.364549/page-3#post-4969373

He said the twitch version might be even better quality though.
http://www.twitch.tv/jurassicplayer/b/519285818

 

[ieatpixels]

I can almost quarantee they just upscale regular resolution. I don't remember single system doing anything to games internal resolution ever, it's even rare that they even give any options to filters! Sonys backwards compatibility/old releases are best but still games run with native resolution.

Well yeah systems don't render older games in higher resolution as standard, but there are HD Remakes.
With the PS2 ones the original files were needed and they were simply re-built through the PS3 dev kit instead of the PS2 kit. The problem with that was some companies didn't have all the original source files, and other companies have disbanded since they made the games.
Though there still have been dozens of PS2 games remastered in this way.

I don't expect Nintendo to remaster them since Nintendo barely do anything when it comes to giving us content.
Plus I imagine it would be too costly for them to get DS games in HD.

edit: Wild idea, probably stupid, but could the creators of the emulator give it to Nintendo for free so they could use it?
Is there any legal problems there?
I doubt Nintendo are interested, but it's just an idea.

 

[Silverthorn]

-snip-

Looks pretty nice as expected, sadly it will probably be too hard to get a framerate decent enough to play it with such resolution unless you have a beast of a machine.

 

[trumpet-205]

edit: Wild idea, probably stupid, but could the creators of the emulator give it to Nintendo for free so they could use it?
Is there any legal problems there?
I doubt Nintendo are interested, but it's just an idea.

If you know Nintendo you would know that it is the only company that took zero tolerance stance against emulators. Nintendo firmly believes that any emulation, regardless of if you own the game or not, is considered piracy and therefore illegal.

Pretty ironic when you considered that Virtual Console runs on emulation (except GBA VC on 3DS).

 

[link6155]

If you know Nintendo you would know that it is the only company that took zero tolerance stance against emulators. Nintendo firmly believes that any emulation, regardless of if you own the game or not, is considered piracy and therefore illegal.

Pretty ironic when you considered that Virtual Console runs on emulation (except GBA VC on 3DS).

While virtual console is an emulator, it's an emulator that you pay Nintendo to use. Nintendo is against using emulators to play their game for free, hence why they go to such extent to make games not work.

 

[Mario92]

Now that I think about it I tried to google up DS games internal resolution change and why it isn't there. http://6bit.net/shonumi/2013/02/25/true-internal-resolution-in-nintendo-ds-emulators/
http://sourceforge.net/p/desmume/feature-requests/138/

Basically all requests were turned down as being low priority which is shame.

I also was stunned that Ghost Trick actually didn't use 3D models even when animations were so fucking smooth.

Well yeah systems don't render older games in higher resolution as standard, but there are HD Remakes.
With the PS2 ones the original files were needed and they were simply re-built through the PS3 dev kit instead of the PS2 kit. The problem with that was some companies didn't have all the original source files, and other companies have disbanded since they made the games.
Though there still have been dozens of PS2 games remastered in this way.

I don't expect Nintendo to remaster them since Nintendo barely do anything when it comes to giving us content.
Plus I imagine it would be too costly for them to get DS games in HD.

edit: Wild idea, probably stupid, but could the creators of the emulator give it to Nintendo for free so they could use it?
Is there any legal problems there?
I doubt Nintendo are interested, but it's just an idea.

This goes way offtopic but what the hell:


I'm glad they do name them "PS2/PSX Classics" and "HD/HDtrilogy" so it's easy to say what version is emulated and what is redone to support HD resolution and trophies. Nintendo did to Wind Waker HD already and they stated they would like to see more HD remakes, it would be interesting if they made some DS games as native games indeed. Otherwise there's not much and everything labeled "Virtual Console" is emulation

All they would have to do is make same decision Sony made: make it possible to play once bought emulated title on all platforms they have PSP, Vita, PS3 or PS4! Nobody want's to buy some PSX game again for Vita if they already did for PSP! If they are going to emulate DS games on Wii U why not make that purchare also count if user owns 3DS which can play DS games natively? They don't even sell any full DS games digitally on that platform even if their DS library is HUUUGE with loats of awesome titles! If I want to buy PS3 game I can most of the times go to Playstation Store and find it.

Desmume is open source and so is several other emulators like mupen64plus so it wouldn't surprise me at all if they have already used some of those components in their official games. Actually this version of emulator most likely wouldn't exist if it wasn't open source! However Nintendo likes to keep things simple. Even GBC game on 3DS has only scaling (hidden option) and save state - that's it! Meanwhile playing PSX game on Vita...
(that automatic youtube video embedding is annoying btw...)

If you know Nintendo you would know that it is the only company that took zero tolerance stance against emulators. Nintendo firmly believes that any emulation, regardless of if you own the game or not, is considered piracy and therefore illegal.


Pretty ironic when you considered that Virtual Console runs on emulation (except GBA VC on 3DS).

I remember when they announced virtual console games and remembered that state they gave

 

[Truner]

Can someone snap a few screenshots from The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road? Probably the most impressive game I've seen on the DS, should look outstanding when upscaled.

 

[FAST6191]

Can someone snap a few screenshots from The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road? Probably the most impressive game I've seen on the DS, should look outstanding when upscaled.

http://gbatemp.net/threads/hi-resolution-ds-emulation.364549/page-3#post-4969373

Go to 24 minutes, 20 seconds.

 

[spotanjo3]

(X3) The backgrounds are 2D so there's not that much of an improvement (even though there still is), but the character models, especially during battles, are gorgeous.
I tried also Blue Dragon Awakened Shadow and it was mindblowing. Though the HUD glitches behind the 3D model -_-

What is this game called ? I know it released in PS3 but I forgot the title.

 

[Truner]

http://gbatemp.net/threads/hi-resolution-ds-emulation.364549/page-3#post-4969373

Go to 24 minutes, 20 seconds.

Thanks! It does look outstanding.