Hacking ISO Loader 3x DVD speed? - I can't do the maths

[g002ahe]

Something isnt adding up here.
The ISO loader is supposed to run at 3x speed. This is at least 3.5MB per second.
The WII has 88MB of ram
So, maximum load time should be around 88/3.5 = 25 seconds

Ive been playing excite truck and the loading time has been 2 minutes.

Is it possible that the speed isn't actually 3x, or does it depend upon the DVD media that is used or other things such as poor buffering, seek times etc?

 

[atomikramp]

the numers you posted are purely theoric.

as you said, there are a number of factor ifluencing the read speed.

first of all obviosly the quality of the media, then it comes to seek time, and buffering stuff...

also maybe the software has to do some trickes that we don't know to decrypt the data during the loading times, wich may influence the performances.

infact all the games have problems with movies content.
probably becouse movies are processed as streams, and showed on the video while they are read by the dvd... if there's something screwed up in the reading process, the movie may suffer from framedrop, audio desync and eventually can cause application crashes.

btw, i'm basing my suppositions only on things i've read here.. i didn't try the backup loader myself...

EDIT: well i don't know the architecture of the wii in details, so i can't say, but it may also depend on the device access method.
if the application can't relay on DMA, the reading process is managed by the CPU, wich may decrease drammatically both the reading speed and the console performance while reproducing multimedia content and accessing a block device at the same time.

 

[windwake]

the numers you posted are purely theoric.

pretty sure that last one isn't a word.

but yeah, load time is not simply moving data from the disc to the Wii, it's moving it into the Wii's memory then calculating how to properly manipulate it into something that can be sent to the video device.

 

[atomikramp]

the numers you posted are purely theoric.

pretty sure that last one isn't a word.

but yeah, load time is not simply moving data from the disc to the Wii, it's moving it into the Wii's memory then calculating how to properly manipulate it into something that can be sent to the video device.

sorry but i'm not that good in english... nonsenses frequently comes out

 

[toastert2003]

2 minutes load time ... + ability to load backups without modchip.... = better than loading for 12 minutes

 

[SanGor]

didn't know Excite truck is only 88MB ...

 

[night_chrono]

didn't know Excite truck is only 88MB ...

:facepalm:

 

[teq]

The Wii doesn't constantly read discs at 6x -- this is a common misconception. It strictly depends on what the content is and what the software determines to be a viable speed.

Most DVD players are perfectly capable of playing movies while reading at 2x speed. Also, the speed you write a disc at doesn't determine how fast it's able to be read by the drive.

3x speed is sufficient for everything but streaming video, though that is highly due to the fact that the videos are highly compressed and the Wii has a small buffer.

 

[g002ahe]

The *main) problem is not with the streaming movies.

The problem is that the load times are very very slow.

One thing in our ( non developer) control is the media that we use. I would like to compare timigs with somone.
Games I have so far are
Carnival Games PAL
Excite Truck PAL
Chess PAL
Family Ski PAL

Can we do some comparison load time benchmarks on one of these? or someone choose some other game.

 

[linkinworm]

The Wii doesn't constantly read discs at 6x -- this is a common misconception. It strictly depends on what the content is and what the software determines to be a viable speed.

Most DVD players are perfectly capable of playing movies while reading at 2x speed. Also, the speed you write a disc at doesn't determine how fast it's able to be read by the drive.

3x speed is sufficient for everything but streaming video, though that is highly due to the fact that the videos are highly compressed and the Wii has a small buffer.

yo teq whats up not seen you for agessssssss on here, after everything lately i can see why aswell

 

[gamidi]

Everyone with a wiikey and 1.9g and up firmware suffers from 3x speed as well(myself included). They only time i got problems was with SSBB videos. Excite truck loaded much faster than 2 minutes maybe the iso patching is what makes the iso loader slow.

 

[zapu]

Patcher decrypts the image from what I know, so the loader doesn't suffer from decrypting times (cause there is nothing to be decrypted).

As waninkoko stated, and as we all know, the driver is still in very early stage, it may suffer from serious bugs that might cause higher timings and delays in read routines.

 

[Jacobeian]

the dol is probably only an DISC apploader with also load the proper IOS: litterally, it read the main dol from the DVD and launch it, like any other loaders will do, it does not require high speed DVD reading ability

about the 3X issue, it's already stated by the original DVDX authors that this is a limitation from the DVD drive when using this special DVD mode (which let us run DVD-R without a drivechip)... I fear Waninkoko does not have the knowledge to get over this limitation

Finally, you are wrong if you take the WII full RAM size in your calcultions because, when a game load, it does not fill the RAM completely but instead will read chunks from the DVD and copy them to the RAM to use it in a program (load textures, audio samples or what else)... This is also repeated all along the game, more or less noticable depending on the programmer talent...

So, the loading time does not only rely on the DVD reading speed but also on the number of access required by the program, which additioned together , could result in LOT MORE data than 88MB, you see ? Generally, the more the loading time was with the original game, it will be twice that time with the backup loader.