Homebrew Nintendo vs Homebrew Emulation performance

[Deleted member 370671]

You're right, Nintendo knows the consoles way better than an hacker. Emulators are good for compatibility and performance, but VCs are better in terms of accuracy.

Well, the "Virtual Console" thing is just the name given to Nintendo's emulators (except for GBA VC, where it runs on native hardware)... So while most of them are more accurate than homebrew emulators, they are still emulators.

 

[Deleted User]

For some reason, Super Mario World SNES VC runs horrible on my N3DS. So much lag, delay and terrible audio quality, while blargSNES runs completely fine on both my N3DS and my O3DS.

 

[MassExplosion213]

One of the "hacks" they use is manually decompressing the audio and shoving it in the romfs.

 

[DiscostewSM]

The whole reason why blargSNES can run at up to 60fps on an o3DS is because it's using the GPU to render everything (as sets of polygons for each and every background tile and sprite cel), therefore reducing the load on the CPU. Emulators like Nintendo official SNES one for n3DS use software rendering because that is the most accurate. There is no accessible 2D hardware on the 3DS to offload PPU emulation like on the DS and even the GBA, but even those lack many of the features the SNES has.

 

[CeeDee]

For some reason, Super Mario World SNES VC runs horrible on my N3DS. So much lag, delay and terrible audio quality, while blargSNES runs completely fine on both my N3DS and my O3DS.

Do you have it set to o3DS clock speed?

One of the "hacks" they use is manually decompressing the audio and shoving it in the romfs.

What? If so, then how can you inject a completely different ROM in it and it works fine?

 

[MRJPGames]

Hey GBATemp, I tried searching for some answers on this question but could not find any direct answers:

On the New 3DS systems, how does performance compare between mGBA emulator (installed as CIA) versus Nintendo's own GBA_FIRM w/ ROM injection?

And simlarly, how would something like BlargSNES or RetroArch compare to the Nintendo's in-house SNES emulation?

Again, I am strictly talking about performance (Frame-rate, screen-tearing, sound quality), not any extra features such as save states or cheat support.

GBA is not emulated in the VC it runs on the actual GBA hardware inside the 3DS, which makes the VC 100% accurate and 100% speed (Only cards that had expensions needed like tilt will not be playable). For all other consoles, Nintendo's emulation trumps that of homebrew. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. They have full documentation, and they PAY people to make these emulators, it's not just made out of the love of 3DS/other console. You cannot really expect some hobiest to make a better emulator than the company who owns both the console they are making the emulator for and the console they are emulating. Anyways, it could still be the case, but in the case of the 3DS it is not.

However homebrew emulation has it's own advantages, it usualy gives more control over the emulation settings whereas nintendo's is very bare-bones (Only 1 savestate). Also there are consoles which are not officially supported by VC (like PS1) that do have a homebrew emulator, in those cases homebrew is really great. Also for those who only have ARM11 userland emulators are a free way to play these old games (and or games that don't have a VC release).

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One of the "hacks" they use is manually decompressing the audio and shoving it in the romfs.

This is false.

 

[Mystic Shadow]

With Nintendo snes VC I get lag on super metroid the game just slows down so bad for no reason then picks up again enemies or no enemies on screen.

 

[Flyingsky]

I must say, i'm a fan of the NES VC, but i don't like the SNES VC.
Because it's only New3DS, and because it runs on the maximum the hardware allows.
So if there is any abnormality it starts to slow down.
Also Emulators like PocketSNES on Retroarch have a little bit more freedom, like stretching the image and stuff.
I know not everybody likes stretched images but i like it with HW Bilinear filtering.

 

[kedest]

Can the Snes VC run Yoshi's Island with no slowdown? I understand it's a bit of a probematic game in homebrew cores such as catsfc.

 

[TLOZmaster]

Performance wise, you can't beat Nintendo's own emulation. That's why we have so many GBA games as CIAs on that iso site.

 

[dubbz82]

Performance wise, you can't beat Nintendo's own emulation. That's why we have so many GBA games as CIAs on that iso site.

Gba uses a sort of hardware based emulation, so yes, speed will be fine for most stuff. That has exactly zero to do with the number of pirate games available at a warez site though. Even if they ran for crap, someone would pack them up and release them anyways.

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I'm talking about "hacky solutions". I don't think Nintendo would take shortcuts. They would have had to do some heavy lifting.. However, blargsnes took shortcuts... Basically what I'm being told is that SNES VC shares some similar issues that emulation does. Which leaves the question: What are these issues?

Nintendo did in fact take shortcuts. The system isn't capable of pulling off cycle accurate emulation. I'm sure if someone managed to disassemble it, they would see that the same sort of speed hacks that are used in other emulators are most certainly used here (probably in combination with some tricks they had up their own sleeve as well). As for exactly what shortcuts, pretty much any open source (non cycle accurate) emulator for PC uses the same sort of speed hacks, so that would give you a pretty good starting point as to where the shortcuts were taken.

 

[Hking0036]

Can the Snes VC run Yoshi's Island with no slowdown? I understand it's a bit of a probematic game in homebrew cores such as catsfc.

I don't think nintendo has put out starfox or anything (yet) so it probably can't support SuperFX games like that. I'm hoping we get SA-1 support though (Super Mario RPG)

 

[dubbz82]

I don't think nintendo has put out starfox or anything (yet) so it probably can't support SuperFX games like that. I'm hoping we get SA-1 support though (Super Mario RPG)

Good luck with your hope.

 

[Hking0036]

Good luck with your hope.

yeah, I'm not holding my breath. Good thing I have it on a real cart.