PS1/2 Emulator WiiStation - Another Fork of WiiSXRX released

[ssjkakaroto]

Hey guys, MAME has added support for Zstandard: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11827
Now we have to wait for rtissera to update libchdr and he's already aware of it.
If you want to create a CHD using Zstandard and FLAC just use the following command line:

chdman createcd -i input.cue -o output.chd --compression cdzs,cdfl

Edit: You may need a nightly build of chdman, which can be found on github.

 

[rexus_pl]

Hey guys, MAME has added support for Zstandard: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11827
Now we have to wait for rtissera to update libchdr and he's already aware of it.

Will those files work on Wiistation? Are they any benefits of using Zstandard on Wiistation?

 

[SaulFabre]

Will those files work on Wiistation? Are they any benefits of using Zstandard on Wiistation?

Supposedly yes, it says that is made also for work on low-end devices.

Quote from cuavas:

ZStandard gives far better decompression performance than zlib or particularly LZMA while delivering better compression ratios than zlib. This is important to people using emulators on low-end devices. CHD decompression speed affects performance of emulated software that streams from hard disk or CD, and zip decompression performance affects initial load time for emulated systems.

 

[Disorarara]

I have to report after switching my Wii back to 4:3 rather than 16:9, the pixel quality is massively improved when turning off bilinear filtering, and games look so much sharper and better! My previous observations about ugly pixel shimmering when bilinear filtering is disabled no longer happen when you have it running at 4:3, which I am aware is the sharpest you can get out of the Wii's image quality. It truly is the last 4:3 console! I am now on the bilinear filtering disabled train, it truly looks amazing to play PSX games with clear image quality, massive visual improvement even if it's still running at less than 480.

EDIT: this doesn't apply to FMVs though, perhaps a pipe dream feature request but I remember on older peops software rendering plugins there was a feature to only use bilinear filtering on FMVs and leave everything else unfiltered, would look amazing to have those filtered since they're otherwise very ugly without some kind of blurring.

 

[Hyllian]

I have to report after switching my Wii back to 4:3 rather than 16:9, the pixel quality is massively improved when turning off bilinear filtering, and games look so much sharper and better! My previous observations about ugly pixel shimmering when bilinear filtering is disabled no longer happen when you have it running at 4:3, which I am aware is the sharpest you can get out of the Wii's image quality. It truly is the last 4:3 console! I am now on the bilinear filtering disabled train, it truly looks amazing to play PSX games with clear image quality, massive visual improvement even if it's still running at less than 480.

EDIT: this doesn't apply to FMVs though, perhaps a pipe dream feature request but I remember on older peops software rendering plugins there was a feature to only use bilinear filtering on FMVs and leave everything else unfiltered, would look amazing to have those filtered since they're otherwise very ugly without some kind of blurring.

It's much more related to lack of integer scaling (in 16:9) than anything else. If image is scaled to non-integer multiple of native resolution (320x240 on most psx games), then you probably get pixels of different sizes to compensate. That's what causes shimmering. Bilinear filtering mitigates it, but doesn't eliminate it. In 4:3 you get perfectly scaled, because 320x240 is 4:3, so all pixels are not only the same size, they're squares.

 

[Ouaz]

I have to report after switching my Wii back to 4:3 rather than 16:9, the pixel quality is massively improved when turning off bilinear filtering, and games look so much sharper and better!

Yep, what said Hyllian.

It's the same story for Wii games, most of them are 4:3 native, and the Wii 16:9 setting is a kind of anamorphic widescreen that blurs the image. And as a cherry on the cake, there's also an extra stretch in 16:9 due to the scaling (that can be fixed with "Video With" set to "Framebuffer" in ULGX). Plus the deflicker filter not totally disabled in 480p (can be fixed in ULGX too)....

Poor Wii...

 

[RedTony]

Happy new year all!

Well, I mistakenly posted a short comment and I do not know how to delete the post, so I'd rather take advantage of it to thank again xjsxjs197, Saulfabreg and all you guys for this excelent emulator.
I have to say, one of the dreams I always had was to play Time Crisis in the Wii taking advantage of the WiiMote... and finally (thanks to Jokkipo forks as well) I managed to do it

Cheers and keep up the good work.

 

[Disorarara]

Happy new year all!

Well, I mistakenly posted a short comment and I do not know how to delete the post, so I'd rather take advantage of it to thank again xjsxjs197, Saulfabreg and all you guys for this excelent emulator.
I have to say, one of the dreams I always had was to play Time Crisis in the Wii taking advantage of the WiiMote... and finally (thanks to Jokkipo forks as well) I managed to do it

Cheers and keep up the good work.

Being able to also use 8 players in games is also an exciting possibility, there weren't many Wii games to do it and even on the PSX itself it was an expensive feature not many people could have experienced at the time but relatively inexpensive now since you don't need to buy another attachment to make it work.

 

[Anddo]

Sorry if this is asked a lot but, which PSX emulator is now considered the definitive best? WiiStation, WiiSX, SXR, SXRX? It's a bit confusing.

 

[Disorarara]

Sorry if this is asked a lot but, which PSX emulator is now considered the definitive best? WiiStation, WiiSX, SXR, SXRX? It's a bit confusing.

WiiSX and Wiistation are the two main builds to focus on right now, WiiSXR is a now obsolete continuation of WiiSX when it was abandoned at the time and WiiSXRX is a continuation of WiiSXR when that project was abandoned, and Wiistation is a continuation of WiiSXRX which is why it's known internally as "wiisxrx_2022" and why it still points to wiisxrx directories. As far as I can tell it was originally only made to add additional language options and minor emulation speed changes until more outside people started contributing their own changes.

WiiSX got new builds as of recently with the addiction of lightrec and now a new, faster software renderer called unai. However it's still missing quite a bit of features that Wiistation has especially in regards to image quality and controller inputs, so I would suggest sticking to Wiistation unless you're trying to play a particularly demanding game or something doesn't work outright in Wiistation.

 

[Anddo]

WiiSX and Wiistation are the two main builds to focus on right now, WiiSXR is a now obsolete continuation of WiiSX when it was abandoned at the time and WiiSXRX is a continuation of WiiSXR when that project was abandoned, and Wiistation is a continuation of WiiSXRX which is why it's known internally as "wiisxrx_2022" and why it still points to wiisxrx directories. As far as I can tell it was originally only made to add additional language options and minor emulation speed changes until more outside people started contributing their own changes.

WiiSX got new builds as of recently with the addiction of lightrec and now a new, faster software renderer called unai. However it's still missing quite a bit of features that Wiistation has especially in regards to image quality and controller inputs, so I would suggest sticking to Wiistation unless you're trying to play a particularly demanding game or something doesn't work outright in Wiistation.

Thank you for your quick response! The game I'd like to play in particular is Policenauts, do you think WiiStation is the best choice for it based on what you've explained?

 

[Disorarara]

Thank you for your quick response! The game I'd like to play in particular is Policenauts, do you think WiiStation is the best choice for it based on what you've explained?

I've played the english translation of policenauts, yes use wiistation for it.

 

[Anddo]

I've played the english translation of policenauts, yes use wiistation for it.

I appreciate it!! Thank you.

 

[Disorarara]

Lightrec is amazing except it has some real notable bugs, i've mentioned a few of these but I'll go through them again

Madden NFL 2005 will show spiky polygons and if played long enough will eventually just crash
Destruction Derby 2, if you play the destruction derby mode every single CPU will immediately target you and mess you up, there's literally no way of completing this mode with how aggressively they target you
Libero Grande will show deep black boxes instead of shadows if the conditions are right, all you have to let the game do is run through the attract mode to see it. A shame since the dynarec is also incorrect in running the game too slow!
Kula World (PAL) just straight up won't run whatsoever. The NTSC version known as Roll Away will run the first level before crashing.
Wipeout XL I've encountered a bug where the game completely slows down and pushes the camera far away during a race, although I don't know the circumstances. I'm not sure if this is common or not but it did happen and I feel worth reporting.

I only report this to improve on lightrec, since it seems to be quite amazing for PSX emulation but unfortunately still suffers from inaccurate and game breaking issues.

 

[GustavoReis]

@Disorarara destruction Derby 2 in total destruction mode really is an extreme level, the machine was programmed so that the target is us
just practice so that the CPU doesn't chase us too much

 

[Ouaz]

Libero Grande will show deep black boxes instead of shadows if the conditions are right

This happens also on Colin Mac Rae 2.

On some tracks, shadows on the road are rendered as plain polygons, i.e. the gradient/transparency is not rendered.
To fix it, I simply return to Wiistation menu and resume the game. The shadows are then correctly displayed.
It happens only on this game.

And this might just be me but games that run at 60fps don't feel smooth anymore?

I confirm this. It is slighty less smooth.

There's no framerate drops on my side, the game speed has never been so high (really noticeable on R4) but it seems a bit more jerking than previous builds (maybe the Wii can't handle this speed ?)

 

[MeXen]

WiiSX and Wiistation are the two main builds to focus on right now, WiiSXR is a now obsolete continuation of WiiSX when it was abandoned at the time and WiiSXRX is a continuation of WiiSXR when that project was abandoned, and Wiistation is a continuation of WiiSXRX which is why it's known internally as "wiisxrx_2022" and why it still points to wiisxrx directories. As far as I can tell it was originally only made to add additional language options and minor emulation speed changes until more outside people started contributing their own changes.

WiiSX got new builds as of recently with the addiction of lightrec and now a new, faster software renderer called unai. However it's still missing quite a bit of features that Wiistation has especially in regards to image quality and controller inputs, so I would suggest sticking to Wiistation unless you're trying to play a particularly demanding game or something doesn't work outright in Wiistation.

Didnt heard about this Unai recompiler, how good is it compared to latest lightrec? i hope gets ported to Wiistation.

 

[Disorarara]

Didnt heard about this Unai recompiler, how good is it compared to latest lightrec? i hope gets ported to Wiistation.

Not a recompiler, new video plugin. I also hope it gets ported to Wiistation so we can enable interlace and disable filtering.

 

[GustavoReis]

Hi @SaulFabre

Can you compile the latest wiistation updates?

Thank's

 

[Maeson]

I have been out of the loop for a while, and I've read about regressions and such, so... Which is considered the best overall release currently?