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MiSTer FPGA

Real hardware will always win there's no disputing that, It's just not always a feasible or economical option.

I don't see the MiSTer replacing any of my real hardware nor will it stop me from buying real hardware.

What interests me is the technical side of things. I tend to spend more time working and reading about technology than I do actually utilising it.

As far as hype goes I have to disagree here, I think people are just genuinely enthused about the potential of using FPGA as a gaming platform and seeing it mature.

Of course it's early days and accuracy is just not there yet but it's fun to be along for the ride and seeing it grow.

As for "buying into the clickbait" What clickbait?
 
It’s not clickbait necessarily, but I personally think Patreon fundraising for one author of an open-source project that several authors are contributing work to, with no description or guarantee of how or if those funds will be shared with the other contributors is in poor taste.

Just IMHO though. Feel free to disagree.
 
Completely agree with you on that front. TBH I didn't even know that patreon existed until you linked it.
 
oneleaf86 said:
Completely agree with you on that front. TBH I didn't even know that patreon existed until you linked it.
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It’s new-I’ve been seeing a lot of links to it today on Twitter. Hence why it popped into my mind as “clickbait”.
 
I think many people are excited about an FPGA solution to arcade gaming. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but that works both ways and doesn’t mean an arcade fan who can’t afford 12 multis is wrong for being excited about this and the future it holds.

I think on these forums the majority of us prefer original equipment, but even that has its limits with the multis, take your multi talk over to KLOV and it sounds like you killed someone’s grandmother! :)

Bottomline is, if you’re interested in the project, today’s CPS tweets are exciting!
 
From my standpoint, I'm not saying it's not good, I actually think it's pretty darn cool.

I just get miffed when people claim it's not emulation, like how Analogue does along with their other bogus claims.
 
djsheep said:
oneleaf86 said:
As for "buying into the clickbait" What clickbait?
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Well, to start with, the 7 hour long marathon YouTube videos with titles like this:


I'm not criticising the product necessarily, even though it's not my cup of tea, it's the hype people have spun around it, in the attempt to be at the forefront and relevant for the minute.
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nothing wrong with it. I love the media attention for MiSTeR. There is a fast iterative pace and enthusiasm.

I love real hardware even more, but face it, we can’t run these boards forever, they will unrecoverably die :/ - after that, some form of accurate simulation would be great to have; which takes time to build.
 
ShootTheCore said:
It’s not clickbait necessarily, but I personally think Patreon fundraising for one author of an open-source project that several authors are contributing work to, with no description or guarantee of how or if those funds will be shared with the other contributors is in poor taste.

Just IMHO though. Feel free to disagree.
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It's true we dont know where the MiSTer funds go to - sorglig didn't intend MiSTer to run anything other than retro computers he doesn't really show that he is very interested in adding game systems. Infact in the Atari forums there sorglig is regularly at odds with a certain member because he doesn't feel that LLCoolJoy serial interface with the FPGA is needed to reduce input lag (MiSTer's input lag is lower than retropie anyways).

However due to Smokemonster it seems other devs like ElectronAsh and Kintrix are coming over and contributing to the project. So its best to support your core designer instead of MiSTer - however Sorg is also coordinating things like scaler and overall the project - so he is not fluff yet. I am kinda glad Smokemonster clickbaited me - I find MiSTer better than Analogue products - specially with the scaler and the support for special chipped games roms and the fact it's open source :)

Btw: Two hours back Sorglig on MiSTer group says "Too early to excite. There is no CPS sources yet.". That's how divided the project leaders are :/
 
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suverman said:
ShootTheCore said:
It's true we dont know where the MiSTer funds go to - sorglig didn't intend MiSTer to run anything other than retro computers he doesn't really show that he is very interested in adding game systems. Infact in the Atari forums there sorglig is regularly at odds with a certain member because he doesn't feel that LLCoolJoy serial interface with the FPGA is needed to reduce input lag (MiSTer's input lag is lower than retropie anyways).
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However due to Smokemonster it seems other devs like ElectronAsh and Kintrix are coming over and contributing to the project. So its best to support your core designer instead of MiSTer - however Sorg is also coordinating things like scaler and overall the project - so he is not fluff yet. I am kinda glad Smokemonster clickbaited me - I find MiSTer better than Analogue products - specially with the scaler and the support for special chipped games roms and the fact it's open source :)

Btw: Two hours back Sorglig on MiSTer group says "Too early to excite. There is no CPS sources yet.". That's how divided the project leaders are :/
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I have noticed that Sorglig opposes / strongly dislikes anything without source code and anything not open to the point if people start mentioning kevtris work threads in the MiSTer forum get locked. He also isn't interested in "people complaining about lag" and tells people to go implement it themselves which is fair enough but sometimes it seems like he goes a little to hard on that kind of stuff.
 
The point of MiSTer is that it's the only platform at the moment which, AFAIK, has a cycle accurate Motorola 68000 driver.
Having cycle accurate emulation means that, under the right circumstances, the emulation will be impossible to discern from the real thing. The 68k is used in a plethora of platforms and, among those, the CPS-1 and 2 systems and the Neo Geo.

If those cores use the Ijor's implementation of the 68k we're in for what could be a perfect replacement of several hardware. Thanks to the I/O board the inputs are taken straight from the GPIO pins which mean that there's no input lag and if you use the analog video out with a CRT you also get zero video lag.

This is why, IMHO, the MiSTer is being so hyped and, I must admit, I'm getting really hyped for it as well, even though I'm one of those "real hardware or GTFO" guys.

We'll have to see how things develops.
 
donluca said:
The point of MiSTer is that it's the only platform at the moment which, AFAIK, has a cycle accurate Motorola 68000 driver.
Having cycle accurate emulation means that, under the right circumstances, the emulation will be impossible to discern from the real thing. The 68k is used in a plethora of platforms and, among those, the CPS-1 and 2 systems and the Neo Geo.

If those cores use the Ijor's implementation of the 68k we're in for what could be a perfect replacement of several hardware. Thanks to the I/O board the inputs are taken straight from the GPIO pins which mean that there's no input lag and if you use the analog video out with a CRT you also get zero video lag.

This is why, IMHO, the MiSTer is being so hyped and, I must admit, I'm getting really hyped for it as well, even though I'm one of those "real hardware or GTFO" guys.

We'll have to see how things develops.
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A cycle-accurate CPU is important, but accuracy on the supplementary memory busses, PPU and sound hardware is just as important, if not more so. After all, there's a reason that CPS1, CPS2, Neo Geo, Sega Genesis, Amiga, Atari ST, etc don't all look identical or run the same games despite having the same 68000 CPU. The MISTer Sega Genesis core alone has taken a while to stabilize in the PPU and audio areas.
 
Flain said:
I have noticed that Sorglig opposes / strongly dislikes anything without source code and anything not open to the point if people start mentioning kevtris work threads in the MiSTer forum get locked. He also isn't interested in "people complaining about lag" and tells people to go implement it themselves which is fair enough but sometimes it seems like he goes a little to hard on that kind of stuff.
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I find it to be a real bummer that such a prominent leader in such a cool project, is so dismissive about input lag and how you can just get used to it. His theories on how input lag affects games only works when it comes to games that require no timing, or if the game has a patterned timing, like a platformer. But when the game is unpredictable, those 1-2 frames completely changes the meta of the game, some games can become down right unplayable. These 1-2 frames can change a reactionary situation, to a guess. Skill becomes luck. But since he doesn't play those games, or doesn't play at high enough of a skill level, he doesn't care.

I thought using an fpga platform was to overcome software emulation weaknesses. Input lag always being the dark horse of emulation. I'm happy that the analog i/o is good to go. But it sucks that I have to use my ossc just to get lag less hdmi support =(

I hope one day he realizes the importance. I think he and other devs are doing a fantastic job, but it's hard to donate money when the lead is so dismissive about a shortcoming in the design =(
 
SabreAZ said:
Flain said:
I have noticed that Sorglig opposes / strongly dislikes anything without source code and anything not open to the point if people start mentioning kevtris work threads in the MiSTer forum get locked. He also isn't interested in "people complaining about lag" and tells people to go implement it themselves which is fair enough but sometimes it seems like he goes a little to hard on that kind of stuff.
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I find it to be a real bummer that such a prominent leader in such a cool project, is so dismissive about input lag and how you can just get used to it. His theories on how input lag affects games only works when it comes to games that require no timing, or if the game has a patterned timing, like a platformer. But when the game is unpredictable, those 1-2 frames completely changes the meta of the game, some games can become down right unplayable. These 1-2 frames can change a reactionary situation, to a guess. Skill becomes luck. But since he doesn't play those games, or doesn't play at high enough of a skill level, he doesn't care.
I thought using an fpga platform was to overcome software emulation weaknesses. Input lag always being the dark horse of emulation. I'm happy that the analog i/o is good to go. But it sucks that I have to use my ossc just to get lag less hdmi support =(

I hope one day he realizes the importance. I think he and other devs are doing a fantastic job, but it's hard to donate money when the lead is so dismissive about a shortcoming in the design =(
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I agree with you 100%, but I also don't know the full story. Maybe he's just tired of people complaining about lag while he's working on fixing it, not just dismissing it as a problem entirely? It's hard to know from just the above quote.
 
looking at a thread on atari age concerning input lag, he was very dismissive. Vut it's definitely possible that hes just tired of hearing it, while working on a solution, which I hope is the case
 
The low lag scaler is in developement by the scaler author btw. That was announced by sorglig 1 month back?
 
Thankfully other Devs do get the lag thing. ijor himself (accurate 68K core) seems to be in solution mode instead of bury head in sand mode :) Electronash and other Devs also take interest in solving it. So it will be solved, it's just a matter of time.

I never took much attention to input lag until i experienced really bad lag on a retropie, worse than i had ever seen before when testing out the first level in SMW. After that experience it really bothers me whenever i notice it.

On FGPA being emulation or not - depends on the core. The important difference with FPGA is due to how it works when defining the hardware descriptors you can get to practically replica state if you were to copy every circuit in an actual system. Many of the cores we have are based on software emulators (like the SNES one - the author never owned a SNES) so of course they can only be as accurate they are made to be.

Also the FPGA will run everything at USB power levels (hello portables? :)), all individual "chips" running in parallel. while a PC needs a decent CPU to run things accurate (eg a raspberry pi isn't fast enough to run higan). Thats not surprising though when a single CPU core has to run around sequentially doing the job of all the other chips in a system.
 
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