XRGB-mini Framemeister

[jdawg131]

Why not just play the game in 480i? You get much better looking scanlines compared to 480p which look like crap as well as a sharper image.

Combing artifacts. The games were initially made in the 240p days, and look terrible in motion when "upscaled" to 480i.

[Chocograph]

I'm not going to drag this out but I played through SMG1 on the previous dolphin without any issues on the 3x internal res that's close to 1080p. Stable 60. I couldn't notice any glitches but if there were some flickering on a few flower petals in a few levels I sure could live with that. I too have the wind waker silver gc that I modded with the xenochip and a framemeister so I like both. I don't own a wii and with this emulator I don't think I'll bother getting one. Snes accuracy via Retroarch is DAMN good but if I'm going to be super anal about it, I need the meister for silky smooth v-sync scrolling. The higan emu is getting damn close though.

[Elite Evil]

No way that I would run nintendont on the wii u for my gamecube games now.

[tusecsy]

Dolphin 5. I KNOW, I KNOW. And I still own the framemeister. It's gooood though.

Dolphin is an absolutely incredible emulator, really mindblowing what it can do and how well it emulates gc/wii. The new version is running smooth as silk.

That being said, it just feels like a giant waste of time. Why bother when you can just get a wii with an HD? Or a 20$ gamecube running into the Framemeister? Lets be honest...

Would love something like this for Saturn tho.

Let me know when you can get native 1080p from NGC and Wii titles with a 20$ gamecube and a framemeister.

I mean come on, man. They do vastly different things. I prefer playing on OG hardware too, but that's clearly not why people move to emulation.

People move to emulation/worthless junk like the Retron because most people are tasteless sadly. Look at what is "popular" in any artform really. That doesn't mean those of us with taste need to justify dumb peoples opinions and give them a pat on the back.

Again, it's an impressive technical feet, the best emulator ever, but it's still just a copy, and will never be as perfect as the real thing. Upscale it all you like. And if you're posting in a thread for a 350$ upscaler, you really shouldn't be using cost as a justification for inferiority.

[cfx]

Yeah, piracy is cheaper than actual consoles and games. What else is new?

[nissling]

There's a vast difference between emulation and piracy. Playing Master System games on the Mega Drive is emulation in a way.

[Chocograph]

"will never be as perfect as the real thing" - 1. Doesn't need to be, emulators are more than good enough. Dolphin that is if you want to be specific. 2 - Haven't we established by now that -the real thing- can't give us a perfectly clean emulator image but instead leaves us with some kind of grainy noise filter thing on specific darker colors?

326 pages all about the same dozens of height/width A/D / overscan / color framemeister settings and yet it will never look as good as a perfectly clean emulator image. And I'm not talking about shadow glitches. First there's the color noise, second there's the "vertical bar" on the snes.

I don't intend to leave any more posts now but I do think I have a point here.

[tusecsy]

"will never be as perfect as the real thing" - 1. Doesn't need to be, emulators are more than good enough. Dolphin that is if you want to be specific. 2 - Haven't we established by now that -the real thing- can't give us a perfectly clean emulator image but instead leaves us with some kind of grainy noise filter thing on specific darker colors?

326 pages all about the same dozens of height/width A/D / overscan / color framemeister settings and yet it will never look as good as a perfectly clean emulator image. And I'm not talking about shadow glitches. First there's the color noise, second there's the "vertical bar" on the snes.

I don't intend to leave any more posts now but I do think I have a point here.

::translation:: i'm an unemployed loser living in my parents basement who can't afford a framemeister and has never even seen one ::translation::

You're just fucking clueless. Emulators suck. Now go masturbate while the rest of us have sex.

[NormalFish]

::translation:: i'm an unemployed loser living in my parents basement who can't afford a framemeister and has never even seen one ::translation::

You're just fucking clueless. Emulators suck. Now go masturbate while the rest of us have sex.

What an aggressively juvenile post. Gross.

[akumajo]

"will never be as perfect as the real thing" - 1. Doesn't need to be, emulators are more than good enough. Dolphin that is if you want to be specific. 2 - Haven't we established by now that -the real thing- can't give us a perfectly clean emulator image but instead leaves us with some kind of grainy noise filter thing on specific darker colors?

326 pages all about the same dozens of height/width A/D / overscan / color framemeister settings and yet it will never look as good as a perfectly clean emulator image. And I'm not talking about shadow glitches. First there's the color noise, second there's the "vertical bar" on the snes.

I don't intend to leave any more posts now but I do think I have a point here.

::translation:: i'm an unemployed loser living in my parents basement who can't afford a framemeister and has never even seen one ::translation::

You're just fucking clueless. Emulators suck. Now go masturbate while the rest of us have sex.

unacceptable !
apologize or leave

[FBX]

326 pages all about the same dozens of height/width A/D / overscan / color framemeister settings and yet it will never look as good as a perfectly clean emulator image. And I'm not talking about shadow glitches. First there's the color noise, second there's the "vertical bar" on the snes.

And yet I LEFT emulation to work on this side of the hobby. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but the payoff of being able to use real hardware is something emulators still cannot touch. I mean, what am I going to do? Lug a frikken computer around everywhere so I can play emulation instead of the real thing? I don't want to have to be pinned to having to use a computer to play all my favorite old games, because it just isn't the same experience even if the emulator is flawless. Speaking of which, Higan has flawless emulation of Super NES. It is in fact the most accurate emulator of any system starting with the NES on up. It's what I used to play SNES games on before I decided to make the switch to real hardware, and you know what? I don't regret it in the slightest.

To address the issue you listed, My SNES has no vertical bar, and has such a clean sharp image as to almost look like emulation. You also need to realize emulation images will only look clean and sharp if you use square pixels, and obviously the SNES looks retarded in square pixels. That's another reason I was never fully happy with emulation. I mean, if I have to use a filter to allow aspect correction, then it becomes a case where it really doesn't look any better than what I've got going right now on my big screen.

Lastly, what it really comes down to is nostalgia. Look at one of the most recent My Life in Gaming videos where they show their current setups. They've got an entire WALL of systems hooked up, and yet why do this when they can just simply load up an emulator? Answer: Because it just isn't the same thing.

[tusecsy]

326 pages all about the same dozens of height/width A/D / overscan / color framemeister settings and yet it will never look as good as a perfectly clean emulator image. And I'm not talking about shadow glitches. First there's the color noise, second there's the "vertical bar" on the snes.

And yet I LEFT emulation to work on this side of the hobby. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but the payoff of being able to use real hardware is something emulators still cannot touch. I mean, what am I going to do? Lug a frikken computer around everywhere so I can play emulation instead of the real thing? I don't want to have to be pinned to having to use a computer to play all my favorite old games, because it just isn't the same experience even if the emulator is flawless. Speaking of which, Higan has flawless emulation of Super NES. It is in fact the most accurate emulator of any system starting with the NES on up. It's what I used to play SNES games on before I decided to make the switch to real hardware, and you know what? I don't regret it in the slightest.

To address the issue you listed, My SNES has no vertical bar, and has such a clean sharp image as to almost look like emulation. You also need to realize emulation images will only look clean and sharp if you use square pixels, and obviously the SNES looks retarded in square pixels. That's another reason I was never fully happy with emulation. I mean, if I have to use a filter to allow aspect correction, then it becomes a case where it really doesn't look any better than what I've got going right now on my big screen.

Lastly, what it really comes down to is nostalgia. Look at one of the most recent My Life in Gaming videos where they show their current setups. They've got an entire WALL of systems hooked up, and yet why do this when they can just simply load up an emulator? Answer: Because it just isn't the same thing.

Well a Raspberry Pi can do most of it these days, but it doesn't change the fact that emulation always feels like a knock-off.

What it always comes down to is this, whenever the issue of emulators vs real games comes up. The people who are poor and unemployed, living in their parents basements, admittedly a large chunk of the gamer community, want to justify not being able to afford the correct equipment. I don't say this to insult, it's simply true. There is no logical reason to say emulators are better other than this.

I could give two shits about nostalgia personally. Get an everdrive and an rgb mod with a framemeister, the ultimate "emulator" setup.

[FBX]

Get an everdrive and an rgb mod with a framemeister, the ultimate "emulator" setup.

Which I already have for several systems in fact. However, there are people that prefer real carts over Everdrive. I'm not that picky myself. As long as I'm using a real console & controller, I don't mind the flash cart method.

[Wolf_]

Anyways back on topic, I changed some setting with my xrgb mini and now I can't change the audio level with my volume up/down buttons and no sound comes out. Can anyone tell me what to do to get the audio working again? I have an english menu and remote overlay.

[CkRtech]

Lug a frikken computer around everywhere so I can play emulation instead of the real thing?

Please don't make me haul 20+ consoles around. PLEASE.

[FBX]

Lug a frikken computer around everywhere so I can play emulation instead of the real thing?

Please don't make me haul 20+ consoles around. PLEASE.

The point being, I can take say an UltraHDMI N64 over to a friend's house. I'm not going to haul my desktop over there, and I don't want to have buy another computer that's more portable. I'd rather just use the original console and my Everdrive 64 for it.

[CkRtech]

Aww. I was just having a little fun.

[tusecsy]

Get an everdrive and an rgb mod with a framemeister, the ultimate "emulator" setup.

Which I already have for several systems in fact. However, there are people that prefer real carts over Everdrive. I'm not that picky myself. As long as I'm using a real console & controller, I don't mind the flash cart method.

I prefer both lol. Just the collector in me though. Only actual advantage to a real cart is you just switch on the system and you're playing, with a flash cart you have to navigate the menu. That one guy from my life in gaming (great channel don't get me wrong), said he prefers real carts with the Retron, now that makes absolutely no sense. Why you would use that ugly ass piece of garbage over say a raspberry pi device I have no idea. You're just playing emulated roms, real cart or not.

[axlblazeadam]

Get an everdrive and an rgb mod with a framemeister, the ultimate "emulator" setup.

Which I already have for several systems in fact. However, there are people that prefer real carts over Everdrive. I'm not that picky myself. As long as I'm using a real console & controller, I don't mind the flash cart method.

I prefer both lol. Just the collector in me though. Only actual advantage to a real cart is you just switch on the system and you're playing, with a flash cart you have to navigate the menu. That one guy from my life in gaming (great channel don't get me wrong), said he prefers real carts with the Retron, now that makes absolutely no sense. Why you would use that ugly ass piece of garbage over say a raspberry pi device I have no idea. You're just playing emulated roms, real cart or not.

The Retron is fine when you don't want to invest in modded consoles + a Framemeister, but just want to play your carts with the original controllers and hook it up to a modern TV. Don't see any problem in that.

Also, i love the patch option with the Retron. Pop in that LaGrange Point, select the translation patch and good to go!

[nissling]

::translation:: i'm an unemployed loser living in my parents basement who can't afford a framemeister and has never even seen one ::translation::

You're just fucking clueless. Emulators suck. Now go masturbate while the rest of us have sex.

You should watch your tone if you want to speak for the owners of the XRGB-Mini. I've had the Framemeister for several years and very rarely use emulators yet I see perfect sense in doing so. In fact, emulators are imo one of the best things that have ever happened the entire gaming scene. Giving everyone the opportunity to play video games on many different platforms is a very important part in terms of availability.

What if every film made til the 80s were only available on 35mm in archives? No one would be able to see them unless screened at specific theaters and this is a much more common dilemma than most people think. Sadly that's also the truth for video games, as the vast majority of all games produced pre-1995 aren't reissued to modern consoles. And once an otherwise lost or forgotten film is released on Blu-Ray it's a massive step from not being available for everyone to see, even if it's not completely accurate to the original negative.

I'm playing my games on original hardware because I can, but that's not the case for everyone.

[austin532]

Why not just play the game in 480i? You get much better looking scanlines compared to 480p which look like crap as well as a sharper image.

Combing artifacts. The games were initially made in the 240p days, and look terrible in motion when "upscaled" to 480i.

True, but the Mini does a decent job of de-interlacing 480i. I guess the only correct way would be to downscale the game to 240p and then upscale that to 1080p so you could get a better picture and much better scanlines. Then again if you play a lot of fighters than a CRT is probably the best way to go.

[FBX]

The Retron is fine when you don't want to invest in modded consoles + a Framemeister, but just want to play your carts with the original controllers and hook it up to a modern TV. Don't see any problem in that.

Also, i love the patch option with the Retron. Pop in that LaGrange Point, select the translation patch and good to go!

Retron 5 definitely has its advantages, though it is ultimately an emulator box. As such, there's going to be issues here and there, but probably not much more than a flash cart does.

[tusecsy]

The Retron is fine when you don't want to invest in modded consoles + a Framemeister, but just want to play your carts with the original controllers and hook it up to a modern TV. Don't see any problem in that.

Also, i love the patch option with the Retron. Pop in that LaGrange Point, select the translation patch and good to go!

Retron 5 definitely has its advantages, though it is ultimately an emulator box. As such, there's going to be issues here and there, but probably not much more than a flash cart does.

What possible advantage could that ugly monstrosity have over plugging in a raspberry pi with hdmi and a microsd with every game ever made? Playing actual carts with an emulator is straight up stupid in this day and age. What percentage of people who shelled out 160$ for a retron probably have a computer in their house with TV out that could do everything and more without ever having to mess with a cart? My guess is at least 60%. Shoulda just bought a usb SNES pad and a vga cable no?

[tusecsy]

::translation:: i'm an unemployed loser living in my parents basement who can't afford a framemeister and has never even seen one ::translation::

You're just fucking clueless. Emulators suck. Now go masturbate while the rest of us have sex.

You should watch your tone if you want to speak for the owners of the XRGB-Mini. I've had the Framemeister for several years and very rarely use emulators yet I see perfect sense in doing so. In fact, emulators are imo one of the best things that have ever happened the entire gaming scene. Giving everyone the opportunity to play video games on many different platforms is a very important part in terms of availability.

What if every film made til the 80s were only available on 35mm in archives? No one would be able to see them unless screened at specific theaters and this is a much more common dilemma than most people think. Sadly that's also the truth for video games, as the vast majority of all games produced pre-1995 aren't reissued to modern consoles. And once an otherwise lost or forgotten film is released on Blu-Ray it's a massive step from not being available for everyone to see, even if it's not completely accurate to the original negative.

I'm playing my games on original hardware because I can, but that's not the case for everyone.

The only logical reason to say emulators are better is if you can't afford a proper xrgb setup. And in that case, gtfo of this thread?

Emulators are for people who like to say "look at all these games I have on my HD I can play anytime!", and then never actually play anything. Because they suck. It makes me sad seeing that huge list of names behind the Dolphin emulator. So many wasted man hours from super talented programmers on something that is largely irrelevant. Just get a wii they're like 20$.

I'm all for ripping ROMs for preservation. But their only useful purpose imo is using them on flash carts on original hardware.

[FBX]

The Retron is fine when you don't want to invest in modded consoles + a Framemeister, but just want to play your carts with the original controllers and hook it up to a modern TV. Don't see any problem in that.

Also, i love the patch option with the Retron. Pop in that LaGrange Point, select the translation patch and good to go!

Retron 5 definitely has its advantages, though it is ultimately an emulator box. As such, there's going to be issues here and there, but probably not much more than a flash cart does.

What possible advantage could that ugly monstrosity have over plugging in a raspberry pi with hdmi and a microsd with every game ever made? Playing actual carts with an emulator is straight up stupid in this day and age. What percentage of people who shelled out 160$ for a retron probably have a computer in their house with TV out that could do everything and more without ever having to mess with a cart? My guess is at least 60%. Shoulda just bought a usb SNES pad and a vga cable no?

I have a hard time believing a raspberry pi can run fast enough to use the better emulators like Higan for example. You could probably run older less accurate emulators like ZSNES on it, but I'd have to see this in action to be convinced.

[Chocograph]

I modded my own gameboy brick with a green backlight and prosound, got that 100 dollar drag'n derp and maybe 20 other original carts. Modded my GBA with a backlight and got the ez-flash 4. I own two snes consoles that I modded myself and an everdrive, a superufo8 and maybe 10 original games. I have the DS lite with a flash cart. I own an original 3ds and a new 3ds, none of them hacked. Turned out to be one of my favorite handhelds. I own a GBA sp. I have a modded ps1, ps2 and a ps3 that'll PLAY ps 1 2 and 3. They're all hacked and modded to h and back. I have the 360 and ps4. There's my cube that I modded myself. I own the gameboy player and maybe 10 games for the system. I also have the action replay. I have a wii-u that I haven't modded because it's not worth it. Got the french pal rgb modded n64 and the everdrive but no original games. I have a ton of games and I've paid a lot for them. I DON'T consider myself a collector at all. I just like to have the option to use real hardware whenever I want to. For example I don't need to buy any other game for the n64 or the snes or gba OR the cube. I got it all ready if I feel like playing it. And sometimes I do.

And I really appreciate FBX's framemeister profiles. I use the SNES 5x one myself. Oh, if your gaming friends don't have a relatively decent PC in 2016....THEN yeah..carry yours over.

[cfx]

Could we keep this thread on topic?

It's very long and for finding information on the Framemeister it's a lot to go through, without endless arguments about emulation, piracy, flash carts, how many games you own and how many you've downloaded, how much you've spent, and the like. There's plenty of other places to rehash those same arguments over and over.

Maybe a mod could clean this up please?

[jdawg131]

Why not just play the game in 480i? You get much better looking scanlines compared to 480p which look like crap as well as a sharper image.

Combing artifacts. The games were initially made in the 240p days, and look terrible in motion when "upscaled" to 480i.

True, but the Mini does a decent job of de-interlacing 480i. I guess the only correct way would be to downscale the game to 240p and then upscale that to 1080p so you could get a better picture and much better scanlines. Then again if you play a lot of fighters than a CRT is probably the best way to go.

The CRT route really doesn't suit me. There isn't room in the house, and I don't play fighters super competitively. As much as I enjoy these types of games, I really am average (at best). Besides, if I had the space, I'd go the supergun or arcade cabinet route. I've always dreamed of owning a Super Turbo board. One of these days, I want to pick up an Omega MVS for SNK fix.

I did play some more with settings this weekend, and have settled on just using 720p for my 480p PS2 2D games. There is a loss in detail / sharpness, but having proper scanlines more than makes up for it. For anyone that doubts the validity of scanlines on these 2D games, just look at the character select screen on one of the (many) Street Fighter II releases. It's amazing the detail and definition that is lost without the scanlines; it's obvious that developers used them to their advantage back in those days.

For the Wii, the 480p scanlines aren't too big of a worry. The only game that I'd want to use them for at the moment is the Ocarina of Time bonus disc. No real issue as I also own the N64 cart. I'll look more into it if I ever get the desire to delve into the Master Quest.

Speaking of the PS2 and its configuration, I'm really surprised to see so many profiles and recommended settings have SATURATION set to 30+. The colors look way off with it set that high. Dropping it to 23 brings it in line with the Saturn, Playstation, and SNES; Street Fighter II was my test case (as usual).

austin532 - I've finally settled on your 70 / 96 settings. I was using 40 /81, but I found the picture to be too dark. Became even more obvious after my scanline tweaking this weekend. I've said it several times already, but I really do appreciate your work for the forum.

[nissling]

The only logical reason to say emulators are better is if you can't afford a proper xrgb setup. And in that case, gtfo of this thread?

W...T...F...? When did I say emulators were better than original hardware? I've said that emulators are great contributions for the sake of availability. Not everyone is keen on buying a PC-Engine CD for a ton of money that barely works either.

[jdawg131]

What I also found that when the output is set to 720p, when using scanlines on 480i games, you can lower the INT SMOOTH below 115. That terrible screen flicker only appears to affect 1080p. Weird.

I'm sure that several on here already know this, but I discovered today that under a profile, it can store different settings depending upon the resolution. Meaning - that I can have one PS2 profile with scanlines enabled. It has one set for 480i games, and another for 480p. Very convenient as it means I won't have to store and flip through an extra profile.

FBX - not sure if you knew that or not. If you didn't, it might allow you to condense your profiles and make it easier for end users. It looks like you could get away with just having one Gamecube profile (two with the unique F-Zero one) that would apply the correct IMAGE_MODE setting (Natural or Picture) depending upon if the game was 480i or 480p.