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HD on Drastic

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 2:34 pm
by inferno
Is there any way , or is there gonna be any way to play games in HD on Drastic ? For instance PPSSPP allows to play games in HD.

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:00 pm
by ericbazinga
Possibly, but it would probably affect emulation in a negative way (as in slower).

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:20 pm
by Exophase
See this thread:

http://www.drastic-ds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2478

This doesn't really count as "HD", but the ability to render the graphics in 2x2 the native resolution (512x384 instead of 256x192) will be included in the next release. We have it working in testing now.

DraStic is different from emulators like PPSSPP in that it doesn't use the Android device's GPU to render 3D graphics. This is because of issues with how DS's graphics work. For that reason, the CPU has to render the graphics, and the resolution enhancement will require a powerful CPU (preferably with 4 cores) to get good speed.

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 5:20 pm
by ericbazinga
Exophase wrote:See this thread:

http://www.drastic-ds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2478

This doesn't really count as "HD", but the ability to render the graphics in 2x2 the native resolution (512x384 instead of 256x192) will be included in the next release. We have it working in testing now.

DraStic is different from emulators like PPSSPP in that it doesn't use the Android device's GPU to render 3D graphics. This is because of issues with how DS's graphics work. For that reason, the CPU has to render the graphics, and the resolution enhancement will require a powerful CPU (preferably with 4 cores) to get good speed.
Perhaps if it DOES happen you could make it optional, in case you have a lower-CPU phone.

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 6:19 pm
by Exophase
ericbazinga wrote:Perhaps if it DOES happen you could make it optional, in case you have a lower-CPU phone.
Of course it will be optional.

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:20 am
by inferno
When will this new update come , I don't mean to ask for an exact date , I mean to ask approximately how long ?

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:10 pm
by zxcvbad
Exophase, what devices are used in tests? I wonder what's performance like on Cortex-A57 comparing it to S800/801/805

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 2:03 pm
by Exophase
inferno wrote:When will this new update come , I don't mean to ask for an exact date , I mean to ask approximately how long ?
Maybe in a week or two, but beta only. It's the kind of thing that I'd like to keep on beta for a while to get feedback.
zxcvbad wrote:Exophase, what devices are used in tests? I wonder what's performance like on Cortex-A57 comparing it to S800/801/805
Lordus has done all Android testing so far, and while I know the devices he's used and have a fairly good idea of what the performance is like I'd rather defer to him to describe it exactly. What I can tell you is he doesn't have a Cortex-A57 device (although he's thinking of getting a Galaxy S6) but he does have devices with quad Krait 400, A15, and A9.

If you remember the performance before DraStic switched to using multiple threads to render 2D and 3D (with the end of 2013 update), I'd say expect the high-res performance on a quad core device to be slightly below what the low-res performance was w/o threading. Maybe lower if your device is throttling clocks heavily with a lot of activity.

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:55 pm
by zxcvbad
Exophase wrote:I'd say expect the high-res performance on a quad core device to be slightly thetow-res performance was w/o threading.
That's an amazing achievement, I thought it'll take more recourses. Regarding S6, I personally think that's definitely a better choice this year, especially for the use of emulators and throttling/overheating issues on S810. That's great Lordus is getting AArch64 device early, DraStic should benefit from it's set of instructions. Plus SGS6 multi-core performance got results that on par with core i3 and Denver, so who knows maybe 3x3 one day :D

Re: HD on Drastic

Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:13 pm
by Lordus
I tested it on a Nexus 5, Note 3, Shield portable, Galaxy S3, Nexus 10.
Mario Kart for example runs mostly above full-speed on the Shield, in busy scenes there can be low frameskip applied, if auto-FS is enabled. That's not really noticable, though.
The Nexus 5 and Note 3 have similar performance, but might need a bit more frameskip sometimes.
Even on the S3 it's very playable, though, and mostly just needs low frameskip as well.