[davew_uk]

This is really great work.

At the moment I have the gpuPeopsOpenGL.dll, gpuPeteOpenGL2.dll and gpuPeteOpenGL2Tweak.dll files in the plugin subfolder, and have selected Pete's OpenGL2Tweaks 2.4 as the graphics plugin in pcsxr-pgxp.exe. My games mostly run fine, but in Tomb Raider 3 and 4 I'm getting some odd glitches:

http://imgur.com/a/N0viu

If you zoom in on the screenshots you'll see black lines around most of the polygons where they don't line up properly. In TR3 in particular Lara's model has some pretty big gaps. In TR4 you can see the same but with Werner Von Croy in the cutscenes.

Is there any setting I can change to modify this behaviour?

 

[iCatButler]

Unfortunately that's due to the unfinished nature of the code, there isn't anything you can do to resolve it yourself. The only way to remove the effect would be to disable PGXP, which would also disable perspective correct texturing.

What you're seeing are seams appearing between vertices that have been successfully captured in high precision and ones which have been lost and so the plugin has fallen back on the low precision data. This causes neighbouring triangles to have slightly different positions for the same vertex, opening up a seam between them.

If you run the 1.78 plugin and press F11 you'll be able to see a visualisation of this as high precision vertices are coloured blue and low precision ones in red.

Spoiler

Most of the work left in PGXP is finding where this vertex data is being lost and writing code to correctly handle the operations involved.

 

[davew_uk]

If you run the 1.78 plugin and press F11 you'll be able to see a visualisation of this as high precision vertices are coloured blue and low precision ones in red.

OK, I've done that and added a third image to the imgur gallery

http://imgur.com/a/N0viu

I hope this helps to track down the problem. FWIW is there any other reason to use 1.78 plugin instead of selecting Pete's OpenGL2Tweaks 2.4 in the video plugin config?

I ask because the Peops plugin doesn't seem to work nicely with any of the Tomb Raider FMVs - they play OK but have a thin vertical line running through them. I just wondered if there were any other particular advantages of using it?

 

[TheDimensioner]

Just a weird little thing that happened while I was recording a video. I had just disabled the music in-game, since I was using CPU overclock (x1.5) and that makes music garbled:

Spoiler

It happened only this time. My settings were the usual, and I have no logs (don't know how to make one, actually XD). Trying to load the BIOS also immediately crashes the emulator, with the message "PCSX-df has stopped working". It's just weird .

 

[iCatButler]

@fischkopf I'm looking into Pandemonium now, it appears to be unique among the games I've tried in that it is completely broken on PGXP
There are absolutely no vertices coming through in high precision, which makes it very useful for testing.

@davew_uk that's quite helpful. It looks like none of the vertices have been modified by the CPU as appears to happen in some other games.

It might be possible to improve results on games like these using a hybrid approach of PGXP and Edgbla's original GTE Accuracy hack. Instead of falling back on the lower precision results it can first try looking up a suitable value in the cache.
Tomb Raider 3 looks like it has an additional advantage in that only one vertex on each quad is missing, the position of the last vertex can be verified against the plane defined by the other three.

I'll try this out, it might be a good interim solution and maybe an alternative if fully mirroring all the operations needed to track values proves expensive on slower CPUs.

The main reason for maintaining the 1.78 plugin is that the complete source is available, whereas the Tweak plugin modifies the closed source 2.9 plugin, making it easier to develop new features in first. There probably aren't any benefits to using it over the Tweak plugin in games at present.

@TheDimensioner I'll have a look at the crash on entering the bios, it's probably something that's normally initialised when running games but not by the bios.

I'm not sure what caused the in-game crash, maybe a side effect of overclocking the CPU

 

[LuismaSp89]

If it helps for someone, changing the default #Texture Cache size from "128" to to something like "320" from the .ini of the Petes opengl2 tweak 2.4, the games runs better and avoids crashes for example in tomb raider 1, when you load a savestate multiple times (At least for me)

 

[iCatButler]

WIP_PGXP_build_16_05_16.zip

This build adds support for vertex caching and fixes a few bugs, it also has a "PGXP" configuration menu with check boxes to enable various features:

• PGXP GTE, enables the tracking of vertices using PGXP
• Vertex Caching, enables hybrid Edgbla GTE Accuracy to catch more vertices in some games
• Perspective texturing, enables perspective correct texturing where possible

You can mix and match different settings, for instance vertex caching will cause extra instability in some games due to ambiguous results (which fall back on low precision data).
The debug mode has been updated in the version 1.78 plugin has been updated to show cached and ambiguous vertices as green and magenta respectively.

@fischkopf Pandemonium now has pretty much complete support from PGXP with only a few 2D primitives not being tracked. Unfortunately the required changes don't seem to have fixed any other games, the developers were writing vertex data to hardcoded memory addresses...

@davew_uk hopefully the vertex caching option should fix some of the worst seams in Tomb Raider 3 and 4. It doesn't work at all in some of the games I've tried, like MGS, but others like Vagrant Story are almost completely fixed.

@TheDimensioner the crash on entering the bios was caused by the clockspeed variable not being properly initialised, this should be fixed now.

 

[davew_uk]

The new build looks pretty good. I tried Tomb Raider 1,2,3 & 4 with both the peops and pete plugins and its definitely much improved. Thanks!

 

[superjupi]

Wipeout and Wipeout XL are also looking a whole lot better! Gran Turismo 1&2 even moreso. The only game I have that seems beyond all reach is Grandia, which was also beyond the help of Edgbla's efforts to start with.

 

[unreal676]

I just have to say, after trying it out, the CPU overclock feature is kind of amazing.

I used to have issues getting both R4 Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo 2 running at 30 FPS in-game before, but this overclock has helped me get a steady and solid 30 FPS from both games. Not only is it more responsive, but it just works too.

On that note, Gran Turismo 2 now works much better than before on the older PGXP builds.

The only game I own that seems really weird is Croc... ... the 3D elements are wavy all the time. I tried it when the PGXP high precision build was made available a while back, it seemed bad then, it's a little better now, but it may as well as be broken. There aren't any seams or black lines and things, it's quite literally wavy when you move and it still showcases heavy jidder as well.


Regarding Gran Turismo and R4, I may make a new video for each of them showing off the newest build, it's kind of incredible how amazing it is.

 

[fischkopf]

Tekken 3 60fps test:

 

[cloudbill]

Tekken 3 60fps test:

It looks good but seems too fast for me. No apparent gaps in the models. I guess it's a matter of preference.

I do have to admit that i liked Ridge Racer Type 4 @ a CPU of 1.5 though.

 

[fischkopf]

@cloudbill
Too fast? I'm pretty sure it's running at the default framerate here. Unlike the Crash games, Tekken 3 doesn't seem to break the frame limiter if you use the CPU overclock.

BTW, I found it pretty interesting that Silent Hill runs much better than on the real hardware, if you use 2.0x overclock. We know the game is capped at 30fps, but without the overclock it will go lower than 30 very often even on real hardware. If you use 2.0x overclock you get 30 fps the whole time, the only problem is the music will run faster, but the speech and sound effects remain unaffected.

 

[curryking3]

Wow, I'm glad people suggested Gran Turismo 2, it's running a buttery 30 frames/second with the overclock and PXGP makes it so smooth looking. It's just like if there was a native PC version almost!

Even though it now feels like an Arcade game that is fine, it's so fun

@iCatButler by the way, that option to turn off the black and white movies did the trick for me on my desktop!

I have it toggled on for my laptop I think, but it never has black and white FMVs there anyway

By the way I've noticed actually on the latest build in Mega Man Legends that I'm clipping through geometry in the world a lot more than I remember... I'm not sure if I'm doing it by pure luck, but it's happened 3 or 4 times in a few minutes just now. I clipped through a buildiing in one of the Town areas after walking into a small potted plant beside the building, and I could repeat that I think if needed. And just now I fell through the ground by walking too close to a wall in the Strip Mall area just before the Town.

Could that be related to geometry changes in PXGP? I never noticed this on previous builds at least. Or maybe it's due to the overclocking?

I just played for 5 seconds with all the toggles for PXGP checked on the May 16 build (and turned off the overclocking feature) and walked to the edge of the "game area" at the save location outside the truck here, and I ended up teleported this far from the game area (you are supposed to only be able to go in the light green area lol ).

Just repeated the glitch in the May 16 build again to make sure. Tried the May 11 build of PXGP and wasn't able to repeat the glitch, either here or falling through the floor in the mall, or clipping through buildings in the first Town area.

 

[iCatButler]

@superjupi I'm looking at Grandia now, from what I can tell it is actually scaling and offsetting almost all the vertex positions on the CPU after they've been transformed by the GTE. In at least one axis the GTE seems to be outputting values at double the screen size with the CPU scaling them down for rendering, maybe in an attempt by the developer to improve stability. That's why Edgbla's vertex cache isn't getting any correct values either.

I'm currently adding tracking code to all the CPU arithmetic and logic operations, it's not particularly easy because a lot of bitwise operations are heavily used but only make sense for floating point values in very specific situations. Depending on how they're used it might be impossible to get 100% compatibility with all titles.

@unreal676 I think Croc might be a similar case to Grandia where none of the GTE values are ever used in their original form, but further transformed by the CPU. With any luck tracking those CPU operations should improve it too.

@fischkopf while it closes up some of the seams vertex caching doesn't completely fix Tekken 3, when using the debug view the vertices flicker between cached and low precision quite a lot. In some cases I think this might be less stable than without caching.

Although perhaps the most distracting effect of PGXP is that the texture correction makes it more obvious that the ground plane and background rotate at different rates, so every fight appears to take place on a giant floating platform

@curryking3 I don't remember adding an option for black and white movies so that must have been there all along

If the collision problems are happening even when overclocking is disabled then I think it might be caused by my fix for the constant memory addresses used in Pandemonium. I've got it calling the same code used for variable addresses, which passes the data on to the emulator's memory functions, but I've since noticed that the original code didn't do this and writes directly to the memory. It probably means that certain memory operations are occurring twice...

I'll try writing a new function to handle this case and include it in the next build.

 

[curryking3]

@iCatButler you're right that black and white movies thing was there before, I missed it from a while ago, oops, I honestly had no idea it was an option

And very interesting, I hope it works out

Edit - F6: Toggle Black & White decoders

Pressing F6 in game for PCSXR gets rid of the black and white high contrast FMVs, I don't even know what that function is for but it is now working perfectly for me with FMVs on all my computers

 

[TheDimensioner]

The newest WIP helps a little with the tire problem in Gran Turismo 2, but now some textures get "pulled" towards the camera, more noticeable in the red and white things at the corners (kerbs, rumble strips? Don't even know the name of that in my own language ).

Spoiler

I've also made a video with Vigilante 8: 2nd Offence. That is the first PSX full 3D 60FPS game that I've found (didn't care about those things when I played as child ). The draw distance is awful, but most moving objects can be seen at a distance. That game is actually better with vertex caching disabled. Will show it later.

P.S.: post #1000, wow, this is great! Thank you @tapeq for starting this thread more than 2 years ago.

 

[curryking3]

I believe Tobal No. 1 and Tobal 2 also run at 60 fps, those should look very nice with the overclock I bet, if there was any slowdown in the originals.

I bet Ehrgeiz also looks great with PXGP too!

 

[superjupi]

Ehrgeiz and the Tobals already looked nigh-flawless with just GTE accuracy, and they don't disappoint at all with the current PGXP. Same goes for Destrega, Dynasty Warriors, and Bloody Roar 1&2.

 

[TheDimensioner]

Here's Vigilante 8: 2nd Offence. I thought the NFS: PU draw ditance/culling was bad, but this game wins:

Spoiler

I tried to setup a Dreamcast emulator to see the difference between this game's versions, but I couldn't do it. Reicast is too slow and nullDC couldn't recognize the .cdi image I had. Chankast is just too old. What software could I use to convert and what kind of image would nullDC read?