First post, by kjliew
QEMU just becomes better at retro Windows games! 😉 Any other PC emulators would even try to emulate SB Live! or Aureal Vortex2? 🤣 and what's the expected frame rate then ...
So here's the recipe:
- DSOAL or DSOAL-XP, using libopenal-1.dll as OpenAL driver.
- Latest OpenAL Soft 1.21.1 from MSYS2 repo, recompiled with heavy optimization and support for Windows XP.
OpenAL vendor string: OpenAL Community
OpenAL renderer string: OpenAL Soft
OpenAL version string: 1.1 ALSOFT 1.21.1
OpenAL extensions:
EFX version: 1.0
It currently works best in Linux KVM. Linux with kernel 5.13.x and latest MESA improve virtualization performance across Intel/AMD CPUs by 20~25%. Many games which were struggling in the past on Ryzen 2500U APU now played smoothly at near 60 FPS. And for games that already rendered at over 100 FPS, we could now bring 3D audio processing to CPU for EAX audio effects.
It is passable on Windows 10 WHPX, but not as great as Linux KVM. Sounds would hiss & pop sometimes and may take a while to recover. Tuning QEMU audiodev backends can help but that would be system specific. There is not many audio backends available on Windows. For dsound backend, I had to increase timer-period from default 10ms to 30ms to get smooth sounds.
-audiodev id=dsound,driver=dsound,timer-period=30000,in.voices=0,in.mixing-engine=off,out.mixing-engine=off
If the games work on 32-bit Windows 7, then QEMU audio on Windows 7 guest will be much better with support for HD Audio, finer OS scheduler time quantum and DSOAL/OpenAL Soft can use WASAPI backend for low-latency audio.
Here's some of the tested games:
GrandPrix 3 Season 2000 is a fantastic game with EAX audio effects fully upgraded from the original GrandPrix 3.
F.E.A.R is probably another fantastic EAX game and the audio effects add to the horrific atmosphere.
The rest, I am not quite sure, probably just a "feel-good" checked mark "Yeah, I have EAX on my VMs for Windows games".