leileilol wrote on 2020-10-18, 00:25:
Kerr Avon wrote on 2020-10-17, 14:31:Of course, if N64 emulation becomes good enough, then I'd be happy emulating the console on my PC or laptop, but it still has problems at the moment.
libretro's Mupen64next has a very fast good ParaLLEl Vulkan backend that takes in all of its dithered+smoothed+antialiased 240p glory. There were major improvements to it earlier this year so it's the best balance for accuracy and speed. and is definitely not very FPGA-able at this time.
(it also has a silly option to render N64 in higher resolutions with those effects, but it'll break some buffer effects and also doesn't do anything about the fog.)
Sound interesting! I'll have a look, thanks. N64 graphics look great (well, relative to the real console's output) when scaled up normally in an emulator, even the N64 emulator on the original XBox looks really good, though that emulator is based on very old emulator code (newer versions of the emulator, which are released only on the PC, are closed source, sadly), plus the original XBox isn't fast enough to run that emulator at full speed with every N64 game. Some games are nearly perfect on it, others have varying levels of problems, and a few games won't run at all.
SScorpio wrote on 2020-10-24, 22:03:
Kerr Avon wrote on 2020-10-17, 14:31:
I just wish that someone would make an N64 clone with HDMI output. By far the best HDMI solution currently available for the N64 is the UltraHDMI, which stopped production a couple of years ago, and scalpers are now selling them for ridiculous prices (I saw one for almost $1,500). Lesser solutions produce inferior picture quality, and aren't usable for me anyway, since I have a PAL N64 (being in England) and some N64 + HDMI solutions don't work with PAL consoles, and also because I also play NTSC games upon my PAL N64 (the Everdrive 64 makes this possible), and some N64 + HDMI solutions can't show the NTSC signal that a PAL N64 outputs.
Of course, if N64 emulation becomes good enough, then I'd be happy emulating the console on my PC or laptop, but it still has problems at the moment. I've heard that emulation of the Gamecube and the Wii are more accurate than emulation of the N64, which baffles me. Mind you, emulation of the PS3 is apparently quite good now, too, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.
There's a Kickstarter live right now for something called the Warrior 64. It seems kinda sketchy in that it's funded in Hong Kong dollars, but it's $95 for the installable kit or $150 for one already installed into a console along with one of their controllers and a new console shell. The page says it's not able to play PAL games, but it would at least let you run NTSC games to HDMI without issue, and for much less than an UltraHDMI.
I've seen it (the webpage, I mean of course, not the console) and I agree that it doesn't inspire confidence. I don't much care that the console shell is so extremely ugly (it's a box that sits next to the TV, so I don't much care about it's aesthetics), but people who seem to know about such things say that the quality of the HDMI output is likely to be pretty bad, similar to the way standard N64 output via composite looks on a compatible TV. That will still be much better than I currently get on my TV, so I'd buy the Warrior 64 for that, but it does seem to have other potential worries about game compatibility and maybe even TV image latency (which you definitely don't want when playing games), so my hopes for the warrior 64 aren't too high.
newtmonkey wrote on 2020-10-26, 02:38:
Kerr Avon wrote on 2020-10-17, 14:31:
I just wish that someone would make an N64 clone with HDMI output. By far the best HDMI solution currently available for the N64 is the UltraHDMI, which stopped production a couple of years ago, and scalpers are now selling them for ridiculous prices (I saw one for almost $1,500). Lesser solutions produce inferior picture quality, and aren't usable for me anyway, since I have a PAL N64 (being in England) and some N64 + HDMI solutions don't work with PAL consoles, and also because I also play NTSC games upon my PAL N64 (the Everdrive 64 makes this possible), and some N64 + HDMI solutions can't show the NTSC signal that a PAL N64 outputs.
Of course, if N64 emulation becomes good enough, then I'd be happy emulating the console on my PC or laptop, but it still has problems at the moment. I've heard that emulation of the Gamecube and the Wii are more accurate than emulation of the N64, which baffles me. Mind you, emulation of the PS3 is apparently quite good now, too, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.
Have you looked into the RetroTINK-2X MINI? The RetroTINK series of products won't produce as nice of an image as the UltraHDMI of course, but I've got my N64 hooked up to a 4K TV using the RetroTINK with Svideo and it looks great.
I wouldn't hold my breath on a decent quality clone coming out, since such a clone would likely use a cheap composite>HDMI converter that would likely be no better than just plugging the N64 straight into your TV.
The RetroTINK-2X MINI might be just what I want! I'll have a read up on it when I get home, thanks.