Amiga emulators: is it worth it?

[amigaksi]

>by AmiKit on 2009/1/19 5:13:35

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>>The problem with emulating a computer is that there will always be latency. Usually this is most visible in sound.

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>I don't think so. Even if there was any latency I doubt any human can notice it.

There IS latency since they purposely introduced it in their buffering scheme so they get more time to translate from one machine to another.  You will notice it -- it depends on the application and which hardware resources it uses.

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>>You'll never get the complete Amiga look and feel via emulation, no matter how good UAE is.

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>Well, a simple Turing test denies your statement. http://www.amigaforever.com/tutorials/goodorbad/

That article is subjective (understandably) and flawed.  You can also put a person who mostly does BASIC language programming in front of an Atari ST set up like an Amiga but that does not make an Atari ST an Amiga.  There's no way to try all the possible applications that can be written for a machine.  CPU power increasing over many years does not make all the other hardware automatically better.  And if the emulation was 100% accurate on PC, there's no reason to use the emulation-- just get the PC version of the software which avoids the translation layer completely and get a more efficient result.  It's easy enough to write a program that works on all OCS amigas but not on an emulator given the standard PC hardware.

[AmiKit]

That article is subjective...

lol, a human being IS subjective! And the Turing test, in this case, is about human perceiving. You did not get it.

[AmiKit]

If you go by PC standard hardware, it is impossible to do the cycle-exact emulation of the Amiga.

Hmmm, strange because I saw Cycle-Exact option in WinUAE/Chipset settings. In addition there's "100% accurate" sound emulation option in sound settings.

[amigaksi]

by AmigaHeretic on 2009/1/19 11:44:46

...
>I use WinUAE and it's emulation is great. The only thing that I never could get to work before was one of the NewTek demos where it shows "4096 color Hi-Res" (on OCS) and it has the picture of the guys face closed up, well, the latest version of WinUAE show it perfectly now. So I guess it's WinUAE IS perfect now.

I guess the earth is flat now-- I just looked out the window and saw in every direction I could.

[amigaksi]

by AmiKit on 2009/1/20 2:16:08

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That article is subjective...

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>lol, a human being IS subjective! And the Turing test, in this case, is about human perceiving. You did not get it.

No, the URL you gave is stating much more than just someone being subjective.  

[amigaksi]

by AmiKit on 2009/1/20 3:14:58

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If you go by PC standard hardware, it is impossible to do the cycle-exact emulation of the Amiga.

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>Hmmm, strange because I saw Cycle-Exact option in WinUAE/Chipset settings. In addition there's "100% accurate" sound emulation option in sound settings.

I can also put many options in software that work partially or not at all.  I don't follow blindly.  You are not even giving experimental results what to speak of deductive logic of whether it's do-able on a particular hardware.

[AmiKit]

No, the URL you gave is stating much more than just someone being subjective.

I was referring to the Turing test paragraph only ("Amiga Feeling Can't Be Emulated"). It cannot be linked directly. Sorry.

[AmiKit]

I can also put many options in software that work partially or not at all. I don't follow blindly. You are not even giving experimental results what to speak of deductive logic of whether it's do-able on a particular hardware.

Experimental results? Lol, you still don't get it, do you? It is the subjective human perceiving that counts here. Not the small difference in exact numbers, voltage or whatever.

Look, I understand that from objective point of view the emulated Amiga on PC hardware is not Amiga. But my favourite games behave just like they behaved on my real Amiga. At least my impression is the same. So from MY point of view it IS Amiga. I really don't care about the PC HW that is under the desk, I don't care about cycle-exact issue or whatever. I don't need to do experimental HW research in order to increase my subjective impression of the game, etc. That's it.

--Jan

[spirantho]

As is always the way, different people have different requirements.

For myself, I use UAE because it's a very good program. However, it is not and never will be perfect.

There is a latency in the UAE engine, there has to be - it's fundamental to the way it works. And for myself the combined latency of the sound, the graphics, and the input maybe be almost imperceptible, but I still feel the difference, and that's what's most important to me.

I'm lucky in as much as I have both a powerful WinUAE setup and also a beefed-up A4000 (CSPPC 060), but I can tell you I only really enjoy using one of them, even though they're both controlled by the same mouse/keyboard/monitor, and it's not the UAE.

[AmiKit]

@spirantho

Are we still talking about A500 games?
Even WHDLoad on a real machine (A1200 and better) can be considered as emulation when running A500 games - in strict point of view.

And for myself the combined latency of the sound, the graphics, and the input maybe be almost imperceptible, but I still feel the difference, and that's what's most important to me.

If those things are imperceptible, what makes the difference in your feelings? Just the knowledge that it is the emulation? If so, that is exactly what Turing test eliminated.

--Jan

[swift240]

I love using Amikit, as far as Amiga emulation goes it has to be the best I have used so far, blazingly fast compared to my Expanded 1200, no more waiting for this or that to open its fast, very fast.

The sound I have never had a problem, I can do far more with Amikit than I can with my 1200, Ok Amikit is not the real thing and never will be of course not well its an emulator after all, but it is the closest thing I have come across.

Lets face it the way the Amiga world is going the Amiga is pretty much finished, so a decent emulator has to be a good thing.
If only some one would get there fingure from out there bum concerning the Amiga we might just get some where.

So until that day comes its an emulator for me. for my real 1200 I do like to use it now and then for nostalgia.

I still must contributed to Amikit I said I would and so far I havent but now Christmas is out the way I can now give some thing.

I know some people will find things wrong with emulation, but over the time emulation has come a long way, it can only get better.

For me on a personal level its Amikit every time.
If only I could get a keyfile for Frogger that would be great.

Mike.

[shoggoth]

amigaksi wrote:
If you go by PC standard hardware, it is impossible to do the cycle-exact emulation of the Amiga.

I'd like to see you explain that statement. Emulation granularity is *not* dictated by hardware capabilities such as timers, sprites, multi-channel audio chips. Generally that's not how you solve these things, at least not in any of the emulators I've worked on.

[bloodline]

shoggoth wrote:

amigaksi wrote:
If you go by PC standard hardware, it is impossible to do the cycle-exact emulation of the Amiga.

I'd like to see you explain that statement. Emulation granularity is *not* dictated by hardware capabilities such as timers, sprites, multi-channel audio chips. Generally that's not how you solve these things, at least not in any of the emulators I've worked on.

Ignore amigaski, he is more ilinformed than a British General during the First World war...

[shoggoth]

bloodline wrote:
Ignore amigaski, he is more ilinformed than a British General during the First World war...

Ah, ok that explains it. I'll try, but I might not be able to. My BS-o-meter just went off the scale.

[DiskDoctor]

KThunder wrote:
if you have any problems setting winuae up on your own from a download, get amigaforever. it is an awesome package that takes 99% of the

swift240 wrote:
I love using Amikit, as far as Amiga emulation goes it has to be the best I have used so far, blazingly fast compared to my Expanded 1200, no more waiting for this or that to open its fast, very fast.

This is why I want to have them both (for a case?), just wanted to be sure.

I wrote:
I assume AmiKit and AmigaForever environments claim to perform better?

So maybe that wasn't silly question to the hilt...

What is performance?  Well once you have all things installed and properly set, AmiKit says the engine's the same - it should work exactly the same.

But when you're not sure about the setup (despite of trying hard), the take-it-out-of-the-box-and-play solutions might be considered working "better".

This is performance, too.  Or maybe configuration is the issue here, too?  As much complicated?

[AmiKit]

@DiskDoctor

Maybe the performance of the user? With AmiKit you can eg. unpack archives with simple drag&drop. This saves much time compared to the bare system which doesn't even have any unpacker program installed...