Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?

[Hammer]

If I understand well, such an interpolation is usefeul in films or wholly moving screens because it suppresses the "pauses" that occur when a frame is repeated.

But if it only adds frames it can't improve 2D animation, especially for objects that moves on the screen without changing shape, because in it motion must be regular. Every added frame will just slow animation down instead of stopping it, so instead of getting jerky animation you will just get wavy animation : it won't make the motion regular. In order to reproduce 2D animation accurately on a different refresh rate, you would need to redraw every frame to make it correspond to what the eye would see at the same moment if the display's frame rate was right..

The whole point about "motion interpolation" is to avoid judder issues e.g. playing 24FPS video on 60hz/120hz display.

[arkpandora]

@Hammer

Are seriously comparing AGA vs AVIVO HD or PureVideo HD?

What is AGA's HQV score again?

You seem to be out of sync with the topic, if I may say.  ;-)

The animation problem we are discussing is independant of processing power.  It is a physical problem - the difference between the emulated screen's refresh rate (in other words the emulated frame rate) and the emulator screen's refresh rate.

On the other hand, there is a misunderstanding about the words "2D animation", which I clarify in my previous post.  Perfect 2D animation of moving objects is designed for only one refresh rate, unlike movies.

The whole point about "motion interpolation" is to avoid judder issues e.g. playing 24FPS video on 60hz/120hz display.

Yes, and this point is not enough for emulated Amiga 2D animation.

[coldfish]

@foleyjo

I disagree.

Being handheld alone makes it "better", not having to use floppies seals the deal, IMO.
 

[arkpandora]

@coldfish

As you can see, I have been no further forward since our last discussion on the subject, about two years ago.

[fishy_fiz]

In regards to the topic, Id have to say both have thier pros and cons. Generally emulation is much faster, but while its pretty accurate these days, its not "perfect" as some have said here. There's still a (admittedly smallish) percentage of heavily copper intensive software that doesnt work as intended. Also the "feel" is a bit wrong. Not really a flaw as such, but I also dont really like running hosted ontop of another OS, but that one is just personal taste. Mostly its pretty good, but any of the emulators that have custom chipset support have enough quirks for them not to be really for me. Personally I enjoy my combination of Amithlon plus my a1200/bppc/grex. Having said this though I can understand why people are happy with UAE variants, as for the most part theyre pretty good these days and I do still use Winuae from time to time.
Just my 2 cents  :-)

[Damion]

Hammer wrote:

If I understand well, such an interpolation is usefeul in films or wholly moving screens because it suppresses the "pauses" that occur when a frame is repeated.

But if it only adds frames it can't improve 2D animation, especially for objects that moves on the screen without changing shape, because in it motion must be regular. Every added frame will just slow animation down instead of stopping it, so instead of getting jerky animation you will just get wavy animation : it won't make the motion regular. In order to reproduce 2D animation accurately on a different refresh rate, you would need to redraw every frame to make it correspond to what the eye would see at the same moment if the display's frame rate was right..

The whole point about "motion interpolation" is to avoid judder issues e.g. playing 24FPS video on 60hz/120hz display.

Actually, the point is to reduce judder, nothing eliminates it entirely. You'll notice film aficionados generally prefer certain scaling techniques over others for this exact reason. From your wiki link:

According to CNET.com executive editor David Carnoy, with Sony's MotionFlow objects look more stable when the feature is turned on. This is sometimes accompanied by a glitch in the picture.[1] Not everyone likes the effect and some complain that it gives film a "video" look.[6]

Anyway, as has been pointed out, the discussion had nothing to do with OMtehG AGA vs s0ny peeCee5 vide0 scalZing ab1Lit33z11!, but rather how closely WinUAE can emulate Amiga 2D scrolling. Bloodline's video (which wasn't really that bad :-P) was supposed to be an example of game scrolling with a good WinUAE config. The bottom line (as was expected) seems to be that some are content, others are not. :/

[foleyjo]

@coldfish

I use WHDLoad on my amiga and its been a long time since Ive used a floppy (except to check if something works before it goes on ebay)

So using your argument would the GP2X playstation emulator be better than a real playstation??

[coldfish]

@foleyjo

PS1 uses floppies?!?  LOL!

/deliberately obtuse mode off.

[foleyjo]

I was obviously referring to your argument that being handheld alone makes it better

[Hammer]

Yes, and this point is not enough for emulated Amiga 2D animation.

It's fine for SuperFrog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZfX-EvDeNc

Also, WinUAE(I'm running 1.4.6) has Fullscreen + VSync, FPS adj and NTSC.

[Hammer]

 :-)

-D- wrote:

Hammer wrote:

If I understand well, such an interpolation is usefeul in films or wholly moving screens because it suppresses the "pauses" that occur when a frame is repeated.

But if it only adds frames it can't improve 2D animation, especially for objects that moves on the screen without changing shape, because in it motion must be regular. Every added frame will just slow animation down instead of stopping it, so instead of getting jerky animation you will just get wavy animation : it won't make the motion regular. In order to reproduce 2D animation accurately on a different refresh rate, you would need to redraw every frame to make it correspond to what the eye would see at the same moment if the display's frame rate was right..

The whole point about "motion interpolation" is to avoid judder issues e.g. playing 24FPS video on 60hz/120hz display.

Actually, the point is to reduce judder, nothing eliminates it entirely. You'll notice film aficionados generally prefer certain scaling techniques over others for this exact reason. From your wiki link:

According to CNET.com executive editor David Carnoy, with Sony's MotionFlow objects look more stable when the feature is turned on. This is sometimes accompanied by a glitch in the picture.[1] Not everyone likes the effect and some complain that it gives film a "video" look.[6]

Ermm, it’s a Sony....

This is not Philips Trimension middleware.
http://www.trimension.philips.com/

"Philips Trimension software for PCs ensures stunning image quality − even on the biggest, most demanding HD flat screens. No judder, no artifacts, just superb images and razor sharp video."

WinDVD7 is shipped with Philips TrimensionDNM middleware.

According to http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hitech/1449/smooth-operator.html


"To eliminate judder, Trimension calculates enough interpolated frames between the actual frames recorded on a DVD to be able to show them all at 60 fps. Good frame interpolation is a technically difficult and sophisticated process, and it's impressive that Trimension runs smoothly on a PC (a 2.8-GHz Pentium 4, at minimum)."


Not a problem with today's multi-core CPUs and video accelerators. Brute force computation performance can be applied at this problem.


"Smooth is also the word to describe the results. Old or new, B&W or color, animated or live action — if the original film was made at 24 fps, Trimension makes nearly all moving objects cross the screen with an almost surrealistic smoothness. While images containing no motion look precisely the same with the system on or off, it takes only a very slight movement — a turn of a head, the raising of a hand, a single step — to make the image look more lifelike than normal film. The effect is so pronounced that the latest version of WinDVD, v.7, includes a toned-down mode that introduces an even-rhythm, cinema-like judder ("2:2 pulldown")."


Latest WinDVD is at 9th release.

[stefcep2]

bloodline wrote:
@stefcep2

Don't blame either your computer or UAE for your inability to configure UAE... Would you like me to send you a config?

Oh I can configure Winuae ok:  I have about a dozen different configs ranging from a 1.3 1 meg ecs A500, through to a 3.1 AGA 1200 with 4 meg, through to a A4000 68040 with P96.  I have also run all of the preconfigured hard files eg AIAB, Amigasys, Amikit, Amiga Classic, even my own A4000 os3.9 install.

Its nothing to do with configuration, its everything to do with the fact the emulator is running on top of the host OS, using the host's hardware and graphics drivers to re-target custom chip calls to equivalent functions on the host hardware.  Sometimes directly equivalent functions exist on the host system or are approximated well enough that you don't notice, sometimes that doesn't work.  Winuae is good but NOT the same as the real thing, yet.

[stefcep2]

@stefcep2

Thanks for your comments.

I would not say that the Amiga once tried to be a PC, as the PC wasn't more suitable than the Amiga for the kind of software you quote (except maybe the "chunky" vs "planar" processing but I suppose that processing power could compensate) : the PC was favoured for marketing reasons rather than technical reasons.

I'd differ on this.  At the time, I used Art effect, TV Paint and Photogenics on a top flight Amiga: A4000 68060, scsi drives, 128 meg ram CV64, 1024 x768 16 bit display.  I also ran Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator on a PC and i can say unequivocally that the PC's processing speed and superior graphics display speed made all the difference in making its software more usable, in terms of speed and the quality of the processing, and features.  Using a few layers in Art Effect on the A4000 use to get painfully slow.
The Amiga hardware was not as well suited to this sort of work as well as the PC was at the same time.

[arkpandora]

@Hammer

It's fine for SuperFrog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZfX-EvDeNc

Animation in this video is quite ugly, you know.

[bloodline]

stefcep2 wrote:

bloodline wrote:
@stefcep2

Don't blame either your computer or UAE for your inability to configure UAE... Would you like me to send you a config?

Oh I can configure Winuae ok:  

Well, clearly not... :-)

I have about a dozen different configs ranging from a 1.3 1 meg ecs A500, through to a 3.1 AGA 1200 with 4 meg, through to a A4000 68040 with P96.  I have also run all of the preconfigured hard files eg AIAB, Amigasys, Amikit, Amiga Classic, even my own A4000 os3.9 install.

Yes, but have you tuned the emulation for the hardware? if you want a perfect experience you have spend a bit of time to try every setting in isolation, and then in various combinations to get the very best emulation.

Its nothing to do with configuration, its everything to do with the fact the emulator is running on top of the host OS, using the host's hardware and graphics drivers to re-target custom chip calls to equivalent functions on the host hardware.

But that isn't how it works...

The software, UAE, actually pretends to be the hardware... there is no re-targeting of calls (except in the RTG emulation)... the Amiga display is built entirely in software and then simply displayed via the host OS.

Sometimes directly equivalent functions exist on the host system or are approximated well enough that you don't notice, sometimes that doesn't work.  Winuae is good but NOT the same as the real thing, yet.

The Amiga was once considered impossible to emulate due to the very tight timings between the chips and the shear number of operations that need to be performed in the right sequence... If the emulation gets anything wrong, things go downhill fast!

[arkpandora]

@stefcep2

But I suppose you are comparing the A4000 to a more recent PC with a more recent motherboard.  Even if you don't, I suppose that the difference of processing power may only be explained by Motorola's or the graphic card's slower processor, which too are a consequence of the PC being in favour with the public, as it has been delaying the Amiga's inheritances and slowing down the hardware's improvements since the late 80s.  And last but not least, as you say it, PC software was better coded, as it was coded for the most powerful setups while Amiga software (especially games) was usually coded for the least powerful setup, which again was a consequence of the public's favour and in turn fueled the hardware factor.  But originally, this favour was independant of processing power.