Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Amiga Emulation => Topic started by: vic20owner on August 06, 2007, 04:05:16 PM
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I just stumbled across the filter settings for WinUAE. Previously I was irritated with emulators never being able to go full screen well. Now, with the filter settings (although not perfect) I am satisfied.
Then I considered that an emulator is more compatible than teh real thing... for example my A1200 may not run older ECS games, but my emulator will.
If I want to use native resolutions, I could use the picasso driver.
So I am starting to think that a laptop running winuae with a bunch of adfs is a lot better than a classic amiga with a box of dying floppies.
I've gone so far as to start configuring winuae on my mame cabinet :)
So how many of you guys think the emulator beats the real thing hands down?
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Depends on what you wanna do.
Btw, the compatbility can not be considered. Even an "over-boosted" A4k can run almost all OCS/ECS/AGA using WHDLoad... using floppies is a little bit outdated.
Moreover on a real Amiga you will have the real perfect refresh rate, the real perfect sound and the real not so perfect controlers to play with :-D
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Right here.
I can, for example, play Quake in OS 3.1 under WinUAE on a moderately powerful PC and get framerates wholly unattainable on any amiga.
More practically, Lightwave on an emulated Amiga setup positively roars it renders so fast.
I was never what you could call an "amiga" games buff; I mean I liked playing games on the Amiga but not some of those old chestnuts that most other folks seem to love so (lemmings, turrican, swiv, shadow of the beast, killing game show, Alien Breed, etc. etc.); more into sims (Gunship2000, M1 Tank Platoon, F16 Combat Pilot, Thunderhawk and so on), all of which were typically straight PC ports anyway. So going back and playing games isn't that big of a draw (to me).
The tiny bit of productivity apps that it's still fun to tinker with on the Amiga for me were real CPU hogs in their day and it's nice to run them through an emulator and watch, say, Vista 3.0 on the Amiga run at an absolutely blistering pace.
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IMHO the real thing is better for games, emulation never feels quite "right", I can't really explain why though. Maybe because I'm aware of Windows or OS X running in the background?
For processor intensive applications, however, an emulated Amiga on modern hardware is always going to be better.
Personally, I tend to use E-UAE to see if I like games before transferring them to my A4000 (with WHDLoad, no floppies needed!)
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Hi,
I'd have to say "Yes, they are better" - and I'm talking about WinUAE here...
You can have every Amiga model (assuming you have the ROM images) emulated almost to perfection.
If you do run into compatibility issues, WinUAE is so tweakable you're pretty likely to be able to get 99% of things running.
I too have found that it's actually more compatible, since it's much more configurable than a 'real' Amiga. I sold my A1200 ages ago and now only run WinUAE.
It's great to be able to run a 1280x1024x24bit workbench faster than any Amiga ever could. And connecting to the internet via my PC's cable modem couldn't be simpler!
Along with Google Earth, WinUAE is one of the most amazing pieces of software for the PC. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to be able to 'boot-up' my old A1200 config and have it running much faster and better looking in 'software' than it ever did in 'hardware'!
Cheers,
Mike.
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If they ever have any conventions it would be a great place to do a test. setup a couple of Emulators and a couple of real amigas (obviously with all signs as to which hidden) and see if anyone could tell. The emulators would have to be the same specs as the real As too.
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Then I considered that an emulator is more compatible than teh real thing... for example my A1200 may not run older ECS games, but my emulator will.
It would if you used a kickstart 1.x with the a1200. You can also run 99% of the games using a 1200 with the whdload software, which is much better than loading games from floppy anyways.. The drawback is that you need more than the standard 2meg chipram and that you need a hard drive. But if your a1200 has a hd+4meg ram added, then it will work perfectly with nearly all pre accelerator games.
UAE just does not cut it for gaming for me.. One of the things that annoyes me, is that it is plain impossible to get audio and video synced 100%. The audio is always delayed by so so many ms to stop it from getting choppy.
Also scrolling is nowhere near as perfect, as the background processes of the OS will interfere there.
Winuae is only better when you need pure cpu power.
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The AGA emulation speed still isn't as good as the ECS emulation on WinUAE. Just try running Total Choas AGA (http://aminet.net/game/strat/TotalChaosAGAr6.lha) on UAE with the Paula-based sound emulation and no patches installed. Unless your processor is over 3GHz or has more than one core, it will lag noticiably when it's trying to play the music.
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The last time I tried UAE, ARexx scripts, which worked on the real thing, would blow off with phony errors. Don't know if it's improved with newer versions or not yet, but it completely put me off emulation.
Does anyone know, has UAE's ARexx handling improved any over the last couple of years?
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@VIC20owner:
BTW, I still use my VIC-20 a lot and even designed an ultimate expander for it...
Concerning the emulated Amiga, I would have disagreed with you until I stumbled upon a nice little utility called Rage 3D tweak.
I often used the real Amiga to create video titling effects and animations. A PC does not normally have a beautiful NTSC compatible signal. However, my Radeeon9800 does have an S-Video out.
Using Rage3D Tweak, I was able to obtain a custom 720x480 video out resolution that is perfectly D1/NTSC compliant, just like the Amiga.
Since then, I am almost exclusively using WinUAE in full screen mode. Everything is the same as the real thing including the taller pixels, except, of course, its a lot faster, more compatible and powerful than the real thing.
It is true however, that achieveing the emulation quality that I get required me to have a PC with a dual core CPU running at 2.8GHz and 1GB of RAM.
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I think it is a more rewarding experience to use a real Amiga computer but I have to agree running old apps on stereoids in WinUAE is nice.
With emulation you can never be sure you get the 100% exact experience. Some modules for example sounds weird in WinUAE, with a real Amiga you know you get the best possible Amiga-sound.
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Pretty much, what I still use the Amiga for is retro gaming. And for that, I still take the real Amiga.
As stated before, though, forget about the floppies except for the few games left that don't have WHDLoads.
But I think the Amiga delivers a few things the emulations miss.
1) Sound/Video/Scroll sync. On WinUAE, the timings aren't as good, and weird little scroll glitches still creep in. Sound doesn't always properly sync.
2) Input lag. I'm not sure if it's also related to (1) but joysticks seem slightly lagged to what the game is doing. Possibly the video double-buffering?
3) Joysticks. For all their faults, I prefer to play the games on the joysticks of the time. I haven't found a solution to use the 9-pin style sticks in a PC that doesn't introduce even more lag than using a PC stick. (Which is already lagged - See #2) Also, nothing seems to emulate an Analog Amiga stick for the few games that support those.
4) Mouse - The Amiga had a few great games that were two player/two mouse. I never did quite figure out how to do that on an emulation.
My 1200/030 stocked with a wide selection of WHDLoads isn't leaving my possession anytime too soon. :-)
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A nice bonus of emulation for games is that you can save the emulator state, which is handy for games that don't have a save option.
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Say what ?! You dont use floppys anymore on real Amigas either..
www.whdload.de - All games installed and fixed for your pimped Amiga.
Also you dont need to reset anymore, just quit back to workbench.
I have regged it many years ago, so should you!
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emulation better? hands down, no. no way! can you run the toaster? no. UAE is cool but not as cool as a real amiga.
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I've heard praise from others that using Imagine3D and ImageFX on WinUAE really makes using them worthwhile (blazing fast).
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I like having a real Amiga. UAE is pretty nice too. Having both is best for sure. On many games, UAE provides better performance for sure, especially on disc access. You can save money with UAE for sure, hardware these days is expensive.
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One of my projects is making a P4 3GHz Shuttle mini-PC an emulated Amiga using WinUAE. I hope to get a Catweasel sometime soon.
The problem I've run into is that I can't seem to get WinUAE to use a partition of the HD for Workbench. It's an 80GB HD with XP on 40GB and a .hdf on the 40GB. The box can only fit one HD. I could use a Firewire or USB HD but I'd rather not.
Anyway, atm I'm using an Interact ProPad hooked up to a SB Live! card and I've got the Total Chaos AGA CD32 up and running. I haven't had any joystick lag. The game runs pretty smooth. Video card is a ATI 9800 AGP PRO.
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I would run an emulated Amiga with the same enthusiasm as I'd have driving an emulated Porsche.
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I personally love the fact that on my PC which is a dual core amd64 x2 processor (4200+) 2 gigs of ram, Nvidia 8500GS, Vista Ultimate x64, I can run WinUAE and WinAROS at the same time. One in emulation, the other in a virtual pc (Virtual PC is now free since Vista's release for download). The exciting thing is I run my machine on a 720p HD monitor, my emulated screen resolution I run in is 1280x768x32bits..
It's soo fast and all of my old 3.x Amiga software (mostly productivity and 3d stuff) opens on the emulated picasso screen soo very nicely. It's extremely fast and gives things like final writer, and Pro Page 4.2 new life..
Also I am getting flawless animation even in Picassomodes for the software that supports it.
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Ilwrath wrote:
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3) Joysticks. For all their faults, I prefer to play the games on the joysticks of the time. I haven't found a solution to use the 9-pin style sticks in a PC that doesn't introduce even more lag than using a PC stick.
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Have you tried Stelladapter? I use my good old Wico Boss 9-pin joystick, the same one I started using on the VIC back in 1982, in WinUAE today.
No lag here...
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I had an expanded A1200 with whdload, it was ok except when an install would crash because of a corrupt disk.
Now, I prefer to use WinUAE on my HTPC for classic Amiga gaming;
-better compatibility.
-faster.
-more convenient.
-more versatile.
-cheap n cheerful.
-gets better with every WinUAE update.
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Hi,
I'd love a Stelladapter - any idea where to get one (The Atari Age website says "out of stock")?
Cheers,
Mike.
>Have you tried Stelladapter? I use my good old Wico Boss >9-pin joystick, the same one I started using on the VIC back >in 1982, in WinUAE today.
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WinUAE better than my Amigas? Not a chance.
For starters the emulation will never be as accurate as the real thing, particularly sound, which still gets choppy sometimes.
But also WinUAE is just nowhere as much fun to tinker with.
I like messing around with obscure hardware, for instance my A500 has a KCS PowerPC board with a 10.7MHz NEC V30 board in it - just for the heck of it. My A1500 currently has a 486SLC2/50 Goldengate bridgeboard and 5 floppy drives of varying sizes attached to it. Do that in WinUAE! Not that you'd want to - but that's the point. WinUAE is a sandpit to mess around in, but if you want the real thing you have to go out into the jungle....
Then again it probably helps that with my PPC/VoodooIII A4000 and A1XE I'm pretty much covered for fast AmigaOS stuff anyway....!
WinUAE better? No way.
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An emulator can never be better than the real thing. If it emulates something so that the whole system runs faster than the original you're not emulating the original anymore. Look at the definition of emulation.
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As it stands, I'm in the "yes and no" camp. On the one hand emulation provides power and flexibility that the originals lack, but on the other hand, there are places where it is still needs improving.
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on the other hand, there are places where it is still needs improving.
For starters, how about sh1tcanning its dependence on windoze? It takes two operating systems to accomplish what a real Amiga does with one and its resource requirements are obscene.
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Using UAE4all on my gp2x handheld is more -fun- than sitting at a desk with a real A500 + 1084s + mouse + stick + stack of floppies.
In that sense (imo) emulation is "better", even though its not 100% perfect/accurate.
WinUAE on my HTPC hooked up to a TV is more fun than a "real" A500 or A1200 because theres no floppies and loads of Amiga configs it can emulate. And when I get bored of Amiga, there's 8->32bit arcade, console and computer emulation for afters.
In that sense (imo) emulation is "better", even though there's no yellowing keyboard on the floor in front of me.
...meh, it's a matter of opinion.
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Absolutely, UAE is far better than having an old classic hardware Amiga. UAE is more compatible, faster and cheaper. Because Amiga hardware changed so much over the years the only way you will be able to run all Amiga software is through UAE.
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What about the feel of the buttons
The wirring of the disk drives
The click the drive makes when its not in use
The messing about with hardware and software
and what about the speed for you to be able to start using it
Set up your amiga and your pc and power them on at the same time to load a game of lets say....cannon fodder
By the time you have inserted disk 2 on the Amiga you might have windows loaded and be starting to open uae :lol:
The AA+CTRL reset much better than F12.
There are some things an emulator just cant emulate. Its like the C64 emulators. Games may load faster but you miss out on the feeling you get when the loading music stops and the picture vanishes and you know in a moment your game is going to load. If you want retro gaming you might as well get the whole experience
Oh and the guy who mentioned the comparisons of Quake. I think the fact you can play Quake on a real amiga in the first place is more impressive than emulating it
also GP2X amiga emulation I like because I cant really take my amiga on a bus with me
:lol:
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foleyjo wrote:
What about the feel of the buttons
The wirring of the disk drives
The click the drive makes when its not in use
Actually, there are options for emulating disk drive noises in WinUAE.
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yeah but its not a real wirring its just a wav file.
Its like when people say hearing a live band is better than hearing a recording
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Some modules sounds weird in WinUAE. Some custom formats do not play right, I was chocked when I listened to them on my A1200, it was like a totally different tune :-)
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HellCoder wrote:
An emulator can never be better than the real thing. If it emulates something so that the whole system runs faster than the original you're not emulating the original anymore. Look at the definition of emulation.
You're still using an A500 then, because anything faster wouldn't be better?
(And in fact, UAE _does_ win on this argument, as you can set the speed to match A500 speed, or give it a range of speeds, where as a real Amiga that's faster than the "original", you're stuck with it.)
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every year emulation gets better than real for one big reason: our amigas are dying, in 2007 so far i have heard of at least a half a dozen real miggies that have died. and a bunch that have been purposely killed or tossed. 500s, 1200s 4000s bad cpus custom chips capaciters etc...
eventually it wont matter to most of us if real is better or not it doesnt matter to me. my amiga 3000 is the last real amiga i will buy (yes ive said something similar before (yes to my wife)but i really mean it this time(again))
when a pc dies who really cares, you go down to your local pc place and buy parts or a whole new machine, you cant do that with an amiga you have to get parts or a machine that are about as old as what just died.
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For apps that do not use the Amiga's custom chips, ie Workbench friendly, emulation may be better because it can take advantage of the latest hardware, ie newer Video Modes via Picasso96 and newer Sound Cards via AHI. Also, it is cheaper and easier to set up more modern things like Ethernet, Internet, CD-Burners, USB devices, etc...
However, apps that depend on Amiga's custom chips, especially Sound apps that need Paula, the real thing cannot be duplicated exactly. So sounds/music can sound different in emulation.
I use WinUAE for emulation on my WinXP machine and it's quite amazing. I also have Amithlon on a PIII-1000 machine which is really amazing. But I still keep my classics (see my sig) and use them once in a while.
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foleyjo wrote:
Set up your amiga and your pc and power them on at the same time to load a game of lets say....cannon fodder
By the time you have inserted disk 2 on the Amiga you might have windows loaded and be starting to open uae :lol:
For me it would take longer to go the "real" route when a bout of Amiga gaming nostalgia would hit.
-First, I'd have to get the machine out of the closet,
-set it up,
-locate floppies,
-wait 1-2min for loading,
-play.
-put it all away again.
Total: (not including play) ~30-60 mins.
OR
-with my Laptop in hibernation (it always is),
-lift the lid,
-wait 20-30 seconds to boot,
-run WinUAE click the ADF,
-press END+PAUSE during loading,
-play.
-close lid.
Total: (not including play) 5 mins.
:lol:
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Hi,
There is nothing like using a REAL Amiga however I also have to give kudos to WinUAE for helping keep the Amiga alive. Things I cannot run on my Amiga I can run using WinUAE. Not only that, I have been able to replace applications I lost in my house fire thanks to WinUAE and being able to create Amiga disks using ADF files.
Finally, I always wanted an Amiga laptop. In essence I now have one. I have a PIII Panasonic Toughbook from my Law enforcement days that I use. It boots right to WinUAE and AmigaOS in essence giving me my psuedo Amiga Laptop! I was also able to strip Windows down to bare nothing on that machine since I do not use Windows at all on it.
You can imagine how many people look at my Amiga laptop and start asking, Wow what kind of system is that! :lol:
After changing the boot pictures and such, it is pretty funny when you think that all Windows is on this machine is a boot loader utility... a well deserved place in my opinion. At least as a boot load util, Windows seems to work pretty darn well! :-P
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OK my 2 cents, I bought Amiga Forever, have to say very nice and well done. I really like it and on my laptop its almost like a portable Amiga so that's kool. I have to say though hands down I choose a original Amiga over it. First Can the emulation run a Video Toaster?, secondly I have problems running some of my Amiga CD32 games (whiles others run fine). Alot of people talk about the tweaks and control and settings, hell I dont have a lot of time to keep trying 5 million different settings combinations, not when i can turn on the A4000 or my cd32 and run the games flawlessly. Besides having to boot into windows, then into workbench kinda sucks and takes away the effect that you get when you turn on your trusty miggy. People say rendering is faster DUH! lets see rendering on a 50MHZ machine with 18MB RAM vs a 2000MHZ machine with 1024MB RAM. Anyways The emulators are a lot better than they were a few years ago and they do still have the sound/video sync prob, but they also are very nice. I do like the Amiga Forever program and am very happy about purchasing it, but to honestly say it's better than the real thing... it just doesn't feel like an Amiga. Cheers
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Lets see sex on video or sex for real... which is better? much like sex, sex on video (emulator) is MUCH safer , quicker and more convenient. But sex for real (real hardware) is much longer and much more satisfying when it works out properly.
straight from the horses mouth.
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A real Amiga is better than any emulator sound for a start a emulator cant get it absolutely 100% correct near very near perhaps.
Winuae is a lot faster I will give it that for sure.
I run an Athlon 1.7 gig 512 meg of memory, and that is damned fast compared to my 030/40.
BUT, I prefer a real Amiga to an emulator.
For me its just one of those things a matter of personal taste.
I like to run both to be honest the emulator Winuae/Amikit to see just how far it can go, and what can be done with it, that always interests me. So in a way I get the best of both.
But a real Amiga is a real Amiga and thats it for me. And by the way with a real Amiga you get to know what its true capabilities/limitations are, with an emulator you just simply cant, why? because it is an emulator and never the real thing.
Mike.
:-)
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hamtronix wrote:
Lets see sex on video or sex for real... which is better? much like sex, sex on video (emulator) is MUCH safer , quicker and more convenient. But sex for real (real hardware) is much longer and much more satisfying when it works out properly.
straight from the horses mouth.
...continuing your analogy;
Real = sex with an old, creaky spanish woman who only does mish.
Emulation = sex with a young, very flexable woman who knows 100's of techniques.
:lol:
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Well, after a couple weeks of tweaking, hacking, and rebooting my A1200 trying to get various demos and games installed via WHDload, my success rate is about 50%.
Many games (future wars, neuromancer) refused to run and just crashed my machine. State of the Art still doesn't work.
Maybe it doesn't like where my accelerator maps memory, who knows.
In some cases I could adf2disk to a disk image for installation... but dms write to my virtual disks always fails, unless I use FMS, which doesn't allow inserting and removing disks on the fly.
So my opinion is that overall, WinUAE is MORE compatible than just one Amiga, while the overall experience and "Amiga Feeling" you get is better on the real machine.
So I still like playing with the real thing... but it's frustrating at times.
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>Emulators better than the real thing?
Never ever :-D Real men play with real hardware ;-)
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vic20owner wrote:
Well, after a couple weeks of tweaking, hacking, and rebooting my A1200 trying to get various demos and games installed via WHDload, my success rate is about 50%.
No offense, I had some similar issues before too... but I suspect that a large part of your problems are due to PEBKAC errors.
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Um, well, I doubt it. I used DMS to write the State of the art demo to a floppy, and cold booted from it. It locked up after 3 seconds.
Where in there does PEBKAC come into play?
Btw, I've been using Amigas since 1989, and have had about 13 of them of the past 10 years (3 3000's, 4 1200's, 6 500's).
I am using 3.0 roms skicked to 3.1. It doesn't seem to work with either. I just ordered some 3.1 roms just in case... plus it'll allow me to remove some patches.
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@vic20owner
wikipedia's definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEBKAC) sums it up politely
Edit.. never mind, you were editing your post while I was replying