Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?

[bloodline]

amigaksi wrote:

>Emulation surpasses the inaccessability to Amiga hardware, there is a limited supply out there. You cannot find a good A500 factory sealed in a box.

So that does not mean that one should get something that is NOT an amiga (from the hardware perspective).  You need to convince some of your hardware pals to build you a REAL amiga.  As an example, try putting an instruction like $009C,$8010 into the copper list and write an interrupt routine (pointed to by location $68) that does something time critical like writing to joystick ports and there your emulator won't work.  The PC timer goes only as accurate as 1.19318Mhz whereas the copper is timing the color clocks at 3.57954525Mhz.

Sorry, but your paragraph makes no sense. Of course an Emulator would fully support the Amiga interrupts and memory address space... and I think you'll find far more accurate and fine grained timers on a modern PC than on an Amiga... A typical OS quantum on a PC would be 1000 times every second... on the Amiga it was 12 times...

Get over it the Amiga is old!! :roll:

>The question is: Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?

No.

Actually yes, Emulation is a better experience. My Amiga's are kept as museum pieces now... other than my A500 and A1200 which sometimes get used for Audio sampling when I need a sound.

>Does it have that original Amiga soul comparable to its hardware counterparts? or is it just a bland Windows executable or binary file that tricks you to thinking that you really have an Amiga?

Souls are only present in living entities-- anything subject to birth, death, old age, disease cannot be a soul.  

You don't know that. Since you can't define a Soul, my calculator might have one!

You are a soul that's why you know you are same person (unchanging identity) throughout your life although your body has changed from when you were a baby.

Actually that's not true, your current stream of consciousness (i.e. your identity is only defined by your memories) may not even survive a night's sleep!! There are plenty of studies in memory disorders to question the nature of consciousness... But this is not the place for that discussion...

As far as tricking, I don't think they are deceiving you since it does emulation on the software level and to some extent hardware (assuming no bugs and real Amiga bugs are emulated), but your Amiga is software+all of the hardware.

>Is Amiga Emulation really modern Amiga Computing since there is no new hardware out from A-inc?

Even if all the Amigas were dead on the planet, the emulator is not an Amiga.  That would just mean the Amiga is extinct.

Is MiniMig an Amiga?

>Give me your thoughts.

You got them.

You thoughts are odd and erratic!

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arkpandora wrote:
Today computers don't allow emulators to display animated PAL/NTSC screen modes, unless you manage to use the emulator on a 50 Hz screen mode (for PAL modes) and synchronize the emulator screen's refresh rate with the emulated screen's refresh rate.  As I have never found any way to make emulators do this, in my experience emulators are unusable, so that I have to go on with using real Amiga computers although emulators could be a much more convenient option for me.

Absolute rubbish!

I was happily playing MegaLoMania on the latest Universall E-UAE* (with OpenGL rendering) on my 2.33Ghz MacBook Pro, last week. The graphics were perfect, there was aboslutly no difference than running it on my A500, except the disk loading was much faster as I had the "Turbo Floppy Mode" active.

I get really annoyed when people like you post some ignorant junk, without using even looking at the state of technology now. I got into the Amiga because it was the best thing available. I still like to ride the crest of the technology curve, but so many people here are stuck 18 years in the past.

Ok, 10 years ago... Amiga emulation was jerky and flawed. But now emulation is perfect. Get some new hardware and enjoy yourself.

-Edit- Just tested my old G4 PowerBook with the same E-UAE binary... worked a treat, perfect... I honestly don't know what piece of crap you are running UAE on...

*WinUAE is even better than E-UAE (But I can rarely be bothered to boot into windows).

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arkpandora wrote:
@Krusher

OK, I will remember.


@bloodline

This kind of unnecessary rude talk is a common problem in forums.  I know my hypotheses are clumsy, but I have absolutely no technical knowledge on the subject, so advices are more welcome than insults.  What makes you think that I am stuck 18 years in the past ?

My abruptness stems from my irritation with people spreading FUD.

As long as the host can update the display faster than 50fps the display will be good. Especially since LCD displays don't actually use a refresh cycle.

My aim is precisely to replace my real Amiga by an emulator, at least on my desk as I'm lacking space.  To this end, a few years ago I tested several emulators on various PCs and various monitors including TVs, tried a few software hacks, without success as far as animation was concerned.

Now my main computer is a 2007 Apple Mac Mini, and I still haven't managed to obtain normal animation in UAE.  I am willing to buy a PC again if this is the only solution, but since my finances are not in a good shape, I am still gathering feedback.

Anyway you are using a Mac, so if I am ignorant, then please explain me how these issues have been solved and how you manage to obtain normal animation on your Mac.

Go here: http://e-uae.de.vu/

And in the configuration make sure you set the OpenGL rendering on (If you write your own configs: sdl.use_gl=true )... I expect you need the latest SDL framework installed for this.

Tweak the settings to suit your needs best.

[bloodline]

Krusher wrote:

bloodline wrote:
... Get some new hardware and enjoy yourself...

I'm running WinUAE on a single core Intel Centrino laptop running at 1.6Ghz, hardly new or state of the art (heh, a familiar name amongst Amigans  :lol: ) hardware but it does the job.

Not really state of the art at all... but if my old 1.5Ghz G4 can run UAE fine... then a 1.6Ghz Core Solo will have no problems at all.

Does E-UAE have the floppy sound in it? Just curious as I don't have a Mac.

No, WinUAE is quite a bit better than E-UAE... but E-UAE is still pretty good.

I have BootCamp on my Mac, so I do have WinUAE installed, but E-UAE is good enough.

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Krusher wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Krusher wrote:

bloodline wrote:
...
Not really state of the art at all... but if my old 1.5Ghz G4 can run UAE fine... then a 1.6Ghz Core Solo will have no problems at all.

Heck, I even remember my old AMD @ 1Ghz running WinUAE just fine. With a lot less memory then my laptop :-P

Does E-UAE have the floppy sound in it? Just curious as I don't have a Mac.

No, WinUAE is quite a bit better than E-UAE... but E-UAE is still pretty good...

I remember the moment the floppy sound was build in, I was like OMG this is the icing on the cake! Too bad that sound output is just not the same (DAC filters and whatnot aren't the same as on the Amiga, and I guess it's too much horsepower to do some trickery to make it sound the same)

No, not really, it would take only a simple lookup table rather than the shifting* currently used. I the NetAmi thread I posted the theory how to achive this. I also have the look up table here. I don't have time to play with the UAE source code, but I have offered it to the UAE devs if they want to implement it.

I doubt anyone would really notice the difference though, while the Paula DACs are not linear they are not really that far off... :-)

*-Edit- while a Lookup table requires a memory access and a shift doesn't, it's obviously going to be a bit slower, but since the Lookup table is only 256bytes it should fit comfortably into a x86 CPU cache and thus be pretty fast!

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Krusher wrote:

bloodline wrote:
...

I doubt anyone would really notice the difference though, while the Paula DACs are not linear they are not really that far off... :-)

*-Edit- while a Lookup table requires a memory access and a shift doesn't, it's obviously going to be a bit slower, but since the Lookup table is only 256bytes it should fit comfortably into a x86 CPU cache and thus be pretty fast!

To me the WinUAE output sounds hars to my ears (regardless of the soundcard used) so yes, I do notice. Then again mp3 @ 128kbps sounds the same to me while most people are ok with that  :crazy:

That is probably more to do with the very low quality (and hence actually rather "warm" sounding) amps on the Amiga motherboard than the actual Paula Audio... plus whatever sound system you used to use with your Amiga...

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Krusher wrote:

bloodline wrote:
...

That is probably more to do with the very low quality (and hence actually rather "warm" sounding) amps on the Amiga motherboard than the actual Paula Audio... plus whatever sound system you used to use with your Amiga...

More like comparing tubes with new opamps then  :-D

yeah, basically... Looking at the A1200 mainboard schematic amp circuits used to bring the DAC output to line level are not high quality, they must introduce a lot of "colour" into the sound.

For most of my +18 year old life I've had semi-highend audio equipment. Did a few years recording orchestra's so that might explain it.

18... I wish I was 18 again, but knowing what I know now :-)

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Krusher wrote:

bloodline wrote:
...

18... I wish I was 18 again, but knowing what I know now :-)

Who wouldn't be, I'm 34 now  :lol:

Ahhh, so then you are the old man, and I am the young :-D

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AmigaHope wrote:

It can't magically make 24fps or 50fps fit into a 60fps framerate smoothly.

http://www.troubled-mind.com/output.mp4

and...?

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monami wrote:
"rough specimen Bloodline."

 :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

Of all the things I've been called, that is actually one of the nicest :-)

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arkpandora wrote:

So, as far as 2D animation is concerned, your judgement is not true : the emulated Amiga is not more refined despite its differences, but less refined.  If it was more refined I would agree with you : but animation is essential, and it is the only reason why I still have to use a real Amiga although I would prefer to use emulators.

You speak such rubbish! I promise you that if you ever come to London, I can show you Perfect Amiga emulation on my MacBook Pro using WinUAE on WindowsXP SP2. I will use WinUAE as it's better than E-UAE.

I will gladly meet you and show you.

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arkpandora wrote:
@bloodline

It's not because somebody's wrong that he speaks rubbish.

That is correct.

But it is rubbish when one speaks with authority on a subject about which they have no evidence to support.

You cannot state as fact your opinion.

Of course it's possible that I am wrong : I still have to double-check all E-UAE settings following your advice, and I still have to see WinUAE on a brand new PC.

WinUAE will provide the most accurate emulation. If you require configuration files I will gladly provide them.

If you get perfect animation, why did you post this : http://www.troubled-mind.com/output.mp4 ?

That video is 50fps upsampled to 60fps using Apples H.264 encoder. I don't care if I'm right or wrong, I just want the truth and will happily provide the evidence I used to support my position.

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-D- wrote:

bloodline wrote:
That video is 50fps upsampled to 60fps using Apples H.264 encoder. I don't care if I'm right or wrong, I just want the truth and will happily provide the evidence I used to support my position.

No offense intended, but that video looks like ass IMHO... I have yet to check it on a CRT (or LCD with "fast" response time), but the trees in particular don't scroll smoothly at all. :shrug:

I grant you that it doesn't look as good as it does out of the Emulator (the uncompressed video is 400meg so I won't post it), but even as an mp4 it still looks better than my Amigas do on a real TV...

[bloodline]

@stefcep2

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

[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!