With FPGA’s and PC Engine in mind have a gander at Furrtek’s page, but really anything is easily found by typing whatever emulator or dev you have in mind and adding GitHub to the search.
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Hmmmmm…
I’ll just leave this right here.
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I like Analouge’s stuff. It’s gorgeous. I just don’t like their approach. It seems pre-orders are really just funding production runs. I get they’re a small company so they don’t have the OEM contracts the big boys, but why not keep pre-order period open for a week to gauge real demand?
I agree with @ShinJohnpv. You really shouldn’t come into threads claiming a person or company is a cheat or liars without some kind of proof. Just because you have a funny feeling you’re right about something doesn’t mean it’s true.
It’s 2020. We’ve had four years of fucking conspiracy theories as government policies all over the world. Maybe take a step back or show some proof before badmouthing things? I can totally understand why @ShinJohnpv would be upset and feel reprimanded based on the conversation above.
Analogue has done fine by me. I own two of their systems and am happy with them. Paying up front isn’t great. Shipping cost is high. I could choose not to buy it though. Value is in the eye of the consumer. For me it was fine value.
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Speculation is fine, as is criticism of any company, just be clear about what you mean and clarify if necessary.
Name-calling is not okay. It’s okay to disagree and we encourage some healthy debate, just be respectful of one another whilst doing so.
Peace 
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Totally reasonable opinion. @ShinJohnpv can certainly voice his opinions that this is a conspiracy theory that isn’t founded in evidence and is harmful and wrong. I may even be inclined to agree. But it’s just the name calling that I would like to avoid going forward.
With that, let’s please consider the matter closed and continue focusing on the substance of the topic.
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I wonder about this too. There is a theoretical appeal to FPGA emulation from a technical standpoint, but it also starts to resemble high end audiophile stuff … and not in the good way, but like “these are ELECTRON TUNED digital Monster Cables!” This is a level of fidelity that goes far, far beyond what most people could perceive, even in double blind professional testing.
To hear what I mean, try taking this digital audio test. Can you hear the difference between a 128kbps MP3, a 320kbps MP3, and raw FLAC CD audio?
Plus, if we’re on the “only play games you actually own” kick, which is completely fine, I’m not here to defend piracy of any kind… how many people actually own this many games on this many systems, such that they would need real cartridge based emulation of a dozen systems (or more)?
On the other hand,
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I believe full on low-level FPGA emulation may be the “final form” of emulation, so in the long run… this may be inevitable
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the design and aesthetics of Analogue are premium / awesome and remind me a bit of Teenage Engineering and well worth that premium because they are beautifully designed
It will be very difficult to justify a $300-$500 device when you can pick up a garden variety RG351P, which already benefits from 5+ years of intensive hacking to produce great emulation of a smorgasboard of systems. Yes, these cheap Chinese SoCs are kind of comically underpowered and weak, but over time… there’s no fighting Moore’s Law and winning.
I am something of a n00b on the topic of FPGA emulation, so I apologize if I got anything wrong here.
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Analogue consoles being fpga based is almost tangental to their appeal in a lot of ways. They are really nicely designed plug-and-play HDMI (a killer feature for many) clone consoles that “just work” with real media, plus have the ability to play ROM files. Plus FOMO / slick marketing.
I agree with the audiophile analogy if we’re talking mister vs raspberry pi box. How much do you really notice the difference on any of that vs running SNES9X on a Pentium 3?
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I’m not into any fgpa stuff but I can tell a pretty big difference at tImes between emulation and some systems. SNES can be hard.
But something like N64 or Genesis can be pretty obvious.
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Not disputing this at all, but I am curious what your “go to” titles would be for verifying emulation integrity? Can you provide some examples?
Is it the known difficult-to-emulate titles? Or extremely popular games (Mario 64) that have been played so extensively that every little tiny glitch in the original game is relatively well known? 
I’d say over time software emulation would trend towards nearly-imperceptible as these little details get hashed out in the emulation software over a period of… well, we’re looking at decades now aren’t we? (note to self: I am old!)
I’ll let Peltz answer, but here’s my opinion.
There are games for each platform that are tricky to emulate - those that push the hardware in various obscure ways. One that comes to mind is Pilotwings N64 which for a long time had emulation issues with the shadow where it would render too dark over everything else and certain 3D geometry would warp making the game almost unpayable. But even that was solved several years back in the RetroArch core and I suspect by now is fixed in every N64 emulator.
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/parallel-rdp-and-rsp-updates-september-2016/
This post has a bunch more emulator edge cases similar to this one.
I was previously a die-hard who would only play games as originally intended. But these days, when convenience wins, I’m happy to play games better than original using emulators.
For me this is generally MD, PS1, N64, GC where I enable certain user experience improvements such as: CPU overclock (MD; certain games), texture perspective correction (PS1; all 3D games) and 480p internal resolution (N64; all 3D games) and supersampling down to 480p (GC; certain games).
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WIth the main 8 and 16 bit consoles this is the case, even with non cycle accurate options compatibility is so good that there are only a couple of games in the whole console library that have issues. N64 has a set of well known problematic titles, but these days the well known stuff all works to a standard that you would not be able to tell from real hardware.
The are a few problems that persist with software emulation. People using outdated emulators, stuff like EPSXE, ZSNES, Kega Fusion, Yabause or N64 using terrible plugins or options like Virtual Console, this stuff is all bound to give you an inferior experience but are still widely used and well known. Most people simply dont know what the best emulators are or how to get the best results from them, MiSTer and Analogue consoles are a hell of a lot more simple in that regard.
Then there is the proliferation or poor hardware and cheap SOC’s that are incapable or running the best avaialble options for each system with enough CPU left over to tackle input lag, those handhelds like the RG351P are very much in that category. But these systems have almost become the standard by which people judge software emulation, I can’t count the number of times I have seen people compare real hardware or FPGA cores to to what runs on a Pi which is ridiculous.
For 8 and 16 bit consoles you don’t need an FPGA, but there is no doubt the MiSTer’s analog out options are a huge convinience if you have a CRT. I think it is in the 5th generation consoles and beyond where we will really see the benefits of how these consoles are starting to be reverse engineered with accurate timings derived from real hardware and decapped chip information (both of which will still benefit software emulation too), I can’t wait for the PS1 core and what lies beyond that in the future.
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In part, it’s this:
I want to put the game in, and just play without configuring a plugin, mapping controls, worrying about input lag, downloading the latest version of the software, etc,
But when it comes to some things - like genesis sound, or the unique look of N64’s anti-aliasting at 240p, I’ve been really let down with what emulators have been able to achieve. I do imagine that things have evolved substantially over the last 10-15 years since I’ve checked out emulation. So my experience is probably very outdated.
But even when I look at something like M2’s Genesis ports to 3DS - I appreciate the added depth of the 3D, but when outputting to speakers, it just sounds so dead compared to my Model 1 Genesis. At the end of the day, it’s not the same thing. I’m not sure if it’s a 3DS hardware limitation or if it’s a software deficiency, but at the end of the day - it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have to work for something that 30 year old hardware can already achieve out of the box. I’m sure that emulating on a PC is superior though.
For me, it’s less about whether every single little piece of slowdown is perfectly represented, and more about if things are scaling to my display with proper aspect ratios, effects are all accounted for, and sound is as good as possible.
In the end, rendering in proper 240p seems like more work than its worth with non-original hardware. So if I want that perfect CRT look, I rather just do less configuring and output an original signal. I could try to find the perfect screen filters, or means of outputting from a PC in 240p, but again, it’s probably going to require too much tinkering and knowledge than what I’m willing to put into it to simply play a game.
Plugging a Genesis in via SCART to a CRT is just magical. It’s all so clean and effortless. It’s a hard thing for emulation to compete with.
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Retroarch has solved most of the issues you’ve listed in the first paragraph. Configuring a plugin is pretty much limited to certain n64 use cases, and really only exists because of the legacy bagage from the past being ported over. I like to enable certain options on a per game basis for psx titles such as higher internal resolution, increased precision to remove polygon jitter, but those are just relegated to the general options menu. You can save settings on a per core, and per game level if you want to make certain changes only apply to select titles. Controller mappings are handled automatically for petty much every common controller found under the sun with autoconfig profiles. The only controller setting I ever really touch is just for switching controller type for the psx for example, dual analog, dualshock, original, etc. Worrying about input lag is also something that is a non-issue if you have the right hardware (not a raspberry pi or other very low power SOC), no image processing monitor, freesync/gsync, wired controller or wireless controller/dongle combo that is known to be low latency. The only thing you might have to ever adjust is enabling 1 or 2 frames of run-ahead if you feel responsiveness is off. The frontend provides automatic updates for all emulation cores, game database files, cheats, overlays, shaders, artwork, all a mere 2-3 selections away.
Genesis sound is something that has seen quite a bit of work in recent times, check out the Nuked YM2612 progress on youtube for an example.
The N64 is has long been an edge case when it comes to emulation quality. The N64 graphics hardware wasn’t really emulated at all. Instead the list of display commands the n64 generated was fed into a kind of translation program that turned it into commands PC hardware could understand. But things have come a long way. They RSP and RDP have been fully implemented in software that can now run as a program on a modern GPU, to the point where the output compared to real hardware can be pretty much indistinguishable if you want it to be. If you’re interested, you can read up on some of the work and see some footage on the following page.
https://www.libretro.com/index.php/category/parallel/
M2’s genesis ports are in a now representative of the state of emulation. These portables with slow ARM cores a very much not something you can hold up as a standard. Sega always had this “good enough” approach when it comes to emulation, with nintendo only faring slightly better. Their VC titles are far from perfect.
The whole display/scaling issue has been a big thing for the longest time. Offical emulators by nintendo/sega usually just render to a texture, mangle it through bilinear filtering when scaled full screen, and call it a day. Even the recent mini consoles have been terrible in terms of image quality.
I’m going to fall back on retroarch again since it’s what I currently use most. You enable 1 option that applies globally, integer scaling. After that, There’s quite a number of CRT shaders that give really good results with their default presets right out of the box. And as with all other features you can save your settings on a per system/core and game basis. Yes you can micromanage a million settings to your hearts content when you wish to, but you don’t have to, and even if you do, usually only once.
As you said, 240p content must be scaled properly to look good, and I agree, it really is important. I have opted (like Matt) for a 640x480 display with DVI/HDMI tied into my PC. 240p content scales fullscreen at exactly 2x, leaving room for adjustable scanlines. For systems that don’t output square pixels like the NES/SNES, I use the tv-out-tweaks shader. It runs as a program on your GPU that turns the 256x240 image the emulation core outputs into a virtual analog signal, compresses the luma and chroma signals to the specs used by NTSC composite (but without the crossover/artefacts), and turns it back into a pixel buffer for display. You get non of the usual scaling artefacts such as uneven scaling, shimmer while moving, etc, but offers the slight amount of blur/softness you would expect when playing on a CRT.
All these things added up mostly complete the experience that emulation was lacking for so very long. Pretty much all the commercial offerings fall so short because they’re running on such very limited hardware, with very low effort software slapped on top. They all feel like the experience that PC emulation gave you in the late 90’s. The advancements that have been made are staggering, but the exposure is still so very limited. Of course none of it will every exactly match the real hardware. As I write this, I’m looking at a stack of 3 psx’s on my desk, and there’s 4 other consoles sitting behind me, so I’m no stranger to the subtleties and unique experiences hardware can offer. But I have to be honest, and say that in these last few years, a lot of it has become pretty damn close.
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The real issue is that hardly anyone outside this board can read and understand your post, and as you say, the everyday offerings from these companies are only “good enough” but they are also easy to use, which is the opposite of what you just described for, again, anyone who isn’t reading RGB and immersed in the hobby of emulation.
Where the Analogue consoles specifically meet a real need is they allow people to play games they already own without having to find or create ROMs and present near top quality simulation of the original hardware at a level that makes it mostly indistinguishable when playing games. That’s not something to sniff at IMO. Their only failing is they can’t seem to make enough of them to satisfy demand, which to me means their approach is probably the best one. A lot of people hate Apple phones, but they are absolutely the easiest to use and maintain while presenting high quality software and hardware, and that’s super valuable to many many people.
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That all sounds great. Had I not already gone down the RGB rabbit hole prior to many of these innovations, I probably would have been inclined to play more games that way.
I’m on the fence, quite literally. I play half my systems on original hardware and half through emulation.
Real hardware is a ball ache: cabling, video output, scaling and deinterlacing for modern displays, too many controllers, physical media, storage space.
Emulation is a different kind of ball ache: too many settings, constant updating, controller adapters, PC upgrade cycle, shaders, etc.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
At least I found the perfect display for me.
I also reckon FPGA will win eventually. Hopefully just in time for my retirement!
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We’re very blessed with options and choices!!
I’m a real hardware (simple!) + Mister (kind of annoying!) guy specifically because I’m also an analog display guy. When that big sucker goes on the fritz I’m probably an emulation guy. I’m afraid Mister might have been a FPGA lucky sweet spot as far as the price for that DE-10 nano goes and I’ll get priced out of the next gen.
I’d love to have the Analogue gear because it looks kinda cool.
@matt What ended up being your perfect display??
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Philips 20PF4121 20" 640x480 LCD with DVI PC mode for pure unprocessed image. Forum search should get you a bunch of posts from me and Gravitone about it.
I also have 14" PVMs but I prefer the LCD because it works with more devices out of the box and takes up so much less space.
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Heck yeah dude! I’ve seen those pics and I’ve looked for a 640x480 LCD after seeing them!