Worth playing on emulator?

[Rpggames77]

After reading lots of people playing on emulators, with better graphics and apparently online ability, is it worth moving away from the wii and going to an emulator? Also I don't emulator so if some could give me a tut or a video that would be appreciated.

 

[Y-L]

Playing on Dolphin is nice to do, although I still prefer the crt + Wii. It's pretty easy to set up, just join smashladder.com and there's guides that will get you going. For an adapter get the Mayflash 4 port or the official Nintendo for the least lag/best experience.

 

[InfinityCollision]

I use Dolphin 99% of the time when at home. As far as I'm concerned it's a straight upgrade if you've got a decent rig, and I don't have to worry about breaking out the CRT and Wii anymore.

 

[Juken]

Like the guy above said, Dolphin is perfect if you have a good computer. You can have the settings much higher than the Wii with little input lag. The only thing is that you'd need a Gamecube to PC adapter if you don't have one but use a GC controller. Also you have to download a specific build if you wish to play online with others.

 

[Draco_The]

You can also use a PS3 controller or a Xbox one if you already have one. Way cheaper than buying an adapter. Like 100% cheaper.

 

[MegaMissingno]

Ever since my Wii broke it's all I use at home. Dolphin's great.

 

[InfinityCollision]

You can also use a PS3 controller or a Xbox one if you already have one. Way cheaper than buying an adapter. Like 100% cheaper.

Also laggier now that Dolphin has native support for the Wii U adapters, and using a different controller may throw off your muscle memory slightly.

 

[SphericalCrusher]

The game runs quite well on my laptop using Dolphin. I do play it on WiiU a lot with a custom GameCube adapter and it runs smooth there... but having the option of online play just adds to the depth of this already deep game. As far as I can tell between my two devices (55" TV and 20" laptop screen) there's no difference in terms of delay and input lag.

 

[Munkyadrian]

If you use a wii u gamecube adapter or its clones in combination with a very low input lag gaming monitor like any of the 120/144 hz ones (check displaylag.com for good monitors) you can essentially have a perfect setup for smash because the native support for gamecube adapter means theres actually less input delay than on an actual gamecube or wii (only by 1ms, but its still impressive) and in combination with a newer monitor with super low input delay and fast response times and a decent computer you can essentially play smash in much higher fidelity and its just as fast, if not faster, than actually using a console with a crt display making it literally perfect in almost every way.

The only problem is that I cant bring my giant ass computer and nice peripherals everywhere like I do with my wii, which I just keep in a drawstring bag in my trunk so I can instantly set up smash anywhere theres a tv and an outlet and play PM and get **** faced with my friends like I do all the time forever.

 

[dav3yb]

I'm going to piggy back on this thread since it's about Dolphin. I got a new laptop recently, with an i7 and gtx 970. Seems like no matter what I do, I still get some slight stuttering from time to time on it. I cut the resolution to 720, which helped, but I still get a few instances of frames dipping below 60 on occasion. Is this normal? Are there some settings I should be looking for to help alleviate these minor issues? Also I've tried on both open gl and d3d, both are pretty much the same.

 

[Y-L]

I'm going to piggy back on this thread since it's about Dolphin. I got a new laptop recently, with an i7 and gtx 970. Seems like no matter what I do, I still get some slight stuttering from time to time on it. I cut the resolution to 720, which helped, but I still get a few instances of frames dipping below 60 on occasion. Is this normal? Are there some settings I should be looking for to help alleviate these minor issues? Also I've tried on both open gl and d3d, both are pretty much the same.

Make sure your laptop is set to high performance in the power options. You may also have put a high performance profile in the NVIDIA control panel. I don't know what kind of i7 you have either.

 

[Ivko]

It's probably worth it, but be aware that there will be significant input lag. Maybe there's some factor that I'm not considering, but I've measured 3 different setups with a high speed camera and they have 4-5 frames of lag. These same setups can get 1 frame on other games, so the lag likely comes from Dolphin. I've tried changing all the relevant settings I can think of, and this is with newer builds and the official adapter with built-in support.

It's harder to notice 4 frames of lag than you might think, but it's likely there. The people that are saying it has no lag likely haven't measured it but are just going by the various components. Yes, the adapter and monitors can have negligible lag, and you'd think that means that the whole setup is lag-free, but Dolphin adds a bunch of lag.

 

[Narpas_sword]

It's probably worth it, but be aware that there will be significant input lag. Maybe there's some factor that I'm not considering, but I've measured 3 different setups with a high speed camera and they have 4-5 frames of lag. These same setups can get 1 frame on other games, so the lag likely comes from Dolphin. I've tried changing all the relevant settings I can think of, and this is with newer builds and the official adapter with built-in support.

It's harder to notice 4 frames of lag than you might think, but it's likely there. The people that are saying it has no lag likely haven't measured it but are just going by the various components. Yes, the adapter and monitors can have negligible lag, and you'd think that means that the whole setup is lag-free, but Dolphin adds a bunch of lag.

mind stating the setup you tested?
because 70ms is heaps.

And if it was that people would notice by feel easily.

 

[Y-L]

It's probably worth it, but be aware that there will be significant input lag. Maybe there's some factor that I'm not considering, but I've measured 3 different setups with a high speed camera and they have 4-5 frames of lag. These same setups can get 1 frame on other games, so the lag likely comes from Dolphin. I've tried changing all the relevant settings I can think of, and this is with newer builds and the official adapter with built-in support.

It's harder to notice 4 frames of lag than you might think, but it's likely there. The people that are saying it has no lag likely haven't measured it but are just going by the various components. Yes, the adapter and monitors can have negligible lag, and you'd think that means that the whole setup is lag-free, but Dolphin adds a bunch of lag.

I think you may just not be setting things up right. With ideal conditions, Dolphin actually has less input lag than console.

Using the latest development builds is crucial with fullscreen mode as it bypasses Windows aero which adds input lag. Playing in fullscreen removes the input lag from Dolphin. Next, using a Wii U adapter is very important, as all adapters have lag. However, Dolphin has native support for Wii U adapters (the Nintendo and Mayflash in Wii U mode) which lets Dolphin poll for inputs as fast as possible, making them lagless. A gamecube polls for inputs every 6ms which makes Dolphin faster in this regard. The only other source of input lag is from the monitor. The least laggy gaming monitors have around ~9ms of input lag. Response time =/= input lag from a monitor btw, so ignore all the 1ms monitor crap. So with a good monitor, you're looking at probably 10ms of lag , or less than 1 frame. Obviously this is offline.

 

[Ivko]

I just re-tested again with the newest drivers, Windows build, etc.

System:
Intel 3570k overclocked
16GB RAM
NVidia 660 GTX
Windows 8, 10, Linux with compositing disabled (tested all 3)
Dolphin build 6554 (the netplay build)
Project M 3.6 Beta
Using official WiiU GC adapter, official controller
Wii motes off in Dolphin
V-Sync is off, fullscreen on at native resolution, other config settings as per netplay guide
Low latency monitor (like I said, I measured it at 1 frame of lag in another game). I know the difference between lag and response time.

Same results as before. 4-5 frames of lag. I've been mentioning this here and there but no one seems to believe it. If I get around to testing more random systems, I'll make a real thread with the results. I'm familiar with measuring input lag, as my Master's thesis is on input lag. I've measured both the frames required for a jab animation to start when hitting A, and the pause screen to start appearing when pressing start.

 

[Narpas_sword]

noone is believing it because 4 frames is huge =/
videos of the tests?

 

[Ivko]

You probably can't count frames through Youtube, but here they are anyway. There's about 16-20 frames of delay between the press/response in the source clip which is at 240 fps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YkBtKyeJsU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5rahJOXv7k

Obviously I took more clips as well to rule out fluke measurements, but they're all similar (just depends on when in the frame the input came to determine 4 or 5 frames).

 

[Narpas_sword]

and the same setup on a crt gives what result?

 

[Y-L]

I want unlock to FALCO on SSB N64. As this video:
I want to know how i get FALCO too.

This is off topic, nevertheless Falco is not in smash 64, that's just a modded game with a Falco skin over Fox.

 

[Ivko]

I can't hook it up to a CRT, but I just measured the same setup in Quake 3 at about 20-30 ms of lag (depending on 60Hz vs 100Hz refresh rate and luck), which is like 1-2 frames in smash terms.

 

[Narpas_sword]

quake is pretty irrelevant to this discussion...

and without a control, i.e. gcn pad on a wii on crt there's not much point drawing any conclusions tbh.

what monitor do you have?

 

[Ivko]

Quake is not irrelevant because it shows what the hardware is capable of. If the monitor has a maximum of 20 ms of lag, then we know the 5 frames of lag isn't coming from the monitor.

Now this is interesting. I finally got around to measuring an actual Wii on a CRT (I don't have such a setup myself) and I got the same 4-5 frames of total lag. So maybe the lag is an innate part of Project M, and it's not Dolphin that's adding it. However, the setup was Wii through component video into a VCR with coax output, so it's possible there's lag coming from there (although it's all analog). When I get a chance to play somewhere with a proper normal CRT setup, I'll measure again. I'll withdraw my belief that Dolphin is causing lag for now though. It certainly feels laggier to me than a CRT though, but other factors can contribute to that feel.

 

[Narpas_sword]

quake is irrelevant as a control because it doesnt use cube controllers.

when you sort your methods out id love to see some actual comparisons between crt Project M and dolphin.

 

[Ivko]

Well, I just measured a proper control (Wii + Melee/PM + normal CRT TV (tried 2 different ones)) and had my mind slightly blown. Melee and PM both have built-in input lag. Fox shine comes out on the 4th frame after the input happens. So it's not dolphin being laggy, it's actually the game. Weird stuff... I haven't come across anyone showing this before.

Here's the video showing the lag on Melee: https://shardsoft.com/smashpr/melee_input_lag.mp4

 

[Narpas_sword]

this is precisely why your results weren't being believed. you needed a control.

would have figured someone doing their masters thesis (in what may i ask?) would know that...

 

[Ivko]

It's also why I didn't go around trying to properly spread the info until I looked more into it. This is the first place I really claimed that Dolphin lags rather than that I'm finding lag on my own setup for whatever reason, and I meant to follow up with a control all along here once I had a chance. I shouldn't have said "results not believed," I just meant it went pretty silently when I mentioned my own experience.

I'll post more publicly about the (non-Dolphin) findings once I measure a number of setups.