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PCSX2 - Excellent PS2 emulation, support improving all the time!

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timnich

Member
Wow this has improved alot! Tales of the Abyss runs full speed for me now with a bit of tweaking. I'm not sure how everyone gets such a sharp image though. It's not like it looks like crap, but I imagine it could look a bit better, no?

Some pictures:
5caf5c247c9850975fff7d7a9bd5d67279b3a2a7.PNG

ffe825a1a3bca0e4691b9732b141baa071b3995d.PNG

80e90ff306fd12b536abf748d8825f5aee22d95d.PNG
 
timnich said:
Wow this has improved alot! Tales of the Abyss runs full speed for me now with a bit of tweaking. I'm not sure how everyone gets such a sharp image though. It's not like it looks like crap, but I imagine it could look a bit better, no?

yeah it definitely looks like it has some blur filter applied to the entire screen... which video plugin are you using?
 

risk

Member
Dwayne said:
Anyone got some nice shots from Yakuza? Just finished the first game and am starting the second (on console), looks awesome enough on PS2 but can't imagine how good it must look with a proper PC setup. cheers
The gameplay is fine, but the cut scenes have blur and there is a cloudy line that hovers at bottom and right edges of the screen. I don't think there are any fixes for the blurriness and cloudy lines yet, but you can run the game in software mode and those won't appear - although you won't get the nice high resolution graphics.

 
timnich said:
GSdx 3693 (MSVC 15.00, SSE2) 0.1.16. I havent tried any of the other ones, is there one in particular that is recommended?

On the plugins config screen, what renderer are you using? Directx 10 (Hardware)?

Also probably you have it running on internal res, try to change the internal res.
For example, to make it native to your monitor, if you have a 1920x1080 screen, use 1440x1080 (if that game doesnt have a 16:9 option).
 

timnich

Member
sotodefonk said:
On the plugins config screen, what renderer are you using? Directx 10 (Hardware)?

Also probably you have it running on internal res, try to change the internal res.
For example, to make it native to your monitor, if you have a 1920x1080 screen, use 1440x1080 (if that game doesnt have a 16:9 option).
Directx9 hardware. And I had it scaled 2x, but I'll try running it on internal res. Thanks!
 
timnich said:
Directx9 hardware. And I had it scaled 2x, but I'll try running it on internal res. Thanks!

I just checked and yes, it definitely is the 2x scale option, using a custom resolution it should look like this:

63KK6.jpg


qJUaw.jpg


plulZ.jpg


Those screens are with a internal res of 2880x2160, and then resized to 1440x1080, but it run slow as hell when you are not fighting. Using an internal res of 1440x1080 looks with more jagging, but better than the 2xScale, and for last using 2xScale runs faster, but looks like your shots.

I used both DX9 HW and DX10 HW, and altough they looks almost the same, DX10 gave me more fps on big resolutions, for example, in DX9 using an internal res of 2880x2160 its unplayable (like 10 fps or less) but using 1440x1080 its pretty much the same on both.
 

teiresias

Member
I saw some pics earlier of someone playing Valkyrie Profile 2 and they said they were having no issues, however it's unplayable for me in both the last official release r3878, and in r4324. Anyone know what's up?

Speed-wise the game is fine, and the FMV plays fine, and the first town you start in plays fine once I'm in control (a little slowdown when moving between areas), but the in-game cutscene has these weird vertical dark areas through the whole image (like wide vertical stripes):
zrSLC.jpg

Nf1Eh.jpg


Then when I leave the town and go to the Forest (I think), the image goes all wonky:

EzAlh.png


It stays like that except when I'm in the battle tutorial, which looks fine, once I'm out of the battle it goes back to that (which is when I took this screenshot). The red is like an overlay because the "Skip this cutscene" confirmation appears over all the red and looks fine.

I went back to r3878 when r4324 didn't give me any improvement. I'm using gsdx sse4 hardware dx11. Do I need to try a different variant on the plug-in or maybe download the latest beta plug-in set? (Where can one download the beta plug-ins anyway?). Thanks if anyone has any help. I picked this up at Gamestop hoping to play it on here, but I can go to a BC PS3 if need be - though I'd like to play the first game first, wish it would show up on PSN.

In other news, FFXII continues to look great as always! Damn, I love this game.

XFbM1.jpg
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Ok now that I have a damn good PC, I cannot for the life of me get this to run. It starts and I configure the stuff but when I go to boot up my Persona 3 disc to test, it always crashes and says the program cannot run. Am I setting up the GPU plugin wrong or something?
 

Red

Member
LiquidMetal14 said:
Ok now that I have a damn good PC, I cannot for the life of me get this to run. It starts and I configure the stuff but when I go to boot up my Persona 3 disc to test, it always crashes and says the program cannot run. Am I setting up the GPU plugin wrong or something?
Are you trying to run straight off the disc or have you ripped the image? Make sure you have your BIOS configured properly and are using the appropriate plug ins. Also might help if you run the program as an administrator.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
Reminds me of Suikoden 3, the flash backs are completely screwed up, The top half of the screen has the filter but the graphics completely corrupted, the bottom half has no filter (Which means you can see the Flame Champion' model fully colored, and that some flash back exclusive outfits are fully textured). At least you can still read the text.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Crunched said:
Are you trying to run straight off the disc or have you ripped the image? Make sure you have your BIOS configured properly and are using the appropriate plug ins. Also might help if you run the program as an administrator.
Disc, and I will run as admin. Does it matter if it's set to compatibility mode?
 

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
Quick question, how do I update this without having to reinstall everything? I want to move from .96 to .97 because Tales of Abyss is running kind of funky on my system right now(Luke's face is showing through the back of his head and it's creeping me the fuck out).
 
shintoki said:
Quick question, how do I update this without having to reinstall everything? I want to move from .96 to .97 because Tales of Abyss is running kind of funky on my system right now(Luke's face is showing through the back of his head and it's creeping me the fuck out).

You just install the new version and all the new filters should install with it... you just need to move the bios folder and select the memory cards if you have a saved game on it
 

flanker37

Member
teiresias said:
I saw some pics earlier of someone playing Valkyrie Profile 2 and they said they were having no issues, however it's unplayable for me in both the last official release r3878, and in r4324. Anyone know what's up?

Speed-wise the game is fine, and the FMV plays fine, and the first town you start in plays fine once I'm in control (a little slowdown when moving between areas), but the in-game cutscene has these weird vertical dark areas through the whole image (like wide vertical stripes):
zrSLC.jpg

Nf1Eh.jpg


Then when I leave the town and go to the Forest (I think), the image goes all wonky:

EzAlh.png


It stays like that except when I'm in the battle tutorial, which looks fine, once I'm out of the battle it goes back to that (which is when I took this screenshot). The red is like an overlay because the "Skip this cutscene" confirmation appears over all the red and looks fine.

I went back to r3878 when r4324 didn't give me any improvement. I'm using gsdx sse4 hardware dx11. Do I need to try a different variant on the plug-in or maybe download the latest beta plug-in set? (Where can one download the beta plug-ins anyway?). Thanks if anyone has any help. I picked this up at Gamestop hoping to play it on here, but I can go to a BC PS3 if need be - though I'd like to play the first game first, wish it would show up on PSN.

In other news, FFXII continues to look great as always! Damn, I love this game.

XFbM1.jpg

Hmm, you may be referring to my screenshots from a few weeks back. Sorry about that if that is the case, I should have clarified that my screenshots were from a complete game save (I finished way back on my PS2), and I was just traveling around to take some screenshots. So I can't say if there are problems playing the complete game by emulator.

I looked up the compatibility of the game (at this link here http://pcsx2.wikia.com/wiki/Valkyrie_Profile_2:_Silmeria ) and I see both of your problems mentioned there. The vertical stripes seem to appear in just a few cut-scenes, and the fog in Lost Forest causes the graphics corruptions.

The only fix for the cut-scenes seems to be to use software mode for graphics just during the movies (but i think that's kind of a pain just for a few movies that aren't all that ruined).

The lost forest issue also has no fix, but the mini-map works for seeing the layout and enemies, and the overall dungeon is short (iirc), so I think you should be able to just quickly go thru it w/o issue and enjoy the rest of the game in HD. The other thing you could do is play past that point on console, then transfer the save to PC and play the rest by emulator. But that would be a whole new can of worms to work thru, at least with the method I used a couple years ago when I imported my old saves to PC.

Anyway, I hope that answers your questions, and hopefully it doesn't discourage you from playing VP2 on PCSX2 since there doesn't seem to be any other game-breaking bugs. Good luck.
 

Gvaz

Banned
Sometimes I wish I could upgrade my Phenom II x3 720 @ 3.2 to an i7 or even i5 system, just to play all my ps2 games at a high resolution and AA (much like I wish for all videogames, actually. Especially the jrpg genre).

Right now my system just runs them admirably, but not as well as I would like (30fps minimum)
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I tried out a few games. I took some Dragon Quest VIII screenshots. The games looks really nice but is there a way to enable AA in them? All are running off disc btw. Is it better to compile an image and load it as an ISO?

5467812419_0fc92f9181_b.jpg


5468409402_bbd3862036_b.jpg


5468408812_81b7ed2ecb_b.jpg


5467811149_3babaae59d_b.jpg


5467810797_2e067db550_b.jpg
 

Chairhome

Member
LiquidMetal14 said:
I tried out a few games. I took some Dragon Quest VIII screenshots. The games looks really nice but is there a way to enable AA in them? All are running off disc btw. Is it better to compile an image and load it as an ISO?
Yes, rip an image and load as an ISO, I think its so much better.

Instead of AA, just try setting it to 2x or 3x the native resolution.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Chairhome said:
Yes, rip an image and load as an ISO, I think its so much better.

Instead of AA, just try setting it to 2x or 3x the native resolution.
BRB, gonna test the IQ settings. Back in 5. I have the internal res set to 1024x1024. Should that be left alone?
 
LiquidMetal14 said:
BRB, gonna test the IQ settings. Back in 5. I have the internal res set to 1024x1024. Should that be left alone?

That's what I normally use and then set it to 2x or 3x depending on the game.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
LiquidMetal14 said:
BRB, gonna test the IQ settings. Back in 5. I have the internal res set to 1024x1024. Should that be left alone?
Results, it looks a lot better but am wondering if I can tweak more. I don't know of changing settings in CCC and forcing AA or MLAA would do anything. Looks great though, not complaining a bit. I set it to 3x and left the internal res t o1024x1024 (it was like that by default).

5468454136_69b6771e6d_b.jpg


5468453830_8a1529527d_b.jpg


5467856207_8dcf8444ec_b.jpg
 

Chesskid1

Banned
LiquidMetal14 said:
BRB, gonna test the IQ settings. Back in 5. I have the internal res set to 1024x1024. Should that be left alone?


internal res only matters if you use 1x. if you use scaling to 2x, 3x it ignores internal res. i usually do 3x scaling (ie 3x the original ps2 resolution). the higher you set the scaling/resolution the more AA you have or something like that.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I'm also using direct 3d11 hw. Is that best for performance or does making it 9 or 10 make things look better or better results?
 
Chesskid1 said:
internal res only matters if you use 1x. if you use scaling to 2x, 3x it ignores internal res. i usually do 3x scaling (ie 3x the original ps2 resolution).

Huh, I didn't realise this. I assumed it was scaling the internal resolution you set.

Duh me.

Fake edit: Oh yeah, it says "OR Use Scaling".
 

MSIMagus

Neo Member
Two questions.

1. Does this effect loading times at all? Would be nice if games like Tales of Abyss actually had reduced loading times!

2. Can you put a PS2 disk in and play it or do you need to find/convert them to roms?
 
MSIMagus said:
Two questions.

1. Does this effect loading times at all? Would be nice if games like Tales of Abyss actually had reduced loading times!

2. Can you put a PS2 disk in and play it or do you need to find/convert them to roms?

To answer both: You can run either by running from DVD drive or by ripping the games into an ISO using ISOBuster or any ISO-making program (also can be referred to as an image of a disc). Load times are, obviously, faster from a file. Not sure how much better normally-slow-loading games are, but yeah.
 

Thoraxes

Member
timnich said:
Wow this has improved alot! Tales of the Abyss runs full speed for me now with a bit of tweaking. I'm not sure how everyone gets such a sharp image though. It's not like it looks like crap, but I imagine it could look a bit better, no?

If you enable the hacks, be sure to check the box that says "Offset Hack". That should fix everything.

Additionally, the only problems i've been running into while i've been playing it, is that character and enemy models completely disappear while i'm in battle. It's annoying.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
Last 3 shots for comparison sake. I tried to be in the same spots as the first ones I took. And I went to that one site linked on this page that has daily updates and got a new GFX plugin. Doesn't look worse so I'm leaving it as is lol

5468515118_9619cfb9ab_b.jpg


5468515848_b17785ee1a_b.jpg


5467918697_75c0bc577b_b.jpg
 

S. L.

Member
teiresias said:
I saw some pics earlier of someone playing Valkyrie Profile 2 and they said they were having no issues, however it's unplayable for me in both the last official release r3878, and in r4324. Anyone know what's up?

Speed-wise the game is fine, and the FMV plays fine, and the first town you start in plays fine once I'm in control (a little slowdown when moving between areas), but the in-game cutscene has these weird vertical dark areas through the whole image (like wide vertical stripes):
http://i.imgur.com/zrSLC.jpg[IMG]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Nf1Eh.jpg[IMG]

Then when I leave the town and go to the Forest (I think), the image goes all wonky:

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/EzAlh.png[IMG]

It stays like that except when I'm in the battle tutorial, which looks fine, once I'm out of the battle it goes back to that (which is when I took this screenshot). The red is like an overlay because the "Skip this cutscene" confirmation appears over all the red and looks fine.

I went back to r3878 when r4324 didn't give me any improvement. I'm using gsdx sse4 hardware dx11. Do I need to try a different variant on the plug-in or maybe download the latest beta plug-in set? (Where can one download the beta plug-ins anyway?). Thanks if anyone has any help. I picked this up at Gamestop hoping to play it on here, but I can go to a BC PS3 if need be - though I'd like to play the first game first, wish it would show up on PSN.
[/QUOTE]
enable the "Alpha Hack" in the GS settings and the blocky boxes will be gone.
(same for tri-aces Radiata Stories btw)
 

flanker37

Member
JohngPR said:
This is an incredibly noob question, but how do you take screenshots with this program?

You can use FRAPS as was suggested or the built-in screen capture that is activated with F8 (you can set the folder location in the settings i believe). F12 is the built-in video recording feature.

However, I should note that the built-in captures do not seem to account for wide-screen aspect ratio if your game window is set to that, and I think you always get full-screen shots (so 16:9 games would need stretching to fix the screenshots). In these cases something like FRAPs works better, since it will account for whatever aspect ratio the emulator window is in.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
FRAPS does frame rate analysis on a universal basis as well. It's much easier just to set that as your default photo capping prog.
 

JohngPR

Member
Thanks guys. I'm fairly new to the PC scene so I didn't know you can use those types of programs to capture screenshots with this as well. I use Radeon Pro so I linked it with that.

I tried out Shadow of the Colossus and it looks great but the frame rate is about 30 FPS but still way too slow...as if the game is running in slow mo...any tips, or is my rig just not fast enough to emulate it properly?

3.2 Ghz X4 Phenom 955 Black Edition, Radeon HD 5770, with 4 gbs RAM.

It tried both the 1x 1440x1080 setup and then 3x setup:

pcsx2-r3878.exe_2011-0y9id.jpg


pcsx2-r3878.exe_2011-09bdd.jpg
 

JohngPR

Member
Dascu said:
Try messing around with the speedhacks. That CPU should be able to handle SotC at fullspeed, most of the time.

Thanks! That did the trick. The game is running 60fps at a semi consistent rate. :)
 

galvatron2k1

Neo Member
Trying this out for the first time - I have an AMD Athlon x2 250 @ stock 3.0 ghz with 4GB of RAM. Of course, I'm now in the market for a video card to run most games in 3x native resolution (as good of an image as I can possibly get for a 1080p monitor). Does anybody have a recommendation for a video card? I was looking at the Radeon HD 6870 on sale at Amazon last night, but I wasn't sure if that would be overkill from the specs that I currently have. Also wanted to try for something cheaper.
 

Ettie

Member
After months of just screwing around with this emulator and thinking that FFXII sure was pretty, I finally got around to starting an honest playthrough of KH1. Let me tell you it's fantastic. This program has rescued titles from my backlog that I thought for sure were never to be played. So help me if they ever get the snowblind engine games playable I'll sell my PS2 and never look back.
 

teiresias

Member
Ettie said:
After months of just screwing around with this emulator and thinking that FFXII sure was pretty, I finally got around to starting an honest playthrough of KH1. Let me tell you it's fantastic. This program has rescued titles from my backlog that I thought for sure were never to be played. So help me if they ever get the snowblind engine games playable I'll sell my PS2 and never look back.

Tell me about it, I have yet to try KH1 in this yet, but I still own the disk. Looks like I need to rip the ISO and try it out.

I finally got around to enabling the hacks and decided to turn on 4x Hardware AA when I was playing FFXII - WOW, makes a good deal of difference and no performance hit whatsoever!! The only problem is that at full-screen it's like the rendered part of the screen is shifted one pixel down and one pixel right so that there's a constant one-pixel wide blue border on the left and top side of the image. Sort of distracting. Does anyone have any ideas for a fix for that. I can probably live with it for the bump it gives the graphics, but still it would be nice to be rid of.

Anyway, example of 4xAA on FFXII (the blue border doesn't show up in screenshots). Click on the thumbnail below for full-size:

 
JohngPR said:
This is an incredibly noob question, but how do you take screenshots with this program?

With the newest version I use F8, and no, im not using fraps. All your snaps will be BMP with the resolution of your internal res, and they will be located in Documents > PCSX2 > snaps.
 
Stallion Free said:
That brings back memories, I played this game a lot. I remember being dissapointed it didn't have any multiplayer like the first game on PS1. Cold you post a picture of the beach landing in the first level? :)
 
LiquidMetal14 said:
Reposting a test screen since I just found a better image host that will not downsize my images.

pcsx2-r38782011-02-220k7oj.png


That looks gorgeous! Could never get that game to run at a decent fps.

Can't wait for pcsx2 to support more cores =/
 

Le-mo

Member
LiquidMetal14 said:
Reposting a test screen since I just found a better image host that will not downsize my images.

pcsx2-r38782011-02-220k7oj.png
Looks gorgeous. I tried playing it on my PS2 today but it didn't agree with my eyes. Looked like a mess on an HDTV.
 
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