nkarafo
Member
After testing a lot of games (and every emulator/plugin in existence since 1999) i can safely say that the best solution for emulating N64 games is the current Mupen64plus-next core with the added Parallel RDP+RSP running on Vulkan. This combination is the closest you can get to perfect N64 emulation at reasonable speeds in 2020.
The new Parallel RDP brings the graphical accuracy of Angrylion (with all N64 filters and blur) at much faster speeds. This time you can run most N64 games full speed if you have a semi-decent CPU. Only on PC though (sorry mobile/Pi4 users). And not only that, this time you can even upscale the graphics. This wasn't possible with Angrylion but it is now. And the upscaling works better than it did with GlideN64 because it upscales all the N64 filters and it's not just "how N64 graphics look using a PC video card". So you are getting pixel accurate graphics and decent upscaling at the same time!
The upscaling also works much better here because you don't get the graphical errors and seams on the 2D assets. This was a problem for N64 graphics plugins since the beginning. The only way to fix some of them was to change some 2D texture options in per game basis because in some games it worked but in some others it made things worse. But with Parallel you don't have to deal with this anymore, everything upscales smoothly. At least i haven't seen any 2D assets breaking so far (about 100 games tested).
This combination also fixes some very long existing issues that i could never fix no matter what combination i used before. Top Gear Rally and World Driver Championship (both made by BOSS) had a sync issue that caused the games to freeze and crackle for a bunch of frames every few minutes. It was a quite annoying issue that i got used to but now it's the first time i see these games run smoothly with accurate graphics, perfect audio, 2X upscale and no mini freezes. Some other issues like Killer Instinct's sky being wrong is also not a thing anymore. This was also correctly rendered in Angrylion but it made my i5 4670 crawl at 50% speed. Now the game is full speed even with 2x upscale.
It's still not perfect though. Conker is still too slow on my CPU. And long time standing, core timing issues still exist. You still get some attract modes run too fast (Goldeneye, Quake 2, EWJ 3D) and Knife Edge also runs at fast forward. But these issues exist in all emulators/cores/combinations. What matters is that there isn't an issue here that it's better in other solutions. This combination will either give you the same results as in others or (usually) better. Which means you don't need to have multiple solutions to play certain games. ALL games will work better (or the same) here, so that's the only one you need. Well, except for the games that your CPU can't run at full speed that is... But that's more of a hardware issue that can be fixed in a faster machine.
Anyway, have others tried this? What's your experience? I'd like to know if there are any issues that other emulators/cores/combinations don't have because i'm still looking. Or any other long standing issues that are fixed.
The new Parallel RDP brings the graphical accuracy of Angrylion (with all N64 filters and blur) at much faster speeds. This time you can run most N64 games full speed if you have a semi-decent CPU. Only on PC though (sorry mobile/Pi4 users). And not only that, this time you can even upscale the graphics. This wasn't possible with Angrylion but it is now. And the upscaling works better than it did with GlideN64 because it upscales all the N64 filters and it's not just "how N64 graphics look using a PC video card". So you are getting pixel accurate graphics and decent upscaling at the same time!
The upscaling also works much better here because you don't get the graphical errors and seams on the 2D assets. This was a problem for N64 graphics plugins since the beginning. The only way to fix some of them was to change some 2D texture options in per game basis because in some games it worked but in some others it made things worse. But with Parallel you don't have to deal with this anymore, everything upscales smoothly. At least i haven't seen any 2D assets breaking so far (about 100 games tested).
This combination also fixes some very long existing issues that i could never fix no matter what combination i used before. Top Gear Rally and World Driver Championship (both made by BOSS) had a sync issue that caused the games to freeze and crackle for a bunch of frames every few minutes. It was a quite annoying issue that i got used to but now it's the first time i see these games run smoothly with accurate graphics, perfect audio, 2X upscale and no mini freezes. Some other issues like Killer Instinct's sky being wrong is also not a thing anymore. This was also correctly rendered in Angrylion but it made my i5 4670 crawl at 50% speed. Now the game is full speed even with 2x upscale.
It's still not perfect though. Conker is still too slow on my CPU. And long time standing, core timing issues still exist. You still get some attract modes run too fast (Goldeneye, Quake 2, EWJ 3D) and Knife Edge also runs at fast forward. But these issues exist in all emulators/cores/combinations. What matters is that there isn't an issue here that it's better in other solutions. This combination will either give you the same results as in others or (usually) better. Which means you don't need to have multiple solutions to play certain games. ALL games will work better (or the same) here, so that's the only one you need. Well, except for the games that your CPU can't run at full speed that is... But that's more of a hardware issue that can be fixed in a faster machine.
Anyway, have others tried this? What's your experience? I'd like to know if there are any issues that other emulators/cores/combinations don't have because i'm still looking. Or any other long standing issues that are fixed.
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