The Future of Melee: How fast can Dolphin accept inputs? What is the refresh rate?

[skid]

From what I have read, the 125hz affects Windows HID devices.  The native GC Adapter support polls the adapter continuously in a loop using a thread.  In the emulation thread, the game picks up the latest input data when it needs to.  So unless there is a delay in response coming from the USB adapter, the game will receive input data lag-free.  If there is a delay, there is nothing we can change in Dolphin to overcome it.

[The_Master_E]

A new Raphnet adapter? >1 MS delay? I'm hype.

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(01-28-2015, 08:28 PM)JMC47 Wrote: You shouldn't need to unless you're really crazy.

There are people who have analyzed the frame data of all the hitboxes in the game without the use of hardware pauses or test stages. Before the debug menu was discovered.

NEVER underestimate the focus of the Melee community. As with most FGC games, they desire speed and precision over all else.

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(01-28-2015, 09:23 AM)TruckJitsu Wrote: Raphnet is working on a new version of their adapter that will use full speed USB. The USB communication will be done by hardware so a low poll interval of 1 ms will be possible.

Will it be a 4-Player Adapter like the official Nintendo one? Or just a single controller? I'm pretty sure that with a poll interval as low as you say it's gonna be, it'll probably be just one.

Also, don't forget to check the deadzones! Remember how Mayflash turned out on https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/01/01/dolphin-progress-report-december-2014/ ?

[FenrirWolf]

(01-29-2015, 12:34 AM)TruckJitsu Wrote:

(01-28-2015, 08:28 PM)JMC47 Wrote: You shouldn't need to unless you're really crazy.  It feels like console as it is with Native GC support + Exclusive Fullscreen; even without a CRT monitor.

For competitive players with money on the line, it's not considered "really crazy".  It's crucial for Dolphin support to be as good as or better than console play.  This is for the competitive Smash Community - so when there's money on the line, it can't be worse than console.  The big reason more players aren't using Dolphin is because of input lag and no one is taking it seriously right now.  I'm trying to change this.

There are a number of reasons emulators aren't used for tournaments, and emulation accuracy is probably among the least of them. Now I'm all for making the Melee experience on Dolphin as accurate as possible, and love that it's been getting better and better with all the updates that have been going into Dolphin and controller support. You should just realize that no sensible tournament is going to be advertising to the world that they're not playing with legitimate discs on legitimate hardware. Even something like the 20XX Tournament Edition that runs on unmodified GCN or Wii consoles (via a modified savegame copied to a GCN memory card) is going to be the subject of much scrutiny and debate before large regional or national tournaments decide to adopt it or not.

[TruckJitsu]

(01-29-2015, 08:17 PM)FenrirWolf Wrote:

(01-29-2015, 12:34 AM)TruckJitsu Wrote:

(01-28-2015, 08:28 PM)JMC47 Wrote: You shouldn't need to unless you're really crazy.  It feels like console as it is with Native GC support + Exclusive Fullscreen; even without a CRT monitor.

For competitive players with money on the line, it's not considered "really crazy".  It's crucial for Dolphin support to be as good as or better than console play.  This is for the competitive Smash Community - so when there's money on the line, it can't be worse than console.  The big reason more players aren't using Dolphin is because of input lag and no one is taking it seriously right now.  I'm trying to change this.

There are a number of reasons emulators aren't used for tournaments, and emulation accuracy is probably among the least of them. Now I'm all for making the Melee experience on Dolphin as accurate as possible, and love that it's been getting better and better with all the updates that have been going into Dolphin and controller support. You should just realize that no sensible tournament is going to be advertising to the world that they're not playing with legitimate discs on legitimate hardware. Even something like the 20XX Tournament Edition that runs on unmodified GCN or Wii consoles (via a modified savegame copied to a GCN memory card) is going to be the subject of much scrutiny and debate before large regional or national tournaments decide to adopt it or not.

"You should just realize that no sensible tournament is going to be advertising to the world that they're not playing with legitimate discs on legitimate hardware."

Yeah I don't care about APEX or EVO not using it.  There's hundreds of local events per year that use 20XX off USB Flash Drives and SD cards on setups as well as Project Melee.

"is going to be the subject of much scrutiny and debate before large regional or national tournaments decide to adopt it or not"

No kidding.  I'm going to push for Dolphin support - that's the whole point.  It's the best move for the future.  It's also not all about tournaments.  Lots of players stream or play online.  Now we can finally enjoy Melee or PM in HD with widescreen progressive output on Gaming Monitors without the nasty input lag we had.  That was the whole problem.  That is why it's not being taken seriously.  It's not because of people being scared of Dolphin being an emulator - they would gladly use it if it worked.  But it wasn't before.  We didn't have exclusive fullscreen, native support for adapters, an official Nintendo adapter, 20XX with Widescreen support, online play, and good affordable BenQ monitors.  Now we have all the ingredients necessary for the dream.

1. HD Upscaling + Anti-Aliasing
2. Widescreen Progressive Output
3. Online Play (with only 33ms or less of input lag if you play buffer 4 and under)
4. Even less input lag than a console + CRT if you use a 144hz monitor

Why limit ourselves to crappy 480i composite setups with CRTs?  The future needs Melee to have HD and Online support to attract more players during this period of growth.  A lot of people are turned off by how it looks and just go to Project M.  We need younger players to look at it and have confidence in wanting to play it.  They don't have the same ties nostalgically if they were born after Melee came out or grew up after Melee faded.  They look at it like it's an old dog and go to Smash 4 or Project M.  Even if you use a Wii and get a Sewell HDMI adapter, it's still only 480p Widescreen and doesn't have any HD upscaling or anti-aliasing, and doesn't have online support.  In 2015, every other popular game has online and HD support - so if we can make Melee have those two important elements, we need to move forward.

There will always be human anchors and people who will resist this for reasons that are from ignorance; but with this new evidence, it's going to be hard to ignore the huge benefits we gain as a community.

[JMC47]

I agree that emulator will be better in the long run; it's just about getting to that point.

[FenrirWolf]

I feel like Melee's growth isn't necessarily constrained by those factors, considering the scene is bigger than it ever has been. Every time I go to a tournament these days I'm seeing kids and older people alike saying that this is their first event, or that they only got into the game in the past year, and so on. But hey, it is true that there are a number of folks out there who don't have a local scene or don't have easy access to it, so easier and more accurate online play is certainly a boon in that regard.

I'm a bit puzzled when it comes to the 144hz thing though. No matter how much faster than 60hz your monitor refreshes, Melee itself is still running at 60FPS. Meaning each frame is still occurring every 16.67ms and polling inputs at 5ms like the GameCube should get you identical results to actual hardware. I suppose 1ms input polling would theoretically be pretty cool, but I'm still lost when it comes to what role a higher refresh rate plays.

[TruckJitsu]

(01-30-2015, 10:45 AM)FenrirWolf Wrote: I feel like Melee's growth isn't necessarily constrained by those factors, considering the scene is bigger than it ever has been. Every time I go to a tournament these days I'm seeing kids and older people alike saying that this is their first event, or that they only got into the game in the past year, and so on. But hey, it is true that there are a number of folks out there who don't have a local scene or don't have easy access to it, so easier and more accurate online play is certainly a boon in that regard.

I'm a bit puzzled when it comes to the 144hz thing though. No matter how much faster than 60hz your monitor refreshes, Melee itself is still running at 60FPS. Meaning each frame is still occurring every 16.67ms and polling inputs at 5ms like the GameCube should get you identical results to actual hardware. I suppose 1ms input polling would theoretically be pretty cool, but I'm still lost when it comes to what role a higher refresh rate plays.

For every 60hz display, it takes 16.67ms to display each frame from transmission lag.  With a 144hz display, it would only be 6.94ms from transmission lag + 2ms from input processing making it have ~9ms of total display lag per frame vs 16.67ms per frame with a CRT or 18.67ms with a 60hz Gaming Monitor.

[I.S.T.]

(01-30-2015, 12:55 PM)TruckJitsu Wrote:

(01-30-2015, 10:45 AM)FenrirWolf Wrote: I feel like Melee's growth isn't necessarily constrained by those factors, considering the scene is bigger than it ever has been. Every time I go to a tournament these days I'm seeing kids and older people alike saying that this is their first event, or that they only got into the game in the past year, and so on. But hey, it is true that there are a number of folks out there who don't have a local scene or don't have easy access to it, so easier and more accurate online play is certainly a boon in that regard.

I'm a bit puzzled when it comes to the 144hz thing though. No matter how much faster than 60hz your monitor refreshes, Melee itself is still running at 60FPS. Meaning each frame is still occurring every 16.67ms and polling inputs at 5ms like the GameCube should get you identical results to actual hardware. I suppose 1ms input polling would theoretically be pretty cool, but I'm still lost when it comes to what role a higher refresh rate plays.

For every 60hz display, it takes 16.67ms to display each frame from transmission lag.  With a 144hz display, it would only be 6.94ms from transmission lag + 2ms from input processing making it have ~9ms of total display lag per frame vs 16.67ms per frame with a CRT or 18.67ms with a 60hz Gaming Monitor.

That assumes the application, in this case Super Smash Brothers Melee, can be run at 144 hz. It can't. Dolphin by default can't run the game higher than 60 FPS. Because of this, the monitor is just duping the frames rather than the application itself.

This is why 30 FPS games have more lag than 60 FPS games even if they're being played using 60 hz monitors.

[TruckJitsu]

(01-30-2015, 09:28 PM)I.S.T. Wrote:

(01-30-2015, 12:55 PM)TruckJitsu Wrote:

(01-30-2015, 10:45 AM)FenrirWolf Wrote: I feel like Melee's growth isn't necessarily constrained by those factors, considering the scene is bigger than it ever has been. Every time I go to a tournament these days I'm seeing kids and older people alike saying that this is their first event, or that they only got into the game in the past year, and so on. But hey, it is true that there are a number of folks out there who don't have a local scene or don't have easy access to it, so easier and more accurate online play is certainly a boon in that regard.

I'm a bit puzzled when it comes to the 144hz thing though. No matter how much faster than 60hz your monitor refreshes, Melee itself is still running at 60FPS. Meaning each frame is still occurring every 16.67ms and polling inputs at 5ms like the GameCube should get you identical results to actual hardware. I suppose 1ms input polling would theoretically be pretty cool, but I'm still lost when it comes to what role a higher refresh rate plays.

For every 60hz display, it takes 16.67ms to display each frame from transmission lag.  With a 144hz display, it would only be 6.94ms from transmission lag + 2ms from input processing making it have ~9ms of total display lag per frame vs 16.67ms per frame with a CRT or 18.67ms with a 60hz Gaming Monitor.

That assumes the application, in this case Super Smash Brothers Melee, can be run at 144 hz. It can't. Dolphin by default can't run the game higher than 60 FPS. Because of this, the monitor is just duping the frames rather than the application itself.

This is why 30 FPS games have more lag than 60 FPS games even if they're being played using 60 hz monitors.

The application is irrelevant to this particular point regarding transmission time.  The game could be run at 20fps.  But the signal from the PC to the Monitor is 144hz.  So even though there's a lot of frame dumping or repeat frames, when it is time to display a frame, it's going to take less time to display it.  Every frame is 16.67ms behind "reality" (theoretical 0ms) just because it takes 16.67ms to display what already "happened".  With a 144hz display, it's just getting a little closer to "reality" or 0ms per frame.  A 30fps game will have more lag from transmission time on a 60hz display than a 144hz display.

[JMC47]

With exclusive fullscreen, we push to the monitor without dropping/losing any frames. The lower latency the monitor, the sooner you see the frame, no ifs, ands, or buts.