Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hi  - I have a question I wondered if anyone could help with?

I currently play my Wii on one of the best CRTs to play the console on - it's a Loewe Aconda 32" with VGA card - so progressive scan on one of the best consumer CRTs ever made. The image is absolutely stunning, absolutely *zero* lag (due to no image processing in VGA mode) - but I'm considering whether I might get rid of it in favor of Dolphin for space reasons - it's a pretty big TV!

On the Wii, I love games like the Metroid trilogy, DKCR, the Mario Galaxy games etc. One of the things I love about these games is that they run absolutely perfectly almost 100% of the time - a rock solid, 60fps without ever missing a beat. I also play stuff like Skyward sword, New play control Pikmin and a couple of others.

If I get a PC to run these games in Dolphin, I'll get one powerful enough to comfortably run exclusive ubershaders & It'll be my normal/work PC connected to my plasma so I can switch over to that for Dolphin games.

My question is that discounting the fact Dolphin can run at high resolutions, use texture packs and other enhancements & taking into account that I'll have a powerful enough CPU & graphics card so as not to be a limiting factor in any way, will the games run as 1000% reliably as the real hardware - i.e. not a hiccup or dropped frame, any game lag or controller lag all the way through a game, bearing in mind I'll be playing the games mentioned above?

This would sway me as to whether to get rid of my Aconda - if there's likely to be any hint of imperfect performance in these games using the emulator, I'll keep the TV + continue to play these games on my Wii.


Thanks!

Considering how Dolphin isn't perfect, there's no way to guarantee no issues at all. However, for the games mentioned, assuming a sufficiently powered computer, you should probably be able to run the games with no perceivable issues.

Thanks for that, so just to be clear - assuming sufficient hardware you could envisage playing through the whole of say Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 with pretty well no noticeable issues or deviations from the original hardware?

Well, taking a look at the support pages for both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, you can see that there appears to be 3 issues total with the 2 games that are not currently fixed. They are "minor" graphical issues, and if you can overlook them then yes, the games will be playable all the way through without any problems assuming your computer is properly setup and not doing weird things.

OK thanks - those are minor and wouldn't bother me at all. So what about lag on the Wiimote/nunchuck? Is the latency as good as when using real hardware?

I think that depends on the Bluetooth adapter being used. There's some thread around here where it talks about what adapters are good

Sure, I've seen the thread - but I'm talking about in a best case scenario where you've got the ideal/fastest adapter.

Best case is using a Wii BT module from a real Wii, soldering a USB male end onto the contacts, and using Bluetooth Passthrough available in dev builds.

In any case, using even Real Wiimote mode, you shouldn't be able to perceive any lag. I don't even think emulated wiimote mode lags at all.

I saw that thread as well - looks very interesting and someone seems to be developing a unit to sell which would be great:

[url=I saw that thread as well - looks very interesting and someone seems to be developing a unit to sell which would be great: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-how-to-wire-a-wii-s-bluetooth-module-to-a-pc-usb-port?page=16]Thread[/url]

But from what you're saying there should be no lag anyway when using a decent recommended bluetooth module right? In that case, what advantages does using a BT module from a real Wii have?

you can use bluetooth passthrough with excellent range, flawless wiimote audio and it will definitely save your paired wiimotes in between game launches.