Request: GroovyMISTER output path

[star69rem]

https://github.com/psakhis/Groovy_MiSTer

The lack of front buffer rendering has always been an albatross around contemporary PC software's neck. GroovyMister allows you to use a Mister device as a GPU for a PC. There is an interface for the PC to send raw pixel data over the network to the Mister device.

You can get ~3ms of end to end latency with emulators/games because there's no vsync lag and no back/front buffer swapping. It would be awesome if Super Model could be updated to send the raw native resolution Model 3 pixel data to a Mister over the network for CRT output of the games at their native resolution with basically no lag. I think it would be pretty sexy.

More info:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,168163.0.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpUSyN1Wt6Q

[toxieainc]

Just to help me understand: As Supermodel renders via GL, could there be even any noticable benefit? Cause from my understanding, there could only be a lag benefit if the emulator/game draws everything in software and then sends that over.

[star69rem]

There are multiple benefits. The first one is compatibility. Anyone with a setup like this won't be able to use Super Model unless someone adds support for it. In terms of lag you should be able to get vsync off responsiveness since this solution doesn't even need a swap chain anymore. It's basically like having front buffer rendering.

[star69rem]

Seems like a benefit to me.

[dukeeeey]

For fullscreen mode in windows it generally renders in exclusive mode, which is something you don't have direct control over with the opengl API. So there won't or shouldn't be any lag introduced by the compositor. It just sort of happens behind the scenes. You call swapbuffers, which blocks until vblank happens. The only possible benefit I could see is if u wanted to emulate the tilegen chip with a CRT, you could reduce the lag to less than a frame. Basically whatever the network latency was + transmission time accounting for the bytes/s. But honestly I don't think anyone would ever notice any difference. But you'd have to rewrite the emulator somewhat to make that happen, because the final image is a sandwich of the 3d and 2d. You'd have to split them and send them separately I think to really take advantage.

[star69rem]

shows a screenshot of a conversation from Discord where someone literally did notice

"I don't think anyone will notice."

People are going to notice if they can run Super Model at all.