[Picodrive 1.40, with SVP (Virtua Racing) support! - Megadrive/Sega CD Emulator]

[wraggster]

Notaz (http://notaz.gp2x.de/) is back and with the killer release Virtua Racing now supported on the GP2x. awesome news :)

There are two major features in this release:

1. SVP (Sega Virtua Processor) support for Virtua Racing at playable speeds (often fullspeed).

http://notaz.gp2x.de/img/vrsa.png

2. Greatly improved streaming for Sega CD games. Read-ahead buffer must be disabled for this to work.

Other then that, some other things were fixed or improved.
More detailed changelog below:
Added support for SVP (Sega Virtua Processor) to emulate Virtua Racing, wrote ARM recompiler and some HLE code for VR. Credits to Exophase and Rokas for various ideas.
Changed config file format, files are now human-readable. Game specific configs are now held in single file (but old game config files are still read when new one is missing).
Fixed a bug where some key combos didn't work as expected.
Fixed a regression in renderer (some graphic glitches in rare cases).
Adjusted fast renderer to work with more games, including VR.
Fixed a problem where SegaCD RAM cart data was getting lost on reset.
Greatly reduced SegaCD FMV game slowdowns by disabling read-ahead in the Linux kernel and C library (thanks to Rokas and Exophase for ideas again). Be sure to keep "ReadAhead buffer" OFF to avoid slowdowns.
PicoDrive now comes with a game config file for some games which need special settings, so they should now work out-of-the-box. More games will be added with later updates.
Files now can be deleted by pressing A+SELECT in the file browser.
download here
source code is still being prepared..

________

Note that Virtua Racing needs some special settings to run well, but the new config system should handle all that for you. In case it doesn't, switch renderer to "8bit fast", disable "accurate timing", and enable "SVP dynarec" in advanced options. You will also need to overclock a bit.

The majority bug reports I get are actually configuration issues (people mess up their configs), there are far too many options in PD. To solve that, I could simply remove most options and force them to accuracy mode. But that is not a good idea, because those opts allow doing things like extreme underclocking for some games, and I know some people do that (I will probably do that for Pandora, though). So I decided making a single file for game configs, and ship PD with that file. The file contains special settings for some games which need them, so those games work out-of-the-box. I haven't prepared it for every game out there though (that would need far too much time), so users can update and share it. The games are detected using headers, so there is no need to worry about filenames differing.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

[Illegal Machine]

Is there a special reason why this isn't being released on the PSP?

[JKKDARK]

I think it's totally possible on PSP. But there are not news about people working on a PSP release.

[Baboon]

Another excellent release for GP2X owners. Congrats to Notaz! :)

I really hope this and also the latest mame4all from Franxis get ported to the PSP some time?

[wolfpack]

yes, i agree, a psp port of this would be nice, it needs an update

[SSaxdude]

This is the first emulator to run Virtua Racing; history in the making. I own a copy of VR so I've never been waiting for this. But if this is possible on the GP2X, I imagine 32X emulation is possible on the PSP.

[xabier]

Is there a special reason why this isn't being released on the PSP?

Gp2x picodrive is ARM Asm code
PSP picodrive is C code.

Picodrive runs much smoother on the gp2x than the psp at 200mhz. There is not framerate drop in the gp2x. Psp version suffers some framerate drops at 333mhz(from 40 to 60fps)

Virtua racing runs full speed with dynarec on the gp2x, without dinarec it runs at 13fps. I don't think we will see this game on the psp soon....:(