MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat

> > Would a console version of MAME, which doesn't work on DirectX I suppose, have the
> > same issue?
>
> Probably. If you're psychologically inclined to find lag under every bed, you'll
> probably find it in console ports.

This is not a subjective feeling, it is an objective fact that can be measured quite easily:

Get a camera that can record videos with 60 FPS.
Start a game in MAME that runs at 60 FPS and set your monitor to 60 Hz.
Set one of your game's input buttons to the Shift Lock key. (For example the jump of a character.) The Shift Lock key is connected to an LED on the keyboard, so you can check exactly when it was pressed.
Position your camera so that the monitor and your keyboard are simulatenously visible.
Press the Shift Lock key and let the character on the screen jump.

Now check your recorded video: Count the frames between the moment when the LED of the Shift Lock key gets turned on and the moment when the character on the screen jumps.
This is your base value.

Now try MAME with different configurations and see how many more frames the character needs to react after the key has been pressed and the LED turned on:

The results most likely will be:

Vsync in DirectDraw fullscreen, DirectDraw windowed and Direct3D windowed will produce 0-1 additional frames of lag.

Vsync in Direct3D fullscreen unfortunately produces circa 3 additional frames of lag.

This is not exclusive to MAME. The same problem happens in Nestopia, so it has to be some kind of DirectX issue.
Anyway, it's a pity because Direct3D in fullscreen is probably the most desirable configuration.

That's why I was asking whether something like this could also happen on a console port since the console port probably doesn't work with DirectX at all. But I don't know which shortcomings that configuration would have.

About the other topics:

Console-wise, I was thinking of the PlayStation 3 and game-wise "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior".

About the resolution: If it is 640 x 480, but SF2 is just 384 x 224 (with the black bars as overscan: 384 x 240), doesn't this mean that MAME artificially adds pixels to the output before it is sent to the TV?
If I play the physical arcade board with a supergun on a CRT TV, the signal is sent to the TV unaltered: The vertical resolution is fixed anyway and is the same value as on an NES or a Super Nintendo. And the horizontal resolution is processed by the TV in an analog way instead of a digital way.
But when MAME itself upscales the image beforehand, this is not 100 % authentic anymore. So, for an authentic look, it would be necessary to force MAME to generate a screen output of 384 x 224 (or 384 x 240 with black bars) to send to the TV.