> OK, let me pose this question in relation to the above: does this mean that MAME > should also emulate the laserdisc players in their entirety for the games that used > them? Digitised disc data could be fed to a virtual laser pickup, the VBI decoded > within the LD player virtual machine, and the appropriate frame data fed from the > virtual player's video output to MAME's framebuffer for display.
Yes it should. And it should output the composite video so we can decode it in a programmable shader and provide a set of dynamic picture controls like you'd get with a real system.
> Granted, I am being slightly silly in asking that question, but not entirely. Given > that we're talking about reproduction of an analogue medium in a digital format, > we're always going to be stuck with the 'how far do we go' and 'where do we stop' > questions.
And people said storing home computer tape software as WAV files and emulating the front-end was silly (rather than just storing bytes), or emulating keyboard MCUs and interface chips was silly (rather than just faking it at protocol level), and emulating CPS2 encryption was silly (rather than just using XOR files), or requiring encrypted NeoGeo GFX ROM images was silly (rather than using pre-decrypted GFX like NeoRageX), yet here we are.