Cannot Get FastForward / Fast Forward To Work

DivinityCycle · 15 January 2017 04:02

I wrote both FastForward & Fast Forward in my post title to help future people like myself who might search for help using either term. I’m running a nightly build from a few days ago on a system running Windows 10 64-bit Enterprise. My CPU is an Intel i7-570HQ 2.7 GHz. My GPU is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M running the most recent mainline driver. I’m seeing this issue on all the cores I have tested, which currently includes PicoDrive, Genesis Plus GX, BSNES Mercury Balance, BSNES Balanced, and MAME. My research on this turned up the detail that VSync must be disabled to allow Fast Forward to work, and the fastforward_ratio setting determines the maximum allowed speed. I have tried enabling & disabling various graphics-related settings like VSync, GPU Hard Sync, Full Screen, FullScreen Windowed, etc. I’m using the OpenGL driver, as that seems to just be what the default is, and the only relevant info I could find was just people complaining that the D3D driver wasn’t working properly under some conditions.

I am generally familiar with how the hotkey mapping works in RetroArch and I have Slow Motion & Rewind working exactly as expected. I used RetroArch about a year ago and I could have sworn that I had FF working on my old setup. Recently decided to start up fresh from a brand new build, and I’m loving the big improvements that have been made to the GUI. IIRC things like “run as a fullscreen window” were not available last time I used RetroArch.

Any suggestions on where I should go in terms of troubleshooting? I just figured out how to grab debug log output from RetroArch but I’m still at work so I can’t really troubleshoot until I get back home.

spinningacorn · 15 January 2017 08:00

I couldn’t get fast forward for the longest time because I had “advance settings” set on my NVIDIA driver. Once I switched back to the default option of “let the application chose its settings”, all my vsync problems in RetroArch were fixed, including fastforwading.

DivinityCycle · 15 January 2017 08:00

Well, that would definitely explain why changing settings in RetroArch itself wasn’t making a difference. I will take a look at this when I get home later today, will post results if I find / solve this issue Many thanks

vitz3 · 15 January 2017 08:00

Does it work in the most recent stable build? Worth checking there too. Does it work in windowed mode? Are you forcing v-sync via your driver config panel? Lastly, have you verified the hotkey for fast forwarding is set?

Defaults to; input_toggle_fast_forward = “space”

FWIW I don’t see any mention of “fast forward” on the master branch for the past week aside from netplay work. But I haven’t gone over enough of the project yet to fully follow the code path though and probably won’t catch up any time soon. One of the devs could probably answer if it’s currently out of commision in the nightlies but I’d check out the fullscreen vs. windowed thing and the driver v-sync enforcement before you bring up an issue.

hunterk · 15 January 2017 08:00

It still works AFAIK. Problems are usually caused by GPU driver utilities forcing vsync (i.e., set to “best quality” instead of “max performance” or whatever). If you’re on Windows 8+, I think vsync is always enforced unless you’re in exclusive fullscreen.

DivinityCycle · 15 January 2017 10:01

Many thanks to all the replies, you guys helped me get this figured out. It appears to indeed have been Nvidia’s drivers, or probably more specifically the extra control panel settings that go with the drivers. I actually did a before & after test and have isolated the issue to this specific setting:

You’ll need to get into the Nvidia Control panel, which you can do simply by right-clicking on your desktop and then choosing the “Nvidia Control Panel” option.

Then once you’re in there, on the left you’ll want to go into 3D Settings > Manage 3D settings, and then choose the “Program Settings” tab. This is where you can specify specific behavior for a particular executable. I had to add RetroArch to the list, and then scrolled way down to the bottom to the “Vertical sync” option. For me this was set to I think “3D Application” or “On”, not sure. Either way, TURN THAT OFF.

For me, this immediately got FastForward working as expected and I am now able to scoot through the opening cut scenes and company logos on games to my heart’s content. Also, just worth noting: this is working for me in Fulscreen Window mode, not just regular fullscreen.