¿Tearing? in beetle psx software

I am having tearing in the Beetle HW in software mode. This is the intro of jojo bizarre adventure and its notorious when the “thunder” sound and the light fills the screen. Its weird, not all games have tearing, in fact, Jojo works very well all the time aside from the intro.

In Hardware mode, there is no tearing here, but this mode is buggy for many games, i prefer the software mode. My question is: maybe the intro (in real hardware) HAVE tearing?

I am using retroarch 1.7.3, with vulkan driver, i have a nvidia gt640 video card and the option “triple buffer” and “vertical sync” set to “active” in the control panel. And the “vertical sync” option in retroarch too. My computer can run all psx games to 60fps with any problem.

EDIT: i tried al direct X drivers, and open gl too, and have the same problem.

I’ve noticed tearing in software mode too, which I don’t understand at all because I have system-enforced G-sync and V-sync.

I´ve noticed the tearing happens when the game has a big FPS drop (i mean, the “emulated console” fps). I easy to reproduce with Duke Nukem Total Meltdown, just walking to any wall and move left and right. This game dont work well with hardware mode.

what you’re describing is most likely not a bug and is expected behavior. software mode, as opposed to hardware mode, attempts to accurately reproduce the visuals as well as timings of the visuals produced by real hardware. thus for any game that exhibits tearing on actual hardware you should expect similar if not near-identical results. so yes, my guess is the games you’re trying to emulate probably had/have tearing on real hardware.

the vsync setting in retroarch only determines if the frame displayed on the host (your machine running retroarch + beetle-psx) is subject to tearing, it doesn’t and shouldn’t extend to the emulated guest machine.

i keep playing other games like Silent Hill, and i noticed some tearing. I noticed the tearing always happen when the Internal FPS drops down in heavy polygon count areas. (well, jojo is a 2d game but the FPS drops down in the screen i posted in my first comment)

I been played Silent Hill for years (real hardware), and i am pretty sure that game DONT HAVE tearing. And any other PSX emu in software mode dont show this tearing.

Silent Hill does tear quite heavily in the Beetle PSX core, I had to avoid HW due to emulation issues (menu-/area-transitions and loading screen motion blur).

I sadly don’t have a genuine PS1 to compare. If SH1 has no screen tearing on real hardware the difference should be rather easy to see in a side-by-side comparison?

The tearing shows when the console have a fps drop (i mean the “Internal FPS”). I noticed the hardware mode has tearing too. This is hardware vulkan mode.

I will record a video in a friend console, next time i visit his house.

EDIT: I found other case easy to reproduce: Gran Turismo 2 Arcade Disc Intro video has HORRIBLE VERTICAL tearing in the hardware renderer.

Does the PCSX Rearmed core have tearing? At least not as immediately noticeable as in Beetle PSX, but black levels don’t look accurate in PCSX Rearmed at least at the default settings. As I don’t have interest in increasing resolution I’ll try to stick with Beetle HW for now despite the minor emulation bugs.

Inside the elementary school which I wouldn’t expect to be a high-strain area screen tearing is constant in Beetle non-HW core.

I tested in Mednafen 1.22.1, also has screen tearing in Silent Hill.

Vsync is enabled in the emulator:

;Attempt to synchronize OpenGL page flips to vertical retrace period.
video.glvsync 1
1 Like

Silent Hill likely has screen tearing on PS1: https://forum.fobby.net/index.php?t=tree&th=1767&start=0&

Doesn’t seem like an emulation issue anymore. I’m not familiar with PS1 hardware, but I find very hard to believe that Vsync would be enabled in the OS system-wide.

1 Like

In a couple of weeks, i have acces to a real ps1 console, and i will record some videos to test that. I dont remember at all tearing in real hardware, or any emulator.

ah, a very easy game to test: grab Duke Nukem Total Meltdown, walk to any wall and move left and right.