Supermodel Forum

Before everyone gets excited, no I am NOT planning to do this and am not allowed to contribute code to Supermodel at the moment anyway. I'm just thinking out loud.

I wondered recently what advantage Supermodel offers over e.g., MAME in the long run. Yes, MAME has a long way to go with Model 3 but it'll get there one day. There are lots of aspects of the Supermodel code base in dire need of an overhaul and one big advantage projects like MAME have is lots of developer interest. Supermodel has attracted some really brilliant folks (Ian, Nik, Harry Tuttle, SpinDizzi, and others) but bigger emulator projects have a massive scale advantage.

Partly it's my fault for not setting up a proper development system with Github, automated builds and packaging, pull requests, etc. I hope to do that one day. But partly, I think Model 3 has fairly narrow appeal. I'd personally love to see Model 1 and 2 emulation and also 90's (and maybe late 80's, too) pre-Naomi 3D platforms. All of these are in MAME, though, and it's not clear what Supermodel (which lacks a GUI to this day!) would bring to the table there. There was once a proliferation of standalone 3D emulators (Zinc, Modeler, VivaNonno, ElSemi's Model 2 Emulator) but MAME is now the bleeding edge as well as the most convenient for most folks.

Something I'd love to see in the future, especially once a proper UX is put in place, is a return of Nik's real-time 3D debugging tool. Model 3 in particular lends itself well to this because the hardware consumes a fairly high level representation of what is being rendered. It's trivial to explore the scene. I don't think this would be possible if Model 3 used a more conventional rendering architecture. Model export/import, texture-editing, etc. would be exciting features. However, again, it's a lot of work for relatively little reward -- the Model 3 game library is very limited. These sorts of bells and whistles are much better suited for console emulators, which have enormous game libraries to explore.

So I'm curious -- what's the future of arcade emulation and Supermodel in particular? What niche is there to exploit?

You're right. The emu scene need a 3D games emulator as good as supermodel.
Vivanono was a great milestone but Mame killed it.
NebulaM2 is great but closed source and dead.
We have nothing for model 1.

So yes, we need something new, fast and open(and android compatible :p)

Please please please.

It would be wonderful if there was a single emulator that emulated all of Sega's early 'Model' 3D games.
Ultramodel!

I think the main goal has been reached with Supermodel, being able to enjoy Model 3 games outside of using original hardware where most people struggle to tell the difference between OG and PC emulation. Sure there are some things to improve, but it's so hard to tell unless you are familiar with the game in question. It's apparent that many people were amazed when that was accomplished, me being one of them.

Along with playing on standard PC hardware with HID devices etc, what I'd like is to have a solution where a PC/Pi/Android could be exchanged for the core hardware in the real arcade machine to allow it to live on. A lot of hardware is getting flaky now, to the point where people are scrapping machines because of failing hardware. Something that's easy to configure and has fully documented guides how to make the 'inbetween' devices (Arduinio's etc) that can be used to connect the PC to the original I/O's/Drive boards/Gunboards etc. This has been done to a certain degree, but that information is not commonly known.

So I guess Supermodel having perfect accuracy would be the ultimate goal for me.
Netplay/local Lan play being the cherry on top......16 player Daytona 2 would be a blast.

Thanks.

Sounds like a great idea it’s definitely possible especially now that we have the technology to support it..!!

Biggest advantage is obvious, hardware accelerated rendering. In theory mame could be much more accurate with regards to rendering, especially with regards to quads. The quad rendering engine in supermodel is actually far superior to what the original hw did, but for purists it's not 100% accurate.

I don't even know if mame is using mipmapping for their implementation.

I think a model 1 emulator would be pretty cool. Could easily render in 4k. I know they didn't use hardware depth buffer and probably did poly sorting in software. But an opengl renderer would be ridiculously simple. Only flat shading, so no attribute interpolation, no transparency, no textures, so no mipmapping etc lol

Would be a very short shader

In my opinion, standalone emulators will always be a better choice for players than Mame.

Mame purpose to achieve perfection is great for videogame preservation, but not that good to actually playing games.
Like many I use Mame since late '90, and for some arcade boards it took nearly 20 years to achieve near perfect emulation, while other boards are still imperfect today and seems abandoned (Sega System 32? ) or progress is very very slow (Model 1 and 2 for example).

Also Mame has become too big IMO and the fact that it include also consoles, computers and even handhelds, only "hinder" the progress made in arcade emulation that (at least from my point of view) is slower than ever in Mame especially on the Sega side (the one that interest me).
With standalone emulators usually progress are much faster and the result are better since you can use hardware acceleration too, even if it come at cost of not 100% accuracy.
For example Mame can't still match Elsemi Model 2 emulator and this remain even today the only option to play model 2 games.

You guys made so much progress with Supermodel in such short time that is amazing, better than any other standalone emulator (maybe only Demul made the same kind of progress)
Without Supermodel, we couldn't even dream to reach the current results in Mame even in 2030 probably ^_^

So yes, adding also Model 1 and Model 2 would be a great idea, but maybe better when Model 3 will be 100% complete.
But who knows maybe adding Model 1 and 2 could attract more people to work on supermodel that could also help with Model 3...

Model 1 and 2: A small yes.

Namco System 23: A big fat YES because of how complicated the custom 3d hardware is.

Anything non-Sega would be a nice to see.

IMO Supermodel and MAME are very different since they do no not share the same target. MAME focuses on accuracy and thus stay with the original resolution even if it is sometimes ugly according to current standards. With Supermodel, high-res are possible and this changes a lot for the user experience. From this perspective MAME will never be on par with Supermodel.
I like Virtua Racing with MAME but am not very fond of the low-res and the low depth of field. Such a game will greatly benefit from a rendering similar to Supermodel.
So Yes, I would love to see an extension of Supermodel capabilities towards Model 1 and 2.

Talented people are necessary. I do not know if everything has to be started from scratch or if some code from MAME can be reused. Elsemi's code for Model2 is probably lost forever.
If the objectives is to attract people to Model3 emulation, there are other options (not mutually exclusive):
- remake the internet site and release latest versions on the site,
- make announcements to attract new coders (on supermodel site and on emulation-oriented sites),
- start the development of a supermodel core for RETROARCH,

It is not easy to get good coders able to develop an emulator. I am absolutely amazed by the achieved results!
It is much easier to get some help to manage the site and forum.

I think there would be a lot of interest in a kind of 'Mame 3D', an open source emulator for newer 3d systems which handles core emulation and documentation similar to Mame but with the graphics done using hardware 3d rendering (with the original 3d engine also documented in source). Of course, given the immense difficulty of reverse engineering even a single 3d engine this would be a tremendous challenge, it would be a brave developer/team that takes it on. Still, if someone was mad enough to start doing it, I think it would be popular.

To answer the original question, I think something along the lines of Model 2 Emulator's core emulation ported to supermodel with Ian's renderer bolted on would be great!

One thing to keep in mind is that Supermodel's renderer is indeed very accurate -- far more so than MAME's currently -- and the "improvement" is primarily in being able to run at a higher resolution than the original hardware. In other words, Supermodel's goal has never been to make the games look "better". It has always been about accuracy and performance.