• Breaking News

    Wednesday, May 26, 2021

    Home Unlabelled Android Google didn't mention the best way to install the Android 12 Beta on Pixel

    Android Google didn't mention the best way to install the Android 12 Beta on Pixel

    May 26, 2021

    Android Google didn't mention the best way to install the Android 12 Beta on Pixel

    Google didn't mention the best way to install the Android 12 Beta on Pixel

    Posted: 25 May 2021 10:12 PM PDT

    Google Feed now supports Android 12's wallpaper-based theming system

    Posted: 25 May 2021 11:29 PM PDT

    Google rolling out Weather app redesign on Android - 9to5Google

    Posted: 25 May 2021 12:35 PM PDT

    Anker teases Nebula Android TV dongle for 2021 release - 9to5Google

    Posted: 25 May 2021 11:00 AM PDT

    ShieldTV Best Emulators "Guide"

    Posted: 25 May 2021 12:31 PM PDT

    This is just to save someone searching for this the hours of time it took me to narrow things down. Credit to u/NaturalViolence

    Android already has a fairly limited selection of good emulators compared to windows/linux and android tv has an even more limited selection. And many don't work properly with external controllers or external storage which are necessary for a "proper" couch gaming experience on the shield tv.

    Optimal Emulators:

    Free:

    • Gameboy/Gameboy Color: Retroarch (mgba or gambatte, I prefer mgba slightly)

    • Gameboy Advance: Retroarch (mgba)

    • NES: Retroarch (nestopia)

    • SNES: Retroarch (snes9x), snes9x standalone

    • Genesis: Retroarch (genesis plus gx)

    Paid:

    • N64: mupen64 fz, free, $3 for pro version which adds external storage support, see below for config details

    • Dreamcast: redream, free for SD, $6 for HD version

    • DS: drastic, $5

    Some important notes about retroarch configuration:

    • You need to map a main menu button before you do anything. Otherwise as soon as you boot a rom you won't be able to get out.

    • Retroarch has READ ONLY access to external storage. These means if you set your savedata to save on a flashdrive for example, like I did, it won't work. And it won't give you any kind of error message to tell you it's not working.

    • Record video causes it to crash even when set to internal storage.

    • Also sometimes for whatever reason it doesn't save changes to the configuration unless I manually press save configuration file in the main menu.

    • Make sure to turn off "Swap ok and cancel buttons" in the settings which for some reason is on by default. It will drive you mad.

    • Whether you connect your controller before or after you start the app you need to make sure that the first input retroarch receives is from the controller. If you press something on the remote first it will assign the remote to port 1 and the input will stop working. If that happens go back to the home screen on android tv, open the app again, and press any button on the controller. It should say "Controller connected on port 1".

    • Auto savestate/loadstate is off by default. Turning it on can make jumping in and out of games much faster. However I had a corrupted savestate in one of my games that caused the game to crash on startup as a result of this option. Your mileage will vary.

    • Add your games using the "Manual scan" options. The automatic scan option for whatever reason didn't find a lot of my roms and this option also forces you to manually set the core for every single rom one by one..... With manual scan you can assign a specific core to a specific system then scan for it. It works much better.

    An important note about mupen64 fz configuration:

    The default video plugin is gliden64 very accurate. While it's supposed to be the best option I found that it gave me graphical issues in many games. Glide64 accurate however, has so far had none. However Glide64 accurate also seems to force original resolution in many games so for those games I ran them in gliden64 very accurate. Mupen64 fz luckily allows you to set different plugins for different games. While I would have liked the simplicity of using a single group of settings for everything this two plugin approach is needed to play everything optimally I'm afraid.

    Emulators I tried but didn't work out:

    • Gameboy/Gameboy Color: Sameboy since it's supposed to be the most accurate retroarch core. It did not run at fullspeed. Oddly enough there doesn't appear to be any standalone emulators that work with android tv for gb/gbc. There are some gba ones however that also emulate gb/gbc. See below.

    • Gameboy Advance: VGBANext and GBA.EMU. Both of these are $5 paid standalone gba/gbc/gb emulators. One of them could not read my external storage and the other could not properly map to my controller. I can't remember which was which.

    • NES: I tried the mesen core in retroarch since it's supposed to be the most accurate. It had slowdowns.

    • SNES: I tried the bsnes core in retroarch since it's supposed to be the most accurate. It had slowdowns.

    • N64: I tried the mupen64 gless 3 core in retroarch. Oddly enough while the standalone mupen64 fz had no major issues this core did. Graphical glitches, slowdowns, and games only ran in original resolution no matter what the settings were.

    • Dreamcast: The flycast core in retroarch flat out would not load any game. As soon as I tried it would crash the entire application. It sees the roms just fine in the scan, it just can't load them. It probably works just fine from what I've been reading but just doesn't support the format that my roms are in so it might work for you. Reicast would not read my external storage.

    • DS: The desmume core in retroarch is supposed to be the definitive way to emulate ds. But it had terrible slowdowns (single digit framerates). After doing some digging I found out that it doesn't have an arm jit, only interpreter. Thus the slow speed. The melonDS core ran much better since it does have a jit but it still only reached half speed in many games. It also does not support HD resolutions, only the DS's pathetic 256 x 192 resolution.

    • DS (sort of recommended): Drastic. Now I do recommend this emulator since it ran flawlessly, which is why it's on the list. However the experience of emulating touch controls with a joystick is quite annoying. So I would only recommend it for games that don't require touch controls.

    • Gamecube/Wii: Dolphin. Some games will run fine but many will have framerate issues. The shield just isn't powerful enough I'm afraid.

    Things I didn't try:

    • Standalone nes emulators. I'm sure some of them work fine but since nestopia worked fine for me in retroarch I had no reason to move on and test more.

    • Standalone snes. Only one I've tested is snes9x, I know there are others but I've never needed to test them.

    • Standalone genesis emulators

    • Other retroarch cores for NES, SNES, genesis.

    • PSP emulators. I simply have no interest in this console.

    • PS1 emulators. Again, no interest.

    I did however test every single core/emulator available for the DS, N64, and dreamcast. And all of the standalone options for GB/GBC/GBA. So I'm positive my choices are the optimal ones for those systems.

    Rant

    Not going to go over the configs for the other emulators because it would be too much. And unlike retroarch none of them forced me to spend hours troubleshooting config issues. To me retroarch has always been a pain in the ass to configure on any system. Typically setting up standalone emulators produces better results and is actually faster when you factor in troubleshooting time. However since android tv has so few standalone emulators that wasn't really an option for the shield tv.

    /Rant

    This post is mainly intended for anyone googling this topic looking to skip the troubleshooting time needed to set all of this up. As I did before setting all of this up after not finding anything worthwhile. I don't care if anyone comments on it or not.

    submitted by /u/NXGZ
    [link] [comments]

    Arm Announces Mobile Armv9 CPU Microarchitectures: Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710 & Cortex-A510

    Posted: 25 May 2021 06:01 AM PDT

    Smart Lock by location fixed again with latest Google Play services update

    Posted: 25 May 2021 08:14 PM PDT

    The last version 21.15.15 broke it, but I see it updated to 21.18.16 today and is working again. So you can stop whatever workaround you use whenever Smart Lock by location breaks, lol.

    (Apparently a lot of people find Smart Lock not reliable with location, but it's always worked well for me except when Google literally breaks it. :/ )

    submitted by /u/OrganicTomato
    [link] [comments]

    VideoCardz: "ARM announces Mali-G710, G610, G510 and G310 graphics processing units"

    Posted: 25 May 2021 06:59 AM PDT

    Google Weather gets a Material Theme design refresh

    Posted: 26 May 2021 04:08 AM PDT

    Cortex-X2 and Cortex-A710 - Two New Armv9 Cores for Smartphones [GARYEXPLAINS]

    Posted: 25 May 2021 06:55 AM PDT

    Redmi Note 8 2021 is now official with Helio G85 chipset

    Posted: 25 May 2021 02:42 AM PDT

    TECLAST M40, This Could Have Been The BEST Budget Tablet! [ETA PRIME]

    Posted: 25 May 2021 10:20 AM PDT
    Read more
    at

    No comments:

    Post a Comment