Collect probably IO timing related problems

[daniel229]

Meaning problems got help by changing I/O timing method to "HOST" or"Simulate UMD delays".

"Simulate UMD delays" helps the following games

• Innocent Life Innocent Life - Crashes the emulator when starting a new game or loading a save. #2830
• Dan Ball Senki W Remaining issues in Dan Ball Senki W #4786
• Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 with Izayoiki Aizouban HARUKANARU TOKI NO NAKA DE 3 WITH IZAYOIKI AIZOUBAN missing BGM and black screen after title #6127
• DJMAX Portable 2 DJMAX Portable 2 bugs #5837 ,probably also helps other DJMAX games.
• Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Masou Kishin II Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Masou Kishin II - Revelation of Evil God movies/moves skipped #5540
• Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Portable Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Portable in-game problem #6557
• Gran Turismo Gran Turismo theater mode video playback issue #6189
• Crash: Mind Over Mutant Crash: Mind Over Mutant - Eternal Loading Screen #7645
• Tengai Makyou - Daishi no Mokushiroku (hangs on certain scene)
• Pangya: Fantasy Golf UMD seek delay isn't emulated at all, causing some games not to boot #4996
• Project Cerberus Project Cerberus (J) Weird control glitch and crash #2182
• Castlevania X Chronicles(Rondo of Blood) Castlevania X Chronicles - unavoidable audio-related softlock bug in Rondo of Blood #11091
• Driver 76 Driver 76 freezing emulation in alleyways #12054
• Bust-A-Move Deluxe(videos) Bust-A-Move Deluxe videos not working #8795
• Arctic Adventures: Polar's Puzzles Arctic Adventures: Polar's Puzzles Crashes on boot #12677
• Aces of Wars Aces of War (Europe) freezes up after chapter selection #11062

"Host" helps the following games

• Ace Combat X2 Joint Assault Ace Combat X2 Joint Assault video #5545
• Final Fantasy 3 Room Lag in Final Fantasy III #10588

"Simulate UMD delays" breaks the following games

• Radiant mythology2 (hang)
• Ghost in the shell (hang)
• Race Driver 2006 (hang) Race Driver 2006, Simulate UMD delays crashes or hangs in Simulator Modes "Now Loading" screens (Windows) #7425
• world neverland (slow)

[unknownbrackets]

The current logic is really basic, it's just this:

        if (abs((int)lastReadBlock_ - (int)secNum) > 100) {
            // This is an estimate, sometimes it takes 1+ seconds, but it definitely takes time.
            usec = 100000;
        }

More correctly, the time on a UMD will vary based on:

• Distance from center of UMD.
• The actual change in physical position (e.g. track -> track and sector -> sector.)
• Rotation speed of UMD (e.g. spin up delay.)
• Whether the data is in cache (PSP-2000+.)

For example, World Neverland might be reading things very efficiently with things laid out on separate tracks that are near each other. Or our delays are just too high for it.... or, it might simply run slow on PSP-1000 devices, I guess (probably not.)

However, there's a simpler solution: if all of these games work on a PSP as iso/cso files on a memory stick, then presumably it can't depend on the above factors of rotation speed and whatever. It's probably a lot easier to simulate the access speed and latencies of flash storage (we already try, but we're a bit too aggressively fast.) I don't think that layer has "seek delay" emulation, so theoretically we shouldn't need it either.

-[Unknown]

[daniel229]

Pangya: Fantasy Golf won't work on memory stick with cfw 660pro-c2

[vnctdj]

The demo of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite has a black screen after language selection.
Using "Simulate UMD delays" or "Host" fixes the issue.

[ppmeis]

Confirmed working DJ MAX titles with Simulate UMD Delays option.

[daniel229]

"Simulate UMD delays" helps the random hang in Youkoso Hitsuji-Mura Portable seems like a translate patch bug,and not really help.

[hrydgard]

It already seems it helps more games than it breaks, so I might change the default soon.

[LunaMoo]

Don't have the other marked as hanging with "Simulate UMD delays", but GitS:SAC works fine with it for me.

[vnctdj]

The default setting for "I/O timing method" is still "Fast (lag on slow storage)".
Therefore I think this issue should be updated.
Does "Simulate UMD delays" still break some games ?

[CookiePLMonster]

I'll run more tests too, but it would seem like Driver 76 should be added to the list of games for which "Simulate UMD delays" helps, as per #12054.

[ghost]

I use "Simulate UMD delays" for the 4 games I own but only Castlevania Dracua X benefits from it I guess.
I don't think Lunar Silver Star Harmony, Mega Man Powered Up or Maverick Hunter X is dependent on it but they work OK still.

Would changing the default value "Fast" to "Simulate UMD delays" be that bad today? It's been 4 years since this issue surfaced after all.

[unknownbrackets]

I took a stab at async IO using threads. It kinda works, but for example LittleBigPlanet gives errors about calling pthreads on non-pthreads (within the game, not host pthreads.) It doesn't seem related to callbacks...

master...unknownbrackets:io-async

-[Unknown]

[sum2012]

@unknownbrackets I still get invalid address in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Portable in beginning story in your change.

debug log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UFuDEcIW0SzEdOr35iXbAYIdEZ1s229o/view?usp=sharing

[unknownbrackets]

I made sure the thread waits for the entire IO operation, and fixed some file open issues. This seems to have made the branch more stable - at least, I'm no longer seeing errors in the chunk of games I tested.

master...unknownbrackets:io-async

-[Unknown]

[hrydgard]

Neat, sounds promising.

[vnctdj]

For reference: link to the merged pull request.

[unknownbrackets]

It'd be interesting to validate if "Simulate UMD Delays" is no longer needed for those issues, or no longer breaks those games.

Host is probably always going to be a wildcard, but if those games no longer are helped, that'd be useful information too.

-[Unknown]

[vnctdj]

The demo of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite has a black screen after language selection.
Using "Simulate UMD delays" or "Host" fixes the issue.

Now "Host" behaves the same as "Fast": a blocking black screen.
It means that only "Simulate UMD delays" fixes the issue.

[unknownbrackets]

The behavior of Host is non-deterministic. Meaning:

• With "Fast", you'll get the same bugs every time you try, on every device.
• With "Simulate UMD Delays", you'll get the same bugs every time you try, on every device.
• With "Host" everything depends on the device, whether OS has cached things, and activity from other apps on the device. You may get a bug one day and not be able to reproduce it the next. It may fix things on one device, but break them on others.

-[Unknown]

[vnctdj]

Thanks for your explanations, but I'm having trouble understanding the interest of a non-deterministic option? Isn't it confusing for the user?

[hrydgard]

Host mode will provide the fastest possible non-blocking loading, I think. Maybe it's not worth it though, I would be open to getting rid of it.

[unknownbrackets]

Well, Host is never faster than Fast. It mostly exists for slow storage.

Example: let's say I'm streaming the disc via network from my PC. Usually, my connection is fast but occasionally it may get slow due to wifi signal noise nearby, etc.

In that situation, Fast and Simulate UMD Delays would just stall and hang if the storage was slow. Music would stop playing, loading screens would stop spinning, and emulation would grind to a halt. That's the cost of determinism.

In contrast, Host will take as long as it takes. Again, never less time than Fast. In some ways, this is realistic. On a PSP, if the UMD had stopped spinning, a disc read would potentially take a couple seconds to fulfill. So games are often prepared for an IO operation to be slow: music keeps playing, you see loading animations, and everything works more or less as it should.

It can be faster than Simulate UMD Delays, but that will not be the common case. Most (or all) operations will be slower than Simulate UMD Delays.

So Host is not really bad imho, it's just not deterministic.

If we removed it, it'd significantly impact the usability of remote disc streaming.

-[Unknown]

[hrydgard]

Argh, yes, thanks for setting me straight. I was mainly thinking of the non-blocking nature of it.

Yeah, not getting rid of it.

[Panderner]

It seems some games like F1 2006 and Arctic Adventures: Polar's Puzzles forced to switch simulated UMD delays via compat.ini

[sum2012]

It seems Arctic Adventures: Polar's Puzzles need Simulate UMD Delays in
#12529 (comment)

[hrydgard]

It shouldn't need it though as it's a mini and doesn't run from UMD... Very strange, probably accidentally covers some other problem..

[dankcushions]

perhaps for devices with low storage access speeds and RAM to spare, a mode where it pre-caches the entire ISO into RAM at start and then it could presumably safely use 'fast' or 'simulate UMD delays' mode. i think beetle-psx does something like this: libretro/beetle-psx-libretro@ee40afa

PSP ISOs are about 500MB, right? quite a lot of devices could probably spare that amount of RAM.

[unknownbrackets]

We already have an option to preload the entire ISO into RAM. PSP games are often as much as 1.8 GB. I don't believe this option helps any of the issues linked here, though.

This issue doesn't really have anything to do with device speed. It has to do with games that accidentally contain bugs, and malfunction when the IO timing doesn't match what happened on a PSP.

For example, on a real PSP the disc spins down after not being used for a while (in part because it's silly loud, but it also burns battery to spin it.) Maybe a game developer "knew" that the disc would always need 2 seconds to spin up when certain code ran, so just assumed that the IO could not possibly complete for 2 seconds.

A PS1 has simpler storage emulation needs. PSP games have to deal with:

• Some games were only ever played from Memory Stick storage, and would have bugs or be slow if treated like they ran off a disc.
• Some games could run off a disc OR storage, and might have the same game ID but subtly different code.
• PSP-2000 devices and higher had a cache that made repeated reads and possibly nearby reads much faster. This was in part a reaction to the terrible and frequent stalls games could have.
• As mentioned, the UMD could spin down during game play. Spinning back up took a while.
• Seeking on the UMD was sometimes slow.

Most of the above problems are problems a PS1 emulator doesn't have. It just has to emulate a CD-ROM drive (which can still have complex timing, don't get me wrong.)

Currently, PPSSPP doesn't do much of the above, though. It:

• Always emulates games as if they ran from the Memory Stick. Note: this is essentially the same as CFW would act.
• Roughly models timing using a microSD RAID-0 adapter with two UHS-1 cards. Some users used high speed cards like this, but systems came with MUCH slower class-4 speed Memory Stick cards.
• Has a mode (Simulate UMD Delays) that takes the above, and tries to add a really crude seek delay emulation.
• Has another mode that takes the above (not the seek delay), and waits for host storage - this is really only designed for networking. But sometimes it "fixes" bugs, because it allows reads to take longer. This probably just indicates a bug in the IO modeling (i.e. if the device can't read the content that fast and the game glitches if it's read that fast, it's probably simply too fast.)

We currently do nothing to emulate:

• Disc spin up times - which were very annoying, btw, when actually playing games. I can absolutely guarantee users would complain and file bugs if we accurately emulated them.
• Any part of the UMD cache, which is faster than the "Fast" timings we have if it has the data.
• Correct UMD spin / seek behavior.
• Any differentiation on games from UMD vs Memory Stick.
• Slower Memory Stick card speeds (possibly as an option) so users can enjoy loading screens for longer.
• The very loud noises (sometimes enough to drown out the music/sound effects) and device vibration that occurred when the UMD spun up or seeked to new content.

We also do some other things, such as CPU operations, HLE syscalls, and GPU drawing faster or slower than we should. This can interact with IO timing.

-[Unknown]

[sum2012]

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Portable is solved by #15930
Edit,it is wrong change

[sum2012]

Welcome to test new IO timing method "Simulate UMD slow reading speed" in any game