RGB amp washed out/low contrast?

[Midwaydj]

I’ve done A/B comparisons with the genesis emulator and adv mame with real hardware and genesis emulation with the wii homebrew channel. The pi2jamma colors are generally more washed out and the brightness or contrast is much more dim in comparison to the Wii and real hardware. Is there something I could adjust overall to resolve this or is this a normal thing with the rgb amp? I could adjust settings in each emulator but seems like this is either a hardware issue or something else.

[dee2eR]

Not really sure about the Pi2JAMMA sorry. Can you adjust your monitor to compensate at all? Seems easier than adjusting the emulators if you're using an arcade monitor.

[Midwaydj]

It’s actually raspberryjamma, I had the name wrong. Still same issue. I can adjust brightness/contrast but the colors are still not as vibrant.

[dee2eR]

Fair enough. Odd that the colours should appear washed out. What kind of monitor are you using? Are you using the same monitor for the other hardware/Wii and the RaspberryJAMMA? What video mode are you in? The default low res (or the 240p only) option should be good for CRTs but the high res option will almost definitely work better on a modern monitor or TV. Are you running through any extra video processing hardware like a scaler or similar?

You should be able to get a really nice picture with the RaspberryJAMMA, I don't believe I've heard of anyone else with this issue.

My understanding is the Wii won't really be accurate to the original hardware, due to the change in TV technology as much as anything else (CRTs handle colour and contrast differently to most modern monitors). Compared to an original console like NES or Megadrive the RJ board should actually be brighter as consumer TVs don't need as strong a signal as arcade monitors can. Home consoles RGB video output is usually at a lower voltage than arcade boards will put out. Original JAMMA boards should look about the same as on the RaspberryJAMMA.

[Midwaydj]

Thanks for the reply. I’m using a Sony PVM and using the same monitor, Wii in component video and arpicade on rgb. I’m using the a/b buttons on the pvm to switch back and forth. I’m using the low res only horizontal setting. No scaler used. It may be that the Wii is not accurate, however I can notice a difference in how bright and colorful a cps2 game is compared to something in mame on the arpicade. Wondering if it’s just an issue with the raspberryjamma board I have. I might try to do a color bar test on the Pi vs the color bars on CPS2 hardware.

[dee2eR]

A PVM should give you a great picture. I wonder what's going on? I happen to have a PVM and CPS2 at my desk so I've taken a couple of photos, sorry they're not great.... also I had to shrink the images a lot to fit them into a forum post but the colours should be comparable.

Here's a pic taken from Street Fighter 2 Turbo (CPS2):

CPS2.JPG (206.18 KiB) Viewed 5397 times

and RaspberryJAMMA:

RaspberryJAMMA.JPG (233.13 KiB) Viewed 5397 times

EDIT: it's Super Turbo.... my bad

[Midwaydj]

Nice, thanks for doing that. Are you using FBA for the Emulator on the arpicade?

[Midwaydj]

So I just tested Pengo with adv mame on a k4900 and it looks almost identical to the real hardware. I’m thinking maybe the emulator is making a difference at this point but I’m going to try a few more things on the PVM. I guess I’ve been using FBA and not mame for the games on the PVM. Advance mame seems to run everything too slow so was using the other emulators.

[dee2eR]

My photo was using MAME 0.172 (my favourite version of MAME for RPi). It is possible there will be some colour differences between versions of MAME, although I've never noticed it. They do keep making the newer versions more accurate, possibly/probably including colour pallettes.

If AdvMAME is running everything slow your voltage may be a little low for the RPi, generally AdvMAME is pretty good. Are you seeing the low voltage lightening bolt indicator in the corner of the screen at all? If so I'd recommend adjusting your 5v, the RPi3B+ like between 5.1v and 5.2v at the JAMMA edge.

MAME is focused on accurately recreating the original hardware (over playability), FBA is focused on making the games playable (over accuracy)... this maybe something to do with your results. Although I've never noticed a difference in colours between FBA and MAME I also haven't tried looking for one specifically.

[Midwaydj]

Voltage was around 5.08 at the edge connector seems like that should be okay. I just compared Mario bros to real hardware using mame 172 and they look pretty close. I think the genesis emulator was just looking the mostly noticeably different. Previously any roms with scrolling backgrounds using Mame 203 were too slow to play. I’ll try that again tomorrow too and adjust voltage to see if it makes a difference.