I got mine from Best Buy last week. It has 4.2 out of box and I plan on sticking with that due to emulators playing slower on 4.4 and 3rd party external writing killed. I am really liking the device more than expected. Here are IMO key points (good & bad).
+ Battery life and standby time are great
+ Display is very good for 720p
+ Controller works great
+ The key reason I like this design over using an external gamepad is the integration with apps. Huge plus.
+ All emulators tested work superbly: NES, GBC, GBA, PCE, Genesis, SNES, Neo Pocket, Amiga, C64, MAME, PSX, N64, DC, Wonderswan, Master System, Gamegear and DS. Playing Dead or Alive 2 with Reicast is super serious superb.
+ DoomGles is great and so are the Quake games. Those games and Android games are much better with the Shield controller.
+ I find myself going back to games I stopped playing due to the controls. Dual sticks for shooters is pure good.
+ Speakers are as everybody says. Very good.
- Wifi is robust, but sometimes stops working even though says still connected. I have a LOT of devices and this is the only one that has the issue.
- The 5" display is too small for MAME games that are designed for long portrait displays like most shootemups, Digdug, etc. At least with a tablet of phone you can rotate the display and not have black bars taking up a lot space.
- Not a Shield negative, but Google and their blatant attempt to passively aggressively kill off external storage. Even if emulator issues are fixed in the next Nvidia update, I will not bother due to this. I would rather not root, since means starting all over again and brick concerns. I vested some fairly serious time in setting everything up.
- I find games like Modern Combat and NOVA 3 too small on the display, so would expect PC games to be even more tiny. The Shield 2 could fit a 5.8" display and that would help. At least for the Android games. MC 4 and NOVA 3 both play great though, and ditto for Asphalt 8.
As far as a Shield 2:
1. At least a 5.5" display, but can stay at 720p. Better for game performance and battery.
2. Have a plugged in and battery mode option. Full tilt with fan when plugged into power and allow customizing if not.
3. 32GB flash. Goople's lame card killing effort compels this for a gaming device. Really.
4. K1, of course.
That is pretty much it. I would buy this again if just added the four things noted above. Shield would be a 10 if had a bigger display. 9/10 as is
They didnt kill writing to the sdcard completely. Apps can only write to their respective folders which no big deal how many games need to access a different games folder. You can still move apps to sd and you can still write anything you want to the sd card using a root explorer. As for The emulator slow downs they are so minor you cant really notice them. I had to update to 72 because it supports laptop streaming.
hexitnow said:
They didnt kill writing to the sdcard completely. Apps can only write to their respective folders which no big deal how many games need to access a different games folder. You can still move apps to sd and you can still write anything you want to the sd card using a root explorer. As for The emulator slow downs they are so minor you cant really notice them. I had to update to 72 because it supports laptop streaming.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The big issue is people are reporting zipped roms have issues as well as saves. A nice thing about the emulators is a resume mode that is relative to the rom folder. Since I have a bunch of roms, not practical to use internal for that. For people that say "Just leave all roms unzipped", that results in on average at least three times more storage space being needed. Even worse for PSX games, since in compressed PBP mode, the games average anywhere from 15MB to 600MB. In correct PSX image mode, a 15MB game is 700MB. Big difference.
Anyway, not a hit on Nvidia, but is with Android. The emulator issue is actually pretty bad to me, since results in game going from smooth to sporadic stutters with 4.4, depending in part on control pad use. Smooth to not smooth is not a good option, IMO. Kind of like using an old Tegra 2 again for emulators. Tegra 2 had some throttle issues, but not due to the OS. Tegra 3 (not Tegra 2) with my Excite 7.7 is smoother with most emulators than Shield with 4.4.
Added: I also have a S4 and Note 2014 and am leaving those on 4.2 as well. Not sure if the emulator issue is Shield specific, but do know the card write issue for all devices. 4.2 does what I need, so no desire to update and then have to go through the trouble and brick potential with rooting. Yes, this is an ironic perspective for an XDA forum.
Hmm thats odd i havent had any troubles with zipped roms on any emulation app. And i have a few. As for the sony pbps i hear you there. Its ridiculous how much filler are in those, i use to rip psp and psx games.
The shield is nearly unbrickable its almost ridiculous how well they did with that. No need for root to go back and forth from system firmwares, but you do have to have an unlocked bootloader which voids warranty although i had to return a rooted unlocked shield and they didnt give me any guff. Not trying to say upgrade to KK but i will say its not as bad as you think.
N64 emulation is superb? Mupen has a lot of N64 games which it cant handle. Granted I know this is an emulator issue, and not an issue with shield capability, but its still disappointing that android emulation hasn't advanced further.
I've read reps from Nvidia stating how surprised they were with emulation being such a popular feature with the Shield. Would it be illegal for Nvidia to work and release emulators, designed exclusively for the Shield, which emulate N64 and Dreamcast games? Considering Reicast and Mupen are allowed on the google play store I don't see why Nvidia can't release their own emulators.
I always thought the roms unzipped into RAM and there was no writing to the card for this process, but reports are some emulators have issues (saves being a key). MAME writes into it's parent directory and no special path can be created for the Android version. Given the 10GB size of my MAME roms, internal storage is not an option and losing settings for roms would mean redoing the settings every time the game is played. No thanks :silly:
As far as N64, I am referring to the control use with games. The PC version is about the same as far as what works, but using certain video plug-ins with Mupen makes a huge difference it what is playable. Mupen plays more games than N64oid as a result.
Going back to zipped file sizes, same thing for PSP, but not as big a ratio. ISO files on average are 50% bigger than compressed CSO files.
For me shield = massive paper weight
None of the games I would use it for on PC or android support it.
Related
** I haven't been around to keep this thread updated. Thankfully, AriStar has done a great job maintaining an extension of this thread over on the developers board. For the most updated status, please follow this link: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1097428 **
I'm looking start up a bounty to get a development effort going around the Native PSX Emulator that comes on the Xperia PLAY.
The preloaded Crash Bandicoot as well as the selection of PSX games available from Sony use this native emulator, the performance in which is PERFECT, compared to FPse and PSX4Droid which have sound and choppiness issues at times.
Some discussion on this topic is in another thread, here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1044755 . We can see the psx image on the SD card with little effort, however the formatting of this image and the steps required to inject our own images is still unknown.
My ultimate goal here is to be able to run FF7 in the Native PSX emulator and support the disc changes needed. (From the PSX Emulator menus, disc swapping looks to be included, but as no multi-disc games are released, this may be tricky).
I'd like to throw in $20 to start this bounty and get discussion going.
Please post under this thread if you can contribute either to the bounty or to the development effort. If you have any requirements attached to your bounty contribution (ie: "Must be able to play FF7") then please include those as well.
Bounty now up to (or over): $280 + Xperia X1
Levistras said:
My ultimate goal here is to be able to run FF7 in the Native PSX emulator and support the disc changes needed. (From the PSX Emulator menus, disc swapping looks to be included, but as no multi-disc games are released, this may be tricky).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disc swapping is probably less of an issue than it sounds - you only have to swap discs once every 10-12 hours for most games, and almost every single game that has a disc swap also lets you save after completing the disc and before the swap, so in theory if the PSX Emulator only allows for once disc at a time, you just make a wrapped image of each disc, save when you hit the end of one disc, and boot the image for the second/third/etc disc and voila.
While ultimately it would be a great feature, it's probably not strictly necessary and will amount to a minor nuisance in the short term.
Also, put me down for $10CDN towards the bounty as well.
10 Euro more. As long as it works, I'm cool with it.
Nice idea.
But my games run perfect in fpse.
Tell me what games you find choppy and i'll test them for you. So far i've played -
Time Crisis (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Demolition Derby
Rampage Universal Tour
Point Blank (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Strider 2
Die Hard Trilogy
and they all run flawlessly.
Would of tried more but i've been hooked on the nes/snes/master system/genesis and native xperia play games (backstab/nova2 etc) for the last month.
dsswoosh said:
Nice idea.
But my games run perfect in fpse.
Tell me what games you find choppy and i'll test them for you. So far i've played -
Time Crisis (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Demolition Derby
Rampage Universal Tour
Point Blank (touch screen as light gun, dam awesome)
Strider 2
Die Hard Trilogy
and they all run flawlessly.
Would of tried more but i've been hooked on the nes/snes/master system/genesis and native xperia play games (backstab/nova2 etc) for the last month.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Levistras said:
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah sound emulation is more difficult to do than it seems. A ton of emulators (even today's Gamecube/Wii emulator, or the PS2 one) have sound issues more than anything else.
Also, I'll throw in $20 CAD for this. Hopefully it's actually possible and Sony's emulator is actually already complete. It'd be a shame to crack it but only find out it needs to be patched by Sony anyway.
Levistras said:
The one I care most about is Final Fantasy 7. Battle sequences tend to be choppy, the sound slows to a crawl when coming into and out of battle. The music sound sync in general also just isn't perfect. It's "good enough" for the most part, but stammers a bit, feels like a beginner drummer that can't really keep time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
final fantasy VII runs pefect to me on fpse, did you turn the sound sync and boost mode on?
AndroHero said:
final fantasy VII runs pefect to me on fpse, did you turn the sound sync and boost mode on?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah ive turned on sound sync. It helps but the sound is not accurate. It eliminates the stutter but the actual sounds are inaccurate, plus the graphics arent smoothed and are overly sharp and a bit ugly. Compared to the smoothed graphics of the official Sony emu they look poor. PSX games run at 1/2 the res of the Xperia screen so smoothing is essential. Fpse slows to a crawl when smoothed
Fpse is good, but still has a way to go before its good enough for me to use for everything.
Sent from my R800a using XDA App
I'll throw in £5 UK into the bounty.
Thats about $5000 US isn't it?!
illuminerdi said:
Yeah ive turned on sound sync. It helps but the sound is not accurate. It eliminates the stutter but the actual sounds are inaccurate, plus the graphics arent smoothed and are overly sharp and a bit ugly. Compared to the smoothed graphics of the official Sony emu they look poor. PSX games run at 1/2 the res of the Xperia screen so smoothing is essential. Fpse slows to a crawl when smoothed
Fpse is good, but still has a way to go before its good enough for me to use for everything.
Sent from my R800a using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does the XPlays native emulator really have smoothing? I did think that Crash looked better than I remembered but put that down to the small screen and the fact that last time I played crash 1 was on a large HDTV.
I dont think it does, sony erricson has already done alot of things in an attempt to save the phones battery life (like the whole no autobrightness off thing)
I doubt they would add smoothing as it would get use up more of the CPU thus draining more battery life.
The only advantage I see with the official ps1 emulator is that fram rates are excellent and there are no graphical glitches.
Correct me if Im wrong, wouldn't one advantage be that Fpse doesn't really support the dual touch pads, but the native app should support them for any game launched through it.
Also for an update,
bounty is at 20CAD+10CAD+10Euro+20CAD+5GBP
50 CAD+10 EUR +5GBP
or about
75 US Dollars if u think in those terms .
bubblegumballon said:
I dont think it does, sony erricson has already done alot of things in an attempt to save the phones battery life (like the whole no autobrightness off thing)
I doubt they would add smoothing as it would get use up more of the CPU thus draining more battery life.
The only advantage I see with the official ps1 emulator is that fram rates are excellent and there are no graphical glitches.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does smooth, trust me - playing Wild Arms is proof enough for me - the graphics are softer and less pixellated than in FF7 via FPSE.
I'll see if I can take some comparative screenshots of Wild Arms in the Sony Emu vs FPSE (as I do have WA on CD as well) just to be 100% sure, but I'm already 99% sure it smooths (is that a word?).
Besides, smoothing wouldn't add that much hit to the battery - you're basically just talking about the bilinear interpolation function of the graphics chip, which is a pretty minor hit overall.
The reason FPSE chugs when smoothing is because FPSE is a generic Android app, written to work on ANY Android phone - so it probably has NO hardware GPU access at all - which in my opinion is pretty lame and shoddy programming. There are, what, like 30 different graphics chips currently used by Android devices? If I'm correct, they'd basically have to write in detection and calls for every chip into FPSE.
Whereas the Sony emulator was written explicitly for the Xperia Play and its hardware (the Adreno GPU). That's why it's 10x more efficient and faster than FPSE, and why it can turn on smoothing and still run better than FPSE does.
I know, my first post but trust me Im good for $10CAD
count me in for $10 CAD
put me in for $20USD
put me in for 10 AUD
illuminerdi said:
It does smooth, trust me - playing Wild Arms is proof enough for me - the graphics are softer and less pixellated than in FF7 via FPSE.
I'll see if I can take some comparative screenshots of Wild Arms in the Sony Emu vs FPSE (as I do have WA on CD as well) just to be 100% sure, but I'm already 99% sure it smooths (is that a word?).
Besides, smoothing wouldn't add that much hit to the battery - you're basically just talking about the bilinear interpolation function of the graphics chip, which is a pretty minor hit overall.
The reason FPSE chugs when smoothing is because FPSE is a generic Android app, written to work on ANY Android phone - so it probably has NO hardware GPU access at all - which in my opinion is pretty lame and shoddy programming. There are, what, like 30 different graphics chips currently used by Android devices? If I'm correct, they'd basically have to write in detection and calls for every chip into FPSE.
Whereas the Sony emulator was written explicitly for the Xperia Play and its hardware (the Adreno GPU). That's why it's 10x more efficient and faster than FPSE, and why it can turn on smoothing and still run better than FPSE does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Opengl should solcem ost of the problems of the multitude of gpu chips there are as the calls to all the gpu's would become the same.
Also, to reply to an earlier post, the touchpads will probably be supported in a future version of fpse, probably the devs don't have an xperia play just yet.
The game ISO is in a file called image.ps and appears to be encrypted. That encryption will need to be cracked before we can do any sort of injection of PSX ISOs.
ill throw in £5 GBP ive tied reverse engineering the app, tried and failed; i dont know what source code their using, but i cant get it recognized by anything so far!
Has anyone else tried the ppsspp emulator? I loaded Wipeout Pure and after changing a few setting, the best I get is a slightly slow version with no sound and frame skipping. That was the most playable I could get it. When I first loaded it it was total slow motion. Wipeout is a confirmed working game for this emu so I'm interested to see what settings combos people may have found that work for the OUYA.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Xparent BlueTapatalk 2
Visegrad said:
Has anyone else tried the ppsspp emulator? I loaded Wipeout Pure and after changing a few setting, the best I get is a slightly slow version with no sound and frame skipping. That was the most playable I could get it. When I first loaded it it was total slow motion. Wipeout is a confirmed working game for this emu so I'm interested to see what settings combos people may have found that work for the OUYA.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Xparent BlueTapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm kind of wondering this myself. Every game I try with it runs super slow.
I wouldn't expect PPSSPP to run smoothly on Mobile processors anytime soon if at all
Getting decent performance is still a challenge for PC users as the emulator is still in its early stages
DrROBschiz said:
I wouldn't expect PPSSPP to run smoothly on Mobile processors anytime soon if at all
Getting decent performance is still a challenge for PC users as the emulator is still in its early stages
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
^ This.
PPSSPP is cool, but little more than a proof of concept at this point. It's hardly playable on any platform.
DrROBschiz said:
I wouldn't expect PPSSPP to run smoothly on Mobile processors anytime soon if at all
Getting decent performance is still a challenge for PC users as the emulator is still in its early stages
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sonofskywalker3 said:
^ This.
PPSSPP is cool, but little more than a proof of concept at this point. It's hardly playable on any platform.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks folks. I hope to some day be able to run wild with some WipeOut. I'll keep an eye on the devs progress and repost if we see some headway in the future.
Sent from my Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Visegrad said:
Has anyone else tried the ppsspp emulator? I loaded Wipeout Pure and after changing a few setting, the best I get is a slightly slow version with no sound and frame skipping. That was the most playable I could get it. When I first loaded it it was total slow motion. Wipeout is a confirmed working game for this emu so I'm interested to see what settings combos people may have found that work for the OUYA.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Xparent BlueTapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Was messing around with this app last night. No luck getting any games to run smoothly, however I do see some potential. Tried both god of war games and they were very choppy. Only the movies within the game played fine. Dragonball Budokai ran pretty decent but the sound was off. Burnout had no music and was very choppy. Call of Duty starts but than goes to a black screen. You can hear the music but nothing else.
Tweaked the settings quit a bit but just couldn't get any to play right. Hopefully, they can get this up and running on the Ouya.
Not all games play slow. Here is a list so far that play fine (smooth with sound) on my Excite 7.7, TF300, Nook HD+ and S4.
Burnout Dominator
Guilty Gear Judgment
Hotshots Open Tee
Namcom Battle Museum
Lumins 1 (not 2)
Star Soldier
Street Fighter Alpha 3 remix
Guilty Gear XX
Megaman Powerup
Metal Slug XX
Blaz Blue (both games)
Need for Speed Carbon
NeoGeo Shooter (it is a shootemup with different NeoGeo characters)
Full Auto 2
I actually own the PSP games to compare to, except NeoGeo shooter. For some reason, it would not work on my PSP when I tried it out and local Disc Replay gamestore.
More games do not work than do, but I was impressed enough to contribute. There are some others that work, but I have most on my tablets and only a few on my S4- going by memory of what does.
The forums seem to have a thread going for hints on how to improve speeds: http://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=5236
Some games need Buffered Rendering.
Some games have no sound unless you download the unofficial atrac3 library from within the app.
The topic started on May, when the version in the stores was 0.8.1. Checked for updates since then? Last version in the store is 0.9.1, and last version on git is 0.9.1.2xx.
I've noticed a huge speed boost from setting the frame buffer to the gpu, some games are actually playable although the full 3d ones are still at about 65%. Hopefully the official ouya release will work better.
I haven't tried it on my OUYA, but one of my friends said using a PSP emulator and connecting his OUYA to a projector was a winning combination.
I have tried PPSSPP on my NVIDIA Shield (Tegra 4) and at first I was skeptical about it - audio was choppy and performance wasn't great in some situations, but then like the next day there was an update to PPSSPP and since then it has been running phenomenal (at least on the games I care about). I love using the "Unthrottle" feature to essentially fast forward the game too
So if you haven't tried it in a while you might give it another go. Shield is of course more powerful than OUYA, but you might at least have better results than before.
~Troop
shield settings
Trooper_Max said:
I haven't tried it on my OUYA, but one of my friends said using a PSP emulator and connecting his OUYA to a projector was a winning combination.
I have tried PPSSPP on my NVIDIA Shield (Tegra 4) and at first I was skeptical about it - audio was choppy and performance wasn't great in some situations, but then like the next day there was an update to PPSSPP and since then it has been running phenomenal (at least on the games I care about). I love using the "Unthrottle" feature to essentially fast forward the game too
So if you haven't tried it in a while you might give it another go. Shield is of course more powerful than OUYA, but you might at least have better results than before.
~Troop
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi!
I have a shield too but cannot make ppsspp work properly. U put ur roms on the sd or the internal storage? do u use any kind of special setting?
thx a lot!
Visegrad said:
Has anyone else tried the ppsspp emulator? I loaded Wipeout Pure and after changing a few setting, the best I get is a slightly slow version with no sound and frame skipping. That was the most playable I could get it. When I first loaded it it was total slow motion. Wipeout is a confirmed working game for this emu so I'm interested to see what settings combos people may have found that work for the OUYA.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Xparent BlueTapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I play ppsspp on my phone with my friends all the time multiplayer It's cool and runs fast
I installed ppsspp on my samsung galaxy note 4. And it's absolutely amazing. Played tekken 6 in full 60 fps. But Wipeout pulse is lagging in some parts of the racing track (always at the same places. The framerate is constantly at 40 fps then, but the game runs really slow. Doesn't matter what settings I apply
First of all, Very and Leap- you two rock something fierce!
I did a review before of the HD+ with 2.1. I gave it a good review, but three things slowly eroded my opinion after time and I returned it.
1- Intermittent stutter that seemed to correlate with on the fly data loads and library sync. This stood out with games.
2- Games loading slow and some REAL sloooooow
3- Accumulative lag. Over a few days, the device got real slow and cache cleaning and restarts were hit and miss to fix it.
Best Buy had it on sale for $20 less this time ($180), so based on folks opinion of CM 10.1, I thought I would test it out again- due to the price and sweet display.
Where 2.1 was a big improvement over 2.0, the improvement from 2.1 to CM 10.1 is fluken' huge!
1- The intermittent stutter is gone along with library sync is gone.
2- Games load a LOT faster. I would not have thought the stock rom would be what was slowing it down, but I tested fresh installs two times with the same sloooow results with 2.1.
3- So far, the accumulated lag has not showed up.
4- Overall device is faster
I also added the "full screen" app to get rid of the navigation bar when I want. More just to test it out, but nice to have an iPad like full display view
Jeepers, it is wild how it is so easy to flash the device with 10.1 and equally wild to have the results of 10.1 with this hardware for the price. Superb so far
Of course, with anything in life comes the negatives:
1- exFAT worked with 2.1, but does not with CM 10.1. I had to transfer, format and recopy back to the sd card with FAT32. I wish there was a simple install fix using the boot card like the unknown sources fix for stock 2.1.
2- Buggy Blitz does not work. I love that game Ditto for Shine Runner. Same company.
3- I have had one instance so far where the device had charged and there was a flashing green light. The device would not wake up with neither home or power button. I had to hold the power down for a while and repeat that a few times. It would get stuck on the spinning boot-up ring. It would freeze up after after "several" seconds. Seems to be working now, but this never happened with stock 2.1 and used the device for a month. Fluke?
4- Quake 3 keeps expecting to see "sdcard" rather than "sdcard0". Touch Quake 1, 2 and Quake Arena mods work fine though. These are examples of games that loaded SLOW with stock 2.1, but are near instant with CM 10.1.
5- The CM 10.1 launcher was jittery and slow. I tried to get used to it, but went back to Nova, which is smooth and fast.
Folks, Nook HD+ plus CM 10.1 equals insane value for the price!
rushless said:
1- exFAT worked with 2.1, but does not with CM 10.1. I had to transfer, format and recopy back to the sd card with FAT32. I wish there was a simple install fix using the boot card like the unknown sources fix for stock 2.1.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there's 3rd party zip you can flash that restores it somewhat..
I also plan to look into this eventually and use texera fat module from the stock rom.
2- Buggy Blitz does not work. I love that game
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That seems to be their bug related to new sgx drivers. Same crash happens on Kindle fire, for example. Nothing I can presently do about it.
3- I have had one instance so far where the device had charged and there was a flashing green light. The device would not wake up with neither home or power button. I had to hold the power down for a while and repeat that a few times. It would get stuck on the spinning boot-up ring. It would freeze up after after "several" seconds. Seems to be working now, but this never happened with stock 2.1 and used the device for a month. Fluke?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sore about not waking up - never saw that. But rare boot problems will be fixed in next release. (esp. those that produce garbage on screen).
Folks, Nook HD+ plus CM 10.1 equals insane value for the price!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still no camera, so it cannot serve as full TP replacement
No problem on the games not working, since works on my Excite 7.7 and S3!
Exfat and NTFS would be nice, down the road!
Thanks!
I think B&N could have done much better with this hardware if they hired someone like verygreen in the first place...
I still don't think this is a very good gaming device, though, especially for 3D.
But the screen is amazing and got me really spoiled. Now I look at Nexus 7 and feel the display is too cheap and low in quality. Comparing it with the TP in my opinion is a bit of an apple to orange comparison as it is mainly a media consumption device while TP's display quality is even worse than Nexus 7.
Someone was complaining the Nook being slow and laggy vs a $499 Galaxy Note 10.1 with 2GB ram, quad core and much lower resolution. That is just unfair. But I guess people are entitled to their opinions.
Honestly I would not have bought this without seeing the CM10 and CM10.1 ports in progress. B&N really owes verygreen a commission. I like this combo so much that I hardly touch my Nexus 7 now.
BTW, donation sent.
View92612 said:
Comparing it with the TP in my opinion is a bit of an apple to orange comparison as it is mainly a media consumption device while TP's display quality is even worse than Nexus 7.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I somewhat agree here, in reality I distributed Touchpads to my relative and they use them for things like Skype.
Nook, having no camera, cannot replace them and would be useless for such purposes.
I agree that the Nook has deficiencies (proprietary ports are a downer). When it comes to cheap toys we pick our poison, eg Nexus w/ no SD slot. If I want a cam or HDMI, there are a flood of cheap 7" tabs that have both, but none of them has a really great 1080p screen in an IMO perfect size and weight for one-handed use. I don't see any tablet with comparable display quality under $400.
Display quality aside, as a reader my preference is for a 4:3 aspect, since I use the tab mostly in portrait mode. But outside of the iPads, most Android tabs hewed to 16:10, which makes the display smaller than their diagonal size would indicate. The HD+ is the only one to eschew the norm in going with 3:2. That's actually better than 4:3, because the present Android UI takes off a couple slices at top and bottom, so the remaining space comes out pretty close to 4:3.
Using the dpi calculator here,
http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html
The 9" HD+ screen has a portrait width of 4.99". The 8.9" KF HD's is 4.72", or 0.27" smaller and not just 0.1" shorter diagonal. For tablet display size, every fraction of an inch is a big deal when you're squeezing a whole web page into portrait.
Some other display portrait widths, which I view as the tablet's true size measurement:
Code:
iPad Mini 4.71"
Nexus 7 3.71"
Galaxy Note 8 4.24"
Nexus 10 5.3"
iPad 5.82"
Oh yeah, e.mote: Thanks for the "dummies" thread!
True on the lack of camera, but I got it for books, comics (more than books) and games (mainly emulators). There are a few games that my Excite 7.7 plays smoother, but most play the same and game emulators like MAME and N64 are faster on the Nook HD+. Also, CM 10.1 closed the gap on the 3D games that are smoother on the Excite 7.7. GTA is a good example. It plays smooth now, where with 2.1, it did not. Asphalt 7 though is an example that plays smoother on the Excite. Asphalt 7 though is now very playable on the Nook HD+. The TF700 also struggles with some 3D games, BTW.
For game emulators. this thing rocks. $180 for a great display and plays emulators better than any other Android I have used- including the S4 and its quad Qualcomm. Bluetooth game pads work fine and no response lag noted so far and fits the iCade
Sad that we get the stock firmware we get when folks here do a better job for user experience. I appreciate the Nook was designed to be mainly a reader, but their premise was also part of their undoing and the convention of poor stock firmware goes way beyond the Nook.
>Thanks for the "dummies" thread!
I actually wrote that for myself, since I have a stack of HD+'s here that I'm retrofitting to pass along to the family. Credit where it is due, it's all a rehash of what leapinlar has written, but just a bit more digestible. And of course to verygreen that made this all possible.
Glad to hear Nook is good for games. I'm not a gamer, but other peeps in the household would be appreciative. Any good guides for emulators you can point to? How about some strategy/tactical games? I liked Call of Cthulhu and Rebuild.
BTW, little known factoid: The Nook's serial # is printed on the inside of the SD slot's rubber flap. I found that out when returning a HD+ for uneven backlighting.
>I appreciate the Nook was designed to be mainly a reader, but their premise was also part of their undoing and the convention of poor stock firmware goes way beyond the Nook.
I view it as a good-thing-bad-thing situation. If B&N had made a great Android tab, it wouldn't be holding a firesale to clear out the Nooks, and we wouldn't be here yakking away. So yes, I'm kinda glad the HD's didn't sell well (until now).
Very ironic.
As far as emulator guides, there is a very good one over at Phandroid forums. It is in the Android game forum.
This tablet is an old school gaming, comic reading, web and Flash slinging bargain.
rushless said:
Very ironic.
As far as emulator guides, there is a very good one over at Phandroid forums. It is in the Android game forum.
This tablet is an old school gaming, comic reading, web and Flash slinging bargain.
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Totally agree. What controller do you use for the emu, though?
I found it extremely difficult to trigger complex moves (in games that require those) using just touch control..... I'm sure it would not be an issue for games that do not require those.
I use a generic Android controller from Gamestop, two Nyko Android pads and iCade. All work fine.
I found another game that worked with 2.1 but not with CM. NBA 2013. Another of my favorites. What are the odds of that? It loads to the point of showing the team logos at start up and then crashes.
Also, most games like NFSMW that took a long time to load up with 2 .1 now load fast like other tablets. The only exception found so far is Asphalt 7. It still loads crazy slow. About two minutes or more per track. Should take about ten seconds. The London level just took over two minutes. Almost three.
The game plays good though. Much smoother (no stutter) than 2.1, but that is the case for all games so far. Odd how Asphalt 7 seems the only slow load hold out. I have tested a ton. A7 appears to be an anomaly.
CM 10.1 BTW also confirms to me the main stutter was not the gpu, but the stock rom. As per Anandtech, the 4470 is still a capable chipset.
I also compared A7 on the GS3. They appear to play very similarly as far as smoothness. GS3 might be a tad smoother, but does not stand out. The GS3 plays all of my games smooth, but the Nook smacks it down as far as MAME. 4470 appears to be a great emulator chipset.
I figured out why a few games do not work. Quake 3 need the files on the SD card and looks like NBA 2013 is trying to run the game from there too. It installs to internal, but installs a directory also in the SD with no files. I am going to move it to the SD and see what happens.
Update. Looks like ports like Quake 3 work fine, but commercial games do not work when moving the files.
Hello just thinking about getting one of these to game primarily. I think I heard the 4.3 update allows you to move large games to the external SD card. Is this true and how well does it work? Are there any limitations? I'm referring to large games like Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat series. Thanks!
Also does anyone use the Moga Pro with their Note? I have one and it works great on my phone not sure if it would fit this large of a screen though.
I've had no issues moving apps to SD, including huge ones like Asphalt 8. As for the Moga Pro, I have one, and it works just fine, though if by "fit" you mean physically fit in the clamp, no, it's way too large for that. Luckily your Moga Pro should have come with a tablet stand, or at least mine did.
rchrdcrg said:
I've had no issues moving apps to SD, including huge ones like Asphalt 8. As for the Moga Pro, I have one, and it works just fine, though if by "fit" you mean physically fit in the clamp, no, it's way too large for that. Luckily your Moga Pro should have come with a tablet stand, or at least mine did.
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Okay thanks for the reply! Yeah my moga came with the nice stand. How is gaming on it through HDMI with the moga?
There's no Console Mode yet, so it just simply mirrors the 720p output of the tablet's screen, and since the tablet is actually 1280x800 and not 1280x720, there are small black bars on the left and right, and for some reason the top and bottom are slightly cut off on my TV. Even with those little issues, it basically works like you're playing a console, and unlike other Android devices I've hooked up via HDMI, there's absolutely no slowdown and very close to no lag... it's easily the best HDMI-out experience I've had yet with Android. Once Console Mode is implemented (it had better be with the 4.4 update!), games should be able to output at 1080p and will hopefully fit the screen a little better. For the record, if you watch a 1080p video, it'll switch the output to 1080p, but it only happens in that one instance for right now.
Awesome! I've been playing games like asphalt 8 on my 4.5" phone screen and it's kinda getting a little annoying how small details are. Sounds like Nvidia is supporting their product with updates pretty well. When is KitKat supposed to arrive?
HTC Desire 601 (Zara_CL)
So this device apparently starts shipping tomorrow right? When it does can someone please download some emulators and try them out? I would like to especially see the performance of PPSSPP, the PSP emulator. I would be eternally grateful to you. If you have access to various Bluetooth controllers I would like to hear about the compatibility of those as well if possible
Yes, If this product can smoothly run some of the games I have downloaded, then I should be picking one up. I'm sure it going to be hard to download games with such limted storage, but hopefully someone can showcase some quality android titles. It basically has OUYA specs; however, with a more powerful CPU. I want to buy one, as it would be my first Nexus product. Some cool titles I would want to see runnig: MC5, GT racing as Asphalt 8 I've seen, and Need For Speed Most Wanted.
As a regard to emulators, It has 8gb of storage, good luck!
disorder78 said:
Yes, If this product can smoothly run some of the games I have downloaded, then I should be picking one up. I'm sure it going to be hard to download games with such limted storage, but hopefully someone can showcase some quality android titles. It basically has OUYA specs; however, with a more powerful CPU. I want to buy one, as it would be my first Nexus product. Some cool titles I would want to see runnig: MC5, GT racing as Asphalt 8 I've seen, and Need For Speed Most Wanted.
As a regard to emulators, It has 8gb of storage, good luck!
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Yeah if this had a Tegra K1 chip in it I would've been there Day 1 no questions asked, but as it is standing I'd rather wait and see some impressions first.
disorder78 said:
Yes, If this product can smoothly run some of the games I have downloaded, then I should be picking one up. I'm sure it going to be hard to download games with such limted storage, but hopefully someone can showcase some quality android titles. It basically has OUYA specs; however, with a more powerful CPU. I want to buy one, as it would be my first Nexus product. Some cool titles I would want to see runnig: MC5, GT racing as Asphalt 8 I've seen, and Need For Speed Most Wanted.
As a regard to emulators, It has 8gb of storage, good luck!
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I would hardly say the ouya's GPU compares to the G6430.
dethrat said:
I would hardly say the ouya's GPU compares to the G6430.
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Yeah, definitely. It outscores the GeForce ULP in the Tegra 3 by 2x-10x depending on the benchmark, and specifically handles the higher resolution (like the 1080p at which these devices tend to run) much better. Given the fact that even the Ouya was able to emulate up through the N64 reasonably well I think that the Nexus Player will make a great emulation device.
Kerfuffle92 said:
So this device apparently starts shipping tomorrow right? When it does can someone please download some emulators and try them out? I would like to especially see the performance of PPSSPP, the PSP emulator. I would be eternally grateful to you. If you have access to various Bluetooth controllers I would like to hear about the compatibility of those as well if possible
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I believe it was the Ars Technica review where they had the N64 emulator running on it flawlessly. Seems emulation will be great on this box (seemingly one of only a few strong points).
Elrondolio said:
I believe it was the Ars Technica review where they had the N64 emulator running on it flawlessly. Seems emulation will be great on this box (seemingly one of only a few strong points).
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Oh man, thanks for the reply. I was looking to emulate PSP games more than anything but I guess up to N64 and maybe Dreamcast is fine as well.
I use my N64 and SNES emulators and they work great!! It runs better than my Xbox one which sucks at most things.
Here are some pictures of it on my TV using Super GNES and Mupen64
The pictures I took aren't the best but it runs great. You can map the buttons on the gamepad however you want which makes it great and my wife loves it
Just wanted to chime in here and say that it works perfectly fine with the Wii U USB adapter and a Wii U Pro controller. Just make sure the adapter switch is set on the Xinput setting
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smiley2billion said:
Just wanted to chime in here and say that it works perfectly fine with the Wii U USB adapter and a Wii U Pro controller. Just make sure the adapter switch is set on the Xinput setting
View attachment 3009109
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how many controllers does the adapter support at one time?
I'm using the PCE.emu and Neo.emu and they work fine. Only thing that makes me crazy is that sideloaded apps are too large for the TV display, some menu options are difficult to read. Does anybody know if there is a way to adjust the resolution for sideloaded apps so they fit the TV screen properly?
buda81 said:
how many controllers does the adapter support at one time?
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The listing on Amazon says that it supports up to 4 controllers with the 'direct input' mode, however I tried using the direct input mode and it seemed to not want to use the d pad and all of the buttons performed the same action. Using 'xinput' (I think this just emulates the Xbox controller input) everything mapped perfectly and all was well, the bad news is that it can only do 1 controller at a time using this method, so you'd need 1 usb adapter per controller. Also I have only 1 Wii U Pro controller so I don't have any way to test if multiple controllers even work with the direct input mode, it's worked perfectly with 'xinput' so I haven't moved it from there.
Its hard to see there but on the side there's a toggle switch that lets you pick between 'dinput' and 'xinput'.
How does one install the emulator? Do I need to do this over adb ? If so, how can I download an apk from the play store?
I can't get Super GNES to work. I install it and it says there is a new version on the play store and for me to download it. Well I downloaded it from the play store so I don't see how its not the newest version. Where are you getting your version of Super GNES?
Searching for a tutorial on how to sideload an app...
Elemino said:
Searching for a tutorial on how to sideload an app...
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If the app you want to "sideload" is in the normal Play store, all you have to do is load up the Play store on your computer then click install and select your Nexus Player as the device. That simple. You'll also want to install Chainfire's Sideload Launcher app from the Play store as well, as that makes accessing non-android tv optimized apps easier:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.tv.sideloadlauncher&hl=en
If you have an apk you'd rather install manually, you'll have to use adb and an a cable or use ES File Explorer (or equivalent) to transfer the apk from your computer/etc over wifi. There are already a few topics in these threads that discuss how.
DeVSS said:
I can't get Super GNES to work. I install it and it says there is a new version on the play store and for me to download it. Well I downloaded it from the play store so I don't see how its not the newest version. Where are you getting your version of Super GNES?
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I got the same error with the (non-free) non-lite version of GNES. Tried the (free) lite version and that works fine (version 1.5.4). I'm not too experienced with sideloading, but perhaps the non-free nature of the full version of SuperGNES is the issue? The free version sucks though, since you can't load saved states, so it seems I can't continue my progress even though the ROM in question has save functionality.
Just wanted to share my experiences so far, since this is one of the bigger reasons I bought the NP. I've managed to load NES.emu, 2600.emu, MAME4Droid (0.37b5), and Mupen64 AE so far.
Installing apps:
Like many have suggested, I was able to load a couple of apps like ES Explorer and NES.emu through the Google Play web site and selecting the NP as the installation target. However, MAME and a couple of other apps would not install this way, so I have to sideload Aptoide and use that to install the remaining apps. Note that since no web browser is available, I had to use another tablet to identify the stores where apps could be found, and add them manually before selecting apps and installing them.
Navigation:
For the most part, the remote suffices, but it's not perfect. I installed ChainFire's Sideload Launcher, as only NES.emu shows up in my apps menu on the home screen. However, I happened to own a Nyko Playpad (not the Pro) from a while ago that I never really used. While I can't recommend it as a great gaming controller, it does have one key feature that turns it from run-of-the-mill control pad to ultimate NP utility. It contains a switch that allows you to switch between HID, iCade, Mouse, and App modes. It's the Mouse setting that makes this controller truly useful, because without it, I couldn't navigate around MAME to set up my control pad, or navigate around Mupen64 to quit out of a game (how else are people achieving this? Just quitting out?) Basically, to really set up many of the emus properly, you need some kind of mouse input, so it's nice that I can switch the Playpad back and forth between HID and Mouse modes as needed.
Performance:
Obviously, NES.emu and 2600.emu are not really demanding, so they work "flawlessly" (as in, any problems are due to the emulators, not the NP.) I also chose the smaller MAME, and nothing in there really pushes the system too hard. Street Fighter II Turbo ran as fast as expected. The only really challenge to the system was Mupen64. I'm happy to say that it ran everything that it was capable of running at full frame rate, and the only hiccups were related to the emulator itself. It successfully ran Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, and Mischief Makers. It could not Blast Corps or Bomberman 64.
All in all, I can say that things work well, provided you have the right equipment. For me, the mode switch feature of the Nyko Playpad is indispensable, although if you have a bluetooth enabled mouse device, that will suffice. Things can only get better. I haven't tried PPSSPP yet, but that will be my next test.
Thank you so much sjj.
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