[Recalbox 9] Theme Next Pixel

[Madmeggo]

@myst Thank you for your answer!
When I force Emulationstation to run in 720p, will I still be able to switch to CRT mode via my RGB-Pi cable or the RGBDual? Or does the "forced resolution" interfere with this?

[lhari84]

@myst Is there any known reason why even Pi 4 has issues with 1080p theme? Just have scraped everything for 1080p and having major issues, especially:

• Backgrounds in system overview (both wheel and horizontal view, does not matter) aren't sometimes loaded or loaded very slowly (black background in the meanwhile).
• Glitches when switching between systems/gamelists.

I thought the problem is be gone with Pi 4 (4 GB), so I have implemented it without too much reading before. Unfortunately it's not. Very disappointing
Hope ES will be further optimized, I can't imagine Pi 4 isn't powerful enough to display that kind of content without issues. The cause can't be the amount of memory...

[Glascoyote 0]

Hello

I installed Next Pixel Theme on my Recalbox 8.0 Electron, but it does not save my Configuration changes. Only the Design "1A" is displayed in every Sub Menu, after a performed new start of the box.

My scraped Images are displayed to big to fit in the square in the middle. The square is overlayed but you can see a thin black line in every picture.

Can you tell me how I can fix this?

Thank you!

[mYSt]

@madmeggo I can't tell sorry maybe @Bkg2k or @digitaLumberjack may be helpful

[mYSt]

@lhari84 Indeed the problem is not memory quantity but how ES is build so 2,4 or 8 go memory is the same and it's still recomanded to use 720p/480p for pi user
A new optimized version is on its way but need to be patient

[mYSt]

@glascoyote-0 Hello, check this part of documentation https://github.com/SamYStudiO/es-theme-next-pixel#scraping--next-pixel-mix and espcially the last phrase if you don't want to use next pixel mix

[Bkg2k]

@lhari84 ES issues regarding picture resolutions are related to the GPU memory which is limited to less than 512Mb whether you have 1, 2, 4 or even 8Gb on the board. That's why we say that running Recalbox on more than 2Gb is useless.

Nevertheless, we're already working on the FrontEnd to rewrite all the picture management code, but it's a long and hard task, don't expect changes in the next weeks.

[lhari84]

@bkg2k @mYSt
Thanks for info, great to read that there is a chance for future optimization!
In the meanwhile I realized the issue regarding graphics memory vs. general memory. Tried to increase graphics memory to more then 512 MB in boot.txt and the system did not boot anymore So I have set it to 512 MB now. Too bad that the Pis are limited in this way.

[Eternity57]

@mYSt I confirm I've currently setting up an arcade cabinet based on Pi 4 8Go & NVMe high speed 480go disk (on argon one v2 case) with Recalbox and Next Pixel theme in 1080 and I've got :

• Screen loading issue with white blinking page during few seconds before loading screen on each gaming console with 512 gpu memory
• Having more than 512 on gpu memory and the system didn't load anything

Side intels, I have render all jpeg image of the theme with jpegmini pro tool to get image with same quality but even lighter (gain 33% in this particular case which means they are already well coded) to ease memory consumption or even loading time but it didn't change anything.

Waiting on all further improvements from Recalbox or Next Pixel team to get this awesome theme working well on Pi4

Keep up your impressive work ! I will looking forward to it

[mYSt]

@eternity57 Thx for your feedback

Indeed changing image weight has no impact, if you want to have an impact you need to change image size/resolution, GPU doesn't care about weight but about pixels count
That's why i have different resolutions available for the theme, PI user should use 720p or 480p as mentionned from the documentation

[Eternity57]

@myst Make sens !

By the way when blinking, I see the background image loaded 3 to 6 times but always blinking to white in the first seconds then after 3-5 seconds of white page then it comes to the image...

Would it be possible, it is a script loop issue ? because from a user point of view the image load immediatly on the first second... blink to the white then redo this 3 to 6 times fade to white and after 3 to 5 seconds load and stay at screen.

To investigate, hoping it could help you

[mYSt]

@eternity57 I can do nothing from theme side unfortunately, recalbox team is working on it but will take time

[Eternity57]

@myst No problem it work perfectly on 720p and we almost even notice any difference from 1080. Your theme is really a game changer on an arcade cabinet ! Thank again.

[lhari84]

@myst @Bkg2k
It seems with the update to 8.0.1, switching whole system to 720p will not work anymore.
As usual, I use following parameters:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=4
in /boot/config.txt

But Recalbox boots up in 2160p at 30Hz since the update to 8.0.1, no matter if parameters in config.txt exist, or not.

That's strange in a second way, I thought default configuration for Pi(4) should make it boot up with 1080p, but never ever with 2160p - even when the connected display supports it.

My current screen configuration is nothing special, a 27'' 2160p LCD monitor, connected by HDMI.

[Bkg2k]

@lhari84 Could you please send us the result of the following command in an SSH console? :
cat /proc/cmdline

Thank you.

[lhari84]

@bkg2k Of course:

coherent_pool=1M 8250.nr_uarts=0 snd_bcm2835.enable_compat_alsa=0 snd_bcm2835.enable_hdmi=1 video=HDMI-A-1:1280x720M@60 smsc95xx.macaddr=E4:5F:01:75:FE:29 vc_mem.mem_base=0x3eb00000 vc_mem.mem_size=0x3ff00000 dwc_otg.fiq_fix_enable=1 sdhci-bcm2708.sync_after_dma=0 dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty3 consoleblank=0 loglevel=3 elevator=deadline vt.global_cursor_default=0 logo.nologo splash label=RECALBOX rootwait fastboot noswap video=HDMI-A-1:D video=HDMI-A-2:D

[Bkg2k]

@lhari84 Ok, could you now test the following:

• mount -o remount,rw /boot
• nano /boot/cmdline.txt
• Remove the latest options: video=HDMI-A-1:D video=HDMI-A-2:D
• Save & exit (CTRL+S, CTRL+X)
• reboot

[lhari84]

@bkg2k Great, this works, thank you very much!

[Bkg2k]

@lhari84 Great ^^'

Anyway the video=HDMI-A-1:D video=HDMI-A-2:D has been suggested by the Raspberry foundation developpers to address an issue with their latest firmware
Seems like it just changed the issue...

[lhari84]

@bkg2k That's too bad, hope you will not have to many issues because of that...

May I ask about another thing in this occasion, I'm still having issue with safe shutdown, please see my latest message in following topic:
https://forum.recalbox.com/topic/25776/safe-shutdown-not-working-nespi-4-case/7