I picked up a Surface Pro about a week ago, and have run into a frustrating issue when trying to use SNES emulators, which I am hoping other people have seen as well and maybe have overcome.
When using SNES9x or ZSNES (or any others I've been able to find) from the desktop, games have minor, but very noticeable, slowdown. When displaying the fps, though, it stays pegged at 60, so the program seems to think it's running smoothly. On the screen, though, it's definitely slow and choppy, which makes precision games like Super Mario World extremely frustrating to play. Changing settings for the emulators seems to have no effect, which reinforces the idea that the emulator itself at least thinks it's working properly, with 60fps.
SNES8x, which runs as a metro app, works perfectly smoothly. SNES8x is based off of SNES9x, so I have no idea why it should run perfectly when SNES9x won't. The one issue with SNES8x, though, is that the screen proportions for it on a surface pro are not correct. I'm not sure why this would be the case, since 16:9 is a very common ratio, but the image is definitely squished horizontally. SNES8x currently has no options to change the aspect ratio or to set it to full screen (internet searching seems to indicate that the windows phone version at least has full screen as an option, but not windows 8 version). If I could set it to full screen, I could just set my TV to 4:3 mode and it would at least give me a way to play the games without distortion.
The most ideal option, of course, is if I could run ZSNES or SNES9x without lag, as they support a wide variety of options and also allow non-xbox USB controllers.
I would appreciate any help anyone here might be able to give.
Ian
When using SNES9x or ZSNES (or any others I've been able to find) from the desktop, games have minor, but very noticeable, slowdown. When displaying the fps, though, it stays pegged at 60, so the program seems to think it's running smoothly. On the screen, though, it's definitely slow and choppy, which makes precision games like Super Mario World extremely frustrating to play. Changing settings for the emulators seems to have no effect, which reinforces the idea that the emulator itself at least thinks it's working properly, with 60fps.
SNES8x, which runs as a metro app, works perfectly smoothly. SNES8x is based off of SNES9x, so I have no idea why it should run perfectly when SNES9x won't. The one issue with SNES8x, though, is that the screen proportions for it on a surface pro are not correct. I'm not sure why this would be the case, since 16:9 is a very common ratio, but the image is definitely squished horizontally. SNES8x currently has no options to change the aspect ratio or to set it to full screen (internet searching seems to indicate that the windows phone version at least has full screen as an option, but not windows 8 version). If I could set it to full screen, I could just set my TV to 4:3 mode and it would at least give me a way to play the games without distortion.
The most ideal option, of course, is if I could run ZSNES or SNES9x without lag, as they support a wide variety of options and also allow non-xbox USB controllers.
I would appreciate any help anyone here might be able to give.
Ian
