Final Fantasy VII Graphics Corruption

[tclive]

Hi,

I've been playing through FF VII and got about 12 hours or so in to the game without issue. However I began experiencing random graphical corruption on a scene change after this point (I think always after ending a battle). This can range from mild to rendering the game unplayable, and unless near a save point you're basically screwed and have to reset, which is annoying to say the least.

After reading a thread on here Re. Final Fantasy IX, I've since played around with all KV modes but have experienced the issue across all 3.

As its worst it looks like this:

https://i.ibb.co/5h8YQZP/IMG-20190324-001900672.jpg

For now I've had to switch back to playing off the discs as I just don't know when it's going occur. As far as I can tell it's an issue with the PSIO.

Any suggestions for a fix?

EDIT: I've just found viewtopic.php?f=72&t=1482&hilit=final+fantasy this thread which is exactly the same as what I'm experiencing - now I've read it, can confirm it seems to occur after a note hang on the exp screen. I find it unlikely every one of the disc images are bad, but I'm happy to rip my own retail discs and test if needed (though looks like fernan1234 already tried that to no avail).

Is there any chance of a fix for this as it's a popular title to be having compatibility issues for sure.

Thanks.

[Matt]

It's a bug in the current PSIO firmware and we're fixing it

https://jira.cybdyn-systems.com.au/browse/CSGC-115

[tclive]

It's a bug in the current PSIO firmware and we're fixing it

https://jira.cybdyn-systems.com.au/browse/CSGC-115

Awesome! Thank you.

While the slightly unhealthy grinding sounds of the aging laser assembly in this thing are somewhat nostalgic and all, I was growing rather accustom to the consistent, faster loading times.

[fluxrez]

I changed the audio to K1V2 and it seems to have fixed it... but im not 100% sure since it seemed a bit random. Anyone else experiencing this, have you tried the other audio modes?

[Takehaniyasubiko]

I checked FFVII on PSP/PSV and guess what? If I put "Disc Load Speed" to "Fast", 2D graphics glitch into a mess like on PSIO.

This is about accurate read speeds of the PS1 CD-ROM, Matt. Remember, it's 150KB/sec in normal mode and 300KB/sec in double mode. No more, no less.

Code: Select all

CdlModeSpeed
0x80
Transfer speed
0: Normal speed (150KB/sec=75 sectors/sec)
1: Double speed (300KB/sec=150 sectors/sec)

[krisk77]

I checked FFVII on PSP/PSV and guess what? If I put "Disc Load Speed" to "Fast", 2D graphics glitch into a mess like on PSIO.

This is about accurate read speeds of the PS1 CD-ROM, Matt. Remember, it's 150KB/sec in normal mode and 300KB/sec in double mode. No more, no less.

Code: Select all

CdlModeSpeed
0x80
Transfer speed
0: Normal speed (150KB/sec=75 sectors/sec)
1: Double speed (300KB/sec=150 sectors/sec)

Good find and this quite possible affect RE2 door loading too? Btw, out of curiosity does this happen on a PS2 when you set the disc speed to fast? I don't have FF7 original disc to check. And since your a PS2 user like myself, an Accurate Read option could help specific titles like what OPL does.

[Takehaniyasubiko]

Good find and this quite possible affect RE2 door loading too? Btw, out of curiosity does this happen on a PS2 when you set the disc speed to fast? I don't have FF7 original disc to check. And since your a PS2 user like myself, an Accurate Read option could help specific titles like what OPL does.

I don't know about PS2 and I can't check that because I only have FFVII as a PS1 Classic from PSN, but it happens on PSP and PSV.

As for RE2-3, it's more likely a problem with no support for full LIBDS. However, FF7 doesn't use LIBDS, so this is definitely a problem with the read speed. Matt and Yuri implemented seek calculations, but that won't do anything for FF7 because the problem isn't in the seek times. The issue with FF7 is all about the actual speed of reading data. It must be exactly like on the real PS1 CD-ROM (150KB/sec or 300KB/sec, depending on the mode which is picked by games).

[fernan1234]

Matt mentioned that they reduced the read speed since 2.6.6, but obviously it's still not as slow as it should be by default.

[Takehaniyasubiko]

The official PSN version of FF7 running on VITA/PSP.





It's identical to what happens on PSIO.

The way to fix this on VITA/PSP (and PS3, BTW) is to change "Disc Load" from "Fast" to "Normal".

Wouldn't it be beneficial to just check the official PSone Classics emulator and see what it does when changing "Disc Load"?

[Listai]

Wouldn't it be beneficial to just check the official official PSone Classics emulator and see what it does when changing "Disc Load"?

It's closed source, so even with custom firmware on the Vita and PS3 they probably can't glean a great deal. It's also worth nothing that its semi-hardware BC on the Vita as the CPU side is run natively on the onboard MIPS co-processor which complicates things further.

[Takehaniyasubiko]

It's closed source, so even with custom firmware on the Vita and PS3 they probably can't glean a great deal. It's also worth nothing that its semi-hardware BC on the Vita as the CPU side is run natively on the onboard MIPS co-processor which complicates things further.

At least we know this issue is related to the disc load emulation's speed. This also happens on PS2, BTW.

The weird thing is, I was told that there's no mystery behind this setting. It's supposed to just change PS1's original reading speed of 1x (150KB/s) to 2x (300KB/s),

Even though PS1's CD-ROM is 2x, games rarely use it for anything other than streaming videos. Data is loaded with the slow rate of 1x/150KB/s, so maybe PSIO is using 2x speed, just like the official emulators with Fast Disc Load? I know Matt said the speed emulation was implemented, but maybe he meant the 2x speed, or maybe there's a bug which causes PSIO to always read at 300 KB/s?

This can't be a coincidence as the glitching on PSIO is identical to the glitching on official Sony emulators set to 2x reading speed.

[Listai]

At least we know this issue is related to the disc load emulation's speed. This also happens on PS2, BTW.

The weird thing is, I was told that there's no mystery behind this setting. It's supposed to just change PS1's original reading speed of 1x (150KB/s) to 2x (300KB/s),

Even though PS1's CD-ROM is 2x, games rarely use it for anything other than streaming videos. Data is loaded with the slow rate of 1x/150KB/s, so maybe PSIO is using 2x speed, just like the official emulators with Fast Disc Load? I know Matt said the speed emulation was implemented, but maybe he meant the 2x speed, or maybe there's a bug which causes PSIO to always read at 300 KB/s?

This can't be a coincidence as the glitching on PSIO is identical to the glitching on official Sony emulators set to 2x reading speed.

It's more to do with the accuracy rather than the speed - if all Matt had to do was narrow the pipe as it were he would have released the firmware by now and we'd all be happy. It's a more granular problem related to how data is buffered and juggled around because of the limited way you can interface with the BIOS.

[Takehaniyasubiko]

It's more to do with the accuracy rather than the speed - if all Matt had to do was narrow the pipe as it were he would have released the firmware by now and we'd all be happy. It's a more granular problem related to how data is buffered and juggled around because of the limited way you can interface with the BIOS.

Seek calculations are supposed to be very accurate by now. It took months to implement them, after all.

This very well might a case of missing the elephant in the living room. It might be a bug which causes PSIO to read data at 2x all the time, which appears fine in many games, but causes issues like this in some titles, especially the highly-optimized PS1 games which relied on the 1x reads. Or maybe it simply reads the data from an SD card at the right speed, but then sends it to PS1 too fast?

[Matt]

This might be fixed now in the new firmware (ARM V2.6.4) so give it a test and see how it goes

[Takehaniyasubiko]

This might be fixed now in the new firmware (ARM V2.6.4) so give it a test and see how it goes

[iggy_poop]

I don't know if this is useful but I played Final Fantasy VII in November 2018 exclusively using the PSIO for 60 hours in 4 to 10 hour sessions and never encountered this issue. I didn't play the original version though, my ISOs were patched with the retranslation.

[fernan1234]

I don't know if this is useful but I played Final Fantasy VII in November 2018 exclusively using the PSIO for 60 hours in 4 to 10 hour sessions and never encountered this issue. I didn't play the original version though, my ISOs were patched with the retranslation.

This confirms my suspicion that something introduced in the December 2018 firmware led to this problem, because I'm sure you're not the only one of the early PSIO users who played FF7 on PSIO prior to that update.

Knowing this might be helpful in figuring out what changed on 2.6.5 that may be associated with this bug.

[Takehaniyasubiko]

On V2.6.9, FF7 has the VRAM corruption bug present, but there's also a new issue now. The game can crash altogether on the EXP screen, especially if you're traversing the world map.

[supdry]

Which region of the game is problematic? I understand that that's all(Pal,ntsc/u & j).Or I'm wrong?. I have SCES-00867. I spent about 3 hours or more in the game (in one session) without missing fights (I found a place for a farm in the tunnel, where they offer to run away, stay and survived a bunch of respawns enemies there in various combinations. So far I have not encountered any problems - all works perfect.

[Takehaniyasubiko]

Which region of the game is problematic? I understand that that's all(Pal,ntsc/u & j).Or I'm wrong?.

All of them have the exact same problems, yes.

This is a problem with the game's engine not working properly on PSIO right now (VRAM corruption after battles at random + black screen of death after the EXP screen at random as of V2.6.9), so it doesn't matter which region your copy is from. I personally tested NTSC & PAL.

So far I have not encountered any problems - all works perfect.

The glitch is random. It can happen after 3 minutes or after 3 hours. You never know when and why. That's a part of the problem, especially in a JRPG where you can easily play for 100 hours just leveling up.