MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi!

Somebody told me recently it wouldn't be possible to attach sideart to mister cores. Can somebody pls explain to me why that is?
I think it would be cool to have sideart on widescreen displays like mame does.

thx

The OSD is spartan by necessity, it runs on the FPGA and has no framebuffer to speak of. You can potentially launch games externally with a graphical app/web-frontend and whilst I've seen some proof-of-concepts, there's not been anything particularly mature yet.

Personally, I appreciate the no-nonsense approach of the OSD. MiSTer OSD makes selecting games and configuring cores simple and easy on a modern display or a CRT. You may think differently but be prepared to die on that hill, there are many other threads and discussions about this.

It's all about available resources. The computer part of the DE10-Nano is not very powerful or capable by today's standards. To give you some idea, it's using a 800MHz (as in 0.8GHz) dual core ARM processor; a low speed and low power mobile processor. Simply put, its computer part is just enough to run what it already does and doesn't leave room for much else to run. The FPGA chip is the real magic and power in the board and what makes the hardware replications possible. But as far as extras are concerned, there's just not enough regular computer power. Sideart or bezels may not seem like much but it's still loading and showing a (presumably) high resolution file so that all the text and art are nice and clear. Advancements in technology is sometimes something we take for granted until we go backwards and see what we can't do as easily anymore.

I'm also of the mindset that I appreciate how straightforward the MiSTer is. MAME and front ends can make for an attractive looking experience but it's a far more complicated and potentially headache inducing experience. The more complex the features you're using, the more complex it is to set it up. By comparison, MiSTer with its more simple approach is far easier to set up. Easier to build and set up a MiSTer than any Pi or computer build, in my opinion. Simple is also fast which is why it loads as quick as it does. MiSTer definitely created an advantage out of the DE10-Nano's disadvantages.

It’s a neat idea regardless if it’s feasible or not. The Intellivision and ColecoVision cores could really benefit if the side art were the overlays.