How to emulate FF7 without any issues?

[Vibhor]

Video card : ATI Radeon Xpress series 200
Processor : Intel pentium 4 2.7 GHz
OS : Windows Vista

I want to know how to emulate FF7 without any errors(green lines, glitchy battle swirl etc).
So far I have tried epsxe 1.7 with pete's DX6 D3D 1.77 plugin and the software one. The software one is pretty perfect but the models are too jaggy(aliased) and the other plugin has myriads of problems(green outline everywhere, tad glitchy battle swirl). Does anyone know any other plugin or emulator? Am I doing something wrong?

[Zorlon]

Software use HQ2x or HQ3x filter to have a much smoother look

For 3D plugins enable the special fixes and make sure the FF7 one is checked inside the special fixes, also look at the offscreen drawing and set that to from 2 to 4, it depends on your system to what it needs to be set to, you might be beter off with OpenGL for your Gaphics chip set, but the same things apply

Software for your system is the beter option though at a guess

If you don't have the system for it you will get slow downs with 3D video plugins but HQ2x or 3x look rather nice for software plugins

with HQ2X stretched

with scale2xstretched (not filtered)


They are both with pete's software plugin and both the same res... think it was 800x600 (would look beter with a native x2 res of 640x480 though)
Beter again if it was 960x720 with the HQ3X stretched filter

Beter quality image of HQX2 800x600

[Vibhor]

Tried the opengl. The green outline is there but it is much more "subtle" and generally bearable. Thanks

EDIT: Encountered a problem, the opengl plugin makes the whole game lag(10-15 fps) in battles. I had to switch to D3D to get anything done but this time the green lines are now red lines and still annoying.The screenshot of my settings is attached to this post by the name of mockup. The screenshot from the part where the problem persists is also attached by the name of "mackup". If the problem is not visible then look at the railings.

[Kouen Hasuki]

you could also just acquire the PC Version of the game and save all this hassle as another option

[SkylaDoragono]

The official PC version does not work on Windows Vista, though there are fixes to get in to work. There USED TO BE a fan-made DVD restoration of the whole game on one ISO, but I haven't seen it since the person that uploaded it rage quit on the one torrent site I used to go to. You might be able to find it elsewhere if you're lucky though.

Part of the issue is your OS. I personally have better luck emulating on XP or Win7 64-bit than anything that Vista spit out. For example, ePSX just did not work on my Vista machine at all, but it works on my XP laptop, which is significantly worse hardware-wise than the Vista computer. Might want to consider upgrading or downgrading OSes if you can.

[Kouen Hasuki]

The official PC version does not work on Windows Vista, though there are fixes to get in to work. There USED TO BE a fan-made DVD restoration of the whole game on one ISO, but I haven't seen it since the person that uploaded it rage quit on the one torrent site I used to go to. You might be able to find it elsewhere if you're lucky though.

Part of the issue is your OS. I personally have better luck emulating on XP or Win7 64-bit than anything that Vista spit out. For example, ePSX just did not work on my Vista machine at all, but it works on my XP laptop, which is significantly worse hardware-wise than the Vista computer. Might want to consider upgrading or downgrading OSes if you can.

Odd, the XP Patch fixed it for me on vista and 7

[SkylaDoragono]

I said there were fixes to get it to work. It was better to get the DVD rebuild though because everything was all on one disc, and once installed, you could hot swap between the discs with no problem, in addition to making it run better on any PC, no matter what OS you were operating on.

They did the same thing for FF8PC. I managed to get that one, but not FF7.

[Vibhor]

Ah Vista, causing problems since the day it was conceived.
I do have the PC version with me but the problem is that it doesn't work on vista(or at least MY vista) even with fixes and what not.
I ask another question though, would this game work on a PS2? Y'know, with backward compatibility and whatnot.

[Zorlon]

Yes if you have it mod chipped

You could also hook up your PC to a standard TV (if you have one) and run the game with the software plugin at 320x240 or 640x480 and no fiters and it will look as it did on the PSX or on the PS2

HQx3 filters at 960x720 with Pete's software plugin does look better than it does via a PS2 and PSX though

[Knightshade]

Tried the opengl. The green outline is there but it is much more "subtle" and generally bearable. Thanks

EDIT: Encountered a problem, the opengl plugin makes the whole game lag(10-15 fps) in battles. I had to switch to D3D to get anything done but this time the green lines are now red lines and still annoying.The screenshot of my settings is attached to this post by the name of mockup. The screenshot from the part where the problem persists is also attached by the name of "mackup". If the problem is not visible then look at the railings.

with opengl Set Filtering to 4 in FF7 should also work for the dx plugin.

also found this on another site I frequent. for speed issues with open gl plugs btw i recommend opengl1.7 if you don't know what custom shaders are or don't want to use them.

If you have speed issues with these configurations:
OpenGL1:

Lower the resoloution to 640x480
Make sure fsaa and anistropic filtering is off in your graphics card's control panel - psx emulation does not support AF
Set 'Hi-Res Textures' to 0
Change Framebuffer Textures to 3 as it may work better on some (ATi) cards. Any other settings will remove the battle swirls

OpenGL2:

Make sure fsaa and anistropic filtering is off in your graphics card's control panel - OpenGL2 does not support fsaa or AF
Lower the internal X/Y resoloution to 1/1
Disable 'Screen Filter'
Enable 'No render-to-texture'
Lower the resoloution to 640x480
Change Framebuffer Effects to 2 - note: this will introduce a 'load' when framebuffer effects are called (like at the beginning of a battle) To make the game playable with these setting, Special Game Fixes need to be enabled.

Bear in mind that ATi cards do not support 'Very High X', you have to set this to 'High'