Bedwyr

Ah, a patch antenna. Doesn't tell me a lot about whether there's a problem or not but that's interesting. If you want to learn some deep stuff about this type here's an engineering primer: http://orbanmicrowave.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Orban-Patch-Antennas-2009-rev.pdf edit: sorry, I didn't have time to watch the whole thing. I see what he found and it makes sense. A PCB antenna is perfectly ok and works in other systems without problem. There may simply be something wrong with this design. Why they wouldn't use a patch antenna on both controllers is not something I'm privy to.

Um, batteries are DC. Not sure what you meant. I corrected myself. They are most likely not using low energy bluetooth which operates on 4.1GHz. My friend has said that he's never had a problem with BLE interference even with equipment operating in unusually noisy environments. I'm positing that it's actually the full power Bluetooth at 2.4GHz that's the problem (and that Nintendo may not even be using BLE).

Bluetooth 3 BLE is not on 3.x. According to my friend at Fluke who is a BLE subject matter expert they (standards committee) basically layered 4.x and low energy on top, grafting in extra stuff. It is also apparently not a cause of any problems as he's never had an issue (Fluke makes measuring equipment like remote current sensors you can deploy in high voltage factory closets; very electrically noisy places). So it's probably regular BE at 2.4. The aquarium thing is still a weird mystery.

Power budget in the design would be my best guess. And I would never underestimate 2.4 interference. You're supposed to design devices to be fairly robust, but engineers can't do miracles. There's still the occasional resonant leakage from microwave machines (really!) and weird wall construction that disrupts communication even with good reasonable output routers. I don't know much about the bluetooth standard, low power or otherwise, whether the signal is isotropic linear or polarized, what the packetization method is like, or anything really. And given a lack of knowledge about the BT Broadcom driver (knowing the Raspberry Pi it would involve signing an NDA and a business proposal to get engineering data), it's not clear whether the chip auto switches between protocols in the Switch or sticks with one or the other. If it's BLE, I would not be at all surprised that a) they took a risk and geared it toward the average Japanese apartment/home size and b) there is an attenuation problem given sufficient distance. Basically I've got 3-5 possible WAGs regarding the issue, all reasonable. disclosure: I'm a systems engineer in aerospace navigation. So I deal mostly with much more robust communications layers than this. I'm mostly spitballing and this should not be taken as a professional opinion, let alone conclusive.

For those interested the communications chip is a Broadcom Bluetooth IC (marketing copy, not datasheet): http://www.cypress.com/file/298421/download I was looking at the iFixit teardown and there's no discussion or image of the Bluetooth antenna, unfortunately. So it's not clear if it is suffering from the same problem as the iPhone 4 ("You're holding it wrong" - Steve Jobs) or something else. The chip is dual mode BLE and full Bluetooth. Not clear whether the comms protocol or the IC uses both. If it does , it's not impossible that there's a mode switch problem. If It just runs on BLE, then there might be a range problem. It's a dual band transceiver (2.4, 4.1GHz) and Nintendo made suggestions that there are definite interference problems with the controllers on 2.4. It shouldn't be vulnerable to multipathing, but water could be an attenuator creating dead spots.

http://www.polygon.com/2017/3/3/14809324/nintendo-switch-joy-con-issues-interference Nintendo suggests, and I'm inclined to believe, that the joy cons are susceptible to interference and multipathing problems (the reason they mention aquariums). My semi-professional opinion is that the signal is simply weak. Has any data come out or been discovered about the joy con comms protocol?

According to github this issue is now fixed.

Sounds like one of the few options that would work short of Retroarch auto-loading configs when a new controller is plugged in.

I was late to the party so I'll be content for Amazon to let me know when there's more stock. I think pricewise the cost to be fully engaged is pretty high. Nintendo is hiding a lot of extra costs that Sony and Microsoft just aren't. It's a bit like the US airlines doing a lot of "unbundling"; setting new prices for luggage, food, and seat pitch (distance from seat back to seat back). So I'll ding them for that even though Nintendo is traditionally unwilling to lose as much margin on hardware as the two bigger players. Release wise, I'm not all that impressed with the lineup. I do hope that builds out quickly and that N capitalizes well on friendlier 3rd party relationships. Failure to have the Virtual Console running at release is rather damning as this is not a new product for them and I believe they ought to have had that animal running fast out of the gate. The format I like. I'm not sure about the size of the small controllers, especially when getting together with my 6' friends with big American hands. Likewise I gather the kickstand is pretty weak. Otherwise it appears to be a decent bit of kit and potentially a rebound from the Wii U. We shall see. I'm rooting for Nintendo as I've always respected their views on the primacy of gameplay and design over nearly everything else.

Hmm, I gathered from what you said that switching explicitly to Glide64 might fix some of those graphical artifacts, but Pilotwings still has the same 3D blanking issue unfortunately. No worries. Someday we'll have a mature Vulkan emulator doing proper trilateral filtering (I think that was one of the major issues with N64 emulation IIRC).

I... I guess so. I don't think I'd be using it all that often TBH so keeping it uninstalled but available is not an unreasonable thing, IMO. Either way it worked, so hurray and thanks.

Well, I've researched some and the closest discussion on the intarwebs is actually from this very forum: It's still not quite the same situation as I want to be able to use a different hotkey setup on a different controller for multiple cores. The XB1 controller hotkey is button 9, but select on a SNES USB controller is a different button number. Is it not possible to have those configs change on the fly?

And one more physics channel covering similar topics but getting them down to bite-sized shorter-than-five-minute bits. Includes fun stick man drawings like those on XKCD.

Physics from the professors at the University of Nottingham. Still told at a public "Nova" level, episodes like these ask sometimes crazy questions like "what would happen if you stuck your hand into the particle stream in the LHC in Switzerland?".

Ok, now the purely educational nerd stuff. I love physics and this guy does not hold back. Lots of discussions on special and general relativity, black holes, gravity waves, and especially why, as discussed here, why Quasars are the most metal thing in the universe.

Extra Credits. Amazing series on game design with an emphasis on Why Games Matter. Often digging into other media, discussing why certain concepts are important in design. This sample covers game literacy on two levels in two videos: basic and advanced. The advanced video suggests where makers, players, and academia likely come in to elevate games as an art form. They also do a phenomenal series on general world history tackling subjects and personalities such as the Punic Wars, the events leading up to WWI, and most recently Catherine the Great. (And yes, if you check one of them out the intro music does come from Actraiser.)

Mark Brown and the GameMaker's Toolkit. One of the best discussion series on game design I've seen. He's really perceptive and does a great series on Zelda dungeon design and the pros and cons for each entry in the series.

MrBTongue. Thoughtful analyses about mostly game subjects, but also general fantasy (including an understated rip on Game of Thrones vs the books) and things like convincing Americans to like Soccer.

Scott Manley for his instructional videos on Kerbal Space Program, other space related video games, science and engineering behind rocketry, and general real life launch news (especially SpaceX).

Ah, I see from searching that it's not part of the direct core download set, hence why I missed it as an option.

Yep, that worked. I think I'll keep the installer for DT but not leave it installed. Call it paranoia.

Wow, ok. I just loaded the five bins into 1.4.2's tracks and converted directly. Wonder what went wrong.

C'est la vie.

Yeah, loading the cue file did it right. Any advice about converting or using an alternate method to create a single file? I originally went to pbp to avoid disc change problems with FFVII.

Well that's odd. I made a fresh pbp file feeding a new redump image into psx2psp and got the same problem.