1. SmartGear updated – with great sound improvements; it’ll also receive touchscreen tap area support!!

SmartGear, which is undoubtedly the best[*] all-in-one emulator for both Windows Mobile platforms, has finally fixed the “clicking sound” problem in their new, 0.34 version

Also see THIS thread page in the official SmartGear thread at MoDaCo for more info & what people report on the new stuff.

Finally, the developer has announced adding support for on-screen tap areas, which will be a god-send for many-many Pocket PC users with touchscreens. After all, on several handsets, it’s much easier to press the virtual buttons on the touchscreen instead of the small / hard-to-press hardware buttons.

*: it has won in the following PPCMag Awards 2007 categories:

Pocket PC: Emulators: Desktop Game Consoles - TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine)
Pocket PC: Emulators: Handheld Game Consoles
Pocket PC: Emulators: Multiplatform Game Console Emulators (they've beaten MorphGear!!!)
Smartphone: Handheld Game Console Emulators (see THIS)
They, in addition, have been finalists in numerous other categories.

2. updated Sony Playstation emulator FPSEce before Christmas?

German generic mobile gaming site pocketplayers.info has just posted some new info on the best Sony Playstation (winner of the 32+-bit Desktop Game Consoles category this year) emulator FPSEce:

The mail, copied verbatim, follows:

"sorry for the delay, i called LDchen last week end, and we are agree we will not ready for christmas for a new FpseCE release using 0.10 Core. The Fact is that LDchen is working on some optimisation, WMMX and many other feature in 0.10 core to boost another time emulation.

I had chance to get a new version running with all these last optimisation and i can tell you this is really very fast! never had such speed before! 3D games are really fast and playable now completely, even if fps isn't constant, when Fps is lowest with many animation it's still very playable, like a true Playstation....

We are thinking to release a last Version with 0.096 Core for Christmas with lasts Optimisations on this core , and on plugins, like CDDA emulation, optimisation on GPU which give about 10-20% boost and much more.

Best regards."

Schtruck.”

Unfortunately, as can be seen, the milestone release 0.10 will still not be released; still, we’ll receive a new version with some 10-20% speed improvement before Christmas.

Microsoft MVP - Mobile Devices, 2006, 2007. See my PPC & SP blog HERE.

    

ooooo boy oooo boy i cant wait =] im deff looking forward finally maybe i can play Driver more like real time =]

bleh, i remember last christmas they where saying the same thing about 0.1 being close to coming out, so i dontaed a few bucks, havent really heard from them since few weeks ago, im curious too see what they bring out new, but a little skeptic about the 0.1 having 1.5-3 times more performance....

 

This will be the best Xmas gift!

Indeed another Merry Christmas.
To be honest, I think I'm more optimistic about getting a 1.5 to 3 times speed boost in 0.10. They've been working so hard and so long on it, I doubt it would be for a minor boost. Plus if Schtruck is using a beta getting fully playable speeds out of 3D games, it'd HAVE to be that much faster. I'm using a maxed out x51v and 0.096 and games run at half speed compared to playing PS1 CDs on my PS2.
With a new 0.096, I'm hoping hoping hoping it can save games... and of course any speed boost is great. Looking forward to playing Diablo a little faster!