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While emulation is constantly pushing forward from generation to generation, there remain some aged outliers yet to be completely conquered. Notably, the 3D arcade scene of the 1990s, despite its vintage, is particularly problematic when it comes to emulation - typically due to the very specific, formative, rare, and even experimental technology used during these early years of polygonal gaming.
Still, the ever-faithful homebrew crew continues unabashedly, as demonstrated in this new emulation core from coder Alphanu1. The MiSTer FPGA core focuses squarely on Sega's Model 1 technology, which made its grand debut in arcade centres back in 1992, but remains one of the trickier platforms to duplicate. Alphanu1 has come extremely close, however, as the new core is capable of running Virtua Racing (the debut game for Model 1 technology) at "99% of its original hardware speed."
According to Alphanu1, Virtua Racing boots up, runs its intro sequence, plays in its entirety, and is able to handle the game's 2D layers concurrently with its 3D polygonal elements, with only occasional tears and minor glitching. As an FPGA, the core replicates the Model 1 hardware directly, and the sound for Virtua Racing was carried on a separate circuit board. Because of this, there is no audio in the current build.
Visually, this is a very impressive endeavour, and the core is doing an excellent job of processing Virtua Racing's fast gameplay at a high rate. Perhaps curtailing requests before they even happen, Alphanu1 has noted that they are not working on similar cores for Sega's additional Model 1 titles - namely Virtua Fighter (1992), Virtua Formula (1993), Star Wars Arcade (1994), Wing War (1994) and Virtuality NetMerc (1995). While several emulators are capable of recreating some of these titles to a reasonable level of quality, it may still be some time before the Model 1 catalogue is bested in its entirety.
But, thanks to Alphanu1 and many other passionate Sega fans, we're getting closer.