There's been a lot of talk recently about the use of Mesen as an emulator and its ability to use a lag reduction feature called run ahead. My understanding is it introduces a display delay one frame at a time to reduce lag for the user. My question is, why is this not allowed?

As a hardware user I started on flat screens and experimented with different systems and setups to change the degree of lag I experienced. I used FPGA consoles, frame buffers, and different TVs all with the result of varying lag. Why wouldn't we allow software (emu) runners to do the same with software?

The only issue I can see is if an emulation user had the run ahead settings past say 2 frames. At that point you've likely overcome the lag introduced by the emulator/computer and are truly working ahead (which is a condition not available to hardware users and I would see as being a problem). But if setting the run ahead to 1 or 2 frames results in the user still dealing with some small amount of lag, how is that any different than an FPGA user who uses a frame buffer and a low lag monitor?

I'd always just assumed there was good reason for it, but today I thought about it (as I recently became a mod for another game) and I couldn't figure out why it would be a problem. Thanks yall : )

I have a run I need to frame count before submitting and I want to make sure I do it right. Where do we begin the frame count? Is it when the screen goes black, when the playing screen comes up, or during the fuzzy part in between? Thanks!