The future of emulation?

[RedLion]

Hello all!I was wondering about the future of emulation; I talk about next-gen consoles.Do you really think the emulation for PS3,Xbox360,or Wii, will be possible???i read somewhere that the cell processor was so powerful that it could even emulate the Pc environment with a lot of ease! And for the wii if someone success to emulate it how to find a PC device to emulate his fabulous controller?and like the complexity and number of devices in console are growing (hard drives for example) how many people will be necessary to built an emulator?Do you think the fabulous world of emulation have reach its maximum capacity?want to know your point of view.thanks.

[Dogmaan]

Theoretically emulating the PowerPC cores of the three consoles (slowly) should be relatively simple, because of the ground work put in by pearpc and the various gamecube emulators out there.

The main problem is emulating the extra instructions in the PPC core(s), the 360 probably has a weird form of Altivec, also according to the avalaunch team it has some x86 opcodes for backwards compatibility, then you have the infineon security chip to emulate and the SIS chipset, oh and dont forget the unified shaders.

The ps3's main problem will be the cells and the extra powerpc instructions also the Ps3 has Rambus memory running at stupid speeds our pc's can only dream of.

Oh and even if you managed to do all that you would need a couple of crayXMP's to run it

anyone like to add some more?

[KanedA]

yeah it's quite possible, years ago ppl. were saying like that about PS2 and look ! its emulation gets better and better :)

[Cid Highwind]

But this time the architechtures are pretty uncommon. A triple core CPU and the almighty Cell Processor with its 7 spe's. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sure attempts will be made and it might be possible, but not on x86, it all depends on future PC developments.

What's more interesting is how the emulation scene will be for those consoles, like we have seen with the Dreamcast and Xbox, and recently on the PSP. IMO thát is the future of emulation. At least from a gamer's pov, and not from a coder (who will always look for the challenge)

[FrostyTheSnowman]

As long as we have coders that are determined enough to give up ANY form of personal life, we will have emulation. Regardless of hardware changes, OS changes, or how impossible it may seem.

[ShendoXT]

Maybe the future of emulation is to emulate things on those consoles...

[Dogmaan]

Sure attempts will be made and it might be possible, but not on x86, it all depends on future PC developments.

With multicore processors set to have 16+ cores in the future, and hopefully some languages and compilers that compliment multicore architecture, maybe we will even see progress quicker this time round.

But then you would still have the problem of the absurdley fast cache and RAM speeds of the next gen consoles (something i believe is one of the main problems of ps2 emulation as well).

[KanedA]

Maybe the future of emulation is to emulate things on those consoles...


hmmm... coders already do that on PS2 PSP and even X-box ;) so that's nothing new :)

[Samor]

not new no, but the emulation of classics on new consoles seems to be rather popular atm.

[ChankastRules]

I'm waiting for the time we can emulate a girfriend, that'd would be great. No more important days to remember, or gifts to buy wow. Of course it's important that we can also emulate realistic skin... boobies and...

ehhr... well I think it'll take a long time until any of the next-gen consoles will be emulated. But IBM is talking about cell-based PC's, if we get that.. the NVIDIA card is really not that special... so PS3 could be possible if PC's go that path. Xbox 360... well we're going towards more and more cores in PC's not impossible either. As for the wii.... well it all depends on if we get a motion sensetive controller for the PC that can in anyway substitute it's controller. In other words it's too early to tell.

[Dogmaan]

well it all depends on if we get a motion sensetive controller for the PC that can in anyway substitute it's controller. In other words it's too early to tell.

using the right adaptor and software we can use ps2 controllers on our pc's, there is nothing to stop us doing the same with the wii controller (hopefully)

[KanedA]

I'm waiting for the time we can emulate a girfriend, that'd would be great. No more important days to remember, or gifts to buy wow. Of course it's important that we can also emulate realistic skin... boobies and...

dude, and where would you stick your... not tonque :innocent: in? :evil:

[Dogmaan]

dude, and where would you stick your... not tonque in?

unfortunately we dont have the technology :(

you could do it manually with the nintendo powerglove for the time being oO

[Cid Highwind]

hmmm... coders already do that on PS2 PSP and even X-box ;) so that's nothing new :)
Without being sarcastic, what can the PS2 offer? I know it has Snes emulation, but last time I heard about it it wasn't as good, or at least not better than Dreamsnes. Any other interesting projects?

[FrostyTheSnowman]

Emulation on the XBOX has both of them beaten by leaps and bounds. You should just see how good ANY SNES game looks on a Widescreen HDTV running at 480p using Super 2xSai filtering. Not to mention that MOST N64 games work perfectly on the XBOX. 4 player Mario Kart 64/GoldenEye feels just like it did on the real system, aside from the difference in controls. Although, I prefer the XBOX controller over the N64 controller anyway.

[Silenus]

I even have a nes emulator in my cellphone :D
And there are snes, gb and gba emulators too.

Emulation is dedication!!!

[Dogmaan]

As the PPC cores of the 3 systems are fairly similiar porting homebrew between the next gen systems (once the security has been bypassed) should theoretically be a lot easier as they will all use PPC binarys

Maybe they could even share the same source tree?

[Samor]

Emulation on the XBOX has both of them beaten by leaps and bounds. You should just see how good ANY SNES game looks on a Widescreen HDTV running at 480p using Super 2xSai filtering. Not to mention that MOST N64 games work perfectly on the XBOX. 4 player Mario Kart 64/GoldenEye feels just like it did on the real system, aside from the difference in controls. Although, I prefer the XBOX controller over the N64 controller anyway.

sure, xbox is powerful enough for the more advanced emulators, but the DC doesn't need any modification for running homebrew.... and that scene is still pretty much alive and kicking too....

[FrostyTheSnowman]

Meh, I owned a DC, and at one point I was very much a part of DCEmu.co.uk, and it does have some significant traits as far as homebrew goes. But I lost interest when the system was announced officially dead, and the homebrew scene was unable to progress past SNES emulation. (And even that didn't emulate very well.)

[Dogmaan]

sure, xbox is powerful enough for the more advanced emulators, but the DC doesn't need any modification for running homebrew.... and that scene is still pretty much alive and kicking too....

I love the Dreamcast and its homebrew scene, but it has slowed down a lot in the past couple of years.

homebrew coders want another more powerful system to get there teeth into this is why there is such an effort to run unsigned code on the XB360 at the moment even though you can already run copied games.

If the PS3 supports Linux as promised, then hopefully the homebrew scene will explode on that console, its also an unusual architecture that a lot of programmers and techies would like to sink their teeth into.

[Coolsvilleman]

considering how every generation of consoles is getting closer and closer to a standard pc architeture maybe emulation will become easier and easier?

[Dogmaan]

considering how every generation of consoles is getting closer and closer to a standard pc architeture maybe emulation will become easier and easier?

The xbox IS a pc and still hasnt been emulated properly

The new next-gen consoles have GFX chipsets that are vaguely similiar to PC technology, but the main CPU's on all three consoles are very different, especially ps3's Cell.

The PS3's RAM is clocked at 3.2GHz and the RAM transfer speed is 25.6Gb/s

The fastest pc DDR2 PC's have clock at 1066Mhz with a RAM transfer speed of 8.5GB/sec

so even if you had a 20Ghz x86, if the cpu cant get the data fast enough its not going to be able to emulate the console at a reasonable speed

This is also a big problem with ps2 emulation on PC architecture The ps2's RAMBUS memory does 3.2gb/sec and the GFX Ram does 48Gb/sec

Could Refraction or Zerofrog (or anyone else who knows the ins and outs of pcsx2) explain how they got passed this limitation of pc architecture, because i would love to know

Thx

[Coolsvilleman]

The xbox IS a pc and still hasnt been emulated properly

The new next-gen consoles have GFX chipsets that are vaguely similiar to PC technology, but the main CPU's on all three consoles are very different, especially ps3's Cell.

The PS3's RAM is clocked at 3.2GHz and the RAM transfer speed is 25.6Gb/s

The fastest pc DDR2 PC's have clock at 1066Mhz with a RAM transfer speed of 8.5GB/sec

so even if you had a 20Ghz x86, if the cpu cant get the data fast enough its not going to be able to emulate the console at a reasonable speed

This is also a big problem with ps2 emulation on PC architecture The ps2's RAMBUS memory does 3.2gb/sec and the GFX Ram does 48Gb/sec

Could Refraction or Zerofrog (or anyone else who knows the ins and outs of pcsx2) explain how they got passed this limitation of pc architecture, because i would love to know

Thx

to the first xbox comment the only reason it hasnt been emulated is because noone is working on it. its not that it cant be its just noone wants to. secondly all that ps3 hardware is not released yet. by the time it is released or maybe slightly afterwards a pc equivalent or better will be released, just like the n64, ps1, ps2, xbox and gamecube. as far as the ps2s architecture is much different than an xbox or pc so that data transfer isnt really comparable to them.

[Xtreme2damax]

What would help PC emulation of consoles now and in the future would be the benefit of multiple Processors, much faster transfer speeds between the CPU, Ram, an Graphics.

It would also help probably if CPU designers/Manufactuers, Stopped sticking with the god aweful x86 Architecture, and started developing CPU's for PC's capable of running 128-bit code, as well as run x86, and x64 code, to maintain compatability with Windows XP, Vista and so on.

For some reason the x64 department in OS's doesn't have much support atm,
although I don't know how this will play out in the future.

If Programmers, for games and apps would support different architectures, like x64 equally, we would be seeing a change fairly quickly, as compared to now.;)

Even Multicore Processors are not fully supported by the majority of developers yet, as noted with most games and apps on the market.

[Dogmaan]

to the first xbox comment the only reason it hasnt been emulated is because noone is working on it. its not that it cant be its just noone wants to

A lot of work was put into CXBX and XEON, if you talk to those emu developers they will tell you it was by no means 'easy' to develop those emulators (although technicially i think they redirect .xbe calls to the equivalent .exe windows directx calls so they aren't emulators).

secondly all that ps3 hardware is not released yet. by the time it is released or maybe slightly afterwards a pc equivalent or better will be released, just like the n64, ps1, ps2, xbox and gamecube. as far as the ps2s architecture is much different than an xbox or pc so that data transfer isnt really comparable to them.

The data transfer is comparable when it comes to emulation, one of the reasons the ps2 could throw around so many particles and polygons with almost no slowdown was because of its data tranfer speeds, pc's aren't designed that way, pc's are designed to have massive amounts of ram and cache but the speed between them is slow, where as the ps2 doesnt have much ram and only has a 16k cache but the speed between them is very fast .

could someone more in the know explain it better?

[Dogmaan]

sorry to bump i didnt want to start a new thread

i am VERY interested in how the pcsx2 developers are managing so far to get around these speed differences between pc and ps2 cache and ram speeds.

Thx

[El_Diablos]

i am VERY interested in how the pcsx2 developers are managing so far to get around these speed differences between pc and ps2 cache and ram speeds.

me too... so, Refraction will you explain? plz :)