Future of Emulation

[Coolsvilleman]

It just occurred to me today. We don't have an xbox emulator yet anywhere near the ps2, gamecube emulators. Wow! Considering it should have been the easiest system to emulate from a purely theoretical standpoint thats quite surprising. It was, after-all, basically a pc.

But I digress. It got me thinking.

So what is the future of emulation. Current generation pc's will never be able to emulate a PS3. Possibly in 10 years but even that is doubtful. The Wii is just basically a gamecube on steroids and the xbox360 is again, another pc. You would think that making a Wii or xbox360 emulator would be the easiest. Though I don't think I'd call the xbox360 one an emulator. Possibly and interpreter.

So what are peoples thoughts, will emulation simply die out due to the ever increasing technical requirements? Is it even worth emulating these systems since they are basically computers anyhow? Will someone ever develop the ULTIMATE emulator that can emulate many systems (not unlike mame) to perfection? Will you be the next "emulator idol" ... I mean programmer.

[Rebel_X]

The problem with XBox emulation is that intel created some kind of protection inside it's processors from Pentium 4 and later, that you cant execute or emulate cpu instructions under the same cpu or similar one.. (something close to this!) that's why the only solution was to use virtualization technology.. but till now nobody dares to deal with it for xbox..

besides cxbox for example uses some kind of LLE (low level emulation) to try to execute the instructions directly.. but it's far from finished.. I guess, ask blueshogun06 for this.

IMHO any cpu core emulation should be done in assembly language, since you can use or imitate same registers and transfer values between them, since all cpus (mostly) contains index registers, main registers for input/output like the accumulator (i.e ax/eax) and flag registers to tell about the state of value stored signed or not, carry bit, odd/even and others..

about the future of emulation, it might be going to a dead end, since the complexity of the hardware involved means more efforts to make it done over the time, for example look at P©SX2, it took the project 4-5 years to be able to emulate FFX.. it's a tiresome project, and I can understand that, if you look at svn you will find that the project has over 3.5 Millions of code (without the external inclusion of windows header files)..

Anyhoo, it would be nice in theory, if somebody/group, will build an EDK (fancy name of Emulator Development Kit) that suits any emulator project, since the principle between console emulation is the same, I mean the same hierarchal execution of logic, but some specific stuff must be done, like writing code for specific cpu instruction to emulate them.. what I am talking about here, is already built framework of functions and classes (Templates) can be used for any project, but for specific project must be filled with specific functions.. this will cut down marvelous code creation time and efforts.. But probably building such project is just like mission impossible, to make it optimized.. (in my imagination, emulation might be like plugin system, plugin for PSX or PS2 or GameCube, Xbox or even Atari)
known that, that EDK will take care of multi-core/multi-threading handling for example making the programmers focus on the specific hardware to be emulated, thus as a consequences of this would be less time and effort to build working emulator (since there is a team that working on EDK to make it Bug-free, and Optimized, the other team focus CPU/GPU/SPU emulation), less bugs/errors/glitches since you can limit which module caused the bug the EDK or the EMUplugin ) and probably other stuff too..

Now I don't wanna hear any stupid comments about my imaginations, it's just imagination/theory. whether it could/would (with or without NOT) be done, but it's still nice idea (IMHO)

[Shin_Gouki]

my opinion:
- well the "PC" itself becomes obsolete for gaming, because its ridiculous to support multiple hardware with 1 gaming API, you think it works? see OpenGL
The industry itself fights so much eachother that innovation from hardware to be used in software take YEARS, in whcih you pay the 2x till 4x ammount of money you get for the SAME software experience on a console
-just because many people like to "tinker" with their pcs it doenst mean its a good or desirable solution ( it isn't)
- if you want to do "work" you use a mac
- Computer (not PC) Hardware will be so flexible that you can run Linux on it and thus if you are a gamer which lsiten to some music surfs the internet , do some office. A "console" Computer will be perfectly fitting for you. Its fast does what you want for you and its way cheaper then a PC which runs the exact same games...
- so all the people who are today screaming ( and coding) for games on linux will instead run linux on their "gaming" Consoles to do the "rest" stuff which they do besides gaming with their computer
- emulation lives on or even more revives very strong since now the hardware to emulate becomes much cleaner ( including APIs) , the hardware manufacture ( sony, MC , nintendo.. ) which does a good mix of presenting his own producs while offering open hardware and API access will get a huge boost!
- projects like MAME will grow even more strong

[cottonvibes]

Coolsvilleman,

new technology is being created everyday, sure a PS3 emulator sounds crazy now, but in 5 years its going to be possible.


the future of emulation won't die because of lack of computer power, but it will actually die because of the way future consoles will work.

for example, 3D television is being researched. That will in turn lead to 3D gaming consoles, and 3d virtual reality.

in the end, it will end up being too much of a challenge to emulate those technologies, and developers will not want to do it for free.
so i think in about 10 years emulation will die out, and it will only be used for retro/classic gaming...
which by then would be the ps3

[there148]

hi this is a very fascinating topic and my opinion is that the future of emulation(which in this case involes playing without buying ) is doomed. i think as future gaming consoles head toward a more interactive experience, ie virtual reality, it would be near impossible to replicate the gameplay process through the traditional pc input devices/peripherals. i know i wouldn't bother buying specialized equip to emulate a system if i can do the same thing with a real console.

my predicion is if the wii success is any indication, is that the next round of consoles will further include virtual reality control schemes and unless the pc gaming world also adopts similar controls, i don't think future emulation is viable.

i think the next wii will include head tracking as well as reality gloves(think virtualboy without the googles). the next ds wll probably do away with buttons and opt for a fully multitouch system ala iphone. xbox and ps will focuse more on "online virtual reality" and that's going to be pretty hard to emulate as well, although emulating sql databases shouldn't be that difficult if wow private servers are considered.

[Hard core Rikki]

Right now, emulation of the currentgen consoles is still in progress, but we see a big effort to port the previously released emulators to the new consoles. Thats worth a footer note, and to me, is a pretty pleasing thought as well. Emulation does not have to be exclusively used on PC systems, playing SuperNES games on your (now powerful enough) consoles is cool too in itself.

[Squall-Leonhart]

Originally Posted by there148

hi this is a very fascinating topic and my opinion is that the future of emulation(which in this case involes playing without buying )

If this is what you think, then you are not welcome to express any thoughts, ideas or opinions here.

Emulation does not mean playing without buying, at all.

[there148]

Originally Posted by Squall-Leonhart

If this is what you think, then you are not welcome to express any thoughts, ideas or opinions here.

Emulation does not mean playing without buying, at all.

hi i think you missed the smilie there .

why do you have a habit of telling people what they can and can't say here? ive seen you play judge jury and executioner quite often on many topics.

i mean you shouldn't be one on the high and mighty position. its rather curious to me that you seem to know so much about, tested, and advocate against unauthorized versions of no$gba and pj64.

relax take a chill pill and stop acting like you're better than others.

[cottonvibes]

he said that because piracy is against the rules of this forum, and its not a laughing matter.

If you're going to be endorsing piracy here, then you can't stay.

[Squall-Leonhart]

No, i didn't miss the smily, and i don't care about whether you were joking or not.
The point remains is that was a warning to anyone who thinks along those lines.

Originally Posted by there148

i mean you shouldn't be one on the high and mighty position. its rather curious to me that you seem to know so much about, tested, and advocate against unauthorized versions of no$gba and pj64.

I am entitled to test PJ64 as one of the many who donated $20 or more,
As for NoGBA, The only time i've had a leaked copy of that on my machine is when determining whether its a leak or just a reshacked version.

relax take a chill pill and stop acting like you're better than others.

All out of chill pills, regardless, i could down the entire box and still know im better then you.

[Hard core Rikki]

A nice thing in emulation is that people aren't forced to keep buying the same games again all over and over, just to please corporatist pigs (well, more true for optical disc-based games).
Does anyone really needs to buy all the 28 Street fighter 2 versions for all his consoles, when playing the same on different consoles would be as consumer-friendly as it gets ?

PS: try keeping this thread on topic guys, I'd hate to see the topic closed, without a healthy discussion on the future of emulation.

[Squall-Leonhart]

This is more a dig at lack of Xbox emulation, then a discussion about the future of emulation.

[Coolsvilleman]

Originally Posted by Hard core Rikki

Right now, emulation of the currentgen consoles is still in progress, but we see a big effort to port the previously released emulators to the new consoles. Thats worth a footer note, and to me, is a pretty pleasing thought as well. Emulation does not have to be exclusively used on PC systems, playing SuperNES games on your (now powerful enough) consoles is cool too in itself.

Very true, and we are even seeing that in many commercial consoles today. xbox360 emulating the xbox, PS3 emualting the ps2 (for some ps3's) PSP emulating the Playstation. Wasnt there even SNES emulator for xbox360?

Originally Posted by Hard core Rikki

Does anyone really needs to buy all the 28 Street fighter 2 versions for all his consoles, when playing the same on different consoles would be as consumer-friendly as it gets ?

It would be nice if you could just buy a license for the game and then download it to whatever respective console you happened to be using at the time. It would require obviously some kinda of memory card to use as ID though.