Halo 1 performance on Xbox 360

[natebigdawg]

I noticed the last time I was playing through Halo 1 on my 360 with my wife that there were certain areas of the first 3 missions that were severely hampered by nearly unplayable frames in and out of combat. Most noticable was on the warthog of course.

Weeks later, we hooked up a XBOX and a XBOX 360 for some multiplayer and I enjoyed perfect frames throughout on the XBOX while others in the nearby room had issues with the 360 and low frames during multiplayer. Has anyone else noticed this issue and can it be resolved or explained? Have yet to test Halo 2 with these findings.

 

[Queasy]

software emulation

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Halo 2 is fine on Xbox 360.

 

[CasioTech]

even with software emu, I don't see why it should be a problem.

 

[natebigdawg]

Good to know that Halo 2 is not affected. Can't really understand that since Halo 1 and 2 released before the 360. I am trying to figure out the best arrangement for a Halo fest at my house in a few weeks. Halo 1 will be the focus because there is a certain feel to it that I have not quite experienced from the other two. Probably just the fact that Halo 1 blew me (as well as others) away with pure FPS joy!

 

[purbeast0]

halo 1's multiplayer is still better than both halo 2's and halo 3's.

 

[CasioTech]

why? I thought halo1 was mediocre.

 

[natebigdawg]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
halo 1's multiplayer is still better than both halo 2's and halo 3's.

I have to agree. It was such a groundbreaking game and the only reason I purchased the original Xbox. I find it very strange that the 360 would have trouble running it smoothly enough.

The main reason I love Halo 1 is Blood Gulch with indestructible Warthogs! It is a blast being able to eject people out of their warthogs with a well placed rocket or to survive impossible flips and turns to land perfectly as you roll over your attacker!

Destructible vehicles were nice with the other games but can't quite duplicate the above feel.

 

[purbeast0]

Originally posted by: natebigdawg

Originally posted by: purbeast0
halo 1's multiplayer is still better than both halo 2's and halo 3's.

I have to agree. It was such a groundbreaking game and the only reason I purchased the original Xbox. I find it very strange that the 360 would have trouble running it smoothly enough.

The main reason I love Halo 1 is Blood Gulch with indestructible Warthogs! It is a blast being able to eject people out of their warthogs with a well placed rocket or to survive impossible flips and turns to land perfectly as you roll over your attacker!

Destructible vehicles were nice with the other games but can't quite duplicate the above feel.

the problem is that they are using software emulation and not the same grahics chip. the graphics chip on xbox was made by nvidia and on the 360 it's by ati (or vice versa) so they can't use hardware and therefore is all done software wise. because of that is part of the reason why you see some graphical glitches.

halo 1 was just perfectly balanced and had the perfect speed to the game. the levels were also a lot better design wise (halo 2 was pretty good too when all said and done after all the DLC) but halo 3 just has crappy maps IMO, which is why i personally did not stick with it very long. when 90% of the matches are being vetoed, you know something is wrong w/the maps.

 

[natebigdawg]

Does anyone know if there was any optimization done for the downloadable version for 1200 points on Xbox Live? Would running Halo 1 off the Hardrive run more smoothly then its original release?

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
halo 1's multiplayer is still better than both halo 2's and halo 3's.

Yeah, we played Halo 1 to death. I can see why people would find it a mediocre game if you play it single player, but the Halo games are meant to be played co-op or multiplayer. Halo 1 multi was just more fun. I can only remember a couple of fun matches in Halo 2.

 

[mugs]

It's been a long time since I played Halo on my 360, but I didn't notice any framerate slowdowns that affected gameplay. I think I'd remember if it was "unplayable."

Now if you want to talk about unplayable, we can talk about the Warthog controls and handling...

 

[Dacalo]

Originally posted by: CasioTech
why? I thought halo series was mediocre.

fixed

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
the problem is that they are using software emulation and not the same grahics chip. the graphics chip on xbox was made by nvidia and on the 360 it's by ati (or vice versa) so they can't use hardware and therefore is all done software wise. because of that is part of the reason why you see some graphical glitches.

Software emulation does not mean software graphics and a lack of access to the hardware. Software graphics are mind bogglingly SLOW. I doubt even a very fast C2D can perfectly emulate halo in pure software very fast - theres a reason we have GPUs. When they first came out, the difference with a 3dfx voodoo chip vs. software was massive, and GPUs have progressed much faster than CPUs since then.

As I understand it, the 360 renders some XB1 games at 720p with 4xAA and what not - theres plenty of GPU power to go around. Theres surely some translation/emulation but its not as big of a deal as the CPUs, after all, its not like Ati and Nvidia cards cant run the same games on the PC - theyre plenty compatible.

The bigger problem is the CPUs - the XB1 used a single core x86 intel PIII-based chip with all sorts of modern features, and the 360 uses a faster, triple core, less fully featured powerPC chip. Even though the instruction sets and what not are vastly different, since all modern games are basically coded in high level C, it can be emulated at a reasonable speed using high level translation, but it'll never be perfect.

And the GPU always has to wait for the CPU, so if the CPU is lagging, the whole thing chugs.

 

[I4AT]

Because MS did a shitty job of emulating them, every Xbox game would run fine on the 360 if time and effort were put into them, but MS did a hack job because they never really gave a shit about backwards compatibility in the first place. They promised 100% BC before the 360 was released to draw sales and have an excuse to fully drop support for the Xbox, they made a few crap releases to keep their customers from bitching too much, then dropped it altogether.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: I4AT
Because MS did a shitty job of emulating them, every Xbox game would run fine on the 360 if time and effort were put into them, but MS did a hack job because they never really gave a shit about backwards compatibility in the first place. They promised 100% BC before the 360 was released to draw sales and have an excuse to fully drop support for the Xbox, they made a few crap releases to keep their customers from bitching too much, then dropped it altogether.

If you've followed the development of many emulators, youll find that they reach a certain point where a huge amount of games run just fine, but theres a number of games that dont quite conform to the norm and dont emulate right, and it takes years if ever to get them working. Various fixes and parameters need to be enabled for these specific cases in order to get them to work right - playstation 1 emulation is a perfect example of this.

Its much more difficult to emulate a system when the architectures differ so wildly. The xbox CPU is single threaded and uses out of order execution. The 360 CPU is capable of running 6 threads between three cores, and uses in-order execution. Its my understanding that you cant use multiple threads to speed up emulation of a single thread, so theyre basically already gimped from the start. And thats not even getting to the instruction set or order of execution differences.

Granted, they dont have to emulate the CPU when they can translate the code much easier, but the performance of some games could be bizarre if they hit architectural bottlenecks that wouldnt have existed on the XB1. The point is, they did a very impressive job in getting it working as fast as it does already. This is far from a hack job, but there are going to be some limitations when youre doing this kind of software BC.

Sony took the easy way out by just leaving in the PS2 hardware in the original PS3 revs, but even they went back on that. At least when you buy a 360, you know itll have some backwards compatibility. I follow console gaming pretty closely, and for the life of me I dont even know whether or not new PS3s actually have ANY BC.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: BD2003
I follow console gaming pretty closely, and for the life of me I dont even know whether or not new PS3s actually have ANY BC.

The 40GB and the upcoming 80GB don't have PS2 BC but do have PS1 BC.

 

[BD2003]

So then if I understand this correctly, only the original 20gb and 60gb PS3s have full hardware based BC? I thought there was a run of PS3s that had software based BC?

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: BD2003
So then if I understand this correctly, only the original 20gb and 60gb PS3s have full hardware based BC? I thought there was a run of PS3s that had software based BC?

Correct. The current 80GBs (the ones you find in the MGS4 bundle) and the 80GBs prior to the bundle have a hardware/software BC for PS2. Sony took out part of the PS2 hardware and used software emulation to make up for that bit.

 

[BD2003]

So for PS2 BC:

Original 20/60gb - Full hardware BC
Current 40GB - No BC
Current 80GB - Software BC
Upcoming 80GB - No BC

And all can do PS1 BC?

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: BD2003
So for PS2 BC:

Original 20/60gb - Full hardware BC
Current 40GB - No BC
Current 80GB - Software BC
Upcoming 80GB - No BC

And all can do PS1 BC?

yeppers

 

[BD2003]

Thats a bit insane. How good is the software BC? I want to get a PS3 at some point, but it needs to have BC.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: BD2003
Thats a bit insane. How good is the software BC? I want to get a PS3 at some point, but it needs to have BC.

Text

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: BD2003
Thats a bit insane. How good is the software BC? I want to get a PS3 at some point, but it needs to have BC.

Text

Well, I'm more wondering about the general quality of the emulation experience of those games that are listed as compatible. The existence of this thread reflects that the 360 software BC isnt exactly perfect, so I'm wondering if Sony has some sort of secret sauce that MS doesnt.

 

[R Nilla]

The state of backwards compatibility for this generation is sad. It will probably only get worse as we progress, so that they can charge us for games we've already purchased and played before. It's already happening now.

Amazon.com currently has The Warriors for Xbox at $6. I was ready to bite, especially when I saw this version supports 16:9, until I checked the 360 BC list to find it was not present. I'm kind of surprised, it's not like this was an unknown title.