Porting games from XBox to PC?

[WageSlave]

Isn't Halo supposed to be coming out for the PC anyway? Or am I wrong, and isn't this illegal? If not I appologize, but I was under the impression that does that was wrong.


I always find it amusing when people equate illegal = wrong...... I dotn know about you but I can think of quite a few laws that I wouldnt consider "right" (in this and other countries) and plenty of things that are illegal that most people woulndt consider 'wrong'

 

[fs5]

Emulating Xbox on PC is LEGAL. Look at Bleem! They're out of business but they did manage to sell PSX emulators for PC and Dreamcast.

The reason "groups" can rip a 1 cd game into 2 cds is 1) downsampling 2) removing sounds/movies 3) eliminating huge dummy files.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"500%? I thought the Xbox used 200Mhz DDR and HyperTransport bus. Which
key areas are you talking about?"

AGP is currently maxed out at ~1GB/sec. The XBox, by way of its UMA, can dedicate ~5GB/sec to the same data that needs to be moved over the AGP bus on the PC.

 

[nippyjun]

<< "XBox is behind the PC."

XBox is far ahead of the PC. Besides the point that Leon brought up(the NV2A whips the GF3 or R8500) the XBox also has a UMA architecture which eliminates the serious problem of the AGP bus on PCs. Yes, you can quickly point out to the incredibly lame @ss graphics on PC games with their pathetic poly counts and overall complete lack of any detail as evidence that AGP doesn't matter much and for that you are right.

DOA3 crushes the strain of any PC game to date, by a wide margin. The polys per frame are more then what most PC games push per second, and for that the limitations of the AGP bus are going to be a very real limitation. Forget XBox emulators for some time, they are not reasonable given current hardware. Sure you don't have the limitations of emulating a different CPU and graphics card, but that is comparitively easy to "emulating" a ~500% boost in bandwith for some key areas. >>




To me all console games look like cartoons compared to the top pc games.

 

[neutralizer]

I thought the NV2A was restricted by the memory bandwith. I heard was very lower and insufficient.

 

[Bovinicus]

The XBox is not far ahead of the PC. The only component inside that is different from PC hardware in a large way is the video card. Even though that card has a wide feature set, it is a bit bandwidth constrained. The only reason that we cannot notice this is because the games are all rendered in 640x480 resolution. Hell, a GF2 can handle that with ease, maybe even with some FSAA. The XBox has a total system bandwidth of 6.4GB/s. That is the same as a GF3 Ti200. In addition to that, some of that bandwidth must be used by other components in the system, primarily the CPU. I don't care about the updated feature sets, the first wave of games doesn't really even take advantage of that. So, a 733MHz crippled P3, NV25 with less bandwidth than a GF3 Ti200, and only 32MB of total memory for everything necessary to run the system. That doesn't sond like it is far ahead of the PC to me.

 

[whazzzzzup]

the xbox is ahead of the pc because all 733mhz are used for gaming and only gaming...a pc uses windows w/ multiple programs running so you won't see as good performance in gaming as an xbox for a while....

and for the person that said the ps2 is trying to be like a comp...wtf u talking about??......

 

[BenSkywalker]

Nippyjun

"To me all console games look like cartoons compared to the top pc games."

I take it you haven't played Halo or DOA3?

neutralizer-

There are several different areas that bandwith is important in. The comments you have seen are most likely based on the fact that the NV2A doesn't have as much bandwith as the GeForce3's on board RAM. This would be an important factor except for a few different points. One is that the NV2A was built with a very effective "HSR" built in as long as developers render front to back. On a closed hardware platform such as the XBox, that is going to happen. In the PC space the GF3 displays a ~250% performance increase utilizing front to back rendering in some cases, this significantly reduces the bandwith strain in that regard. Another point is the resolution that the XBox will be using. Most games are going to run 480p, equivelant to 720x480 on PCs. Add on MSAA and you still aren't going to significantly strain the bandwith available to the NV2A unless you have serious overdraw(which any intelligent developer won't).

The huge advantage that XBox has over PCs is it doesn't need to waste so much system level bandwith moving data around. On the PC data starts in system RAM(for the purpose of this comparison anyway) and then has to be moved over the PCI bus for sound, or over the AGP bus for graphics data. This takes away bandwith from the system bandwith available, you don't move data around on a UMA so all of that bandwith is freed up. The 500% increase comment was directly in regard to maximum transfers for data that needs to be uploaded over the AGP bus. If you wanted to push it, the number is actually a bit over 600%, but that wouldn't leave anything for other operations.

 

[neutralizer]

thanx for the explanation!

 

[BenSkywalker]

Arrgh, people were posting while I was

"The only component inside that is different from PC hardware in a large way is the video card."

Unified Memory Architecture. Check out the $50,000+ high end 3D visualization workstations and see what they use. The edge of a UMA over the incredibly segmented PC architecture is huge.

 

[gogeeta13]

umm, guys, the gf3 in the xbox has 2 vertex shaders, not 1 liek our pc geforce3s

 

[ElFenix]

its going to be tough. pc's won't be able to handle that for a while.
part of it is hardware. UMA is damn tough to get around. as is the fact that NV2A is more advanced than NV20.

but a big chunk of it, and a real big chunk of it, is that games can write directly to hardware registers on the xbox.
on a windows pc you have about 6 or 7 layers of software between your apps and your hardware, in order to make things compatible.
xbox boots a 200k kernel that has only the bare minimum, mostly file system and xbox peripherals duties.
all that windows crap gets in the way.
simply running the software on actual final xdk's rather than the gf3 equipped pcs that were the original dev kits improved performance 50%

and even with all that advantage doa3 uses 100% of gpu time and about 80-90% of cpu time.

(note: info taken from an xbox technical presentation given at UT by one of the xbox's lead programmers)

 

[MrWhiteUK]

I really dont want to get into this, but comments like:

It only has a 733MHz chip, my pc is faster!

Are nonsense.

I think PS2's are clocked at under 300Mhz, dreamcasts are only about 200mhz but they perform ALOT better than similar clocked PC. Pentium 200 or Dreamcast? No contest. Now you have 733Mhz with the xbox, stacks more memory, HUGE bandwidth and geforce graphics.

Add on the extra overhead of an emulator, an xbox emulator on a pc would absolutely choke. I would like to see GT3 running full speed at the same level of detail as the ps2 version.

Xbox and PC may share some common parts but their architecture is chalk and cheese. I haven't looked into the Xbox's specs for a while but it will be a LONG time before pc's catch up, some people say 2-3 years +.

In short, PC's are not designed to handle large amounts of data (textures etc.) They are designed to push lots of code acting on relatively little data (spreadsheets etc.)

A pc may have a gf3 (which is a beast ) but it also has all the other age old pc components/architecture slowing it down. When pc architecture was first devised do you think they intended huge amounts of textures to be shuffled around inside...no. They have attempted to fix this with the addition of the agp bus.

My personal opinion is PC's aren't even up with PS2's yet (look at GT3) and the XBox is a big leap over ps2.

Bottom line is, so the pc catches up with the xbox in several years, by that time another super console will be released upping the ante one more time. There is room in the market for mega $$$ mega quick consoles, PS2 proved that. I think PC gaming has taken a permanent back seat to the new consoles, in terms of raw power anyway (which doesn't make the game I know)

 

[Damascus]

<< Xbox a crippled PC? Funny your poor choice of words. No, the Xbox is a dedicated gaming platform... it does not even try to be a PC.

The Sony PLayStation 2 *Computer* Entertainment Center on the other hand.... well, it's desperately trying to be your new PC. >>



I know you love MS, but really, everyone knows that Xbox is the first step
towards Xbox set-top boxes. (last I checked, Xbox tries to play music and
movies too)

 

[ragiepew]

<<
I know you love MS, but really, everyone knows that Xbox is the first step
towards Xbox set-top boxes. (last I checked, Xbox tries to play music and
movies too) >>

that is a ridiculous (sp?) comment. I dont know about you but I seem to recal that the Dreamcast and PSOne play Music. As for movies.. well PS2 does that as well. Anyway, as others have stated already, the hardware inside the XBox may seem similar to modern day PC's, and in fact they may be, but the whole package that is the xbox is far different. with the xbox you dont need to worry about different hardware, different drivers, other programs, multitasking, etc... its a dedicated system built for one main purpose. ITs like having a dedicated system for doing spreadsheets... only its for playing games.

I honestly believe that most people just love to criticize the xbox just because its from MS, not because its a bad product... hell I bet most have yet to try it.

 

[Rahminator]

<< I really dont want to get into this, but comments like:

It only has a 733MHz chip, my pc is faster!

Are nonsense.

I think PS2's are clocked at under 300Mhz, dreamcasts are only about 200mhz but they perform ALOT better than similar clocked PC. Pentium 200 or Dreamcast? No contest. Now you have 733Mhz with the xbox, stacks more memory, HUGE bandwidth and geforce graphics.

Add on the extra overhead of an emulator, an xbox emulator on a pc would absolutely choke. I would like to see GT3 running full speed at the same level of detail as the ps2 version.

Xbox and PC may share some common parts but their architecture is chalk and cheese. I haven't looked into the Xbox's specs for a while but it will be a LONG time before pc's catch up, some people say 2-3 years +.

In short, PC's are not designed to handle large amounts of data (textures etc.) They are designed to push lots of code acting on relatively little data (spreadsheets etc.)

A pc may have a gf3 (which is a beast ) but it also has all the other age old pc components/architecture slowing it down. When pc architecture was first devised do you think they intended huge amounts of textures to be shuffled around inside...no. They have attempted to fix this with the addition of the agp bus.

My personal opinion is PC's aren't even up with PS2's yet (look at GT3) and the XBox is a big leap over ps2.

Bottom line is, so the pc catches up with the xbox in several years, by that time another super console will be released upping the ante one more time. There is room in the market for mega $$$ mega quick consoles, PS2 proved that. I think PC gaming has taken a permanent back seat to the new consoles, in terms of raw power anyway (which doesn't make the game I know) >>



Wrong. XBox is based totally on x86 architecture, so there's no need for an emulator which would slow things down. Why would emulating PS2 be unfeasable? Because it doesn't run on x86 and you would need to emulate all instructions/calls which have a big overhead and slow things down considerably. Xbox is different. It has a p3 733, and a geforce 3 card. It has slightly modified directx. There's no need to emulate anything since the underlying processes are all exactly the same. All you would have to do is some kind of a translator that would translate the modified directx into pc directx, which would be very light on the cpu. Playing Xbox games on today's PC is very possible if someone has time to write a translator app. Forget about playing PS2 games.

 

[Damascus]

<<

<<
I know you love MS, but really, everyone knows that Xbox is the first step
towards Xbox set-top boxes. (last I checked, Xbox tries to play music and
movies too) >>



that is a ridiculous (sp?) comment. I dont know about you but I seem to recal
that the Dreamcast and PSOne play Music. As for movies.. well PS2 does that
as well. Anyway, as others have stated already, the hardware inside the XBox
may seem similar to modern day PC's, and in fact they may be, but the whole
package that is the xbox is far different. with the xbox you dont need to worry
about different hardware, different drivers, other programs, multitasking, etc... its
a dedicated system built for one main purpose. ITs like having a dedicated
system for doing spreadsheets... only its for playing games.

I honestly believe that most people just love to criticize the xbox just because its from MS, not because its a bad product... hell I bet most have yet to try it. >>



You're misunderstanding me.



<< Xbox a crippled PC? Funny your poor choice of words. No, the Xbox is a dedicated gaming platform... it does not even try to be a PC.

The Sony PLayStation 2 *Computer* Entertainment Center on the other hand.... well, it's desperately trying to be your new PC >>



What I meant was that if Chad claims the PS2 is trying to be a PC, then you have
to say the exact same thing about Xbox because both units have more or less
the same feature set and capabilities. Looks like the Xbox is "desperately trying
to be your new PC" as well.

And yes it's true, Xbox will be the first step towards a Microsoft set-top box
(same as PS3 down the line).

Link

 

[MrWhiteUK]

<< x86 architecture >>


Last time I looked x86 was not an architecture, that's where the difference lies.

Sure you could get xbox code to run on a pc without too much hassle....as long as you don't mind 12fps.

A pc would croak.

The xbox may have the same components but that's where the similarity ends. The ps2 (especially the ps2) and the xbox render gfx in a TOTALLY different way.

Sure you could make PC's more suited for gaming but that's like modifying a toaster to do a kettles job. The pc does what it does very well, so does a games machine, they will perform best separately. Games machines trying to be pcs is just as bad, ever been on the net with a console? The most you'll see to help pc gaming is add-in graphics cards and thats because it doesn't affect anything else.

 

[Shalmanese]

The thing is that the Crippled, Enhanced GF3 can only run Halo at 640x480 so Have fun running it on your GF3 card at 1600x1200. You would probably need another generation or 2 before Xbox games can run acceptably on a computer moniter

 

[Martyman13]

Just a quick reminder. Consoles are made for gaming purposes only. They don't crash like PCs do. And they cost a fraction of a PC. On the down side: 600 x 400 resolution (or something close to that).

 

[mchammer187]

problem with an emulator would be that the comp used to play it would have to be 2 - 3x more powerful than the hardware and there i'll bet almost no one has a gpu 3x more powerful than the ti500

since the games were written for that they could be optimized completely for the hardware

ie programmed for nvidia vertex shaders though i'm sure it can and will be done I'd just say it wont be for a while at least 2 years

now pirated xbox games i could see that in the near future

GC games will probably be the only thing that cant be pirated without much effort because of the mini DVD format

 

[CQuinn]

>> Consoles are made for gaming purposes only.

Depending on what you consider a "Game" to be... Have you looked at the Linux and BSD ports done to the Dreamcast?

>> They don't crash like PCs do.

Not like PCs, but they can still crash or flake out thru Overheat, hardware glitch/failure, or buggy game code.

>> And they cost a fraction of a PC.

True enough, they are targeting a competely different market than the General purpose PC.
But good design ideas get passed back and forth from both sides of the console/PC fence.


>> On the down side: 600 x 400 resolution (or something close to that).

Should be at least 640x480 (VGA) before downstreaming to NTSC standard (352x240).
My Dreamcast has that, and all these other consoles are newer.
And the Xbox should be capable of higher (HDTV standard) res as long as you have a compatible display.

 

[aka1nas]

Are the GC's mini DVDs readable by any DVD reader? Are they like those mini CDR-s that are around now? Those can be read in most CD-ROM drives.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"Should be at least 640x480 (VGA) before downstreaming to NTSC standard (352x240).
My Dreamcast has that, and all these other consoles are newer.
And the Xbox should be capable of higher (HDTV standard) res as long as you have a compatible display."

720x480 progressive mode is tops for the GC(which it appears every game supports). 1920x1080 interlaced is tops for the XBox(supports lower resolutions with progressive scan, currently available titles all seem to top out at 720x480p).

 

[Fenix793]

Let's all keep in mind that the xbox renders everything at 640*480. And correct me if I'm wrong but even at this resolution the framerate can drop pretty low. Many of us here who play games on our PC would only run at 640*480 with FSAA running. Even then its pretty fast. I run all my games at 1280*960 or 1280*1024 on a GF2 GTS with no FSAA. I'd say nvidias next gen part is gonna put the xbox to shame. Of course game developers have to take advatange of the hardware. The advantage with the xbox is that the hardware will never change so compatibility isnt an issue and the performance of the system is known. PC game developers have to target a larger range of systems which probably keeps them from making games as graphically appealing as those of the xbox.