Won't PC emulation of next gen console games be extremely easy?

[futurefields]

Since they are x86?

 

[Revolution 11]

Unknown.

In theory, yes. The consoles share common ISAs with Intel and AMD. In practice, there is enough custom silicon and APIs that emulation is not going to be copy and paste.

I do think that XB1 and PS4 emulation will be mature long before the 360 and PS3 get any decent emulation for the reason OP mentioned.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Perhaps, but like Revolution 11 said, emulation involves accounting for custom silicon as well as custom memory systems and their bandwidth if you expect any kind of real time interaction.

The PS2 for instance is was (and still is) a bit dubious as far as emulation is concerned because of it's complex-for-the time-architecture. The PS2's eDRAM bandwidth of 48 GB/s is still beyond the bandwidth of most basic home computers and laptops 14 years later. I'm not sure if PCSX2e even takes advantage of GPUs properly or not.

 

[PowerYoga]

Side note: pcsx2's performance now is "good enough" that it doesn't really matter. On a gaming computer or laptop the emulator will run without issues even with all the bells and whistles turned on.

 

[Aikouka]

You're forgetting the GPU. Essentially, an emulator needs to translate whatever the executable issues as commands into a language that the host machine understands.

 

[0___________0]

I'm not certain if you're asking whether creating the emulator will be easy, if these consoles will be easy to emulate processing power wise, or both.

Anyways, no, you can't infer that, too many other variables. The xbox is x86, but since it was more difficult to emulate the PS2 is the one that has complete and practical emulation. x86 isn't inherently easier to emulate just cuz we already know a lot about it, we don't know everything and it has some complexities. In the case of the xbox x86 made it harder to emulate.

Even if you had CPU emulation with sufficient accuracy, there's a lot of other problems. The xbox is so far behind in emulation because there was a of lack of information about the GPU, and the BIOS was notoriously hard to understand. Maybe AMD documents GCN better, I still don't expect miracle emulation within two years like some people think.

 

[JeffMD]

Ok lets stop this here and now. If Emulation is needed, it will not be easy, it won't happen either. We arn't even emulating the last generation yet.
Question is, will we need to? The question you SHOULD have asked was, isn't direct playback of console games on pc easy.

Theoretically yes, it seems no different than when taito retrofitted PCs as arcade platforms, using a usb dongle as a form of copy protection. The new consoles use x86 CPUs, and while the die might not be the same available to consumers, it is the same tech. There are no custom instructions that current cpu's don't support. So I am interested in hearing about what the current issues are on getting the code to run on PC.

 

[mmntech]

In theory, it should be. In practice, not so much. Take a look at the original Xbox. AFAIK, there still isn't a decent emulator for that system, despite it using x86 hardware and Direct3D. Not sure why this is. Different APIs, security, firmware, etc. It does run Windows but it's a heavily modified version of the kernel. Probably requires a lot of overhead to emulate. It's like running Windows within Windows without the benefit of using VM technology.

Today though, most multi-platform titles do get a PC release so it's a bit irrelevant. Xbox doesn't have a lot of exclusive games. So you'd only really want emulation for Sony systems.

 

[ImpulsE69]

In theory, it should be. In practice, not so much. Take a look at the original Xbox. AFAIK, there still isn't a decent emulator for that system, despite it using x86 hardware and Direct3D. Not sure why this is. Different APIs, security, firmware, etc. It does run Windows but it's a heavily modified version of the kernel. Probably requires a lot of overhead to emulate. It's like running Windows within Windows without the benefit of using VM technology.

Today though, most multi-platform titles do get a PC release so it's a bit irrelevant. Xbox doesn't have a lot of exclusive games. So you'd only really want emulation for Sony systems.

Lack of want

 

[Maximilian]

Lack of want

Yeah... I mean the only good exclusive was halo and thats on the PC anyways. Only console worth emulating from that generation was the PS2 since it got pretty much every game.

 

[PowerYoga]

which is why the PS3, Vita and DS emulation scene have a lot more active developers. There's a lot of exclusives that people want to play.

 

[desura]

depends on how efficient Direct X is. If DX is efficient use of GPU resources, shouldn't be too hard. If DX is really a hog and direct access to GPU results in huge increases in performance...it would be a different language.

 

[BrightCandle]

In many ways it actually should be easier to emulate the current consoles than prior ones. Because they are x86 based you can run most of the instructions uninterrupted and only generate interupts out to your virtualisation engine when the API/OS, and specifically GPU calls. We kind of have that capability already with modern virtualisation engines, they can run raw code at near native speeds. The issue is virtualising DirectX calls, these are not easy to emulate quickly. But some strides are being made and once we have virtualisation being able to do that with one OS inside another doing true 3D graphics it should be possible to extend that minimally to consoles.

But its not possible today, we likely need some additional hardware on the GPU and CPU to make it a reality on the desktop, even if the companies have worked out how to do it on servers for the cloud gaming services we don't have that specialist hardware on our desktop yet.

 

[ImpulsE69]

In many ways it actually should be easier to emulate the current consoles than prior ones. Because they are x86 based you can run most of the instructions uninterrupted and only generate interupts out to your virtualisation engine when the API/OS, and specifically GPU calls. We kind of have that capability already with modern virtualisation engines, they can run raw code at near native speeds. The issue is virtualising DirectX calls, these are not easy to emulate quickly. But some strides are being made and once we have virtualisation being able to do that with one OS inside another doing true 3D graphics it should be possible to extend that minimally to consoles.

But its not possible today, we likely need some additional hardware on the GPU and CPU to make it a reality on the desktop, even if the companies have worked out how to do it on servers for the cloud gaming services we don't have that specialist hardware on our desktop yet.

I would imagine for the cloud portion they aren't running different hardware from normal servers. That would not be cost effective at all. This leads me to believe it's probably software based, and that will probably leak out at some point.

 

[Bateluer]

Unless MS/Sony deliberately inhibit emulation, should be a relative cake walk. The XB1/PS4 are powered by a standard x86 netbook CPU with 18 month old low end GPUs, using DirectX 11 and Mantle APIs. Unlike, say the Cell in the PS3, these won't need to be completely rendered virtually for emulation.

The real question is: Why bother? Just get the PC version to begin with.

 

[Red Hawk]

It should be comparatively much easier than emulating the 360 and the PS3, yes. The 360 has the annoying problems of being a multicore PowerPC system with 10 MB of eDRAM. Programmers will probably eventually crack how to emulate it in a x86 environment, but it may take a while. I don't know if programmers will ever be able to efficiently or accurately emulate the PS3, with its exotic Cell architecture of having a central CPU core and several smaller "synergistic processing units".

The Xbox One and PS4 are based on x86 CPU architecture, so yes, in principle it will be much easier. But the Xbox One still has that eSRAM, and both consoles have unified system/graphics memory. Maybe if Mantle allows for more unified management of PC memory, then we'll see emulation happen easier.

 

[Revolution 11]

Unless MS/Sony deliberately inhibit emulation, should be a relative cake walk. The XB1/PS4 are powered by a standard x86 netbook CPU with 18 month old low end GPUs, using DirectX 11 and Mantle APIs. Unlike, say the Cell in the PS3, these won't need to be completely rendered virtually for emulation.

The real question is: Why bother? Just get the PC version to begin with.

See, that's what I think as well. But then, I remember missing out on the exclusive games I was dying to play like Valkyria Chronicles. I am not getting a PS3 just for that but I would readily buy the game itself if there was a decent emulator out.

Sure, it would be nice if they ported it to PC. Will it happen? I doubt it.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

The biggest issues will likely be the optimizations that developers use when the subvert the API and write instructions directly to metal, you can port the API with some work but you can't factor in the API subversion without either mimicking the silicon itself (very computationally expensive) or you have to add exceptions for each game which is messy.

 

[DigDog]

also much lack of want.

console games are console games; PC master race doesn't want laggy, 60fps max games with boatload of bloom and godrays. we want our 144hz/fps gsyncs and 1ms mice.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

That and the fact that most noteworthy console games are now also on PC anyway, they carry very few really decent exclusives.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

You'd think... but where is Xbox 1 (like the one from 2001) emulation? It basically is x86 with a Geforce2 GPU and Directx

 

[PowerYoga]

nobody cares about emulating xbox because there was nothing worth playing that isn't also cross platform or has a superior version out on the pc.

 

[Fox5]

In theory, it should be. In practice, not so much. Take a look at the original Xbox. AFAIK, there still isn't a decent emulator for that system, despite it using x86 hardware and Direct3D. Not sure why this is. Different APIs, security, firmware, etc. It does run Windows but it's a heavily modified version of the kernel. Probably requires a lot of overhead to emulate. It's like running Windows within Windows without the benefit of using VM technology.

Today though, most multi-platform titles do get a PC release so it's a bit irrelevant. Xbox doesn't have a lot of exclusive games. So you'd only really want emulation for Sony systems.

My guess is probably lack of effort, plus it has a true OS which makes it more complex than systems where the OS gets out of the way and lets it run games.

Still, the GPU on the Xbox is too complex to emulate. They would have to reverse engineer the system APIs and intercept them in the emulator, ala UltraHLE. Alternatively, getting access to a dev kit would probably do the trick too.

I don't know if programmers will ever be able to efficiently or accurately emulate the PS3, with its exotic Cell architecture of having a central CPU core and several smaller "synergistic processing units".

It's the memory architecture that would make it tough I think. Those spus had access to some pretty high speed local memory. I don't think the L3 cache in current x86 cpus is fast enough to use the same algorithms.