Dreamcast Emulator For Pandora?

[quadomatic]

I'm going to say hell no...since Dreamcast hasn't been emulated well on PC until very recently.

 

[Svartalf]

This discussion ended gently.

Didn't it though... In the end, it's "theoretically" possible, but I'm not going to venture that it's really doable until someone gets DOSBox going a lot better first... >

I'm going to say hell no...since Dreamcast hasn't been emulated well on PC until very recently.

This is because

1. We didn't have a solid grip on things related to the PowerVR- you have to know how the register level works to even begin to map emulations to other GPUs via Direct3D or OpenGL
2. It's very difficult to map register level mappings to decent 3D API calls, which are typically at a higher level than the stuff the game's poking and prodding when it's sitting native
3. x86 is less efficient than ARM, MIPS, etc. You're going to need a 1GHz CPU, etc. to emulate that SH4 based beast on a PC, etc.

Now, having said this, I'll reiterate- it's not likely to happen because you're going to need some pretty tight code to pull it all together, if it's even doable. We're sitting on the hairy edge of possible here, so it could go either way. I'm going to say, "not likely" because so few will have the skillset and be interested enough to jump through the flaming hoops to make it happen. At least for some time to come, that is.

 

[Exophase]

We didn't have a solid grip on things related to the PowerVR- you have to know how the register level works to even begin to map emulations to other GPUs via Direct3D or OpenGL

So you say again, but Chankast was emulating many games at high visual quality years ago. And Icarus, although never released, showed screenshots of doing the same well before that (we're talking like, 2002-2003)

It's very difficult to map register level mappings to decent 3D API calls, which are typically at a higher level than the stuff the game's poking and prodding when it's sitting native

3D primitives on platforms such as these map more to elements in display lists or commands packed in some other format that do correspond pretty directly to primitives you'd find in a 3D API. This is why even some of the earliest PS1 and N64 emulators had 3D acceleration to handle emulation of their 3D subsystems.

x86 is less efficient than ARM, MIPS, etc. You're going to need a 1GHz CPU, etc. to emulate that SH4 based beast on a PC, etc.

You mean, a deeply out of order x86 with potentially many execution units in its backend is less efficient? Than what, for reference?

Although you pay for some of the limitations x86 imposes on you, they're not as big as one might think. Lack of registers and three address arithmetic is hidden by the scheduler pairing loads/stores with ALU operations (where otherwise the LSUs would be more likely to go unused) and L1 cache tends to be multi-ported and reasonably low latency. If you don't believe me, it's worth noting that the author of nullDC once told me that adding register caching to his recompiler only yielded a 9% performance improvement.

And SH4 doesn't exactly sport the world's most powerful instruction set either, largely limited by 16bit widths.

On the other hand, recompiling for a platform like ARM would need the most aggressive register allocation you can manage. It's only a shame that you can't get a 64bit address space like in x86-64, because that can be very useful when emulating an arbitrary 32bit one.

Now, having said this, I'll reiterate- it's not likely to happen because you're going to need some pretty tight code to pull it all together, if it's even doable. We're sitting on the hairy edge of possible here, so it could go either way. I'm going to say, "not likely" because so few will have the skillset and be interested enough to jump through the flaming hoops to make it happen. At least for some time to come, that is.

I think it's more a matter of those having the skills not willing to take a chance on something that might never be fast enough. That isn't to say that many people with that level of skills are around.

 

[macias1]

so could you port a single game or would it still be far from running decent?

 

[Jaguarandine]

I think the main idea that can be gleaned from this thread is that while DC emulation is a small possibility, buying a Pandora secifically for this reason would be an ill-considered decision. All anyone can do at this point is speculate, and we won't know one way or the other until someone actually gives it their best shot. Topics such as this are for now interesting diversions until additional information is obtained, and should be taken as nothng more.

 

[JerryG20]

I think the main idea that can be gleaned from this thread is that while DC emulation is a small possibility, buying a Pandora secifically for this reason would be an ill-considered decision. All anyone can do at this point is speculate, and we won't know one way or the other until someone actually gives it their best shot. Topics such as this are for now interesting diversions until additional information is obtained, and should be taken as nothng more.

Don't you think small is too hopeful of a word? I'd always thought that just a DC emulator being created in the first place would be considered an incredibly small possibility (a.k.a, odds are it's not going to ever happen), while a playable DC emulator being created would be beyond slim to none (a.k.a. it's never going to happen and it should never be expected).

I agree with others that all of this talk is hyping Pandora more than it can meet demand. Before people were HOPEFUL for playable N64 on the Pandora...and now so many speculation threads later people are already ASSUMING full speed N64 emulation and are thinking it's POSSIBLE for playable Dreamcast emulation! Getting a Pandora with DC emulation in mind (at any speed) I think would be like getting a GP32 with the hopes of full-speed with sound GBA emulation.

 

[atomicthumbs]

so could you port a single game or would it still be far from running decent?

no

 

[Tobriand]

so could you port a single game or would it still be far from running decent?

Well, I imagine you could - if you had access to the source, and enough of it translated well to the OMAP archetecture. I can't see why, e.g., the dreamcast version of Chu Chu Rocket wouldn't be well within the scope of Pandora's hardware. Nor something like Worms Armageddon. WA ran on a P2-233, which, I believe, Pandora should beat. Significantly, in fact - Quake 3 would not run on such a machine iirc.

However, since no-one who *would* make any such port does, in point of fact, have access to the source, it's fairly moot. Except that if you know anyone who does, and you're friendly with them, it might be worth showing them the spec-sheet for Pandora and hinting that there's a market, if the ports wouldn't need too much effort. But short of that, as atomicthumbs said, "no".

 

[ldesnogu]

However, since no-one who *would* make any such port does, in point of fact, have access to the source, it's fairly moot. Except that if you know anyone who does, and you're friendly with them, it might be worth showing them the spec-sheet for Pandora and hinting that there's a market, if the ports wouldn't need too much effort. But short of that, as atomicthumbs said, "no".

You don't need source to make a game run without emulation. You only have to spend a huge amount of time reverse-engineering the code and use some static translators. I did it once for an ST game and won't do it again, even though the result was impressive (>20 times faster than Hatari)

 

[Svartalf]

I agree with others that all of this talk is hyping Pandora more than it can meet demand. Before people were HOPEFUL for playable N64 on the Pandora...and now so many speculation threads later people are already ASSUMING full speed N64 emulation and are thinking it's POSSIBLE for playable Dreamcast emulation! Getting a Pandora with DC emulation in mind (at any speed) I think would be like getting a GP32 with the hopes of full-speed with sound GBA emulation.

I would love to know how "it's not likely" is hyping anything.

If you're concerned that people are going to go "There were rumors about <foo>, is <foo> around- why isn't <foo> around?", you can just quit worrying about anything. Those sorts are going to go and do that no matter how much you try to say "don't talk about it" or you talk about it. They're operating in a different world than you or I- and it doesn't matter one damn bit either way what you do with regards to trying to discourage that sort of thing, as they're going to do it anyhow. The moment one of them puts two and two together and realizes there's less of a disconnect between the DC and the Pandora than there is with a PC, never mind that there's a razor thin margin of being able to DO that, that they'll be on about it ANYHOW.

 

[Firefox]

You don't need source to make a game run without emulation. You only have to spend a huge amount of time reverse-engineering the code and use some static translators. I did it once for an ST game and won't do it again, even though the result was impressive (>20 times faster than Hatari)

Ah, interesting. Which game was that?

 

[ldesnogu]

Ah, interesting. Which game was that?

A not very famous one: Tower of Babel, wikipedia.
It was fun to see the game reach more than 7000 fps, and I was lazy, I left the original sound emulation

 

[Firefox]

A not very famous one: Tower of Babel, wikipedia.
It was fun to see the game reach more than 7000 fps, and I was lazy, I left the original sound emulation


Ah yes, I think I remember that one from back in the day.

Do you have a link to your emulated version?

 

[atomicthumbs]

You don't need source to make a game run without emulation. You only have to spend a huge amount of time reverse-engineering the code and use some static translators. I did it once for an ST game and won't do it again, even though the result was impressive (>20 times faster than Hatari)

Sukhigp was right

 

[ldesnogu]

Do you have a link to your emulated version?

MP sent.

Sukhigp was right

???

 

[jakshep2]

well, what about the successor to the pandora? yes, I know that it's not anything to think about at this moment in time, bt would THAT be able to emulate 6th generation consoles? - hopefully