SNESFAN
Retro game fanatic
This might be a bad time to ask this, but is there any chance of a native pandora port of an nes emulator that runs fullspeed?
The hardware getting more complex (like the GPU) is a problem, yes. There could be some effort spent to understand how to use it in low level, more like it has been on PSP, but that's difficult of course. Still the same methods used to optimize in GP32/GP2X could still be used though, but it's not happening nearly as much as it could be.
There are only a few systems on the Pandora where such optimization is really needed, like N64, NDS, PSP, DreamCast, PSX.
You and Exophase did PSX and it's almost perfect. N64 core was perfected by Ari, but I think the plugins could be optimized.
No idea if PSP or Dreamcast would even work... but that would be the only challenges I could think of (except for DosBOX / QEmu).
A lot of devs that did tricks like that on the old systems probably have a family now and no time to code.
A lot of devs that did tricks like that on the old systems probably have a family now and no time to code.
Well, Slaanesh seems back in action: http://www.gp32x.de...r-gp32-in-2012/
Maybe someone shoud contact him, since he owns a Pandora.
What would be the expectations for emulation
http://en.wikipedia....o_game_consoles
- First - Fourth gen should work out of the box on the original.
- Fifth gen should work on the 1ghz/P2?
- Sixth gen plus is almost out of the question.
http://en.wikipedia....ld_game_console
is even more fun. Most of these should be able to be emulated.
How many active devs were you to understand well the arm architecture (aka able to write optimized code for it) in these gp2x days ? I can easyly count 6 that are not around here. (oh and I wasnt part of the community at this time so I probably forgot a few in my count). Now we only have left :I actually only see backwards trend. uae4all got Cyclone pulled out instead of fixing it (the problem is actually in glue code there, not Cyclone itself). Snes9x got asm cores pulled out too instead of fixing them. I'm not aware of any new uses, except maybe FBA, but that came from GP2X too AFAIK.
The hardware getting more complex (like the GPU) is a problem, yes. There could be some effort spent to understand how to use it in low level, more like it has been on PSP, but that's difficult of course. Still the same methods used to optimize in GP32/GP2X could still be used though, but it's not happening nearly as much as it could be.
How many active devs were you to understand well the arm architecture (aka able to write optimized code for it) in these gp2x days ? I can easyly count 6 that are not around here. (oh and I wasnt part of the community at this time so I probably forgot a few in my count). Now we only have left :I actually only see backwards trend. uae4all got Cyclone pulled out instead of fixing it (the problem is actually in glue code there, not Cyclone itself). Snes9x got asm cores pulled out too instead of fixing them. I'm not aware of any new uses, except maybe FBA, but that came from GP2X too AFAIK.
The hardware getting more complex (like the GPU) is a problem, yes. There could be some effort spent to understand how to use it in low level, more like it has been on PSP, but that's difficult of course. Still the same methods used to optimize in GP32/GP2X could still be used though, but it's not happening nearly as much as it could be.
- you (notaz) : kernel, sdl, your emulators, fixes in others emus too (enough for one man realy
- MT-H : X-COM releases, theses optimizer filters
- Exophase : pscx gpu plugin
- Ari64 : mips->arm recompiler
And I'm not realy sure I can count the last too as active.
So as always the problem here is : work-force. Without new fresh blood growing your rank, there little chance this to happen. But the chance to get more are thin : working for android can make you some more bucks than here so capables dev go there.
I for one would love to join your rank, but I had barely coding knowledge when I received my pandora and I'm already proud of what I'm able to do. But the optimisations you're talking about are still far away from my league.
I don't really understand how Gingerbread runs on our Pandora. Is it running directly on the hardware, or is it going through a hypervisor?
If it is the first one, do we have a chance that 1Ghz units could run N64 via Android? Or is just too clunky?
There are only a few systems on the Pandora where such optimization is really needed, like N64, NDS, PSP, DreamCast, PSX.
You and Exophase did PSX and it's almost perfect. N64 core was perfected by Ari, but I think the plugins could be optimized.
No idea if PSP or Dreamcast would even work... but that would be the only challenges I could think of (except for DosBOX / QEmu).
The next-gen consoles are far out of reach, the old ones work fullspeed without optimization... so it's sad, yes, but it seems the amount of work needed to gain only a little is not attractive for devs.
Which again shows that supporting Android is an important strategy for Pandora.
N64 on android doesnt run that much better than mupen on the pandora, i get slightly better performance on goldeneye but thats clocking upto 1.6ghz so cant imagin running it on the pandora will be as good as it aint going to clock up that high.
N64 on the 1Ghz looked quite brilliant natively, noticeably better than on the 600mhz machines which were already getting close.It was a shame to hear n64 on the 1ghz via Android was still not fast enough.
N64 on the 1Ghz looked quite brilliant natively, noticeably better than on the 600mhz machines which were already getting close.It was a shame to hear n64 on the 1ghz via Android was still not fast enough.