Help! We're Getting Older. Is Emulation Dying Off?

[rsuryase]

My generation is the 8/16 bit generation. Kids in college these day probably never played a 16bit system. Emulation is most famous for 16bit and older systems.
As game consoles becomes more and more complex, emulation will become harder and next to impossible. 32-bit emulation is not that good today whereas 16 bit is almost perfect.
I noticed many emulators are not longer being updated, is emulation scene getting smaller and smaller each year?
Are most emulators also not open-source, is that why people can't easily take over the development?
Will the new generation support emulation?

 

[Tag5]

I see where your coming from, it does seem that emulation is slowly gonna be a thing of the past. At least I can safely say that I have played some real classical games that has 100% enjoyment and playability.

 

[Exophase]

Emulators of 32bit platforms aren't quite as mature as that of 16bit ones, but I'd hardly call it "not that good"; PS1 and GBA emulation is highly compatible and from what I hear Saturn emulation has more or less reached that point too.

These days far more emulators are open source than they have been in the past. Furthermore, the only reasonably successful PS2 and Gamecube/Wii emulators are both open source and contributed to by several people. The better of the currently active DS emulators is as well. On the other hand, the currently most well regarded Genesis emulators are closed source.

It may really be the case that newer platforms are being emulated more slowly, but part of it is because serious work started on the emulators sooner in the platform's life cycle. But there's no question that emulators of newer platforms are much more work and much more challenging. Not only are platforms exponentially more complex, they're also much more closed and protected - from almost everyone, not just the general public. Back in the day the console manufacturers had to give developers most of the details of the hardware to allow them to effectively do anything on it. Now console manufacturers not only hide this information but protect it behind layers of security. Finally, PCs just aren't increasing in single core performance like they used to, and you need stronger and stronger single core performance for even highly parallel consoles; at the very least, each core must be significantly more powerful than the core you're emulating, it won't suffice to just have many more of them. Unless things end up heavily abstracted this could end up being a very serious problem for emulators.

One interesting snag in all this is that the console makers themselves have incentive to make it possible to emulate platforms so that their next iteration can retain compatibility. Hardware compatibility is going to become a less and less viable solution - we've already been seeing it thrown out this generation. So whatever abstractions console makers implement in their consoles to help make it compatible for next time could end up making things easier for third party emulators. That is, if they can figure out and decrypt enough.

 

[Chip]

It's a numbers game. When people first started emulating 8 and 16 bit systems, the computers they were using were already tens of times faster than the systems they were emulating. Consoles have always lagged behind PCs in sheer processing power, but the gap is getting smaller (especially in the graphics department) as systems progress. Since both PCs and consoles are evolving more or less in parallel now, it takes longer and longer for PCs to outdistance a previous-generation console by a large enough margin to emulate it effectively. Add to that the growing complexity of game systems, all the added locks and DRM, and as Exophase pointed out, the secrecy surrounding the hardware and software. Even if you had infinite processing power to work with, emulating something as complex as an Xbox 360 - with a triple-core CPU, custom ATI video chip, and tons of specialized hardware and software for which little documentation is available - is a daunting task. Certainly it can (and probably will, eventually) be done, but it's a hell of a project. It's not like an NES emulator that one guy might write up in a few weeks as a learning experience.

 

[torpor]

I know one thing for sure: my 3 year old sure loves 8-bit games more than 3D stuff ..

 

[rsuryase]

I know one thing for sure: my 3 year old sure loves 8-bit games more than 3D stuff ..

lol maybe it's because of 8-bits simplicity. Wait til he turns 9, he gonna want 3D!

 

[Javacat]

I don't really have anything to add, but there was a semi-related thread on the MAME forum a few months ago.

 

[Jourdy288]

I don't think we have much to worry about; my ten year old sister loves SNES emulation!

 

[Thomas Dequinas]

I see where your coming from, it does seem that emulation is slowly gonna be a thing of the past. At least I can safely say that I have played some real classical games that has 100% enjoyment and playability.

I could say that people being lazier and not getting out of the house is becoming more and more common.

 

[Orion4874]

It depends on which scene your in. The DS scene seems like alot of the emulators have stalled. I'm not sure about the PSP scene as I havn't even picked up my PSP in God knows how long. I no longer own a Dreamcast so again I'm not sure. The Wii scene is very much still active and obviously the GP2X and Pandora scenes are on the move. Then of course there's the iPhone/Android scenes which have alot of incentives for devlopers as alot of them charge for their emulators(at least for the full versions).
Basically, I think as long as there is a platform for them there will always be devs that will pick up the torch and carry on.

 

[Exophase]

It depends on which scene your in. The DS scene seems like alot of the emulators have stalled. I'm not sure about the PSP scene as I havn't even picked up my PSP in God knows how long. I no longer own a Dreamcast so again I'm not sure. The Wii scene is very much still active and obviosly the GP2X and Pandora scenes are on the move. Then of course there's the iPhone/Android scenes which have alot of incentives for devlopers as alot of them charge for their emulators(at least for the full versions).
Baically, I think as long as there is a platform for them there will always be devs that will pick up the torch and carry on.

All of those platforms are mainly just getting ports. Sometimes somewhat polished ports, but ports nonetheless. I would hardly call them substantial progress for emulation.

 

[Orion4874]

It depends on which scene your in. The DS scene seems like alot of the emulators have stalled. I'm not sure about the PSP scene as I havn't even picked up my PSP in God knows how long. I no longer own a Dreamcast so again I'm not sure. The Wii scene is very much still active and obviosly the GP2X and Pandora scenes are on the move. Then of course there's the iPhone/Android scenes which have alot of incentives for devlopers as alot of them charge for their emulators(at least for the full versions).
Baically, I think as long as there is a platform for them there will always be devs that will pick up the torch and carry on.

All of those platforms are mainly just getting ports. Sometimes somewhat polished ports, but ports nonetheless. I would hardly call them substantial progress for emulation.

Granted, but what's wrong with ports? As long as they are periodically improved upon it doesn't matter as this shows that emulation isn't dying off. As technology advances their will always be people who will want to play yesterdays games. Down the road i'm sure we'll be playing PS2 or Xbox emulators on some new handheld device or console. In a nut shell, as long as their are developers there will be emulators in one form or another.

 

[Exophase]

Granted, but what's wrong with ports? As long as they are periodically improved upon it doesn't matter as this shows that emulation isn't dying off. As technology advances their will always be people who will want to play yesterdays games. Down the road i'm sure we'll be playing PS2 or Xbox emulators on some new handheld device or console. In a nut shell, as long as their are developers there will be emulators in one form or another.

There's nothing wrong with ports, but I just don't see them as being that relevant to what the original poster was talking about. Before we can play XBox emulators on a handheld someone has to make an XBox emulator for a PC, and so far the only work we've seen towards that goal has shown itself to be a dead end. Unfortunately, all of the effort of the homebrew porters isn't going to do anything to help make XBox emulation a reality, and this is the point I was getting at.

It's not like the existing emulators will ever go away, so of course we'll always have them. But at the same time, it's not really enough that they just get some kind of update or port, not if you want new platforms to be emulated or old ones to be emulated better.

 

[Jourdy288]

Perhaps emulation has grown too fast for it's own good. Computers are getting outpaced by consoles. NES/MD/SNES/PSX/GBC emulation isn't so big a deal since out computers (most of them) are more than fast enough to handle it. Yet, kick it up to Gamecube, PS2, Xbox power and BOOM you've hit a wall. I'm pretty sure in about 3-5 years the emulation scene will gain some real power. In the mean time, play it cool boy. Don't be a fool boy.
2 Internets for anybody who know's what I'm referencing.

 

[iprice]

Yet, kick it up to Gamecube, PS2, Xbox power and BOOM you've hit a wall. I'm pretty sure in about 3-5 years the emulation scene will gain some real power.

There already are working emulators (that run commercial games) for GameCube and Wii - http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/gamecube/dolphin.html and PS2 - http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/ps2/pcsx2.html

Emulation isn't dead just yet

 

[quote]

^ Dolphin runs Wii ISOs wonderfully on my semi-powerful pc . Now all I need is a USB bluetooth dongle for my Wiimote :S.



Emulation won't die, it'll just move with the consoles.
In 20 years time, the PS3 will be 'retro', and the Pandora 1000 will emulate it (albeit with a bit of frameskip ).

 

[lulzfish]

In 20 years time, ... the Pandora 1000...

Sad to see that OpenPandora will go the way of Sony, Maxis, and co. with the order-of-magnitude version numbering.

 

[Mithrildor]

Why play old non-HD stuff. When you got Forza Motorsport 3, Assasins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2 etc.

Thats why emulation is dieing

 

[lulzfish]

Why play old non-HD stuff. When you got Forza Motorsport 3, Assasins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2 etc.

Thats why emulation is dieing

This statement is not representative of all the people who dislike emulation.

"HD stuff", indeed. >_>
It's a shame the majority of commercial games are closed-source forever and ever, or we wouldn't need emulation.

 

[Titcher]

Why play old non-HD stuff. When you got Forza Motorsport 3, Assasins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2 etc.

Thats why emulation is dieing

Y'know, the majority of those probably just scale up from 640x480.