How far can emulation go? (Pyra vs. Pandora)

[Spirit]

The Pandora can emulate consoles up until PS1 and Nintendo 64. The Pyra will have much more power. So I was wondering, how much further would it be able to emulate if any farther at all? PS2 is a difficult thing to emulate, even on my beefy PC. I'm not sure how emulation works exactly but it would require decent specs as well as an emulator that can get as much juice as possible from that hardware. Perhaps a GameCube? Dolphin works great on my PC and ones with weaker specs. Like I said, whether that has effect or not I'm not sure.


Now to stop rambling and let ED answer the question.

 

[Exophase]

It's hard to make a very informed guess outside of emulators that are already available for ARM platforms like Pandora or (predominantly) Android. You can look at how Dreamcast (Reicast) and PSP (PPSSPP) emulation runs on a similar device like Nexus 10 to get an idea. Search for youtube videos. From what can surmise both should run a lot of games at full speed.

For Gamecube there's a Dolphin port on Android, but it doesn't run that well on Pyra level hardware and requires OpenGL ES 3.0 which Pyra won't support. So it's unlikely you'll see high performance here.

Anything else is an unknown. Systems like PS2 require new emulators that are heavily optimized for ARM that don't currently exist. Until someone does one (if they ever do) it's really hard to accurately guess what's possible, even a ballpark, but I wouldn't be terribly optimistic.

Your PC isn't really a good indicator for anything, unless your PC is like 12+ years old.

 

[WizardStan]

This is probably not a good question for ED, he uses emulators but isn't big on writing them. Exophase can probably give a better answer, but I'm guessing it'll be something along the lines of "better than the Pandora". And that's about it, we won't really know until someone tries it.

There's a huge step between PS1 and PS2, N64 and Gamecube. I wouldn't bet a lot of money on the upgrade from Pandora to Pyra being enough to span the gaps there. Gains are definitely going to be had in PC emulation though, DosBox and Windows, probably everything pre-2000 or so, assuming we can get the 3D acceleration in QEMU working.

There's a few people with an OMAP5 dev board, if there's anything specific you want to know about you should probably start a general thread in the Pyra section to ask about it, or respond to the "What do you want to see" thread with your request.

edit: ninja'd by the man himself

 

[TrashyMG]

Well Reicast already running on the Pyra Devboard...  this isn't fully optimized yet.

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/16846-first-version-of-reicast-on-the-pyra-devboard/

 

[Spirit]

Wait so in the "What do you want to see" thread, what would I say exactly?

 

[Exophase]

Here's some info on how Reicast runs on a Nexus 7 2013 w/quad core Krait 300 @ 1.5GHz:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/1ysxge/reicast_dreamcast_emulator_games_ive_bested_on_a/

I expect it to run quite a bit better on Pyra (Cortex-A15 generally quite a bit faster than Krait 300 clock for clock, plus higher clock), unless Reicast can utilize more than two threads to any real effect.

From looking at other compatibility lists I'd say the bigger issue will be compatibility than speed.

 

[rygD]

Wait so in the "What do you want to see" thread, what would I say exactly?

You would say what you want to see.  If there is a Gamecube emu that might work ask someone to give it a shot.  If you want to see a specific game on a specific emulator, ask someone to play it.

 

[TrashyMG]

without 3D acceleration working at the moment, I don't think Gamecube emulation would be that great of a show.

 

[Exophase]

without 3D acceleration working at the moment, I don't think Gamecube emulation would be that great of a show.

Without OpenGL ES 3.0 support (which will never happen) it won't run to begin with.

Maybe exposed extensions will be enough to bridge the gap but I doubt it.

Lack of working 3D acceleration at this stage is worrying though...

 

[ouroboros]

Sorry this micht be a stupit qeustion but why won't the pyra work whit OpenGl ES 3.0

 

[ekianjo]

Sorry this micht be a stupit qeustion but why won't the pyra work whit OpenGl ES 3.0

because no drivers ? 

 

[EvilDragon]

without 3D acceleration working at the moment, I don't think Gamecube emulation would be that great of a show.

Without OpenGL ES 3.0 support (which will never happen) it won't run to begin with.

Maybe exposed extensions will be enough to bridge the gap but I doubt it.


Lack of working 3D acceleration at this stage is worrying though...

Well, last year at the GamesCom notaz made a proof of concept and got the 3D drivers working, so we know they can be made to work.


But we haven't done that yet in the current OS (where we want to prevent hacky ways as much as possible)

 

[Exophase]

Sorry this micht be a stupit qeustion but why won't the pyra work whit OpenGl ES 3.0

 because no drivers ?

And because the hardware doesn't completely support it.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Even though PYRA's CPU board is changeable, we still have to wait several years to have a new SoC board that could support Dolphin emulation full speed.  

 

[TrashyMG]

Even though PYRA's CPU board is changeable, we still have to wait several years to have a new SoC board that could support Dolphin emulation full speed.

I think Dolphin could be made to run on the OMAP5, just not going to be an easy task. When did anyone here take the easy way, the Pandora software library is full of titles were developers have pushed the hardware to the limit.

Hard to say as I'm not an emulator specialist at all, but the capabilities of the Pandora keeps surprising me, I expect the same with the Pyra.

 

[edgex004]

Even though PYRA's CPU board is changeable, we still have to wait several years to have a new SoC board that could support Dolphin emulation full speed.

I think Dolphin could be made to run on the OMAP5, just not going to be an easy task. When did anyone here take the easy way, the Pandora software library is full of titles were developers have pushed the hardware to the limit.

Hard to say as I'm not an emulator specialist at all, but the capabilities of the Pandora keeps surprising me, I expect the same with the Pyra.

I agree. I'm keeping my expectations low, but am definitely excited to see what surprises are in store.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, it's always similar.

I never expected playable Genesis on the GP32, but existed.

Then I didn't expect playable SNES on the GP2X - and it existed.

I never expected playable PSP, Amiga with AGA or NDS on the Pandora - and it exists.

I don't expect playable GameCube on the Pyra OMAP5... but who knows.

I never expect stuff like that, but am always pleasantly surprised

 

[Spirit]

Then let's just hope for the best and work to make it happen

 

[Exophase]

I think Dolphin could be made to run on the OMAP5, just not going to be an easy task. When did anyone here take the easy way, the Pandora software library is full of titles were developers have pushed the hardware to the limit.

Hard to say as I'm not an emulator specialist at all, but the capabilities of the Pandora keeps surprising me, I expect the same with the Pyra.

The developer handling the port was adamant that it needed some features from OpenGL ES 3.0 to work properly. Until something suggests otherwise I will defer to this judgement. If the hardware/API doesn't support something nothing is going to change that, and that something could be highly intrinsic to how it works or even fundamental to any attempt to emulate Gamecube games.

That doesn't stop anyone from writing a functional software renderer, but the idea of having enough CPU time to software render Gamecube graphics at decent speed on Pyra seems like a fantasy.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, maybe no full software renderer, but something like glshim could be coded for OpenGL ES3.0 as well, using hardware functions of OpenGL ES2.0 and either implementing the remaining via software or allow to switch them off (if that's speedier).

That would be a mixture of both that could work (though I have no ideas about the OpenGL ES3.0 / 2.0 differences).