Release How will a 3D processor help emulation?

[Mqark]

The current PSX emulation looks great as it is, the machine is clearly powerful, but I'm just wondering about the implications of people saying things like the emulation will be better when using the 3D processor and the DSP.

Am I right in thinking the 3D chip of the PSX isn't opcode compatible with the pandora's so how will it help?

The DSP I guess can be used as an extra processor which will definatley help matters in emulation, I guess you could have that emulating a particular processor which will take the strain off the main processor.

 

[PoisonedV]

the 3d graphics still have to get rendered and output to your screen...

 

[Mqark]

the 3d graphics still have to get rendered and output to your screen...

Eh? The 3D graphics are already being rendered and being displayed on the screen as it stands by using software emulation. What are you saying? the graphics in any system no matter how complex eventually end up as a flat bitmap pushed to a ramdac for display as a 2D image frame by frame.

I'm asking if the pandora's 3D processor will actually perform any of the 3D processing functions of the emulated platform - for example the PSX. or will they need to be translated on the fly to compatible opcodes for it to be practical which may actually increase the complexity rather than help.

 

[hlidegp2x]

For PSX, you can use 3d engine to render 2d primitives (z = 0 for instance) for instance. You can also use shaders to make some operations on pixels which are specific to PSX GPU. Etc. maybe Tinnus can tell use more about if he's around .

 

[PokeParadox]

PSX emulation will benefit from 3D hardware since the geometry work can be given to the GPU, and free up more CPU cycles for the game logic to be emulated.

Of course that's a very simplified explanation.

 

[Mqark]

PSX emulation will benefit from 3D hardware since the geometry work can be given to the GPU, and free up more CPU cycles for the game logic to be emulated.

Of course that's a very simplified explanation.

But it's good enough for me - thanks!

 

[javaJake]

If I recall correctly, the way it's emulated allows it to scale nicely with the resolution, as if the game was natively ported to the Pandora, meaning the 3D graphics won't be blurry.

Don't quote me on that, though.

 

[mkinzler]

You prefer emulation to native port?

 

[benjymous]

You prefer emulation to native port?

Huh?

Obviously if someone was willing to port PS1 titles to the Pandora, that'd be great, but obviously it's not going to happen.

 

[Tinnus]

The guys with the green names are pretty much correct

The primitive command codes to the PS1 GPU are very high-level, just things like "draw a textured polygon with these colors and positions for each vertex". Then I just get those and buffer them as OpenGL ES 2 calls, which is obviously less CPU-intensive than software-rendering each primitive. This gives us a lot of things for little or free like bilinear filtering on textures and possibly inscreasing resolution (ie: render natively to 800x480 or 640x480 for purists). You can search for the PS1 emulation threads in GP32X to have an idea of what it looks like

Another cool thing that could be added (and I plan on eventually, probably after first release) is the possibility of using post-processing filters much like in Pete's OpenGL2 plugin, although the shaders written for that wouldn't automatically work since the syntax for regular GL2 and GL2 ES shaders is different. Someone that knows what they're doing should have little problem adapting them though, and it even **might** be possible to write an utility to convert them.