N64 Emulation Impossible?

[edwin_cartagena]

well i wanna know why some people say that n64 emulation is almost impossible,

if psp has less potential then pandora, how can it play n64 games at (almost) playable speed???
i think pandora can emulate n64 way better than psp!!!!!

why n64 is a hard console to emulate?
n64 emulators on pc are better than psx emulators

also nds emulation... psp has one but it kinda doesnt work so i think in pandora at least it would play 2d games

if pandora doesnt emulate n64 i think im gonna buy a psp.......
also im latin so my english is not perfect

 

[yaustar]

QUOTE
well i wanna know why some people say that n64 emulation is almost impossible,

Where did you read that? In theory, it is possible but the real question is who and when the emulator be done so that games are at a playable rate. That part is unanswerable.

 

[schnitzelboy]

yeah, i think it's just a matter of time, and how dedicated the programer(s) are, but i think it will definitely come eventually, especially because of the potential the Pandora's hardware has

 

[Shiny]

well i wanna know why some people say that n64 emulation is almost impossible,

They don't; The 'impossible' part is finding a dev who's willing to get it up and running

if psp has less potential then pandora, how can it play n64 games at (almost) playable speed???
i think pandora can emulate n64 way better than psp!!!!!

o_o You're kidding, right? Daedalus is completely unplayable for nearly every game. There are a few that might yield an enjoyable experience to those who have the patience to put up with playing 1/2 speed most of the time (adn that's with frameskip), but nothing that can reach a steady 30 FPS.

why n64 is a hard console to emulate?
n64 emulators on pc are better than psx emulators

From what I've heard, it doesn't actually require a massive amount of processing power if you use HLE (High Level Emulation), but at the expense of compatibility. I don't know how difficult the implementation of said protocol would be, but I think there's a few open source emulators that do this.

also nds emulation... psp has one but it kinda doesnt work so i think in pandora at least it would play 2d games

I believe that DS emulation is possible, but would require some really tight code to pull off. It would have to be written from scratch, which requires lots and lots of time and effort.

if pandora doesnt emulate n64 i think im gonna buy a psp.......

Buying a PSP just for N64 emulation would be a huge mistake. Have you ever viewed any videos of Daedalus?

 

[Tinnus]

Some games in Daedalus PSP do run very fast though, ex. Mario 64.

What we need is to tell StrmnNrmn about the Pandora

 

[gruso]

What we need is to tell StrmnNrmn about the Pandora
Yes yes. Contact details anyone? I have gifts for him.

 

[Prophet]

What we need is to tell StrmnNrmn about the Pandora
Yes yes. Contact details anyone? I have gifts for him.

Well, his blog is:

http://strmnnrmn.blogspot.com/

And I bet he'll know about Pandora when the time comes, if he doesn't already. For all we know, he could already be on Craig's first 100 devs list.

 

[flatmush]

The PSP has a MIPS processor very similar to that of the N64, the Pandora doesn't, so I'd imagine dynamic recompiling would be both more difficult and wouldn't be quite as efficient.

 

[Tinnus]

The PSP has a MIPS processor very similar to that of the N64, the Pandora doesn't, so I'd imagine dynamic recompiling would be both more difficult and wouldn't be quite as efficient.

Wrong. The fact that the architecture is similar doesn't help any, and on the other hand it DOES help a bit that ARM (and the Cortex-A8 specifically with NEON and suff) is more powerful than MIPS to dynarec MIPS code into ARM.

 

[hlidegp2x]

The PSP has a MIPS processor very similar to that of the N64, the Pandora doesn't, so I'd imagine dynamic recompiling would be both more difficult and wouldn't be quite as efficient.

nope, PSP has only a 32-bit ISA and no MMU so it makes more harder to emulate N64 since it has a 64-bit ISA and has a MMU.

Cortex-A8, being an ARM-like cpu, can emulate 64-bit integer operations in fewer instructions and lesser registers than a 32-bit MIPS-like cpu.

For the 64-bit MIPS fpu it seems Cortex-a8 also has VFPEv3 with 32 double-precision registers (but VFPE is very slow compared with NEON instructions).

MMU emulation is still touchy.

 

[Exophase]

The PSP has a MIPS processor very similar to that of the N64, the Pandora doesn't, so I'd imagine dynamic recompiling would be both more difficult and wouldn't be quite as efficient.

nope, PSP has only a 32-bit ISA and no MMU so it makes more harder to emulate N64 since it has a 64-bit ISA and has a MMU.

Cortex-A8, being an ARM-like cpu, can emulate 64-bit integer operations in fewer instructions and lesser registers than a 32-bit MIPS-like cpu.

For the 64-bit MIPS fpu it seems Cortex-a8 also has VFPEv3 with 32 double-precision registers (but VFPE is very slow compared with NEON instructions).

MMU emulation is still touchy.


I agree with all of this, but having more registers on MIPS32 helps. Aggressive optimizations can also be done to make a lot of operations 32bit instead of 64bit (since most of the time that's all that's used or needed), although Daedalus doesn't do this to a great extent (some emulators for PC at least claim to). Even if 64bit registers are retained 64bit adds/subtracts are very rarely used, and those are the only ones that I can see being more expensive to emulate on MIPS. If converted to 32bits some operations can be done more directly on MIPS than ARM, like the conditional set instructions and conditional branches.

MMU is said not to be used in a lot of popular games (only one I can think of that I know uses it is Golden Eye). On Cortex-A8 there's at least the potential of using its MMU to assist in this (even through Linux).

Daedalus actually does all of the 64bit math in 32bit. It remains to be seen what effect this has on compatibility, if any. It might be good to keep as an option for an N64 emulator on Pandora.

 

[Svartalf]

well i wanna know why some people say that n64 emulation is almost impossible,

"Unlikely at this time" isn't the same as "almost impossible".

Set expectations appropriately first and then surprise the heck out of everyone afterwards...

 

[ldesnogu]

I think I am one of those pretending it's almost impossible. And I still think an emulator capable of running all N64 games can't be done on the Pandora.

However a high level approach could make many (most?) games possible

 

[Exophase]

I think I am one of those pretending it's almost impossible. And I still think an emulator capable of running all N64 games can't be done on the Pandora. However a high level approach could make many (most?) games possible

Given that there are some games that no PC N64 emulator emulates correctly I'd be inclined to agree, although these can potentially still be done with HLE as well, if they're ever fully reverse engineered. It might even be possible for all games to be properly emulated with the same basic HLE techniques.

 

[ldesnogu]

Reverse engineering can be extremely time-consuming, that's a big problem

 

[magicman5421]

What I'd really like to know is the games that would be probably playable on this hypothetical n64 emulator. Which are easiest to emulate/work the best with HLE?