Psx4gp2x Dynarec Status Update

[epitaph]

Sigh. I dunno what's up with you tonight, but i'm not going to get into some kind of spacker internet argument, i'm pretty sure other posters know exactly what I mean, and understand the hardware differences.

youve done 3 posts completely avoiding the question. As far as I know the psp emulator is simply an emulator just like this one on the gp2x but sony made it. wtf are the hardware differences? is the psp emulator some sort of mips to mips translation and not an emulator or what?

I get what he's trying to communicate, although considering how he's managed to obfuscate it by just being plain cryptic and stuck-up (as in not giving a better explanation when asked to) I understand why others aren't. Basically, he's saying that psx4gp2x is the fastest PSX emulator around when seeing to its performance in light of the hardware it is running on. The PSP PSX emulator is a lot faster, but also has access to a significantly larger amount of system resources.

 

[craigix]

Cryptic and stuck-up... i'm afraid it's just lazyness and 4:15am apathy. But you explained it rather well yes.

 

[epitaph]

Cryptic and stuck-up... i'm afraid it's just lazyness and 4:15am apathy. But you explained it rather well yes.

Okay, I overdid it. I just get really frustrated when people produce an expression and then are unable/unwilling/whatever to properly explain it .

 

[craigix]

Heh it's ok, once I actually thought about it VGS is faster so i was wrong anyway but you know what I mean.

 

[vaiovann]

Glad that was settled.

ZodTTD, whenever you feel that this emu is far enough along to worry/begin working on other aspects of it like volume control and interface updates, I have a suggestion for something. A "compatibility script" or rather something like a configuration file that has the most compatable/best mode for the emulator to work under for that particular game. Something akin to the small configuration files for Squidgesnes to use for only a single title, instead of a global setting. Obviously different versions of this emulator have different requirements and quirks, the hope being that the configuration files can be traded around so that the set up for the emulator can be automatic, when playing different games. Make sense?

 

[shinneri]

I agree with telco. The comment just isn't correct. The PSP's PSX emulator is almost perfect and runs at like 266mhz. It's fine to be supportive of Zod and Una-i for their excellent work, but that kind of comment is just going to confuse newbies into thinking it IS as good as the PSP PSX emu.

 

[LegendaryMachine]

I agree with telco. The comment just isn't correct. The PSP's PSX emulator is almost perfect and runs at like 266mhz. It's fine to be supportive of Zod and Una-i for their excellent work, but that kind of comment is just going to confuse newbies into thinking it IS as good as the PSP PSX emu.

It will be some day.

 

[Exophase]

I agree with telco. The comment just isn't correct. The PSP's PSX emulator is almost perfect and runs at like 266mhz. It's fine to be supportive of Zod and Una-i for their excellent work, but that kind of comment is just going to confuse newbies into thinking it IS as good as the PSP PSX emu.

It will be some day.


I don't think so..

Still has room to grow and will be a fine emulator, but that's asking the impossible.

 

[LegendaryMachine]

I know. I was just being hopeful. XD

 

[nubie]

I agree with telco. The comment just isn't correct. The PSP's PSX emulator is almost perfect and runs at like 266mhz. It's fine to be supportive of Zod and Una-i for their excellent work, but that kind of comment is just going to confuse newbies into thinking it IS as good as the PSP PSX emu.

It will be some day.

Some day after the GPX3 is released. I think the MMSP2+ could do it for sure, it's stock clock is 360mhz for a start, and with a 3D accelerator too it would be a piece of cake.

 

[evol]

I don't think so..

Still has room to grow and will be a fine emulator, but that's asking the impossible.
[/quote]

fine emulator thats all we hope for

(and the rest of you stop with the inferiority complex display)

 

[zodttd]

I spoke with Exophase about the whole "fastest Playstation emu" thing. There's 2 more emulators brought to my attention other than Sony's emulator for the PSP.

Bleem (and Bleemcast?) might be faster, it's hard to say since it was written for a completely different architecture. X86 and SH4 are a different beast than ARM. They were very talented (some poor business decisions though heh).

VGS is one I know little of, since I never got a chance to use it. But the software the VGS people put out besides that product are top notch. Of course a side by side comparison isn't possible, because like Bleem, it never ran on a handheld / ARM processor.

Then there's Sony's PSP emulator, which is damn fast! I don't know what the emulator clocks itself to when run, but either way, it has an advantage over most other handhelds due to the PSP having very similar hardware as the Playstation. My best guess is it's running a dynarec as well from MIPS -> MIPS, which also gives it an advantage imho. I am going from MIPS -> ARM which gives me some bonuses as well, but I still have to emit more code. The PSP has a Vector FPU (like the MMSP2+) which helps GTE math operations for 3D games tremendously if implemented right. The GP2X does not have such hardware.

In the meantime I'll get psx4ppc (PSX for the PocketPC ) up and running and see if it's faster than FPSEce. If it is, which my guess is a yes, then I at least accomplished something.

But yes, I have room to optimize this emulator, and if I get another 10 FPS or more I'll be really happy. But some games will never run as well as Sony's PSP emulator, due to me not having such similar hardware that the PSP has for PSX, and the lack of a VFPU, etc. What will be interesting is to see how this runs on a 400MHz - 600MHz PocketPC. It will be a little idea of "whats to come".

Anyways, TelcoLou, thank you for derailing my thread with such nonsense. You're answer seeking was much needed. If you didn't seek the truth out of an excited Craig, you might have let me be happy with his comment for too long! At least DaveC is there for you in times of such importance. TelcoLou, why not ask your buddy DaveC over there to take back his comment that PSX emulation is "IMPOSSIBLE" on the Zodiac, when I posted a PCSX port to it moments later? Or how about you have him take back his comment about how the GP2X will never get more than 5 FPS emulating PSX? You can 6+ FPS on the GP2X at default clock speed. These are answers we need! Go TelcoLou go! Seek that truth!

EDIT: Just a small note, yes, DaveC has been bothering me over PSX emulation being not worthwhile for around 3 (more?) years since that "impossible" comment he made. It gets old.

 

[Vimacs]

well, bleem did run rather well on dreamcast, but its compatibility is worse than psx4gp2x.

 

[Finn]

Tested with the latest release.
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
@280MHz
Interlace1
PSX Clock @30%
Ram tweaks ON

And i get 46-50 fps

For me is more than playable.When i clock PSX clock to 100% i get around 36 fps.So do i lose sth when i clock to 30%?

 

[b._.o._.b]

At least DaveC is there for you in times of such importance. TelcoLou, why not ask your buddy DaveC over there to take back his comment that PSX emulation is "IMPOSSIBLE" on the Zodiac, when I posted a PCSX port to it moments later? Or how about you have him take back his comment about how the GP2X will never get more than 5 FPS emulating PSX? You can 6+ FPS on the GP2X at default clock speed. These are answers we need! Go TelcoLou go! Seek that truth!

EDIT: Just a small note, yes, DaveC has been bothering me over PSX emulation being not worthwhile for around 3 (more?) years since that "impossible" comment he made. It gets old.

Well, I kind off silently agreed with DaveC on PSX emulation being the wrong choice for spending devs time on. I thought that programming time could be spent better, by improving the already available emus or creating new easier to port ones.
I did not say this in the forum, because a dev knows better what he is capable of and even more important, what drives him most. In this case I think you've convinced people that there will be a psx emulator that will run a couple of nice games full speed on the gp2x.
Good job and I definitely respect you for being this persistent.

 

[kevcal]

Videos look very good - congratulations on getting this far psx4gp2x team!
I guess you've proven (or at least started to prove) a few naysayers wrong.
I would think if you could move the cpu handling to the 940 with little performance hit (when you've fully debugged it) then I think more improvements will be in the offing.

(Can't say I understand how underclocking the PS1 affects performance though.)

 

[Amon_Re]

I remember not so long ago when i asked for MegaCD emulation that some people also called it IMPOSSIBLE, then notaz went & proved them wrong (much to my enjoyment ).

Zodd, what's the hardest part to emulate? I'm assuming the 3D stuff? Now, i'm not a 3D coder and such, i have no knowledge of how those things get emulated (heck, i don't even know how to draw polygons, let alone calculate them), and this might be an incredibly stupid idea, but could some sort of vector calculating cache help/be implemented?

Hacking on the dynarec will offcourse help greatly with the emulation, but finding 'odd' ways to speed up the rendering could help too

(Can't say I understand how underclocking the PS1 affects performance though.)

I'm assuming that's because it brings the "cpu" emulation more in sync with the "3d" emulation, making the emulator waste less cycles on the cpu while it's basicly waiting for the 3d hardware to perform certain tasks.

 

[yodaofborg]

Speaking of other emulators, I used to use epsxe on a very old PC to play playstaion games. I only bring this up because I used to play games like resident evil, wipeout and the likes on a system that had a 366Mhz CPU and a 4Meg 3DFX card. I used to get a massive perfomarnce increase by turning off gouraud shading, which most PSX games use. While this may look things look flat, it made games playable at near full speed on a real crap system.

I'm giving up on FF VII until this beast has been declared stable, you would think I would learn to back things up, but my new save state just go corrupted >.< !!!

/me goes to the local video game store to check the bargain bin for PSX games

 

[bOingball]

Speaking of other emulators, I used to use epsxe on a very old PC to play playstaion games. I only bring this up because I used to play games like resident evil, wipeout and the likes on a system that had a 366Mhz CPU and a 4Meg 3DFX card. I used to get a massive perfomarnce increase by turning off gouraud shading, which most PSX games use. While this may look things look flat, it made games playable at near full speed on a real crap system.

I'm giving up on FF VII until this beast has been declared stable, you would think I would learn to back things up, but my new save state just go corrupted >.< !!!

/me goes to the local video game store to check the bargain bin for PSX games




A 366Mhz Pentium II and a 4Meg Voodoo 1 3DFX card is about 4 to 8 times more powerfull than our little handhelds

(Pentium has an nice pipelined FPU and the Voodoo 1 had the Glide API to accelerate the 3D)

Theres no Gouraud Shading on the gp2x at the moment in the PSX emulator from what I can see.

bOing

 

[yodaofborg]

Heh, true, but that was a loooong time ago also, I'm sure epsxe was nowhere near as fast as this emu could be on simaler hardware ;D

[edit]

FF VII looks like its models during fights might just be gouraud shaded, but it may also just be due to scailing/another technique...