So What's The Problem With Sega Saturn Emulation Exactly?

[plopperz]

We could at least try a Yabause port. I think it's open source.

 

[Tinnus]

See how it works on the PSP.

 

[plopperz]

Wow, 2-6 fps. What would we expect on the Pandora? 10-15?

 

[Exophase]

Maybe we should come up with a formula, something like:

Absolute minimum required "perfect" emulation MHz = (((CPU1 MHz + CPU2 MHz + ... + CPUn MHz) * 2 + (5 * Number of CPU's)) / (60 * FPS_Required) + 50)

If you plug that in for, say, a Super Nintendo:

(21.28137 MHz (Main CPU) + 24.576 MHz (Audio CPU)) * 2 + 10 = 151MHz for 60fps

Please tell me you aren't being serious. Those clock speeds are ridiculous; sure, SNES might have master clocks around there but the CPU and DSP take many many many of those cycles to execute an instruction. Saturn takes closer to 1 clock cycle to execute an instruction. You've totally ignored the part that makes SNES emulation expensive, emulation of the PPUs. Notice how a 66MHz ARM9 + 33MHz ARM7 DS can handle SNES emulation decently a lot of the time, since it uses 2D hardware for the 2D emulation.

Please, if everyone could drop these ridiculous conventions, stop telling people who don't know anything about the archs that they can determine how much work it takes to emulate something :/

 

[hessiess]

there are some replys on my thred at yabause forms,


QUOTE
Possible but given that they don't have the full specs listed(like ram size for instance) I couldn't tell you for sure. That being said, it also wouldn't shock me if it ends up running pretty darn slow on it.

 

[White Demon]

But AFAIK even on high End-PC's thwere is no full-speed Saturn Emulation and AFAIK coding for x86 is much more easy than coding for ARM... (?) .... So I think there will be no usable Saturn Emulator for Pandora...until we hear about a really good Saturn-Emulator for PC.

There is in fact a very good Saturn emulator for PC, at http://www7a.biglobe.ne.jp/~phantasy/ssf/index.html.
The site is in Japanese, but the emulator menus are all in English and it's pretty easy to set up, plus it runs almost all Saturn games at (or extremely close to) full speed. I threw around 30 games at it at one point and only 2-3 of them refused to run.

Unfortunately there's no source available for it, and you'd have to know how to read/write Japanese to contact the people making it, so I wouldn't even begin to expect this particular emu on the Pandora.

Pity really, as it's the only Saturn emulator I could ever get running on the PC, all the others were either complicated beyond belief and/or would not run anything at all.

 

[.Gogeta§§J4BR.]

See how it works on the PSP.

Future Saturn emulation on handhelds looks a little more promising: I hope this isn't fake

 

[Tobriand]

See how it works on the PSP.

Future Saturn emulation on handhelds looks a little more promising: I hope this isn't fake


Me too... looks *almost* playable. Slideshow, certainly, but actual motion seems to be pretty zippy.

 

[PokeParadox]

Sega Saturn Emulation sounds very interesting and the Saturn was e good Console. I remember great "SATURN BOMBERMAN" Sessions in the Army, outstanding Bomberman Game.

But AFAIK even on high End-PC's thwere is no full-speed Saturn Emulation and AFAIK coding for x86 is much more easy than coding for ARM... (?) .... So I think there will be no usable Saturn Emulator for Pandora...until we hear about a really good Saturn-Emulator for PC.
Maybe it is more easy to concentrate on a useful NDS Emulator, hard to but maybe more easy to realize than a Sega Saturn Emulator?

GiriGiri was pretty much fullspeed on my old laptop, but you are still talking about 1.2GHz... also GiriGiri is a commercial emulator which Sega used to debug Saturn games. It was leaked and hacked. Anyway it is possible, and things are still progressing in terms of Saturn emulation on PC. Pandora will be another story.

 

[Prophet]

See how it works on the PSP.

Future Saturn emulation on handhelds looks a little more promising: I hope this isn't fake


Hmmmmm... h34r:

If that's real, then all I have to say is WOW - port it to Pandora!

EDIT: See here:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=51yRSyxgbak

Someone commented there: "its a video if you lok closeley at the bottom right corner of teh psp youll see a verey faint DiVX logo its just barele reconizable"

I don't quite see the Divx logo, anyone see it? But I'm smelling a fake here. Why no FPS counter?

 

[gaterooze]

I don't quite see the Divx logo, anyone see it? But I'm smelling a fake here. Why no FPS counter?

It's not a DivX logo, it's the course map. But the video is still a little suspicious -- hope that it is proven true though!

 

[Prophet]

I don't quite see the Divx logo, anyone see it? But I'm smelling a fake here. Why no FPS counter?

It's not a DivX logo, it's the course map. But the video is still a little suspicious -- hope that it is proven true though!


Definitely!

If Saturn emulation can run that well on PSP... then it would be smokin' on Pandora.

But still... it just doesn't smell good to me. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Vorporeal]

I'm pretty sure it's a fake, if you look closely you can see that the movement of his fingers and the tilting of the PSP (due to him pressing buttons) doesn't always line up with the gameplay on the screen.

 

[Prophet]

I'm pretty sure it's a fake, if you look closely you can see that the movement of his fingers and the tilting of the PSP (due to him pressing buttons) doesn't always line up with the gameplay on the screen.

I noticed that as well, especially on the Sonic R video.

Could be input lag... but most likely it's just fakery. Sadly.

 

[Nintendo]

You know, it's almost amusing. This is one of those systems that is going to be impossible to emulate on practically anything. I still haven't even figured out how to even set the emulators up on my PC, as they're incredibly user hostile. In addition, I asked a well known portable console modder if he ever considered making a portable Saturn, and I got an answer that it would be very difficult to do, since the components are stacked like in a Gamecube or Dreamcast. Then you get into the issue that you mod chips virtually don't exist anymore, and that even if they did, compatibility with all the different models would be an issue. And you can't just ignore the system, because it has gems like NiGHTS, Shining Force III, Panzer Dragoon Saga, etc. SFIII[/B ] and PDS both being prohibitively expensive to find

Huh? I don't remember SFIII being released for SS or did you make a typo?

 

[Ravnos]

You know, it's almost amusing. This is one of those systems that is going to be impossible to emulate on practically anything. I still haven't even figured out how to even set the emulators up on my PC, as they're incredibly user hostile. In addition, I asked a well known portable console modder if he ever considered making a portable Saturn, and I got an answer that it would be very difficult to do, since the components are stacked like in a Gamecube or Dreamcast. Then you get into the issue that you mod chips virtually don't exist anymore, and that even if they did, compatibility with all the different models would be an issue. And you can't just ignore the system, because it has gems like NiGHTS, Shining Force III, Panzer Dragoon Saga, etc. SFIII[/B ] and PDS both being prohibitively expensive to find

Huh? I don't remember SFIII being released for SS or did you make a typo?

Re-read his post. SFIII == Shining Force III.

 

[Nintendo]

Ah, ok. My bad! The good 'ol SF RPG eh...

 

[imec]

Oh no, it's Gnirfleo all over again.

The horror, the horror.....

 

[gibberish]

I'm pretty sure it's a fake, if you look closely you can see that the movement of his fingers and the tilting of the PSP (due to him pressing buttons) doesn't always line up with the gameplay on the screen.

I noticed that as well, especially on the Sonic R video.

Could be input lag... but most likely it's just fakery. Sadly.


this video apparently shows him loading the emulator from the menu...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RauQARZw58o

is anyone here into emulation on the psp that can verify that these vids are fake or not?

 

[Vorporeal]

That would probably be the speed you'd get playing on a normal home computer. That's most likely a video that he cut together with some video editing software that makes it look like he's actually playing. Saturn emulation is very difficult, and seeing as it's still not very good on a PC, there's very little chance that this is a real video.