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PSX Emulator Performance Investigated
An anonymous reader writes "AnandTech took a look at console emulators (ePSXe as well as a preview of a GameCube emulator) and how the latest ATI and NVIDIA cards perform at emulating. The author also compares Intel and AMD CPUs and their impact on ePSXe emulation performance. It turns out that emulating PSX games is pretty pixel shader intensive, as pixel shaders are required to emulate a lot of the PSX's effects."
I have a Playstation, and let me tell you that the emulator blows it out of the water. No more waiting for the game to load from the double-speed CD-ROM, way better and sharper graphics, etc.. I mainly play Gran Turismo 2 on it, and with some Anti-Aliasing the cars look great.
I have yet to try it with TV-out to compare the quality on an actual television, but now I'm going to have to, to see if it looks any better.
Connectix was truly ahead of their time with Virtual Gamestation. I played all the way through Xenogears and Chrono Cross on a 333MHz iMac with a macally iShock, and it was quite a pleasant experience. There were a few rare glitches and the occasional squishy sound, but having a 6GB memory card was nice. :D
It's amazing that they were able to put such an emulator together, to instantly expand the Mac's game library to thousands of titles, but it's very sad that legal action by and subsequent agreements with Sony made them have to shelf the whole project. VGS2 or at least VGS for OS X would have been nice.
I forgot to add that there is also software and wiring diagrams out there that will help you rip apart your Playstation to take one of the memory card readers on it and have it interface with a serial port, and software to go along with it, so that you can migrate save games to/from the Playstation or emulator..
Unfortunately I'm at work at the moment, and I don't use the software often, so I completely forget the name of it or the site with the schematics.. maybe someone else can post that.
Also, you can hack the save files emulators produce at the hex level. Cheating in console games is important to me (but only on certain levels) because I like to completely conquer the games I play. This is why I vastly enjoy the save and load state features that are present in most emulators. For example, saving and loading at certain times in FF7 chocobo racing can increase your chances of getting the extremely uber rare 3 pieces of materia the races have to offer. Shortens 3 straight days of gaming into 3 hours. Great for college students with tight schedules ;)
:)
A good example of where (hex edit) cheating is necessary is FF4 for the SNES. In order to get some of the game's items, you have to fight millions of battles! The odds are so much against you that I know people who have had the actual cartridge for upwards of twelve years and still haven't gotten it all.
So in response to this practically impossible difficulty I have created a guide for hacking FF4 ZSNES save states at the hex level, to be found here.
See, I see using console emulation like using open source software. If you don't like something about a console, too fucking bad. If you emulate it, chances are you can do something about it. Just like if you don't like something about closed source software, too fucking bad. But with open source, chances are you can do something about it.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
It's worth noting that several of the "3d" GPU plugins (like the d3d/GL ones), while being nice on mostly 3d games, are quite suckish on 2d. The same applies to the reverse.
I've found that for older 2d-style games like FF Chronicles, I was better to select a software GPU to get better graphics performance/features.
Of course, for 3d games the hardware-accelerated GPU's often do a much better job of rendering/aliasing etc than the PSX or PS2 hardware. Some FX are missing, but the improvement in graphics is quite nice and most games are playable.