Slashdot Mirror
The Quest To Build Xbox One and PS4 Emulators
Nerval's Lobster writes "Will Xbox One and PS4 emulators hit your favorite download Websites within the next few years? Emulators have long been popular among gamers looking to relive the classic titles they enjoyed in their youth. Instead of playing Super Mario Bros. on a Nintendo console, one can go through the legally questionable yet widespread route of downloading a copy of the game and loading it with PC software that emulates the Nintendo Entertainment System. Emulation is typically limited to older games, as developing an emulator is hard work and must usually be run on hardware that's more powerful than the original console. Consoles from the NES and Super NES era have working emulators, as do newer systems such as Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii, and the first two PlayStations. While emulator development hit a dead end with the Xbox 360 and PS3, that may change with the Xbox One and PS4, which developers are already exploring as fertile ground for emulation. The Xbox 360 and PS4 feature x86 chips, for starters, and hardware-assisted virtualization can help solve some acceleration issues. But several significant obstacles stand in the way of developers already taking a crack at it, including console builders' absolute refusal to see emulation as even remotely legal."
Those systems are locked down so tight, they won't allow ANY outside software to be installed, much less software specifically designed to allow for unauthorized games to be played (and mostly pirated ones at that). So, good luck with that. You will have to AT LEAST jailbreak them first.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Is Anonymous Access to TOR Attainable?
7 December 2013
http://cryptome.org/2013/12/tor-anon-access.htm
"I was thinking about whether anonymous access to the first server, however desirable, might or might not be attainable."
Usually the emulator comes when the console becomes obsolete right?
Nah... there won't be any good games released for these consoles that aren't on PC already. Which is probably the #1 reason.
You can get almost all of the same games for the PC you're using to emulate the console. They're probably much cheaper on the PC. The PC versions will probably work better than the console versions plus the emulator. The online functions of the consoles will probably never work on the emulator.
It seems like a lot of effort to build something inferior.
I'd rather see people working on emulating the last generations consoles. Or the one before that even. The PS2 has one emulator, PCSX2, which is about 80% compatible. The original Xbox has no currently developed emulators.
There's no shortage of ways to play old 8bit and 16bit games. There is a shortage of ways to play last generation games. When our 360s and PS3s finally give up in 5 to 10 years, there's a large number of games that simply won't be playable anymore.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Zelda was cool when you were 10 BECAUSE you were 10.
Move on.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It's not questionable, it's illegal. Ask the copyright holders. No, not making it available doesn't make it questionable.
But several significant obstacles stand in the way of developers already taking a crack at it, including console builders' absolute refusal to see emulation as even remotely legal.
Well that's not surprising. The battle isn't to win the hearts of Microsoft and Sony. The battle is to win rights from the governments that enforce these restrictions.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
On the plus side, emulating an AMD x86 and GPU is likely to be considerably easier (especially since AMD's current or near-future PC parts are likely to be extremely similar in most respects, though you will probably have to go up a few speed grades to deal with the emulator running on top of a full OS) than emulating either the relatively fast PPCs of the previous generation (PPC-on-x86 is done; but doing that really fast is another story) or the slow-but-somewhat-esoteric-and-absolutely-every-oddity-was-used-and-abused architectures of the older consoles.
On the minus side, the odds are good that both new consoles (especially the Xbox, given MS's software side; but probably the PS as well) contain a lot of software that, while not integral to the tightly-optimized-graphics-twiddling aspects of the games, will probably have to be given a fairly precise "WINE-like" treatment to avoid breaking things all over the place. Not necessarily impossible (as WINE itself demonstrates); but definitely a different game than the 'emulate the hardware and let the ROM do as it will' emulators that work for older consoles.
On the very minus side, it would not be out of character for either MS or Sony to have added some nasty copy-protection-related cryptographic goodies that will be very hard to emulate. MS, given their PC background, might well have gone for a TPM. Architecturally, emulating one of those would be cake by the standards of what the emulation scene has taken on, except for minor matters like the endorsement key. A TPM emulator that emulates a TPM loaded with the 2048-bit RSA private key of your choice? Sure, no problem. The correct private keys? That might be an issue.
Despite the hardware platform being x86-64, there is probably a ton of hoops to jump through to discover precisely how the hardware works and to crack the protections. Systems are so complex these days that a loosely-knit group of unpaid hackers might not be able to make a strong result anymore.
Exclusives
...the PS3 and the XBox 360 for the PS4 and XBox One respectively?
Lack of backwards compatibility in this day and age is pretty lame.
I'm aware of the testing issues involved, and frankly I think if you provided a backwards compatibility platform that was extensible by the game companies themselves (i.e. they could patch the game to run inside the VM without Micro$oft or $ony being involved) at least you'd make things better...
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It should of created a $99 ad-on, that would allow the Xbox One to play 360 games. Essentially, all it would be is an Xbox 360 processing core, which would use the already available hard drive, controllers, I/O, and Kinect 2.
I'd wager it'd sell like hot cakes, and be profitable. Because the entire Xbox 360 is now what $150-$200? Minus case, controllers, hard drive, all output components, they should of been able to pull it off.
But how long did it take to build a working Xbox emulator?
Games, both downloaded and on optical media, are likely to be encrypted eight ways to Sunday on modern systems. Before you can even begin to emulate games from a modern console, you need the unencrypted binaries, or you need to resign yourself to running community-developed homebrew. This means extracting the console key from a console, which is not likely to be a trivial matter.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
@Clive Robinson
A lot of people are wondering why dragosr was the only one to run across this malware. In fact, he wasn't. The people who were before him were mocked and most threads closed and either deleted or shuffled to areas of message boards where Joe Q public couldn't see it and question this for themselves. [some] Major Anti-Virus companies included.
Users didn't want to know, companies didn't want to know. Unless you were "known" in the field, like dragosr, and even then, you are handled like you may be retarded or just need a vacation.
Here is one of dozens of reports:
LCD Monitor Broadcasts Noise To Radio! Why? (FRS)
http://forums.radioreference.com/computer/255488-lcd-monitor-broadcasts-noise-radio-why.html
Final post in that thread:
"BOTTOM LINE: No matter WHAT you do, all devices that use electricity will emit some sort of interference in the air and there's nothing you can do about it without unplugging/turning it off. "
including:
"Have you noticed any nondescript white vans or black helicopters in your neighborhood?
What do you do or have you done to make "them" take such an interest in you that "they" have to bug you?
You need a bigger tinfoil hat, perhaps a full body suit."
Another thread:
Gpu based paravirtualization rootkit, all os vulne
http://forum.sysinternals.com/gpu-based-paravirtualization-rootkit-all-os-vulne_topic26706.html
This:
U.N. report reveals secret law enforcement techniques
"Point 201: Mentions a new covert communications technique using software defined high frequency radio receivers routed through the computer creating no logs, using no central server and extremely difficult for law enforcement to intercept."
http://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Use_of_Internet_for_Terrorist_Purposes.pdf
http://www.hacker10.com/other-computing/u-n-report-reveals-secret-law-enforcement-techniques/
I think this is something which has been brewing for years, but "forces" beyond our sight have managed to stifle any serious investigation into the technology. Some have announced they are retreating to ancient technology of the 70's and 80's, others are looking towards open source hardware and software combinations.
Is it time Wireshark included audio monitoring as well? Off to play with a recording device and Audacity.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/friday_squid_bl_402.html#c2751193
###
Scientist-developed malware prototype covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound
---
Malware communicates at a distance of 65 feet using built-in mics and speakers.
by Dan Goodin - Dec 2, 2013 7:29 pm UTC
http://arstechnica.com/author/dan-goodin
https://twitter.com/dangoodin001
"Dan is the IT Security Editor at Ars Technica, which he joined in 2012 after working for The Register, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and other publications."
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/scientist-developed-malware-covertly-jumps-air-gaps-using-inaudible-sound/
--------------------
Topology of a covert mesh network that connects air-gapped computers to the Internet:
Mind Games
New on the Internet: a community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds. They may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that.
By Sharon Weinberger
Sunday, January 14, 2007
IF HARLAN GIRARD IS CRAZY, HE DOESN'T ACT THE PART. He is standing just where he said he would be, below the Philadelphia train station's World War II memorial -- a soaring statue of a winged angel embracing a fallen combatant, as if lifting him to heaven. Girard is wearing pressed khaki pants, expensive-looking leather loafers and a crisp blue button-down. He looks like a local businessman dressed for a casual Friday -- a local businessman with a wickedly dark sense of humor, which had become apparent when he said to look for him beneath "the angel sodomizing a dead soldier." At 70, he appears robust and healthy -- not the slightest bit disheveled or unusual-looking. He is also carrying a bag.
Girard's description of himself is matter-of-fact, until he explains what's in the bag: documents he believes prove that the government is attempting to control his mind. He carries that black, weathered bag everywhere he goes. "Every time I go out, I'm prepared to come home and find everything is stolen," he says.
The bag aside, Girard appears intelligent and coherent. At a table in front of Dunkin' Donuts inside the train station, Girard opens the bag and pulls out a thick stack of documents, carefully labeled and sorted with yellow sticky notes bearing neat block print. The documents are an authentic-looking mix of news stories, articles culled from military journals and even some declassified national security documents that do seem to show that the U.S. government has attempted to develop weapons that send voices into people's heads.
"It's undeniable that the technology exists," Girard says, "but if you go to the police and say, 'I'm hearing voices,' they're going to lock you up for psychiatric evaluation."
The thing that's missing from his bag -- the lack of which makes it hard to prove he isn't crazy -- is even a single document that would buttress the implausible notion that the government is currently targeting a large group of American citizens with mind-control technology. The only direct evidence for that, Girard admits, lies with alleged victims such as himself.
And of those, there are many.
IT'S 9:01 P.M. WHEN THE FIRST PERSON SPEAKS during the Saturday conference call.
Unsure whether anyone else is on the line yet, the female caller throws out the first question: "You got gang stalking or V2K?" she asks no one in particular.
There's a short, uncomfortable pause.
"V2K, really bad. 24-7," a man replies.
"Gang stalking," another woman says.
"Oh, yeah, join the club," yet another man replies.
The members of this confessional "club" are not your usual victims. This isn't a group for alcoholics, drug addicts or survivors of childhood abuse; the people connecting on the call are self-described victims of mind control -- people who believe they have been targeted by a secret government program that tracks them around the clock, using technology to probe and control their minds.
The callers frequently refer to themselves as TIs, which is short for Targeted Individuals, and talk about V2K -- the official military abbreviation stands for "voice to skull" and denotes weapons that beam voices or sounds into the head. In their esoteric lexicon, "gang stalking" refers to the belief that they a
Are there going to be games worth emulating? Or are we already talking about emulating the next Philips CD-i so we can play Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon on our PCs?
Barely even a proper *SNES* emulator. PlayStation/Saturn ones are not anywhere near decent. How the hell do they expect to emulate a just-released-gen console? Are they high on LSD mixed with crack cocaine?
The games are encrypted, the OS is encrypted, can't even start writing an emulator without the code to run.
(Because of all that, I was able to port POSE to Android.)
Admittedly, the ROM images are copyrighted, but that's not the same thing as the emulator itself. Same thing for the game machine emulators like MAME and such.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I'm not emulator writer, nor am I an x86 expert, but I'm pretty skeptical about this. If there are any experts out there, feel free to chime in.
The original XBox had a custom Pentium 3 processor clocked at 733Mhz, and to date there haven't been any reasonable emulators for it. There have been a few attempts, but no big successes have been made. Last I checked about 6 months ago, interest was also waning on the development of it.You would think a quad core i7 clocked at 3.2 GHz would run circles around that custom P3, at least fast enough to get the low-level system instructions handled.
The XBox 360 has a custom PowerPC Xenon, and the PS3 has the cell processor. Both are a PPC architecture, which given the clock speeds and variance in instruction set are probably pretty hard to emulate.
With the XB1 and PS4 both running on x86 hardware, we are now beyond the point of consoles being custom hardware (NES on up to Gamecube, PS1-PS3) with custom software, and that barrier for multi-platform release is really just down to contracting. I'd also be interested in seeing what can be done with the XB1 or PS4 software without the MS and Sony imposed restrictions, such as the XBLive profanity blocking. Hell, I may even buy one of my favorite games (Killer Instinct), as long as I'm not subjected to MS monitoring and policing my swearing at friends during our own tournament.
Games will be the hardest thing about emulation. While I don't doubt that emulating the hardware can eventually be done, getting the games will be harder. Also, legally, emulating hardware could fall under exceptions like reverse engineering whereas copyright law would make games harder.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Another console release, another sea of TRASH technical journalism. Here's a question... why was there NEVER a Xbox (original) emulator, when the hardware had a PC CPU (standard Intel x86 chip) and a PC GPU (near standard Nvidia GPU chip), tiny amount of RAM, and was significantly less powerful than gaming PCs after a few years?
Emulators are NOT what the common sheeple are encouraged to think they are. The MAIN fact to consider when it comes to console emulators is the "WHY" they come to exist in the first place.
-console emulators (at least the ones being considered here) are NOT commercial products, but the work of enthusiasts.
-enthusiast coding happens for many reasons, and these reasons frequently FAIL to overlap with those that drive commercial coding
-a MAJOR factor driving original emulation efforts was the fascination with emulating console HARDWARE units (CPU and GPU) in software. This intellectual challenge is rendered DULL indeed when one is 'emulating' PC-like hardware with PC hardware.
-a MAJOR factor driving original emulation efforts was that console games were VERY different from those available on PCs. Today, the AAA console games usually exist in much BETTER forms on the PC. Where the publisher refuses to release a PC version (say with Halo beyond 2, or Gear of War beyond the first) PC gamers consider the missing games as inferior trash for console heads.
-the games that PC users would love to play (eg., Red Dead Redemption, or Last of Us) are known to be so "to the metal" that such games would run very poorly indeed on an emulator. In other words, the types of games that an emulator would run well today are not the games PC owners care about.
Hence, this subject is just another for TRASH technical journalists to fill this week's column inches with. People in the Emulator community KNOW that there is hardware likely to get some form of semi-decent emulation, and hardware that will NEVER be usefully emulated. Nintendo and hand-helds are where emulation hopes remain.
NO-ONE in the emulator community expects any sensible, useful progress to be made emulating the PS3, PS4, or Xbox One for running games anyone cares about.
I think some people here are missing the point.
I don't think anyone is saying that PS4/Xbox1 emulation will be easy. Just that it will be easier than PS3/XBox360 emulation.
Both generations will have a significant amount of hacking and reverse engineering involved and will be fraught with legal challenges. The current generation just has the advantage of being more or less based on hardware that's readily available at a reasonable price. The previous generation is not even remotely similar to anything you can buy easily or cheaply. (Other than the PS3 and XBox360, of course.)
Usually reliable emulators don't come out until about two generations after a console. So by the end of the XBone/PS4 era we should start seeing good 360/PS3 emulators coming out.
Its Called a PC
The first Xbox had very similar hardware to a PC, but Xbox emulation got a lot less attention than PS2 or even Gamecube/Wii emulation. Why?
Um, no....
Not really, some computers, really powerful computers (about the same as playing the most intensive computer game on the absolutely highest graphics possible), can play a few of these games without huge game wrecking glitches. At best I would call the emulator a very early alpha; Proof of concept.
And we still do not even have something even that good for the original Xbox. The only reason we have something that is even decent at emulating the PS2 is because it is far older than even the Xbox and by far the most popular console of all time. And really that is only like 50%. Very popular games have been made to work, but you can pretty much forget just getting some random PS2 game popping it in and playing it.
Which is not to say that the current gen will not be easier to emulate, but that is a lot of power to be emulating even if it is already basically 99% a normal PC already.
The N64 was probably the last decently complete emulator, and you have to go all the way back to the SNES era to get one that is 100% working, every game works, launch and go.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
In this day and age with so many games already ported to PC, what is even the point of this, other than the "because I can" mantra?
Sure, makes sense for older hardware, but I don't see the point for modern stuff.
The PCSX2 developers said a PS3 emulator will be possible around 2020...so good luck with a PS4 emulator.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...that these companies haven't looked into building such emulators themselves? Perhaps as part of a back-compatibility solution? Perhaps it's not that easy, perhaps there are legal issues and push-back from game studios? There's more to "emulating" that just running some CPU code, and a console is a very integrated piece of hardware/software, where users expect realtime experience.
The picture is much more complex than you're making it out to be.
I mean, sure, there was a lot of effort and money spent on making and designing the consoles, but for these two companies, typically they take a loss on the hardware, then expect to recoup the money on software sales. It sure seems like they could spend (a little?) time developing an emulator, then sell it for a nominal fee, and have some program tell you if your computer is good enough/incompatible/questionable, and that should generate more software sales (which, as mentioned, is how they're really getting paid anyway)
So, why not treat their systems as more of a platform, rather than just a hunk of hardware?
OMG, that could cost me .. *shudder* .. sixty dollars! That's almost as much as a whole new game, and an entire ten percent of the cost of a newest-generation console!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Different use cases. Palm didn't care because nobody was going to carry around a PC to emulate a handheld device. The utility of a PDA was as much in its form factor as anything else. Not so for game consoles.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Assertion 1:
“I don’t think it’s been the case that an emulator has been written
without there first being some hardware hacks on the system such
that people could put mod chips in and run homebrew.”
Reply 1:
A hardware hack is not required to clone a computer in software...
it is but one of many tools that may be used.
Assertion 2:
"Even creating an emulator could potentially be illegal"
Reply 2:
Everything is potentially illegal. An emulator is less
encumbered with legalities than the thing it emulates. This
means that You are more likely to be harmed by the real thing.
Note that only an incomplete emulator doesn't emulate the lack
of a ROM (or different ROM) in the same way as the original
hardware.
Assertion 3:
"While it (emulation) exists in murky legal waters..."
Reply 3:
Untrue.
It is the lawyers wish that emulation exist in murky legal waters.
However, it is the 'lawyers wish' which exists in murky legal waters
because FUD (fear uncertainty doubt) is their only il/legal recourse.
Back in the day I played around with CXBX because I didn't want to buy an XBOX. It was more of a research project, but it proved it could be done. What it actually did was turn XBOX executables into Windows executables, with call redirection. It was a very cool idea but by the time it was working, no one was playing XBOX games anymore.
I would imagine it would be significantly harder with the XB1, but still very possible considering the architecture.
Apparently the project lives on and is pretty compatible with many games, today: http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/
Both consoles are built to a familiar PC architecture, I can see an xbone one emulator working alright, as the only major hurdle to overcome is emulating the way the eSRAM works. I don't see how software emulation could emulate the GDDR5 RAM in the PS4 though, unless the machine emulating itself has very high bandwidth memory.
There's nothing "questionable" about it. It is clearly illegal, piracy, to download a copy of the game. I do not claim to have never done it, either.
The Retrode is a brilliant little gadget: http://www.retrode.com/
It's basically an old-school console cartridge -> USB adaptor. It also supports old Megadrive / SNES gamepads and doesn't require host software (which is actually rather neat - it'll appear as a USB mass storage device with a cartridge image on it, plus presenting the controllers as either gamepads or keyboards). With further adapters you can plug in Mastersystem, Gameboy and N64 carts (plus two N64 controllers).
It's just a really nice piece of work. I use it to rip my cartridges, just like I rip CDs, then put them into whatever emulator I like. Avoids the legally dubious websites, etc. I can imagine there might be grey areas in some emulation stuff still (e.g. some emulators need a BIOS image, which someone has to have dumped from the console) but that's only for certain consoles - and at least you don't have to go on dodgy websites to download the games you already own.
Im guessing xbone is probably running something based on Winders 8, but if the ps4 is running a unix thing, then it should be easy to implement the necicary api calls into current linux/bsd computers.
Hey, maybe this generation will be the generation for running ps4 games on linux.
The original XBOX used an off the shelf Celeron processor that we easily run circles around today, and an nVidia chip that was somewhat custom, but not so far out there we can't work around it, not to mention a customized version of Windows as a front end.
Last time I checked only the original Halo worked on anything else with emulation. The original XBOX should be among the easiest things to emulate all things considered.
I don't put much stock in X86 = guaranteed emulation at all.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
console builders' absolute refusal to see emulation as even remotely legal
Wrong. The Wii, Wii U, PS3, and Xbox 360 all run emulators for various downloadable games, and it will be no different with the Xbox One and PS4. The Xbox 360 also has an Xbox emulator for those who buy the hard drive add on.
Twinstiq, game news
I thought Microsoft's plan was to have windows on everything - phone, tablet, xbone, etc
If emulating a handheld is so hard, emulating a console would be much harder.
This isn't the Bleem days anymore :D
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
i was gonna say something to this but the newsletter would only let me post on twitter or facebook, lets see if i can dig it up ...
yea yea, the article is the-quest-to-build- somewhere on slashdodt and i was gonna say 'fuck legal, team satoshi didnt give a shit about legal obviously and now they're making law by abscence. Fuck unhackable, thats not possible. If you're the man, just do it, if you're scared, just dont take credit.' but it will only let me post on twitter or Facebook ? the decline of slashdot ?
good thing i put it somewhere, yea sure, if you can, why dont you, you dont have to put your name on it, you just post it on a few fora and put up a torrent through a vpn, put it on filesomething.com and 'the community' will surely take it up if it's worthwhile
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?