Dolphin for Next-Gen Consoles

Well, the Xbox 360 does use a PowerPC processor derivative and an ATi-based GPU just like the Gamecube, so I guess some functions could be easily mapped to them if the emu was written from the ground up.

But until someone codes one no one will know how it performs.

I hope they will not. Because I do not liked XBOX 360 very much. I do not mind for PS3 and maybe Revolution but no way for XBOX 360, ugh!.

Well that's just your opinion. If they port Dolphin to the X360, I'll be very happy. We do not need a port for the Revolution because the Revolution can play games from older generation consoles.

Well the GameCube and Xbox 360s architechure are nearly the same, maybe.

As was said above the 360 could most likely do it easier, but you'd have to code for the 360 and msot likely start from the ground up. I wouldn't hold your breath. If something like that ever came to be it most likely wouldn't happen for another 5 years or so. Simply because people don't code for a console from the ground up. For anyone to even consider it mod chips for it would have to be common place and they don't even exsist yet. Then development alone would take years.

Also you guys forget. Dolphin can run A LOT faster then it does on current PC's. Oh sure people post specs and reasons why it doesn't right now (but these don't take into account things like the fact that most GC games arn't taxing it to 100%). Fact of the matter is, this emulator isn't optimized and most likely never will be fully optimized. Plus there is all sorts of hacks and other things that could be put in to get the speed up, someone just needs to make them. Current HW is most likely capable of emulating the GC at full speed. The real problem is writing the software thats written so perfectly that it can do it. In the end GC emulation will most likely come to be usable at some sort of middle ground. Roughly a 4-5ghz processor and some optimizations to dolphin itself.

Really my point is. Just because the new consoles have better HW doesn't really mean much. HW isn't holding emulation back as much as people think it is. You've got to remember they arn't working on speed right now, they are merely trying to make the games work at this stage and they arn't anywheres close to having 100% of the games yet.

Fact of the matter is, this emulator isn't optimized and most likely never will be fully optimized.

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Dolphin already uses sophisticated means of speeding up emulation, which include dynamic recompilation. The optimisation of the code can only be speculated upon since no source code is available to the public. I see no current evidence that Dolphin is unoptimised, only a developer would be able to give you the degree of optimisation and a forecast on how much faster it can get.

Just because the new consoles have better HW doesn't really mean much.

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Hardware is a very big determinant of how fast an emulator can run. Look at the requirements of Saturn and PSX emulators. Both consoles have similar capabilities, yet with Saturn the requirements are greatly higher. Why? Because of the complexity of the system - it's use of many coprocessors. Both Saturn and PSX emulators are optimised - Saturn even more so (SSF requires SSE2 to even run).

Current HW is most likely capable of emulating the GC at full speed. The real problem is writing the software thats written so perfectly that it can do it. In the end GC emulation will most likely come to be usable at some sort of middle ground. Roughly a 4-5ghz processor and some optimizations to dolphin itself.

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I strongly doubt that current PCs could handle a fully LLE Gamecube emulator, as it has been said that an LLE N64 emulator could not run fullspeed on current PC hardware either (although the systems are vastly different). Fully LLE emulators that are fullspeed end with the PSX and perhaps Saturn with very fast hardware.

Plus there is all sorts of hacks and other things that could be put in to get the speed up, someone just needs to make them.

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HLE can speed up emulation, but emulator authors are more interested in emulating a system properly without hackish methods just to please freeloaders who only care about playing games rather than the technical feat in emulating the system properly regardless of speed. HLE may not be feasible to use with GC emulation either.

HLE can not be used as much as it could on the N64 and will not give as big benefits.

I do think the 360 could handle it (with tons of work optimizing), but it would have to be fully opened up for homebrew first and it looks like that is going to be tough..

Clements said:

Dolphin already uses sophisticated means of speeding up emulation, which include dynamic recompilation. The optimisation of the code can only be speculated upon since no source code is available to the public. I see no current evidence that Dolphin is unoptimised, only a developer would be able to give you the degree of optimisation and a forecast on how much faster it can get.

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Actually you don't need a dolphin devloper to say it's not fully optimized. The reason being is you can always optimize something more. You could count on one hand how many programs have been made that simply couldn't be optimized just a little bit more by doing something else. Hell even those first few "hello world" programs that every programmer makes can be optimized. In the case of a program as complex as a gamecube emulator the amount of little optimizations which could be made could really add up to be VERY significant. Of course this isn't to say the developers are doing a bad job. Finding new optimizations and actually implementing them is a HUGE task. It's quite easy to sit here and say you could add them, but doing so is quite tricky, which is why I have great respect for the dolphin team and their work. But any developer who tries to say their app is fully 100% optimized and they can't improve upon it at all, is either an idiot or full of himself.

I mean I can remember a few years ago people saying current HW couldn't emulate the xbox at full speed. Then poof, suddenly it started emulating turok from the xbox at full speed and working perfectly on a PC. Sadly after that happened development basicly stopped, but it still proved current HW could do it (and we're tlaking roughly 2 years ago).

So do I think the a current day PC can emulate a GC, yes, I think if we sat at this tech level for the next 20 years and software makers had to make do with what we had something would come that would be able to emulate the GC at decent speeds. Although I don't really expect such a thing to ever happen. If you look at the GC right now a 3500 amd gets roughly 6fps on WW. Do you really honestly believe you're going to need a 17500 AMD just to be able to run WW at 30fps? I expect somewheres in the range of 5000 to 6000. Basicly the stuff that is coming out now is going to be the stuff that will begin to get decent speeds with GC emulation. That would be my bet anyways.

Many people look at HW as a problem right now, but it's not a huge issue. HW is only an issue for speed. The emulator simply doesn't work with most things yet (It can open most things but I mean fully work throughout a whole game). Until it can actually play games fully speed isn't an issue anyways, so there is no reason to worry about what HW can or can't do at this point in the game. Because it CAN do everything you need it to, to actually emulate the GC.

This has been debated many a time and all to the same conclusion(can't remember what it was)but GC will never run perfecly on any PC.

Coco said:

In the case of a program as complex as a gamecube emulator the amount of little optimizations which could be made could really add up to be VERY significant.

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Of course Dolphin is not fully optimised, never said it was. Just said that it is not unoptimised. Just because it's slow now does not mean there is no optimisation in place. Boosting the current 0-5fps to 60fps consistant through some code optimisations alone seems infeasible with current PC hardware - and with the lack of full documentation, the developers can only do so much.

The speed is decreasing to sub 1fps with the unreleased beta. It would literally take a miracle for the 60-fold performance increase required for fullspeed to happen with current tech and knowledge of the target system. I don't doubt the developer's skill but we are talking a astronomical hurdle here. Performance increases of that magnitude have never to my knowledge happened from a semi-compatible emulator.

Putting a random MHz figure on emulation is not possible right now, as the bottleneck is not really the CPU at all. Everybody achieves almost the same framerate regardless of how fast the CPU is. This may be a problem inheirent to x86 architecture, thus the Xbox 360 discussion. There is no way you can estimate a figure for this with nothing to base it on.

Xbox just needs a 'wrapper' since it is essentially an x86 PC (with a PIII/Celeron hybrid CPU, nForce board with GeForce 3 graphics), so is not comparable to emulating a totally different architecture. That's why the speeds attainable were so high. Emulating Gamecube or PS2 is nowhere near as simple as Xbox to emulate at speed.

Remember we only need 20 or 30 fps to achieve decent speed. To see if the current hardware is enough to emulate the Gamecube the emulator needs to be fully optimised, until then no speculation will work. I ask the coders to do at least one speed enhacement, since testing and other stuff related to compatibility can be easier at a higher speed. I don't ask for a miracle, just 5 more fps. If you could make an emulator that boots 50+ games, then you could make it a little faster. It's not an easy task, but I'm sure you can do it. It's the only way to see if Gamecube emulation can be done with the current hardware. I'll wait until a new speed improvement is made, I have more than 10 Gamecube games, so I have nothing to worry about. Plus, I have at least 60 more years to live.

Argh. You just don't listen. Dolphin is optimized, and much so. But with little info and all that, it is hard to boost speed and the fact also that it isn't NECESSARY. We weren't meant to play GC games on the PC. And GC games will live on as the revolution is released, so there is no NEED to achieve a high fps, even.

We weren't meant to play GC games on the PC. And GC games will live on as the revolution is released, so there is no NEED to achieve a high fps, even.

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I didn't say we NEED an emulator to reach full speed... I just say we can't argue until the coders TRY to reach to optimise the code. From what I heard, they just want to improve compatibility...

Stop worry about fps and appreciate the screen shots because they just want to improve compatibility first then who knows about fps speed in the future, ok ?

Alex The Great said:

I didn't say we NEED an emulator to reach full speed... I just say we can't argue until the coders TRY to reach to optimise the code. From what I heard, they just want to improve compatibility...

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It's a far greater effort to emulate a system properly than to make it run fast.