How come PSP emulation hasn't taken off?

[jamsi]

We have seen big advancements in PS2 emulation as well as Nintendo DS emulation, yet there is no emulator that will emulate the PSP to the level that PCSX2 and no$gba emulate the above systems. I'm just curious...

Is the hardware perhaps not well documented?

Is the platform not interesting enough to coders?

I wonder if anyone has some inside info on the matter Thanks!

 

[FlotsamX]

Well: like any other, time needs to take place. NO$GBA started having DS support in mid 2005: it wasn't until early 2007 that it could play that many games. Same with PCSX2. It's a project in progress, and unless it dies, advancements are bound to happen.

 

[jamsi]

True, but I wasn't referring to PCSX2 development, that one is actually making great strides.

What I was referring to is emulation of the PSP handheld... someone noone seems to be undertaking at this time. I would be great to play LocoRoco on a giant monitor some time

Anyone hear anything about a PSP Emulator being in development? Or is there a lack of documentation that makes emulation difficult?

PS: sorry for the late reply

 

[Clements]

My guess would be lack of interest right now is the principle reason. PS2 and DS are very popular and have well over a thousand games apiece, while PSP development at the moment is focusing on homebrew/emulators for other consoles.

 

[jamsi]

That could be the reason noone picked up where Potemkin left off last year. Although very promising and I believe with the source code released, there haven't been any new steps in the right direction (or any direction) after that.

Time will tell, I suppose.

 

[synch]

That could be the reason noone picked up where Potemkin left off last year. Although very promising and I believe with the source code released, there haven't been any new steps in the right direction (or any direction) after that.

Time will tell, I suppose.

Just get the source code and improve it yourself, if you really want to see it improved

PSP emulation hasn't taken mainly due to the little amount of documentation about PSP hardware itself. Current approaches go in the direction of HLEing the firmware and emulating the rest, but it's quite difficult to get right due to the rather large amount of firmware versions. The only two large low level documentations are either the Hitmen psp reference and the information spread in the ps2dev forums, and they're far from describing all the hardware.

The most currently developer PSP emulator is pspplayer, it seems to be showing more progress than potemkin (and has hell a lot more tools and code done). It doesn't run all the pspsdk samples still, so still has loads of work to be done on it. So you'll have to play with your own PSP for a while

 

[jamsi]

Thanks for that very informative post I hadn't even looked into pspplayer yet, but the mere fact that it's not discontinued yet obviously makes it very promising.

And I wasn't counting on playing my favorite PSP games on my computer anytime soon (not having seen any emu releases that got close), I was just wondering what was holding it back. I will let myself be pleasantly surprised once news arrives