Homebrew Discussion Play! PS2 Emulator is running on the Nintendo Switch!

[TheMrIron2]

I would say it's quite feasible to get PS2 games running faster than this on the Switch. A friend of mine got an early PCSX2 build running on the original Xbox at a little over 10FPS, using a special profile-optimised dynarec (for any developers: -fprofile-generate) and hardware acceleration just like on a PC. If - and this is a big "if" - Play! or a similar PS2 emulator gets GPU acceleration on Switch and, in the case of Play! or a less mature emulator, the program becomes faster/cleaner/more optimised, it would not be inconceivable to imagine some games reaching playable speeds on Switch.

As for walking proof of this -- while the PS3's PS2 software emulator is hardly perfect, it runs a lot of games very well, and while you can get into circular discussions about whether the PS3 or Switch is ultimately more "powerful" (the Switch is.. sort of, but that's a completely different discussion) you can't deny they are not out of each other's leagues and if it's possible on one machine, it should be possible on the other.

 

[Deleted User]

There is a PR that will allow you to build this: https://github.com/jpd002/Play-/pull/754

I was trying to build play last year but failed good that you done it, somebody need to try pcsx2 with qemu

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I would say it's quite feasible to get PS2 games running faster than this on the Switch. A friend of mine got an early PCSX2 build running on the original Xbox at a little over 10FPS, using a special profile-optimised dynarec (for any developers: -fprofile-generate) and hardware acceleration just like on a PC. If - and this is a big "if" - Play! or a similar PS2 emulator gets GPU acceleration on Switch and, in the case of Play! or a less mature emulator, the program becomes faster/cleaner/more optimised, it would not be inconceivable to imagine some games reaching playable speeds on Switch.

As for walking proof of this -- while the PS3's PS2 software emulator is hardly perfect, it runs a lot of games very well, and while you can get into circular discussions about whether the PS3 or Switch is ultimately more "powerful" (the Switch is.. sort of, but that's a completely different discussion) you can't deny they are not out of each other's leagues and if it's possible on one machine, it should be possible on the other.

Many people called me an idiot when I told them the switch will emulate the ps2 and now it's happening

 

[TheMrIron2]

Many people called me an idiot when I told them the switch will emulate the ps2 and now it's happening

Honestly, I think it was almost inevitable that someone was going to do it eventually, what with Play! being so portable that one of the developers straight up told people on discord that he could get it working within a weekend. It compiles all the dependencies for the target platform if they don't already exist and is completely modular; the "porting" process would mostly be a series of tweaks to suit the Switch's audio, input etc.

 

[Kioku]

PS2 emulator running on Linux on the Switch. Big difference.

 

[Deleted User]

PS2 emulator running on Linux on the Switch. Big difference.

It's start if you can do any better so do it

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@Voxel

 

[Deleted User]

It's start if you can do any better so do it

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@Voxel

Why was I tagged?

 

[Deleted User]

Why was I tagged?

So you might confirm if pcsx2 runs inside qemu

 

[stick267]

Playing the GTAs that released on PS2 handheld on the Switch would be awesome.

 

[masagrator]

Playing the GTAs that released on PS2 handheld on the Switch would be awesome.

For GTA you should look into Android or support for anbot in L4T Ubuntu. This is more likely to happen than playing them on this emulator.

 

[smf]

Many people called me an idiot when I told them the switch will emulate the ps2 and now it's happening

Switch is turing complete, so it can emulate anything given enough storage and time.

It's that last part that is hard. The ps2 has a lot of chips that run in tight synchronization passing data between them as they go, this is hard to optimise for every game (which is why people always shows off specific games on the ps2 to show how fast their emulator is)

If you upgrade a commodore 64 so it has enough random access storage to store the ps2 ram and frame buffer etc then you could emulate a ps2 on that as well. It doesn't have to be ram, you could use seekable magnetic tape. It wouldn't run full speed, but it could emulate it.

I wrote an emulator back in the p4 days that I predicted would need an 8ghz p4 to run full speed, well that never happened but my laptop now runs it much faster than real time. The switch is pretty weak in the grand scheme of things, but that should never put you off. Gordon Moore usually helps out.

 

[Deleted User]

For GTA you should look into Android or support for anbot in L4T Ubuntu. This is more likely to happen than playing them on this emulator.

still didnt give up the hope that they will someday port pcsx2 to aarch64 , but until then we have to wait for Android or something else

 

[kevin corms]

10

this is actually one of the harder games to run, and already 10 fps!

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I would say it's quite feasible to get PS2 games running faster than this on the Switch. A friend of mine got an early PCSX2 build running on the original Xbox at a little over 10FPS, using a special profile-optimised dynarec (for any developers: -fprofile-generate) and hardware acceleration just like on a PC. If - and this is a big "if" - Play! or a similar PS2 emulator gets GPU acceleration on Switch and, in the case of Play! or a less mature emulator, the program becomes faster/cleaner/more optimised, it would not be inconceivable to imagine some games reaching playable speeds on Switch.

As for walking proof of this -- while the PS3's PS2 software emulator is hardly perfect, it runs a lot of games very well, and while you can get into circular discussions about whether the PS3 or Switch is ultimately more "powerful" (the Switch is.. sort of, but that's a completely different discussion) you can't deny they are not out of each other's leagues and if it's possible on one machine, it should be possible on the other.

of course it is, I kept telling people this months ago but they thought they were so much smarter than me (I even ended up blocking one fool that kept going on with stupid straw man arguments), and im a god damn developer. The switch is more powerful than a ps3, and its not a sort of its a simple fact. The switch cpu is actually probably better than other current consoles, its the gpu where it falls behind (other consoles use the gpu to make up for the cpu). Emulation is mostly cpu bound.

 

[Deleted User]

this is actually one of the harder games to run, and already 10 fps!

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of course it is, I kept telling people this months ago but they thought they were so much smarter than me, and im a god damn developer. The switch is more powerful than a ps3, and its not a sort of its a simple fact. The switch cpu isnt actually that much worse than the new other current consoles, its the gpu where it falls behind. Emulation is mostly cpu bound.

Time to gear up and help developing an ps2 emulator for the switch or an port of pcsx2 but ofc it will need an new recompiler

 

[kevin corms]

Time to gear up and help developing an ps2 emulator for the switch or an port of pcsx2 but ofc it will need an new recompiler

If I could find the time and motivation, emulating ps2 is pretty damn tricky. It might take me years to get it up to speed given my limited time. If i did write an emulator it would be for saturn, I love all the panzer dragoon series, especially the rpg panzer dragoon saga.

 

[uyjulian]

PCSX2 has a very ugly code base. DobieStation and Play! are relatively new emulators but they have cleaner code bases, so it might be easier to start from there.

PS2 has quite a bit of hardware running at the same time, like the EE, GS, VU0/1, IOP, and its peripherals. Play! does most HLE of the IOP.

These things can contribute to making Play! faster and/or have higher compatibility:

Implementing more IOP module HLE (.IRX or IOPRP .IMG files; Most, if not all official developers used the same libraries provided by SCE)
Implementing HLE of EE code (Most, if not all official developers used libraries such as libmpeg, libgcc, libpad, etc provided by SCE)
Implementing AOT static recompilation (PS2 released games often have left debug symbols and debug (no) optimization)
Implementing host-based timer and/or EE clock rate change

 

[M7L7NK7]

Can you do up a guide for exactly what tod for us non Linux people?

 

[uyjulian]

Can you do up a guide for exactly what tod for us non Linux people?

Follow the Dolphin build instructions if you haven't done so already
Run this in the terminal (once the PR I mentioned earlier has been merged)

git clone https://github.com/jpd002/Play-Build.git;cd Play-Build;git submodule update -q --init --recursive;git submodule foreach "git checkout -q master";cd Dependencies;git submodule update --init;cd ..;cd Play;mkdir build;cd build;cmake ..;cmake --build .;Source/ui_qt/Play

 

[EmulateLife]

If I could find the time and motivation, emulating ps2 is pretty damn tricky. It might take me years to get it up to speed given my limited time. If i did write an emulator it would be for saturn, I love all the panzer dragoon series, especially the rpg panzer dragoon saga.

There's Yabasanshiro for Lakka. Are you talking about a saturn emulator for Horizon? That would be my dream. I love PS2 but I have a PS3 and a PS2 for those games (I know not portable, but still) I'd rather have a saturn emulator on my main switch screen.

 

[Captain_N]

A ps2 emulator is gonna have to be written 100% from scratch to get any optimization on the switch. too much overhead ruing Linux then running an emulator.

 

[uyjulian]

A ps2 emulator is gonna have to be written 100% from scratch to get any optimization on the switch. too much overhead ruing Linux then running an emulator.

No, because Switch uses Nvidia GPU and ARM64 processor like the Jetson Nano and Shield TV.

When more optimizations of ARM64 recompiler and GS are added, all platforms will benefit. We're 1/6th of the way there