Homebrew Is a N64 emulator possible?

[GazaIan]

You're still at it with obsolete measurements? You realize the 3DS crushes the PSP? And the Xbox One has a 1.7Ghz CPU as opposed to the 360's 3.2Ghz CPU? Would you say the 360 is stronger than the One?

I don't think that was the point of his comment at all. I'm pretty sure he's saying that cross compatibility between CPU architectures is a nightmare to get working perfectly. The PSP was a super weak console, yet did a pretty phenomenal job at running an N64 emulator (Daedalus X64 on PSP was amazing). Part of this was because both systems used a MIPS based processor, which makes the job a lot easier. The PSP is probably among the weakest hardware ever to receive an amazingly functional PSP port. The same can't be said for other processor architectures. For example, emulating MIPS based stuff on an ARM processor is very, very hard. Just take a look at PPSSPP. They emulate the PSP, but you still need a pretty damn hefty phone to get it running well, and the emulator has been in the making for well over two years now. 4th generation Snapdragon processors with the Adreno 320 can pull off amazing graphics for apps that were written for it, but struggles to run PPSSPP at a decent speed. x86 doesn't suffer from this, because x86/64 CPUs are based on black magic where everything just runs perfect for no good reason. Yet as powerful as ARM CPUs are, even the most powerful are far from perfect from emulating MIPS correctly. To add to that, N64 emulators have been available for ARM processors much longer than PPSSPP has, and they are by far among the buggiest emulators ever, not because devs suck, but because it's not easy to get it right. Like some other guy said, there has never been any fully accurate emulator for a console, and the most accurate one is a SNES emulator that is pretty intense on resources.

Now back to the 3DS. We're talking about a pretty low power, low clocked ARM11/ARM9 CPU here, trying to emulate something as hefty as the N64. It's not impossible, but it's more than likely not even worth it. Maybe a PoC just to say hey, we did it, but at the end of the day you'd probably be better off getting another device to emulate N64 titles.

 

[JazzCat.CL]

I think that gaming other consoles games at a 3ds is pretty neat and makes you love more your 3ds. Scene is a pretty neat thing too, you start to build your own arcade system on a 3ds and you can do a plenty of stuff. Gaming at a tablet or smartphone is pretty dumb and i don't like it that much. And c'mon the 3ds scene is going to be big as the psp one, that's going to be amazing!

 

[Sizednochi]

and the most accurate one is a SNES emulator that is pretty intense on resources.

puNES is also pretty damn close to NES perfection. Like 97% or something. But yeah, NES and all that.

 

[Oxybelis]

Ugh. There should be sticky thread fo this.
There won't be a usable fullspeed emulator for 3DS ever.

 

[MyJoyConRunsHot]

I don't think that was the point of his comment at all. I'm pretty sure he's saying that cross compatibility between CPU architectures is a nightmare to get working perfectly. The PSP was a super weak console, yet did a pretty phenomenal job at running an N64 emulator (Daedalus X64 on PSP was amazing). Part of this was because both systems used a MIPS based processor, which makes the job a lot easier. The PSP is probably among the weakest hardware ever to receive an amazingly functional PSP port. The same can't be said for other processor architectures. For example, emulating MIPS based stuff on an ARM processor is very, very hard. Just take a look at PPSSPP. They emulate the PSP, but you still need a pretty damn hefty phone to get it running well, and the emulator has been in the making for well over two years now. 4th generation Snapdragon processors with the Adreno 320 can pull off amazing graphics for apps that were written for it, but struggles to run PPSSPP at a decent speed. x86 doesn't suffer from this, because x86/64 CPUs are based on black magic where everything just runs perfect for no good reason. Yet as powerful as ARM CPUs are, even the most powerful are far from perfect from emulating MIPS correctly. To add to that, N64 emulators have been available for ARM processors much longer than PPSSPP has, and they are by far among the buggiest emulators ever, not because devs suck, but because it's not easy to get it right. Like some other guy said, there has never been any fully accurate emulator for a console, and the most accurate one is a SNES emulator that is pretty intense on resources.

No, he was referring to clockspeed as the be all end all unit of measurement. It doesn't matter what context you use it in, unless its the same family CPU, clockspeed will tell you very little about where two processors stand.

Now back to the 3DS. We're talking about a pretty low power, low clocked ARM11/ARM9 CPU here, trying to emulate something as hefty as the N64. It's not impossible, but it's more than likely not even worth it. Maybe a PoC just to say hey, we did it, but at the end of the day you'd probably be better off getting another device to emulate N64 titles.

Maybe in 2035 when we finally get kernel access. Then maybe we can consider attempting such a thing.

 

[garrlker]

You're still at it with obsolete measurements? You realize the 3DS crushes the PSP? And the Xbox One has a 1.7Ghz CPU as opposed to the 360's 3.2Ghz CPU? Would you say the 360 is stronger than the One?

Actually, there wasn't a huge IPC boost between cpus and the xbox one's cpu is clocked a good portion lower than the 360's and since a lot of emulators can't effectively use more than 2-3 cores they
might run at a similar performance level on the 360, possibly even better, although it would be close.