Hacking vita playing PC games

[Foxi4]

really? you think the most a quad core processor that is capable of running anywhere from 800mhz to 2ghz per core will only be able to emulate a Windows 95 game that maxes out at around 133mhz? Not to even mention the GPU which is about 1000 times more powerful than anything ever conceptualized during the Windows 95 days. Wow, that just baffles me how you could say something so ignorant! The fact is you have no idea if or when it will be possible.

The Vita does not have a quad-core processor clocked 800mhz to 2ghz per core.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A9_MPCore

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

You do know that the specific architecture of a processor matters far, far more than clock speed and number of cores, right? And that running a program compiled for one ISA on another--in this case, running an x86 program on an ARM processor--requires substantially more processing power than would be required to run it natively?
There is a reason compatibility layers like Wine are only available for x86-compatible processors and that we don't have PS3 emulators.

Of course I realize this, my point is there's more potential than raulpica was leading on. I don't know what you're rambling on about the PS3 for because that has a high powered PowerPC processor, not an ARM. The Nintendo Wii also has an albeit lower end PowerPC processor yet there are a ton of emulators for that. Please get your facts right before trying to challenge someone. Check out this: http://www.windowsfo...ws/TI-OMAP4470/

Also check out this video for a little actual ARM processors running windows systems:
[yt]HCREv-RDSBM[/yt]

 

[Rydian]

On the one hand I should have gone the route of pointing out it's not the same as PC specs.

But on the other hand... I think in all of history no portables have been released with the core chipset at stock speeds on the first model (see the PSP, DS, GBA, etc), so I can be lazy and say I'm right anyways since I'm talking about the Vita's implementation particularly.

I'll go with lazy.

---

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

The Nintendo Wii also has an albeit lower end PowerPC processor yet there are a ton of emulators for that.

ONE emulator for the Wii that currently runs commercial stuff, and it's for the PC, no handhelds.
Virtualization is not the same as emulation.

First off I was referring to Advi's claims about the PS3, secondly I was referring to emulation of consoles, etc on the Wii, not emulation of the Wii itself.
Who said anything about virtualization? the video I posted said there was "No Virtualization" going on.

Also yes the PS Vita's processor is a Quad Core....taken from Wikipedia "Internally, the device features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor"

 

[Advi]

You do know that the specific architecture of a processor matters far, far more than clock speed and number of cores, right? And that running a program compiled for one ISA on another--in this case, running an x86 program on an ARM processor--requires substantially more processing power than would be required to run it natively?
There is a reason compatibility layers like Wine are only available for x86-compatible processors and that we don't have PS3 emulators.

Of course I realize this, my point is there's more potential than raulpica was leading on. I don't know what you're rambling on about the PS3 for because that has a high powered PowerPC processor, not an ARM. The Nintendo Wii also has an albeit lower end PowerPC processor yet there are a ton of emulators for that. Please get your facts right before trying to challenge someone. Check out this: http://www.windowsfo...ws/TI-OMAP4470/

Also check out this video for a little actual ARM processors running windows systems:
[yt][media]v=HCREv-RDSBM[/media][/yt]

I'm pretty sure it will take a LOT more power to emulate a Super Nintendo game than a modern Windows game--ever heard of Moore's Law? A lot of games require specifications that still greatly exceed the resources of a PS Vita, and that is just to run the game natively, without any emulation or compatibility layers. Traditional personal computers are extremely more powerful than consoles.

Also, that ARM processor is only designed to run the Windows operating system. Microsoft is officially porting Windows 8 to ARM-compatible hardware. It will not run older Windows software compiled and optimized for x86 processors without compatibity layers, which will utterly kill the performance if said programs require a lot of resources, especially video games.

 

[raulpica]

Won't ever ever happen.

The max you'll be able to run will be Win95 games at BEST with a highly optimized emulator. Don't think of anything made after 2003.

really? you think the most a quad core processor that is capable of running anywhere from 800mhz to 2ghz per core will only be able to emulate a Windows 95 game that maxes out at around 133mhz? Not to even mention the GPU which is about 1000 times more powerful than anything ever conceptualized during the Windows 95 days. Wow, that just baffles me how you could say something so ignorant! The fact is you have no idea if or when it will be possible.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MzPDHd2soU[/youtube]

0:53 to 1:05 for a little tasting.

The Galaxy S2 is a dual-core, has the same architecture (A9) and also has a quad-core GPU.

But HEY, I'M SO IGNORANT! So who cares for actually knowing my **** before posting stuff, I don't know jack anyways.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

I'm pretty sure it will take a LOT more power to emulate a Super Nintendo game than a modern Windows game--ever heard of Moore's Law? A lot of games require specifications that still greatly exceed the resources of a PS Vita, and that is just to run the game natively, without any emulation or compatibility layers. Traditional personal computers are extremely more powerful than consoles.

Also, that ARM processor is only designed to run the Windows operating system. Microsoft is officially porting Windows 8 to ARM-compatible hardware. It will not run older Windows software compiled and optimized for x86 processors without compatibity layers, which will utterly kill the performance if said programs require a lot of resources, especially video games.

Ha ha, funny guy! Did I ever claim it would run "Modern PC Games"? I did not, I simply stated that there is a lot more potential than that of your claims.
Also believe it or not, it won't be too big of a leap to run x86 applications on an ARM processor. In fact it's already being done, you realize there's a piece of homebrew for the DS called DSx86 that emulates DOS games on a 67mhz ARM processor right? What makes you think that an at least 800mhz ARM9 Quad Core processor couldn't run at least a game made to run on a 400mhz Pentium 3 chip?

0:53 to 1:05 for a little tasting.

The Galaxy S2 is a dual-core, has the same architecture (A9) and also has a quad-core GPU.

But HEY, I'M SO IGNORANT! So who cares for actually knowing my **** before posting stuff, I don't know jack anyways.

And what's your point about the Galaxy S2? A Phone with a generation behind what's in the Vita, no comparable graphics chip and probably a whole lot of other crap running in the background....not to mention no one said it has to be running windows to run windows games, hence less processing power needed. Good job though trying to make your point, good luck with that!

 

[raulpica]

DSx86 is a true marvel of programming, entirely written in Assembly. Don't expect another dev to step up doing that for ARMv7 CPUs, since they're radically different (and more difficult) than ARMv4 CPUs.

Also, while writing a 486 dynarec in assembly is somehow a feasible thing, writing that for a Pentium 1+ is hell, since it's a lot more complex.

Refer to the Vid above for P1+ performance levels.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

DSx86 is a true marvel of programming, entirely written in Assembly. Don't expect another dev to step up doing that for ARMv7 CPUs, since they're radically different (and more difficult) than ARMv4 CPUs.

Also, while writing a 486 dynarec in assembly is somehow a feasible thing, writing that for a Pentium 1+ is hell, since it's a lot more complex.

Refer to the Vid above for P1+ performance levels.

Just because you believe it cannot be done doesn't make it true. You can have your opinions but don't expect the world to take them as a credible source of information.

 

[Advi]

I'm pretty sure it will take a LOT more power to emulate a Super Nintendo game than a modern Windows game--ever heard of Moore's Law? A lot of games require specifications that still greatly exceed the resources of a PS Vita, and that is just to run the game natively, without any emulation or compatibility layers. Traditional personal computers are extremely more powerful than consoles.

Also, that ARM processor is only designed to run the Windows operating system. Microsoft is officially porting Windows 8 to ARM-compatible hardware. It will not run older Windows software compiled and optimized for x86 processors without compatibity layers, which will utterly kill the performance if said programs require a lot of resources, especially video games.

Ha ha, funny guy! Did I ever claim it would run "Modern PC Games"? I did not, I simply stated that there is a lot more potential than that of your claims.
Also believe it or not, it won't be too big of a leap to run x86 applications on an ARM processor. In fact it's already being done, you realize there's a piece of homebrew for the DS called DSx86 that emulates DOS games on a 67mhz ARM processor right? What makes you think that an at least 800mhz ARM9 Quad Core processor couldn't run at least a game made to run on a 400mhz Pentium 3 chip?

The original poster certainly did, citing Killing Floor as an example.
Of course the Vita would possibly be able to run games for MS-DOS and early Windows versions, which are so old that full-performance emulation is possible with completely portable code. The original PSP even has a DOSBox port.

 

[raulpica]

DSx86 is a true marvel of programming, entirely written in Assembly. Don't expect another dev to step up doing that for ARMv7 CPUs, since they're radically different (and more difficult) than ARMv4 CPUs.

Also, while writing a 486 dynarec in assembly is somehow a feasible thing, writing that for a Pentium 1+ is hell, since it's a lot more complex.

Refer to the Vid above for P1+ performance levels.

Just because you believe it cannot be done doesn't make it true. You can have your opinions but don't expect the world to take them as a credible source of information.

Yeah sure, let's call blatant proof "my opinions". I've posted a vid which shows what you want, with abysmal results.

You're talking of utopistical projects of super-emulators written by uber-skillful coders which tap into the maximum theoretical capabilities of the system.

Guess what? You won't get any of that. You'll just get a sloppily ported version of Dosbox/Bochs, and that's it. That's called "common sense", but hey, your call.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

I'm pretty sure it will take a LOT more power to emulate a Super Nintendo game than a modern Windows game--ever heard of Moore's Law? A lot of games require specifications that still greatly exceed the resources of a PS Vita, and that is just to run the game natively, without any emulation or compatibility layers. Traditional personal computers are extremely more powerful than consoles.

Also, that ARM processor is only designed to run the Windows operating system. Microsoft is officially porting Windows 8 to ARM-compatible hardware. It will not run older Windows software compiled and optimized for x86 processors without compatibity layers, which will utterly kill the performance if said programs require a lot of resources, especially video games.

Ha ha, funny guy! Did I ever claim it would run "Modern PC Games"? I did not, I simply stated that there is a lot more potential than that of your claims.
Also believe it or not, it won't be too big of a leap to run x86 applications on an ARM processor. In fact it's already being done, you realize there's a piece of homebrew for the DS called DSx86 that emulates DOS games on a 67mhz ARM processor right? What makes you think that an at least 800mhz ARM9 Quad Core processor couldn't run at least a game made to run on a 400mhz Pentium 3 chip?

The original poster certainly did, citing Killing Floor as an example.
Of course the Vita would possibly be able to run games for MS-DOS and early Windows versions, which are so old that full-performance emulation is possible with completely portable code. The original PSP even has a DOSBox port.

While I wouldn't classify a 3 year old game with a minimum 1.2ghz processor and 64mb graphics requirement that's based on a 7 year old game engine a "modern game" , maybe it will not be possible to play something like that on the Vita, what I was saying is that the Vita is plenty capable of running PC games beyond that of a Windows 95 machine.

Yeah sure, let's call blatant proof "my opinions". I've posted a vid which shows what you want, with abysmal results.

You're talking of utopistical projects of super-emulators written by uber-skillful coders which tap into the maximum theoretical capabilities of the system.

Guess what? You won't get any of that. You'll just get a sloppily ported version of Dosbox/Bochs, and that's it. That's called "common sense", but hey, your call.

Like I have explained previously, just because you don't believe it will ever come to pass does not make it true. There may very well be an excellent coder out there working on something as we speak. You're also probably the same guy who didn't believe DSx86 would have come to fruition.

You showing me a video of a Smart phone trying to run a Windows XP with a poorly coded emulator doesn't prove anything you've said, you're trying to compare something that doesn't currently exist to something that does.

CHECK IT OUT GUYS: "On March 24, 2011, Ubisoft Montreal revealed that UE2.5 was successfully running on the Nintendo 3DS.[8]"
THE SAME ENGINE THAT KILLING FLOOR IS A MODIFICATION OF! Now tell my why the Vita couldn't handle something the 3DS can?

 

[BORTZ]

Originally i was going to come in here and say "No that wont happen"
Then i started reading the arguments. I was going to say, "Lets all remember that an ARM processor is nothing like a full blown CPU/ GPU that a computer might have"
But now the conversation has gone way too deep for me so now i have no idea whats going on.

 

[Rydian]

Who said anything about virtualization? the video I posted said there was "No Virtualization" going on.

My bad, the video wasn't loading properly so I thought it was virtualization, and not showing off Windows on ARM stuff.

As pointed out, Windows on ARM won't run older windows software.

Also yes the PS Vita's processor is a Quad Core....taken from Wikipedia "Internally, the device features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor"

As pointed out that's not nearly as powerful as a desktop processor, and only 3 cores are usable by programs and we don't know the clock speed anyways. Remember that even though the PSP's CPU model was clocked at 333mhz stock, 222mhz was how it was run for the majority of it's life.

 

[Originality]

A handheld gaming console (or mobile device, if you like to think that way) playing PC games? An ARM CPU running x86 code? A 1.2Ghz (wild guess) tri-core CPU running a 2Ghz+ dual-core (just using the most common spec req for semi-modern games) game?

Am I the only one who finds this just a lil bit fundamentally flawed? Even before getting into the nitty gritty about opposing CPU architectures and how the speed/cores of one CPU does not correlate to that of another (AMD vs Intel jab here), and how emulation requires a lot more power than gamers think it should (N64 reference here); PC games are designed for PCs (you know, with big monitors and keyboard and mouse) and handheld games are designed for small handheld devices (with tiny screen/s and buttons).

EDIT: Ports take time and effort because it's not that easy to resolve the above differences.

 

[raulpica]

Like I have explained previously, just because you don't believe it will ever come to pass does not make it true. There may very well be an excellent coder out there working on something as we speak. You're also probably the same guy who didn't believe DSx86 would have come to fruition.

You showing me a video of a Smart phone trying to run a Windows XP with a poorly coded emulator doesn't prove anything you've said, you're trying to compare something that doesn't currently exist to something that does.

CHECK IT OUT GUYS: "On March 24, 2011, Ubisoft Montreal revealed that UE2.5 was successfully running on the Nintendo 3DS.[8]"
THE SAME ENGINE THAT KILLING FLOOR IS A MODIFICATION OF! Now tell my why the Vita couldn't handle something the 3DS can?

If you knew something about programming, you'd have realized it ages ago. And other people in this thread are saying the same too, but whatever. I was certain that something that DSx86 was feasible because of its inherent limits (it's just a 286/386) and wonderful quality of the coding. ASM is the key, google it.

Ok, let's try it again: The newer it gets, the harder (and slower) the emulation gets. Expect full-speed 486 emulation on the Vita, and also Win3.1 in a decent degree. I hope you understand it now.
My E8400 (3,0Ghz dual-core) runs Win95 in Dosbox with abysmal results. And Dosbox for the PC is an emulator in development since YEARS. Not even counting the brute power of my CPU, which FAR surpasses a measly tri-core ARM Cortex-A9.

Ports are feasible, but you need the source code. The news you're talking about has a specifically engineered version for the 3DS.
Yes the 3DS can run Killing Floor. Yes, the Vita can do it even better than the 3DS.

BUT NOT THRU EMULATION. IT NEEDS TO BE REPGROGRAMMED FOR THE PLATFORM. PERIOD.

If the original devs make a Vita version of it, it'll run majestically. Now please... please. Don't ever mix up emulation and ports ever again. Thanks.

 

[Un4tural]

i believe there even was a port of windows on psp? i am no coding expert, but from experience, emulation don't work nearly as well as ported software(games at this occasion) on other platforms... even on PCs look at performance difference between games (nvidia vs. ati cards) drivers play a big role plus game's code... it is way easier to code for a console as programmers don't need to account for nearly countless configurations of hardware...

Dolphin the WII emulator runs well enough on modern PCs, i got a netbook(to be fair it is fairly performance oriented m11x but okay...) and it runs dolphin fine but even with a lot of brute force(big big scores on benchmarks) you still get frame drops and performance drops, because it is emulated, and it cannot ever be perfect(in theory could, not really plausible) AS IT IS RUNNING CODE NOT MEANT TO BE RAN ON THAT PLATFORM. (also these days E8400 isn't "brute power" my netbook's 2537M does better at benchmarks. just sayin')

Seeing how PSvita has remote play (again it is crap, tried it, it has noticeable lag in the menus even on my home network. i might be picky) IF vita gets hacked AND gets CFW AND someone makes software for PC to make use of VITA's remote play functionality, you could use that to run whatever you'd like.

Other than that, no one could say how much Vita will be able to run, if it gets hacked properly and gets a port of windows, it could probably handle windows 7 even though it would be mostly useless, also most games, even if windows 98 or w/e ran on the vita likely wouldn't recognize the hardware of it, so most games would need "patches" or other things.

It is possible in theory, emulate with poor performance or run it on vita if it gets fully hacked etc. however, it will be very time consuming and difficult task to do that...


Anyways hate posts like this. always makes me blab. bottom line is emulating windows games will result in crap performance, running windows on the vita and running games under windows on vita wouldn't work as games wouldn't recognize the hardware, even if they did, running windows+games... i don't think so...

sorry for all the blasphemy i might have written, theres probably a fair bit that can be argued to be void. cheers.

 

[raulpica]

(also these days E8400 isn't "brute power" my netbook's 2537M does better at benchmarks. just sayin')

I know, my PC is almost 4 years old now. It's still a lot stronger than a Cortex-A9.

Seeing how PSvita has remote play (again it is crap, tried it, it has noticeable lag in the menus even on my home network. i might be picky) IF vita gets hacked AND gets CFW AND someone makes software for PC to make use of VITA's remote play functionality, you could use that to run whatever you'd like.

Remote play is just video and controls streaming. The software is still running on the PC, and the Vita's CPU is actually doing nothing. Even the DS can do that. Since that's the case, you would be better sitting in front of your PC.

Other than that, no one could say how much Vita will be able to run, if it gets hacked properly and gets a port of windows, it could probably handle windows 7 even though it would be mostly useless, also most games, even if windows 98 or w/e ran on the vita likely wouldn't recognize the hardware of it, so most games would need "patches" or other things.

Well, sure, the Vita hasn't been hacked yet, but lots of Smartphones and tablets out there sport the same CPU architecture, so results are pretty much comparable with that.

There won't EVER be a port of Windows, since there's no source of it. That's why there are emulators. To take care of the hardware dissimilarities, with drivers and stuff. That is what makes emulation a lot more demanding than the console itself. No patches needed, Windows is made to run on x86 architecture, and it won't ever run on ARM architecture without emulation.

It is possible in theory, emulate with poor performance or run it on vita if it gets fully hacked etc. however, it will be very time consuming and difficult task to do that...


Anyways hate posts like this. always makes me blab. bottom line is emulating windows games will result in crap performance, running windows on the vita and running games under windows on vita wouldn't work as games wouldn't recognize the hardware, even if they did, running windows+games... i don't think so...

sorry for all the blasphemy i might have written, theres probably a fair bit that can be argued to be void. cheers.

Emulation is the only thing that is doable on the Vita, as I've already explained, running Windows on the Vita isn't possible. It's like sticking a SNES game into a NES and asking it to run it

 

[Originality]

Wasn't Windows 8 supposed to support ARM natively?
I stand corrected.

 

[Rydian]

Windows 8 and Windows On ARM are two separate products.