PS2 Emu on Pi3 possible?
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@andrefgj said in PS2 Emu on Pi3 possible?:
What about it?
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Playstation-2
Did anybody manage to enable it in Pi3?
Don't believe @BuZz on this one he's lying meanwhile he's playing PS2 games on his Raspberry! Just kidding, even the average PC will have a rough time running PS2 emulation. I have a gaming PC and I tried some PS2 roms, the emulator runs them but not perfect. Some games are laggy as a snail.
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How about the Asus Tinker Board? That one us supposedly 2 times stronger than RPi3.
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If it did, it wouldn't run it at full speed. The Asus Tinker Board has:
- CPU: Rockchip RK3288 - Quad core 1,8 GHz ARM Cortex-A17 (32-bit)
- GPU: Mali-T764 GPU
- RAM: 2GB two channel LPDDR3
The system requirements from the PCSX2 Website are:
Minimum (most games will be unplayable slow)
Windows/Linux OS
CPU: Any that supports SSE2 (Pentium 4 and up, Athlon64 and up)
GPU: Any that supports Pixel Shader model 2.0, except Nvidia FX series (broken SM2.0, too slow anyway)
512MB RAM (note Vista needs at least 2GB to run reliably)Recommended
Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32bit or 64bit) with the latest DirectX
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3.2 GHz or better OR i3/i5/i7 @ 2,8 GHz or better OR AMD Phenom II @ 3,2 GHz or better
GPU: 8800gt or better (for Direct3D10 support)
RAM: 1GB on Linux/Windows XP, 2GB or more on Vista / Windows 7Warning:Because of the nature of emulation, even if you meet the recommended requirements there will be games that will NOT run at full speed, due to emulation bugs or other limitations. -
@mediamogul
Yeah, i know the system reqs, but those are x86/x64 reqs, not ARM. Thats why i thought that the Asus board might be capable of running it far better than RPi3, since its specs are double that of RPi3. -
It'll run it just about as well as Toonces can drive a car; not very well. ;)
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pcsx2 doesn't run on ARM at all. look into the "play!" emulator http://purei.org/about.php
(i don't think it works anywhere near as well as pcsx2 yet but it "works" on ARM i guess)
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Looks like development has already slowed down as well. Not a good sign for a closed source project. Whenever it becomes a possibility, versatile PS2 emulation will be a huge boon. As far as home consoles go, that system arguably has the strongest library of games per total volume of anything before or even after.
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guess ps2 emulation will stay on my desktop for now, runs flawlessly there...
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It'll happen for mobile eventually. Of course by that time people will be more concerned about why they can't run PS4, but the wheel does keep turning.
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@mediamogul said in PS2 Emu on Pi3 possible?:
Looks like development has already slowed down as well. Not a good sign for a closed source project. Whenever it becomes a possibility, versatile PS2 emulation will be a huge boon. As far as home consoles go, that system arguably has the strongest library of games per total volume of anything before or even after.
Hey look at the bright side. It's further along than Xbox emulation.
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I could be wrong but im pretty sure you can do this on the UDOO. It is built on the x86 architecture and has multiple times the processing power. The lightest version is about $100 and it has built in memory as well as the sd card and has a boot management interface so you could install multiple OSs using bootable USBs. You could install retropie on the SD and windows on the bootable USB and run a PS2 emulator and still have the built in memory to work with for anything additional.
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@d2klein I do this about once a year..guess it had been a year xD
Emulation in a nutshell:
To emulate higher end games it takes a higher end PC. That is obvious right? Not so much when it comes to emulation. When you emulate something you make something think it is something else (in this case). In order to do this software is created to emulate hardware*. Thus your PC (or Pi of phone or tablet..whatever) now thinks it has the hardware of a say Sega Megadrive. And because of this you can load software (the cartridge, CD ect. ) and play the game.
Software and hardware work and in hand. Hardware is useless without software..(sega megadrive paper weight anyone?) but hardware what are you gonna run the software on?
So an emulator creates a "virtual sega megadrive (using software) to build the hardware environment do the game itself can run correctly. This is all created in RAM on the fly and uses the CPU to run it. I don't care how big your graphics card is. For emulation it is (almost) useless. One reason being is because the systems did not have dedicated graphics card in the system to begin with! Much like the Raspberry PI they shared the CPU to run graphics AND the CPU.
So if you have a one RISC based (yes most on these were RISC based like the pi!) doing two jobs..well you are killing the poor little guy! The cpu had to share the RAM as well..soooo you really don't have the space you need to cram all that info into ram now (again much like the raspberry pi!)
So the solution was to make a dedicated GPU to run along side the CPU and throw more RAM at it (i.e. the PC Engine..which by the way outsold the NES in japan..so i hear.. shrugs). Okay but what does that mean to me..I mean after all I have a I5 with 128GB of DDR4 ram!...well good for you. I could care less..because eventually you WILL run out of ram.
The more hardware you have to emulate the more you fill your ram up and the more your CPU has to churn out...if your RAM is full well you're out of luck PERIOD. See you can run pac-man easy..because there are few chips that need to be loaded and they are small at that.so they take up less room in ram and less hardware your CPU has to run and emulate..but let's take Killer Instinct for example. You are NOT going to run that on a 486 400Mhz CPU with 64MB of (PC-133?)..how do I know this? Because I have a still working 400MHz with 64MB of RAM in it. an I could NOT run Killer Instinct on it at all. I could however run a stand alone emulator made just to run the game and it would run near perfect.
Why? Because to code an emulator for ONE game takes a lot less code..thus a smaller file..thus takes less space in ram..which equals more space for run my game! Simple right?..not really. If you REALLY want to get performance out of the PI you can create and emulator for each game..anyone want to do that?
Now I COULD run KI on a slower computer with a special version on mame..it was called fastmame and it worked surprisingly well. I couldn't run Mortal Kombat on that machine using normal mame..but i could using fastmame (at full speed I might add). And as far as I know it was compiled with a different compiler.that was it..and you got that much more performance out if it...beats me.
How does this have anything to do with the PI..everything. The PI is not made to be fast. A 8086 CPU (or intel / AMD) is made to be FAST and crunch instructions..and it generates a TON of heat and if not properly ventilated to stay cool..WILL die..and FAST! An ARM based CPU which is what the PI is built on is called a Reduced Instruction Set Chip or RISC. It in not made to be fast..it is made to be COOL thus not needing a fan. How would you like it if you had to deal with fan noise coming out of your DVD player..or your cable set top box..or even your smart phone?...get my point?
So all that being said and I know psx2 in on the wiki.but that is for a PC..it even says it on the wiki. You will not EVER get a PSX2 to run on a PI 3 or even a pi4 (when it comes out) I am sure. Why because you have to emulate all the CPUs in that beast! You have a CPU @ 300 MHz, a GPU@150 MHz and a SPU Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1. That is three beefy chips you have to emulate! The CPU is 300Mhz alone! And the PI is and equivalent of a 400Mhz 8086 CPU..that will KILL the pi alone! compare that to the two chip CPU @ 33.8688 MHz and SPU Sound 16-bit, 24 channel ADPCM (notice no dedicated GPU there.)
"But wait!" you cry. if the PS2 was a RISC based cpu running at 300MHz I have a quad care 1.4GHz CPU so you are full of it!" Again WRONG. Most of the chips made were made for the system PERIOD. Thus this chip can not run anything BUT ps2 software (and the software was built for it..so without it..). So you STILL have to emulate all the chips again that takes up room in RAM.the PI only has one (1) GB of ram to work with..and it is shared between the CPU and GPU..so at BEST you have 512MB RAM...but that is not true either..because part of that ram is running
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- The operating system
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- Emulation station
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- THEN it runs your emulator
So you give more ram to the CPU because as I said above you really don't need a GPU but even then you DO NOT have enough ram. That is is cut and dry. Now IF we are lucky with the PI4 we might get more ram (two gigs PLEASE!) and we might get faster ram (the PI uses DDR ram would be nice to have DDR3 ram..faster RAM= better emulation..even at the same size. One GB of DDR3 ram would give better performance that a one GB of DDR ram.))
Last thing is..well see most of the authors for emulators do not have the EXACT specs or code that will help them run the emulators better..that is a guarded company secret. If they could get their hand on the devkits or "raw code" well they MIGHT be able to make a better emulator. This is what Nintendo did with the NES and SNES minis (yes they are emulators that run roms..(and yes a raspberry pi2) shock and surprise) but because they have access to the "raw code" and hardware well the emulator is (or should be) more stable and accurate.
Now with all THAT being said. you have to remember the PI was not made to be a game machine..it was made for learning and for schools..and made cheap (in cost) so that it could be affordable. If you want to game on a single board computer..be my guest get another board..there are MANY out there and some with better performance than the Rasp PI but you'll pay for it too.
Emulators are short of a miracle they work at all..and the people that make them are wizards for sure! THANK YOU! to ANYONE that has EVER written a working emulator! bows humbly
Disclamer : this was not made in anyway to be technical or correct or accurate it was made to teach basically in a way that people could understand how emulation works without getting into the details..because most don't care about that anyway xD
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