Downloadable PS1 games and backwards compatibility

[eloic]

Hi,

There's a (maybe stupid) question bo-bo-bouncing in my mind. If the current PS3 models aren't backwards compatible but you can play some PS1 games on them if you download them through PSN, does this mean that the whole game is re-coded (ported) to the PS3? Or... they run through some kind of built-in emulator from the game?

Moreover, what do you think is the true reason of removing backwards compatibility? Is it, just, to force gamers to download PS1 or even PS2 titles from PSN instead of playing their own physical copies?

'Argh'. The end.

 

[idsn6]

PS1 games are backwards compatible.
PS2 games are not.

 

[eloic]

PS1 games are backwards compatible.
PS2 games are not.

Wow, I dramatically, totally, epically FAILED.

Hm, however, the same question goes with PS2 games, if they release PS2 games through PSN. Do you actually know some PS2 games that have been released in PSN? Do you expect some to come?

 

[milan616]

Wow, I dramatically, totally, epically FAILED.

Hm, however, the same question goes with PS2 games, if they release PS2 games through PSN. Do you actually know some PS2 games that have been released in PSN? Do you expect some to come?

It would be very difficult to support PS2 games on PS3 if they made heavy use of the EDRAM on the PS2. Its a very unique piece of hardware that the general memory systems on the PS3 would have trouble matching for bandwidth, though obviously not size. Emulating the other PS2 hardware on the PS3 wouldn't be as difficult.

The same problem will fall to Microsoft on the Xbox "720" when it comes to the new hardware design. EDRAM provides some pretty awesome benefits, and some disappointing side effects (depending on implementation of course!). If Microsoft chooses not to have EDRAM the next time around, backward compatibility for 360 games might have to be chucked as well.

 

[eloic]

The same problem will fall to Microsoft on the Xbox "720" when it comes to the new hardware design. EDRAM provides some pretty awesome benefits, and some disappointing side effects (depending on implementation of course!). If Microsoft chooses not to have EDRAM the next time around, backward compatibility for 360 games might have to be chucked as well.

Off-topic, but... which would be the reason to remove EDRAM in a next generation console (in this case Microsoft)? Pros and cons?

 

[milan616]

Its not a very high cost, but the process technology it uses doesn't work very well with other chip processes, so it ends up being a daughter die. It can also narrow the options available to developers in terms of how they design their graphics engines. Also, developers used to traditional forward rendering haven't been as able to extract the benefits of Microsoft's EDRAM+logic. Going forward this won't be as big an issue though, as they're figuring it out pretty well now.

What benefits does it provide? Massive amounts of bandwidth for very particular operations. Anti-aliasing and particle effects are the only two I know off the top of my head. The real graphics guys can tell you more, I'm just an interested observer!

 

[eloic]

Its not a very high cost, but the process technology it uses doesn't work very well with other chip processes, so it ends up being a daughter die. It can also narrow the options available to developers in terms of how they design their graphics engines. Also, developers used to traditional forward rendering haven't been as able to extract the benefits of Microsoft's EDRAM+logic. Going forward this won't be as big an issue though, as they're figuring it out pretty well now.

What benefits does it provide? Massive amounts of bandwidth for very particular operations. Anti-aliasing and particle effects are the only two I know off the top of my head. The real graphics guys can tell you more, I'm just an interested observer!

Thank you for your reply.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

PS1 is emulated, not true BC. There are no software PS2 emulation downloads. Any PS2 titles being distributed on PSN (are there any?) will only run on the PS3's that include PS2 hardware.

 

[eloic]

PS1 is emulated, not true BC. There are no software PS2 emulation downloads. Any PS2 titles being distributed on PSN (are there any?) will only run on the PS3's that include PS2 hardware.

Thank you, too.

 

[Akumajou]

PS1 is emulated, not true BC. There are no software PS2 emulation downloads. Any PS2 titles being distributed on PSN (are there any?) will only run on the PS3's that include PS2 hardware.

There is currently no such thing as downloadable PS2 games on PSN.

 

[Blazkowicz]

there even was a short-lived PS1 emulator for the dreamcast, featuring higher res and filtering. the PS1 is pretty easy to emulate, requiring less CPU power than a SNES.

 

[I.S.T.]

requiring less CPU power than a SNES.

Wrong. The SNES requires very very little CPU if you run hacky emulation. People have gotten SNES emulation to work on 486s. i have never heard of a 486 running PSemu Pro or one of the other old PSX emulators.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I reliably emulated a sega megadrive on a 486SX, could actually play (there's hardly any hardware, a 68K and a Z80 and that's it for the most part).

The SNES is difficult. Perhaps you can display a simple Mario level at a quarter the framerate with no sound on a 486 DX4/120 (I had an early glimpse at this on my cyrix 6x86, but the emulator crashed right away).
I prefer a playable framerate with good quality sound, and all the good stuff done with the coprocessors (scaling, rotation mosaic effect..) plus the DSP-1 chip found on common cartdriges such as Mario Kart.
My celeron @562 struggled under zsnes or snes9x. It was pretty perfect under the latter with the 3dfx taking care of upscaling. (that eased the burden on the CPU)

 

[DRS]

Makes sense, if you could emulate the PS1's 3D acceleration with PC hardware, you wouldn't need much CPU. All the graphic commands are deferred to PC 3D HW. In addition, the SNES emulator mentioned, emulates all hardware by CPU. So I'm not suprised that a 486 struggles to handle it.

If you would emulate a PS1 using CPU only, it would be far worse than SNES.

 

[Arwin]

I reliably emulated a sega megadrive on a 486SX, could actually play (there's hardly any hardware, a 68K and a Z80 and that's it for the most part).

The SNES is difficult. Perhaps you can display a simple Mario level at a quarter the framerate with no sound on a 486 DX4/120 (I had an early glimpse at this on my cyrix 6x86, but the emulator crashed right away).
I prefer a playable framerate with good quality sound, and all the good stuff done with the coprocessors (scaling, rotation mosaic effect..) plus the DSP-1 chip found on common cartdriges such as Mario Kart.
My celeron @562 struggled under zsnes or snes9x. It was pretty perfect under the latter with the 3dfx taking care of upscaling. (that eased the burden on the CPU)

Yeah, it's pretty amazing that these days something like the PSP can handle snes9x almost flawlessly now. But then as Sony is showing the PSP is also very adept at emulating the PSOne.

PS2 though, the fact that emulation on high end PCs is only just starting to work for some games speaks volumes. The VRAM does indeed remain the problem here. I keep wondering whether it would be easier to write a PS2 emulator on the 360 (and vice versa, an Xbox1 emulator on the PS3 ) ...

 

[Blazkowicz]

not that I want to argwue endlessly.. but I believe a software renderer for PS1 is fairly cheap, especially if you stick to 320x240 point sampled with no perspective correction.
(Snes9x was actually, really using 3D hardware for 2D scaling of the SNES output, as an option)

snes9x on the PSP? is it using the vector unit to emulate the graphics coprocessor?
For PS2 we may wait for GT300-class performance. It IS coming with edram-like bandwith!

 

[grandmaster]

I'm fairly sure that full software PS2 emulation is being worked on, though it may only be deployed on a title-by-title basis.

 

[Boxercide]

I seem to remember a job posting by Sony last year for a programmer to work on backwards compatibility for "PS1 and PS2 games".

It wouldn't surprise me if they're trying to figure out a way to get PS2 compatibility into every PS3. think of the money they would rake in charging even $15-20 a pop for the most popular titles.
It surprises me that so few PS1 games are available on the PSN. Somebody has dropped the ball pretty badly in that area over at Sony.

 

[eloic]

I'm fairly sure that full software PS2 emulation is being worked on, though it may only be deployed on a title-by-title basis.

I seem to remember a job posting by Sony last year for a programmer to work on backwards compatibility for "PS1 and PS2 games".

It wouldn't surprise me if they're trying to figure out a way to get PS2 compatibility into every PS3. think of the money they would rake in charging even $15-20 a pop for the most popular titles.
It surprises me that so few PS1 games are available on the PSN. Somebody has dropped the ball pretty badly in that area over at Sony.

I guess that backwards compatibility/full PS2 emulation is being worked on, as well, especially if we take into account that Sony has a (surprise!) 'ten-year life cycle' for its PlayStation 3.

I suppose that they surely want to reintroduce that feature, sometime in the future.

 

[AzBat]

I guess that backwards compatibility/full PS2 emulation is being worked on, as well, especially if we take into account that Sony has a (surprise!) 'ten-year life cycle' for its PlayStation 3.

I suppose that they surely want to reintroduce that feature, sometime in the future.

How timely is this...

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/06/29/sony-patents-software-based-ps2-cpu-emulation/

Tommy McClain