PS2 Emu (allegedly)

[rampy]

skeptical... but passing it along... playstation 2 emulator (allegedly)  probably old news to most.

http://www.pcsx2.net/downloads.php

[ChadTower]

Well, if it requires XP to run AND is also reasonably emulating chips the speed of what is in the PS2, then it's going to need some serious, serious desktop hardware to run.  We're talking high end CPU and more RAM than a field of sheep.

[ften]

It works fairly decent, Although I'm sporting a pretty decent computer. AMD x2 4600+, Geforce 7800GS OC, and 3GBs of Ram.  I mostly just use it for Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and Street Fighters 3. When I had a 5600 Ultra I had to screw around a lot with the graphic settings to get it to run at a decent speed.


-FTen

[Howard_Casto]

It works just fine, the problem is that there isn't a pc fast enough to run it (other than some old 2d games). 

[boykster]

Time to go spend $2000 so I can upgrade my computer to run emulated games at full speed rather than on my $129 console....

 

[ChadTower]

It works just fine, the problem is that there isn't a pc fast enough to run it (other than some old 2d games). 

So how could you know it runs just fine?  Does the car not built go 400mph?

It could easily be full of stack overflows that you never see until it approaches the redline.

[Howard_Casto]

Well chad I think you just put your own foot in your mouth.

It does run just fine, I can run many games on it.... at 5 fps. 

This isn't a new emu, it has been out for two years, slowly becoming more useable.  Around 50% of the games on the ps2 are in a playable state, which is amazing compared to the progress of gamecube and xbox emus, but the processors available today simply aren't fast enough to actually play the games. 


Anyone else want me to spend half a paragraph re-explaining something that I already explained with a single line?   

[ChadTower]

Well chad I think you just put your own foot in your mouth.

It does run just fine, I can run many games on it.... at 5 fps. 

5 fps is not "just fine".  Something approaching full speed is "just fine".  All 5 fps does is prove my point precisely.  The job requires more horsepower than is currently available.

Ever spent a month working on an application that ran "just fine" only to see it fail dramatically during a performance test?  I have.  Quite a few times.

[Howard_Casto]

Maybe you don't understand how emulators work, but the ps2 had around a 500-700 mhz processor. 

It does run just fine, just like some of the 3d games run just fine in mame, but due to the requirements of an emulator to run such a powerful machine, a pc to run it properly doesn't exist yet.  I'm sure if you had a 4.5+ gig processor on you pc you could get a very playable 15 fps, but most people don't have that.

Run just fine = emulated properly.  Run just fine =! playable on the average pc.

You are arguing just to argue on this one.   

[ChadTower]

Maybe you don't understand how emulators work, but the ps2 had around a 500-700 mhz processor. 

It does run just fine, just like some of the 3d games run just fine in mame, but due to the requirements of an emulator to run such a powerful machine, a pc to run it properly doesn't exist yet.  I'm sure if you had a 4.5+ gig processor on you pc you could get a very playable 15 fps, but most people don't have that.

Run just fine = emulated properly.  Run just fine =! playable on the average pc.

You are arguing just to argue on this one.   

Not really... being someone with a decade of experience in such software, I am in a very strong position to know exactly what I'm talking about.

In software industry terms, when a piece of software cannot run at a speed sufficient to meet performance requirements, it is not fully functional.  Whether the reason his computing resources, actual software limitations, or alien zombies, the conclusion is the same:  it is not done.  Done is usable now.

Why?  You cannot prove it will work when given the appropriate horsepower.  Software is so complex, especially emulation given its multiple layers of abstraction, that it is a practical impossibility for a person to know for sure it won't pop stacks, develop memory leaks, or end up a victim of bugs in third party independent libraries (ahem Windows).  There are quite a few other things that can happen that you simply can't rule out without functional testing.  And since in this case you can't functionally test the software at full speed, it's not done.

Any software professional who tried to pass something like this off to their employer (or god forbid tried to sell it) as finished would not experience a very welcome reception.  They would be told one of two things:  1)  It's not finished, keep finding ways to improve benchmarks or 2)  It has proven nonviable at this time, do something else.

[rampy]

have either of you two downloaded/tried the latest build?

[ChadTower]

I have not, I have been going off the info in this thread.

Which probably makes me a dumbass.

[ften]

SF3 is sporting like 47-50 fps, very playable and decent speed. SF EX3 is about 23 to 27 FPS, it's playable but a little slow. The background is a little crazy.
If anyone has a game they would like me to test, just ask.

-FTen

[shmokes]

I'm going to venture a guess that when Howard says it works just fine, but current computers can't run it fast enough to make the games playable it's pretty safe to assume that "it" is referring to the emulator and "works just fine" means that it works properly.  Even if everything Chad says is true it seems like splitting hairs when the main point of Howard's post is that the emulator is currently useless.

[G@M3FR3@K]

I'm going to venture a guess that when Howard says it works just fine, but current computers can't run it fast enough to make the games playable it's pretty safe to assume that "it" is referring to the emulator and "works just fine" means that it works properly.  Even if everything Chad says is true it seems like splitting hairs when the main point of Howard's post is that the emulator is currently useless.

OMG!!! shmokes actually said (wrote) something that made sense! 

[elvis]

5 fps is not "just fine".  Something approaching full speed is "just fine".  All 5 fps does is prove my point precisely.  The job requires more horsepower than is currently available.

You'd make good upper management with those sorts of long-term thinking skills.

Plenty of games in MAME weren't playable 5 years ago.  A combination of better programming and exponentially increasing hardware means they are today.

The PS2 isn't dead.  Far from it.  Sony will support it officially for some time yet as a budget console (the PSOne was available up to 6 years into the life of the PS2!).

The fact that someone is working on a PS2 emulator *now* is a "goof thing" (tm).  Buy the time the PS2 is officially dead, this project will be in it's prime.

Furthermore, PS2s are utterly rubbish pieces of hardware.  I've still got my original Sega Master System, and I'm sure it's still got a few more decades left in it.  PS2s go pop after a few years thanks to their crappy design and underpowered lasers.  As far as being a collectable item in 10-20 years time, I doubt these things will honestly last that long.  I *hope* that the Chinese spare parts market continues to deliver replacement laser units and whatnot for them like they occasionally do for Dreamcast today.

But in terms of forward planning, an emulator running at 5FPS today is just fine.  Think about it in terms of a few years/decades from now, instead of merely as a replacement for what you have today.  Software development (especially development that is done for free by individuals in their spare time) takes a lot of time.  5FPS is 10FPS next year, and 20FPS the year after, and so on.

Again, look at MAME, Chankast, etc etc.  Hell, when I first started using SNES emulators, none of them would play properly on my desktop hardware.  Now mobile phones have enough grunt to play them.  These things take time, and need to start somewhere.  You can't criticise them for that.

[tommy]

My moped engine in my corvette runs just fine too.    It's just not going anywhere and is pretty useless.