7 ms·

Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. So right at t

by dtech 9y ago

Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. So right at the time emulators are good enough to enable piracy the impact is significantly less because you can't buy the original console and games anymore.

chrisper 9y ago
Since the Switch is similar to the 3DS and it uses a well documented chip (Nvidia Tegra) development should be faster.
- pizza234 9y ago
  Hopefully it will be comparatively easy. But (presumed) similarity is not a guarantee - see the XBox emulation: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#Emulation_issues http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#E...
- delroth 9y ago
  Recent consoles are well abstracted from the hardware. The only case where this is usually not true is the GPU, and it's rare to have something completely custom there nowadays (the 3DS and its weird PICA chip is very much the exception). Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Plus timing issues, bugs & errata, etc.
    - delroth 9y ago
      Meh. Timing issues become almost irrelevant in a world where consoles have dynamic clock scaling, deep sleep modes, etc. Games are usually not written around specific timings anymore. Bugs and errata can be a concern (I think I remember some issues regarding PowerPC atomic instructions misbehaving on the Wii U for example) but I would expect them to be fairly minor compared to the whole work of REing a custom microkernel and its associated services.
  - comex 9y ago
    > Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets. That’s assuming that you reimplement/HLE parts of the operating system rather than running the whole system in the emulator, in which case you wouldn’t need to care much about how the OS works. I suppose you think HLE is nevertheless easier overall?
- t0mek 9y ago
  yuzu is a fork of the Citra 3DS [1] emulator, maintained by the same people [2]. [1] https://citra-emu.org/ https://citra-emu.org/ [2] https://yuzu-emu.org/ https://yuzu-emu.org/
laurent123456 9y ago
> Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. The Nintendo 64 was an exception since Ultra64 was released quite early and worked impressively well on PCs of that time (as long as you had a 3Dfx card).
- stordoff 9y ago
  I suspect you mean UltraHLE (Ultra 64 was the original name of the Nintendo 64) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE Another oddity is the GBA - an emulator for the machine existed before it was even released (GBAemu - I believe it was capable of at least running Nintendo's tech demos), and BoycottAdvance was, IIRC, at least somewhat viable around the time of the US launch of the console.
  - chungy 9y ago
    Nintendo DS and 3DS emulation both were attained pretty early in the lifetime of the consoles.
  - deaddodo 9y ago
    ARM-based machines are kinda a gimme though. The ARM is remarkably well documented, very straightforward to decode (both THUMB and ARM modes) and every ISA level is a superset of the previous. You could write the entire opcode table for an ARMv7 chip and run ARMv3, ARMv4, etc code on it. Assuming there aren't any illegal instructions and that you've got the timing right, it should run just fine. So, essentially, you've got 1/3 the hard part done. The GPU for the GBA was basically a chimera of the GB engine and the SNES's. Even had similar modes built into the BIOS. The Switch has a Maxwell based GPU. One very similar to that in the Tegra X1, which is very well documented (If you're willing to dig through their massive Technical Reference Manual (https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads) and the nouveau source. That just leaves audio, the bus, game formats, etc to be "discovered" or reverse engineered.
    - 9y ago

by dtech 9y ago

chrisper 9y ago

Since the Switch is similar to the 3DS and it uses a well documented chip (Nvidia Tegra) development should be faster.

pizza234 9y ago
Hopefully it will be comparatively easy. But (presumed) similarity is not a guarantee - see the XBox emulation: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#Emulation_issues http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#E...
delroth 9y ago
Recent consoles are well abstracted from the hardware. The only case where this is usually not true is the GPU, and it's rare to have something completely custom there nowadays (the 3DS and its weird PICA chip is very much the exception). Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets.
- MBCook 9y ago
  Plus timing issues, bugs & errata, etc.
  - delroth 9y ago
    Meh. Timing issues become almost irrelevant in a world where consoles have dynamic clock scaling, deep sleep modes, etc. Games are usually not written around specific timings anymore. Bugs and errata can be a concern (I think I remember some issues regarding PowerPC atomic instructions misbehaving on the Wii U for example) but I would expect them to be fairly minor compared to the whole work of REing a custom microkernel and its associated services.
- comex 9y ago
  > Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets. That’s assuming that you reimplement/HLE parts of the operating system rather than running the whole system in the emulator, in which case you wouldn’t need to care much about how the OS works. I suppose you think HLE is nevertheless easier overall?
t0mek 9y ago
yuzu is a fork of the Citra 3DS [1] emulator, maintained by the same people [2]. [1] https://citra-emu.org/ https://citra-emu.org/ [2] https://yuzu-emu.org/ https://yuzu-emu.org/

laurent123456 9y ago

> Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. The Nintendo 64 was an exception since Ultra64 was released quite early and worked impressively well on PCs of that time (as long as you had a 3Dfx card).

stordoff 9y ago
I suspect you mean UltraHLE (Ultra 64 was the original name of the Nintendo 64) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraHLE Another oddity is the GBA - an emulator for the machine existed before it was even released (GBAemu - I believe it was capable of at least running Nintendo's tech demos), and BoycottAdvance was, IIRC, at least somewhat viable around the time of the US launch of the console.
- chungy 9y ago
  Nintendo DS and 3DS emulation both were attained pretty early in the lifetime of the consoles.
- deaddodo 9y ago
  ARM-based machines are kinda a gimme though. The ARM is remarkably well documented, very straightforward to decode (both THUMB and ARM modes) and every ISA level is a superset of the previous. You could write the entire opcode table for an ARMv7 chip and run ARMv3, ARMv4, etc code on it. Assuming there aren't any illegal instructions and that you've got the timing right, it should run just fine. So, essentially, you've got 1/3 the hard part done. The GPU for the GBA was basically a chimera of the GB engine and the SNES's. Even had similar modes built into the BIOS. The Switch has a Maxwell based GPU. One very similar to that in the Tegra X1, which is very well documented (If you're willing to dig through their massive Technical Reference Manual (https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads) and the nouveau source. That just leaves audio, the bus, game formats, etc to be "discovered" or reverse engineered.
  - 9y ago