5 ms·

I think what we'll likely see is that it's (relatively) easy to get PS5 games running in a PC emulator, but running them _well_ will take ages. Primarily becau

by xienze 3y ago

I think what we'll likely see is that it's (relatively) easy to get PS5 games running in a PC emulator, but running them _well_ will take ages. Primarily because PCs will have to be able to out-horsepower the PS5 by a wide margin to make up for things like the shared memory setup, texture streaming stuff, etc.

dagmx 3y ago
It would be interesting to me to see an emulator that specifically required APUs to run to not have to design around the unshared memory pool of a discrete GPU. Either an AMD APU or, if Rosetta sticks around, the Apple Silicon chips.
jwells89 3y ago
Yeah, PS5 games expect to have up to 16GB of VRAM available, and thanks to GPU vendors being stingy with VRAM to upsell to get that you’d need to buy expensive high end cards. But that doesn’t do anything to help with the PS5’s shared memory architecture, where because VRAM and RAM are one in the same, textures that need to be in memory aren’t duplicated between RAM and VRAM like on bog standard PCs, which has performance implications. Windows has support for streaming assets directly from SSDs like the PS5 does now (at least if you have a fast enough NVMe SSD installed, SATA SSDs or older NVMe drives won’t cut it), but PCs still lack the hardware texture decompression of the PS5 which once again impacts performance. The mass market computers closest in architecture to PS5s are actually M-series Macs, with how they also have a large pool of memory serving as both RAM and VRAM. Once the integrated GPUs on M-series SoCs achieves parity with the PS5’s onboard Radeon, they might actually be the most straightforward to emulate a PS5 on despite needing x86-to-ARM translation.
- dagmx 3y ago
  Excellent points on memory architecture. Though I’d posit that the non-base M series GPUs are actually already equal or higher performing than the fairly aging Radeons on a PS4/5, depending on the respective SKUs The wild cards will be translation overhead , differences in TBDR access and thermal headroom.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > PCs still lack the hardware texture decompression of the PS5 which once again impacts performance. They might not implement it the same, but hardware-accelerated texture decompression has been around on PC for as long as SIMD has existed. With tech like ATSC floating around I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say PCs really "lack" the technology. > they might actually be the most straightforward to emulate a PS5 on despite needing x86-to-ARM translation. The problem with Apple Silicon is that nobody wants to use Metal. The big Switch emulator Yuzu should have also been a perfect fit for Apple Silicon too, but it took years to get "ported" and the end result used MoltenVK for the GPU API. Now that it's here, systems like the Steam Deck are hitting 60fps where M2 struggles to hold 50: https://youtu.be/pubEj1yLknI?t=414 https://youtu.be/pubEj1yLknI?t=414 https://youtu.be/5BeYYuLnS3I https://youtu.be/5BeYYuLnS3I It would be cool to see, but nothing I've witnessed surrounding these sorts of emulators suggests that will be the case.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    At the end of the day it all depends on the will of the individuals involved with the projects. Dolphin got a native Metal port for instance.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    > The problem with Apple Silicon is that nobody wants to use Metal. iOS games market begs to differ.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      The iOS games market speaks for itself. It's littered with freemium games and low-effort asset flips, the number of shitty 2D lottery/lootbox games outnumber Monument Valleys 100:1. The vast majority of substantial game experiences are not getting ported to iOS. The reason for this is mostly Metal-related. Apple has acknowledged this themselves on many occasions, like the last WWDC with their Game Porting Toolkit.
      - dagmx 3y ago
        Why weren’t they getting ported before Metal when OpenGL 3.1 was still at parity with the rest of the industry? The graphics API is not the significant portion of the porting issue. It’s market share and the fact that until recently, very few Macs by market share had great GPUs. The game porting toolkit works alongside wine and Rosetta to make time to first pixel easier for developers to consider the platform. Regardless of metal or not, time to first pixel and consistency of hardware has always been the biggest hurdle. Most big engines support metal just fine already, so it’s not the primary hurdle people claim otherwise we’d see more unreal and Unity games running natively on Mac’s. Now every Mac has a decent GPU (for some definition of decent) with very similar hardware.

by xienze 3y ago

dagmx 3y ago

It would be interesting to me to see an emulator that specifically required APUs to run to not have to design around the unshared memory pool of a discrete GPU. Either an AMD APU or, if Rosetta sticks around, the Apple Silicon chips.

jwells89 3y ago

Yeah, PS5 games expect to have up to 16GB of VRAM available, and thanks to GPU vendors being stingy with VRAM to upsell to get that you’d need to buy expensive high end cards. But that doesn’t do anything to help with the PS5’s shared memory architecture, where because VRAM and RAM are one in the same, textures that need to be in memory aren’t duplicated between RAM and VRAM like on bog standard PCs, which has performance implications. Windows has support for streaming assets directly from SSDs like the PS5 does now (at least if you have a fast enough NVMe SSD installed, SATA SSDs or older NVMe drives won’t cut it), but PCs still lack the hardware texture decompression of the PS5 which once again impacts performance. The mass market computers closest in architecture to PS5s are actually M-series Macs, with how they also have a large pool of memory serving as both RAM and VRAM. Once the integrated GPUs on M-series SoCs achieves parity with the PS5’s onboard Radeon, they might actually be the most straightforward to emulate a PS5 on despite needing x86-to-ARM translation.

dagmx 3y ago
Excellent points on memory architecture. Though I’d posit that the non-base M series GPUs are actually already equal or higher performing than the fairly aging Radeons on a PS4/5, depending on the respective SKUs The wild cards will be translation overhead , differences in TBDR access and thermal headroom.
smoldesu 3y ago
> PCs still lack the hardware texture decompression of the PS5 which once again impacts performance. They might not implement it the same, but hardware-accelerated texture decompression has been around on PC for as long as SIMD has existed. With tech like ATSC floating around I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say PCs really "lack" the technology. > they might actually be the most straightforward to emulate a PS5 on despite needing x86-to-ARM translation. The problem with Apple Silicon is that nobody wants to use Metal. The big Switch emulator Yuzu should have also been a perfect fit for Apple Silicon too, but it took years to get "ported" and the end result used MoltenVK for the GPU API. Now that it's here, systems like the Steam Deck are hitting 60fps where M2 struggles to hold 50: https://youtu.be/pubEj1yLknI?t=414 https://youtu.be/pubEj1yLknI?t=414 https://youtu.be/5BeYYuLnS3I https://youtu.be/5BeYYuLnS3I It would be cool to see, but nothing I've witnessed surrounding these sorts of emulators suggests that will be the case.
- jwells89 3y ago
  At the end of the day it all depends on the will of the individuals involved with the projects. Dolphin got a native Metal port for instance.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  > The problem with Apple Silicon is that nobody wants to use Metal. iOS games market begs to differ.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    The iOS games market speaks for itself. It's littered with freemium games and low-effort asset flips, the number of shitty 2D lottery/lootbox games outnumber Monument Valleys 100:1. The vast majority of substantial game experiences are not getting ported to iOS. The reason for this is mostly Metal-related. Apple has acknowledged this themselves on many occasions, like the last WWDC with their Game Porting Toolkit.
    - dagmx 3y ago
      Why weren’t they getting ported before Metal when OpenGL 3.1 was still at parity with the rest of the industry? The graphics API is not the significant portion of the porting issue. It’s market share and the fact that until recently, very few Macs by market share had great GPUs. The game porting toolkit works alongside wine and Rosetta to make time to first pixel easier for developers to consider the platform. Regardless of metal or not, time to first pixel and consistency of hardware has always been the biggest hurdle. Most big engines support metal just fine already, so it’s not the primary hurdle people claim otherwise we’d see more unreal and Unity games running natively on Mac’s. Now every Mac has a decent GPU (for some definition of decent) with very similar hardware.