360 Emulator?

[DarkBloodyFetus]

So when do you think we could see a working 360 mod in the near future? I believe that it will probably take about 3 - 8 years a most for even a Beta version....

[Jale]

The Xbox 360 could be modded 4 months after its first release, believe it or not. I really doubt there will be an Xbox 360 emulator soon. Maybe in 5-10 years.

[insanemaniak]

I'd say 7 - 10 for just a basic one that can just run a few commercial games at a decent rate

[Epsi]

Considering how long the xbox has been around, and it stil doesnt have a emulator. I dout we wil even see a xbox360 emulator in the next 3 years, id give 6 years till we see some worthy development.

[AnAutisticDog]

You wold need a VERY expensive computer to run it.

[diablo671]

You wold need a VERY expensive computer to run it.

Agreed, You might also need a extremely good graphic card for the stunning graphics the 360 has.

[gforce75]

Man, I think it would never be made unless a dedicated team with some great funding has the ability to work on this over a period of years. It took MS awhile to reverse engineer the XBOX emulator on the XBOX360 and all the games nearly work (and that's with a full team and staff). The sad thing about emulators is that as more systems grow more complicated and complex; it will be harder to create emulators for them.

[blueshogun96]

It all depends on what you want from a 360 emulator. If you want one that runs homebrew and just emulates some framebuffer stuff, a 360 emu can be created right now. If you want one that plays commercial games (at all), then expect a good 3 years or so. Either way, for 360, it's best to use HLE and not emulate the hardware that doesn't need to be emulated like the GPU. It will be emulating the CPU and it's vector units that will slow you down.

[AnAutisticDog]

another thing would be online support.I bought a 360 mainly for XboxLive. So far most of the 360 games are basically for XBL, for me single player is boring.

[Gnash]

Yeah, mods aren't bad.

The really difficult hing would definitely be a complete emulator...that'd take forever.

[azoreseuropa]

I do not think it will ever happen. Look at XBOX emulator.. It was incomplete and offical dead now. Nobody ever step in and continue the project. No, it will never happen at all.

[insanemaniak]

Dead...? I heard that Cxbx was sorter active?

[montpics]

Considered inactive for now since the author, caustik is paying attention more on programming.

[azoreseuropa]

Oh, it will be back after he understood the programming more first ?

[Duke]

You guys are right anyway im also guessing that a graphics card that can match the 360's custom ATI Graphics processor or the upcoming Gears of War port to the pc. I got a crappy ATI X1050 and i was foolish to try playing the Lost Planet demo (dx9) of my pc.

[Gnash]

I don't think this emulator will ever exist.

The project is now inactive....as are most projects like that (see sourceforge).

[montpics]

Oh, it will be back after he understood the programming more first ?
Only time will tell..... :glare:

[azoreseuropa]

Hmmm... Then we will see in the future. Thanks, montpics.

[FatTrucker]

Its highly unlikely. The mistake most people seem to make is in comparing the specs of a PC to the specs of the host machine and thinking 'thats plenty powerful enough'.

What people seem to fail to realise is that an emulator has to do everything in software, the comparison like for like between the host machines specs and the PC's specs is irrelevant. That means any 360 emulator will have to run everything from the processing architecture to the graphics hardware routines in software.

Effectively like making a PC that doesn't need a graphics card it just emulates a Geforce 8800 using the processor......its absolutely bonkers complicated and would need impossible levels of data crunching grunt. Considering we've now reached something of a plateau with processor speeds and everything is now moving over to multiple cores I don't think there will ever be a working emulator for the next gen systems. When you consider that X-box, PS2 and Gamecube cannot be done with any real measure of success and even the Saturn is challenging, the next gen systems are just too complex to be emulated in software on a home system.

[blueshogun96]

FatTrucker has basically put the whole thing (LLE wise) in a nutshell. Right now, there's just absolutely no way the Xbox360, or worse yet the PlayStation3 can be emulated in software. IMO this means we need to search for new methods of emulation. Here's some ideas I was thinking of for a while now, and please note that I'm not an expert on Xbox360's hardware or executable file format (.XEX), only a novice so this might sound rather noobish...

1. Since we all know that the Xbox360's triple core PPC processor cannot be emulated in software (at least at a reasonable speed) a better solution might be to translate PPC assembly code into native x86-64 code (possibly in the form of a 64-bit .exe file similar to what Cxbx does). Yes that would be alot of work to do because PPC and x86 are two different architectures with little similarities (one big pain in the @$$ would be the big-to-little endian conversion stuff) but the result would be faster than using a standard interpreter or even dynarec.

2. Xbox360 uses 3 cores right? Well, one solution to that problem might be to split the execution of each core on multiple processors like on a Quad-Core CPU on the PC via threads. Each core could be dedicated to the execution of one processor and the other core could be dedicated to other tasks if it isn't being used. Only one problem remains, the vector units. Each core has it's own vector unit. I'm not sure of a viable solution for those though.

3. Alright, now that I've gotten the CPU theories out of the way, let's talk about hardware emulation. We could write an emulated Xbox360 kernel for emulated hardware such as GPU, APU, misc I/O devices etc. in the form of a .DLL file so that the more customized HLE/LLE code can be accessed dynamically which makes updating that code easier (again like Cxbx). One way of telling how a certain device is being accessed is allowing the translated PPC to x86-64 code access a certain memory address, catch the exception and emulate the action in software using our HLE/LLE code (whatever you prefer). Or we could use MMU.

4. Also the memory requirements for this would be rather high. I would recommend at least 1 GB ram and 512MB VRam to be on the safe side because well over 500 MB of system memory would be allocated for the UMA (Universal Memory Architecture) Ram emulation and 10MB for the framebuffer, Z-Buffer, etc. One other issue would be memory alignment because the PC and Xbox360's ram works differently (from what I read in this month's issue of GameDeveloper Magazine) so that would be something to consider.

These are just some rough ideas. I don't exactly have the skills to implement most of them, they are just thoughts and theories now. I hope this helps bring a little more hope on the subject. Feel free to comment on this.

[satnlafsasurot]

Yeah, mods aren't bad.

The really difficult hing would definitely be a complete emulator...that'd take forever.

What the heck would you run a computer emulator on? A 360 or something fast enough to handle all of the processing?

Would you need a fast-ass PC to run a PC emulator?

Thank you for askin that question...i am gonna be up all night in shambles thinking about that one...

[satnlafsasurot]

Thank you for askin that question...i am gonna be up all night in shambles thinking about that one...


Already, another ?...

If you emulated a PC, would it take all components into account such as sound card, video card, etc?

[blueshogun96]

???

You're replying to your own post? :confused:

[seether9111]

???

You're replying to your own post? :confused:

thats pretty funny::p

[blueshogun96]

Anyway, back on topic. I've found out that 3D hardware acceleration is available via homebrew for the 360. Click here. (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=620515&st=0)

This information would be extremely helpful for any would-be 360 emu author, but still not enough to run Halo 3 or anything like that. If you want to emulate basic homebrew, that can be done, but not very fast... but I personally think that 360 emulation is not nearly as impossible as everyone says. We just need to find new methods of emulation.

[FatTrucker]

I don't think thats referring to emulating a 360 its referring to emulating 'on' a 360, as in people making homebrew games for the 360 and perhaps in the future developing emulators (for snes, megadrive etc) to work on a 360.

Current Processors are nowhere near powerful enough to be able to emulate a 360's processors, and graphics chips in software. Although PC's are very similar in terms of the types of chips etc, thats not how emulation works, everything has to be done in software which is a completely different kettle of fish.

Saturn emulation is still miles away from being perfect largely because the Saturn had so many different chips doing different things its very challenging to try to emulate those chips accurately in software and retain useable framerates, even with a PC with a really fast processor, and the Saturn is a lot less processor intensive than a current gen console.

[blueshogun96]

I don't think thats referring to emulating a 360 its referring to emulating 'on' a 360, as in people making homebrew games for the 360 and perhaps in the future developing emulators (for snes, megadrive etc) to work on a 360.
Yeah, I'm aware of that. It's the GPU register information that makes it valuable for actually making an emulator. When you are able to write homebrew for a system from scratch, it makes writing an emulator for the target system much easier. For instance, PS2 emulation wasn't even a reality until homebrew from scratch was written for it because that type of homebrew helps document the system. ;)


Current Processors are nowhere near powerful enough to be able to emulate a 360's processors, and graphics chips in software. Although PC's are very similar in terms of the types of chips etc, thats not how emulation works, everything has to be done in software which is a completely different kettle of fish.
Yeah, I'm aware of this too. Of course you can see how PS2's vector units kill PCSX2's speed :p That's why earlier I was suggesting some alternative methods of emulation for 360 earlier in this thread to keep our hopes up. :)


FatTrucker has basically put the whole thing (LLE wise) in a nutshell. Right now, there's just absolutely no way the Xbox360, or worse yet the PlayStation3 can be emulated in software. IMO this means we need to search for new methods of emulation. Here's some ideas I was thinking of for a while now, and please note that I'm not an expert on Xbox360's hardware or executable file format (.XEX), only a novice so this might sound rather noobish...

1. Since we all know that the Xbox360's triple core PPC processor cannot be emulated in software (at least at a reasonable speed) a better solution might be to translate PPC assembly code into native x86-64 code (possibly in the form of a 64-bit .exe file similar to what Cxbx does). Yes that would be alot of work to do because PPC and x86 are two different architectures with little similarities (one big pain in the @$$ would be the big-to-little endian conversion stuff) but the result would be faster than using a standard interpreter or even dynarec.

2. Xbox360 uses 3 cores right? Well, one solution to that problem might be to split the execution of each core on multiple processors like on a Quad-Core CPU on the PC via threads. Each core could be dedicated to the execution of one processor and the other core could be dedicated to other tasks if it isn't being used. Only one problem remains, the vector units. Each core has it's own vector unit. I'm not sure of a viable solution for those though.

3. Alright, now that I've gotten the CPU theories out of the way, let's talk about hardware emulation. We could write an emulated Xbox360 kernel for emulated hardware such as GPU, APU, misc I/O devices etc. in the form of a .DLL file so that the more customized HLE/LLE code can be accessed dynamically which makes updating that code easier (again like Cxbx). One way of telling how a certain device is being accessed is allowing the translated PPC to x86-64 code access a certain memory address, catch the exception and emulate the action in software using our HLE/LLE code (whatever you prefer). Or we could use MMU.

4. Also the memory requirements for this would be rather high. I would recommend at least 1 GB ram and 512MB VRam to be on the safe side because well over 500 MB of system memory would be allocated for the UMA (Universal Memory Architecture) Ram emulation and 10MB for the framebuffer, Z-Buffer, etc. One other issue would be memory alignment because the PC and Xbox360's ram works differently (from what I read in this month's issue of GameDeveloper Magazine) so that would be something to consider.

These are just some rough ideas. I don't exactly have the skills to implement most of them, they are just thoughts and theories now. I hope this helps bring a little more hope on the subject. Feel free to comment on this. :ninja:
There it is just in case you missed it :)



Saturn emulation is still miles away from being perfect largely because the Saturn had so many different chips doing different things its very challenging to try to emulate those chips accurately in software and retain useable framerates, even with a PC with a really fast processor, and the Saturn is a lot less processor intensive than a current gen console.
Yeah, saturn is indeed a byatch emulation wize.

[Jale]

People tend to confuse "360 emulator" and "emulator for 360".

[blueshogun96]

BTW, want to see something funny?

http://www.xbox360emu.com/ <- The worlds most pointless emulation site!

[Youngy 360]

If there is a 360 emulator the first games i'd try would be dead rising or crackdown ;)

[heat84]

BTW, want to see something funny?

http://www.xbox360emu.com/ <- The worlds most pointless emulation site!

http://www.xbox360emu.com/img/xbox360_screen010.jpg

What game is this from? It looks like GTA but with much better graphics(look how shiny the tanker is). And speaking of that tanker, trucks in GTA drive around without trailers. Could this be from GTA 4?


Well, I just Googled Steel Monkeys and it isn't GTA 4. So what game is it? Is that a screenshoot from an XBOX 360? I'm a hard core PC'er but that graphical quality almost makes me wanna reconsider. Almost but not quite.;)

[insanemaniak]

2 Days To Vagas (http://www.steelmonkeys.by/en/projects/2dtv_game) and it's a PC game

[ulaoulao]

Its highly unlikely. The mistake most people seem to make is in comparing the specs of a PC to the specs of the host machine and thinking 'thats plenty powerful enough'.

What people seem to fail to realise is that an emulator has to do everything in software, the comparison like for like between the host machines specs and the PC's specs is irrelevant. That means any 360 emulator will have to run everything from the processing architecture to the graphics hardware routines in software.

Effectively like making a PC that doesn't need a graphics card it just emulates a Geforce 8800 using the processor......its absolutely bonkers complicated and would need impossible levels of data crunching grunt. Considering we've now reached something of a plateau with processor speeds and everything is now moving over to multiple cores I don't think there will ever be a working emulator for the next gen systems. When you consider that X-box, PS2 and Gamecube cannot be done with any real measure of success and even the Saturn is challenging, the next gen systems are just too complex to be emulated in software on a home system. -

This pretty much sums up the answer to the posted question. Just a few things to add. One in response to all not FT, never say never.. Most thought n64 was never going to happen.. PS2 is also looking much better. IT will come around... Now personally I'm surprised it has not happened yet. An XBOX is for the most part a computer it's self. I'm 100&#37; sure its 8086 architecture and almost sure it runs something very similar to the nt kernel. Of cause not like an OS, but more like CE. I mean a few things here..

one, Xbox uses an Intel chips set. and both x86 (almost sure).

two (I think) the drive is ntfs derivative, but the OS is not on the drive its naturally in the bios.

three, more then anything it's about understanding and emulating the OS(bios). understanding this will unlock the potential of reading the drives and discovering the locks and protection m$ took to prevent such a thing.


Emulating an Xbox is a totally new thing, it is a PC to begin with.. I think the possibility of seeing XBOX I and II on an IBM clones ( AKA PC ) is possible and will happen. Now linux or MAC may be a different story.. Yet we have linux running on them...

Also I dont think many care about writing an emulator for xbox on a computer for now. Since it practically is like converting a Chinese remake of we are the world back to English.. There are bigger fish out there right now. If any emu author is gong to attempt to emulate the XBOX using the emulation paradigms of today. then like FT said forget about it... Thats going to require one heck of a computer.. Try thinking more along the lines of a translator between XBOX API calls and Windows API Calls. Thats more realistic IMO.

[blueshogun96]

Also I dont think many care about writing an emulator for xbox on a computer for now. Since it practically is like converting a Chinese remake of we are the world back to English.. There are bigger fish out there right now. If any emu author is gong to attempt to emulate the XBOX using the emulation paradigms of today. then like FT said forget about it... Thats going to require one heck of a computer.. Try thinking more along the lines of a translator between XBOX API calls and Windows API Calls. Thats more realistic IMO.
Maybe not, but I sure do care about Xbox emulation. It appears that you're talking about Xbox 1. There are many reasons why there are only a small handful of people working on Xbox emulation.

1. Lack of interest in the system itself.
2. Users usually use the "every good game has a PC port" excuse.
3. The average emu author (that knows what he's dealing with) that sees the specs of Xbox won't dare to try to emulate it.
4. Emulating Xbox1 is H-A-R-D. It's easy to assume it's easy to emulate just because it's like a PC, trust me, it's not.

IMO, mapping API calls and stuff like that (HLE) is more realistic for Xbox360. It would be impossible to write a complete emulator for Xbox1 using HLE. An LLE Xbox emulator is being worked on though, and no, it doesn't play commercial games now.

[Ultimas Gamer 5]

Its highly unlikely. The mistake most people seem to make is in comparing the specs of a PC to the specs of the host machine and thinking 'thats plenty powerful enough'.

What people seem to fail to realise is that an emulator has to do everything in software, the comparison like for like between the host machines specs and the PC's specs is irrelevant. That means any 360 emulator will have to run everything from the processing architecture to the graphics hardware routines in software.

Effectively like making a PC that doesn't need a graphics card it just emulates a Geforce 8800 using the processor......its absolutely bonkers complicated and would need impossible levels of data crunching grunt. Considering we've now reached something of a plateau with processor speeds and everything is now moving over to multiple cores I don't think there will ever be a working emulator for the next gen systems. When you consider that X-box, PS2 and Gamecube cannot be done with any real measure of success and even the Saturn is challenging, the next gen systems are just too complex to be emulated in software on a home system.

Well most people aren't genious programmers who know all that stuff. Most people just want games.

[ulaoulao]

Well most people aren't genious programmers who know all that stuff. Most people just want games. - then fork over the cash, emulation never will be and never was only about "playing" the games. Asking any emu author , any and I promise you they will tell you they did if for vintage, the challenge, the love, or anything aside from playing that games. And most die hard emulation fans also do it for many other reason then just playing the games. Now I'm not sure if you mean playing old games or new games. If you use emulators for "steeling, and playing" the games then if and only "if" that is you, your a crook, hence the reason we here at emz dont provide links to games (roms). it is unethical and not what emulation is about. In short emulation give us the link to the past. To a young person it is very posible they can see the value in emulation and what it really is, but when they group up I a sure you they will then understand.

Ultimas Gamer 5- I'm not bring this post directly to you, but your comment carries the MO of some one with misguided ethics in emulation. So if the only reason you use emulation is to play newer games and I'm not saying thats you.. but if so you have emulation all wrong. Then again maybe you mean to sit back and play out some old school nes or what ever, then that I understand. yet if that is the goal then why emulate the xbvox when the same game is available on other platforms?:glare:

[blueshogun96]

Well most people aren't genious programmers who know all that stuff.

Well, someone has to inform them why there is no 360 emulator. And it doesn't take a genius to understand it either.

I agree with ulaoulao too. I/we aren't saying you're a pirate that wants to cheat Microsoft, it's aimed at those who haven't learned this comcept. Emulators don't exist just to play game XYZ whether the emulator can or cannot assuming it exists. Period.

[Yoster]

Computer technology wont take long, but coding will, maybe 5 years for a good working one.

[azoreseuropa]

Computer technology wont take long, but coding will, maybe 5 years for a good working one.

I totally disagreed. Look at Xbox emulator and only two games are working but still imperfect. For 360 emulator -----> Try 10-15 years from now. :)

[ulaoulao]

I totally disagreed. Look at Xbox emulator and only two games are working but still imperfect. For 360 emulator -----> Try 10-15 years from now. - Ya I would agree. If the idea is to emulate the xbox in the same fashion is it is being emulated that is a very true statement. If some one decided to take another approach I dont seen any reason we wont ave a good xbox or 360 emulator. I just dont see how the API and assembly is that different from a x86 system. The idea of revere engineering is not the correct approach think more like "unlocking" or hacking it to work on A PC. Maybe something like ultraHLE will happen again, were an author takes the correct approach out of now where. Now as far as a mac goes ya try 25 years LOL..

[scottprindel]

You wouldn't really need a powerful pc to have a xbox 360 emulator all a xbox 360 is is a computer designed to play only video games, dvds, and cds. if you know how to reprogram on you can remake it into a pc I DO NOT RECOMEND DOING THIS. This is time consumable and if you mess up you will have only a pile
of junk. But if you do this you can make a powerful pc butt you will still have to purchase some parts to make it work. You can also keep the program that allows
it to play 360 games therefore it has a 360 emulator. But i repeat I do not recommend doing this.

[TchuBacha]

eh?.......

[scottprindel]

Confusing yes?

[TchuBacha]

Confusing yes?

Very....

[blueshogun96]

You wouldn't really need a powerful pc to have a xbox 360 emulator all a xbox 360 is is a computer designed to play only video games, dvds, and cds. if you know how to reprogram on you can remake it into a pc I DO NOT RECOMEND DOING THIS. This is time consumable and if you mess up you will have only a pile
of junk. But if you do this you can make a powerful pc butt you will still have to purchase some parts to make it work. You can also keep the program that allows
it to play 360 games therefore it has a 360 emulator. But i repeat I do not recommend doing this.

An Xbox360 and a PC are totally different things. The only similarities I can see between the two are the USB 2.0 capabilities and the VGA compatibility. PCs use x86 processors by Intel or AMD, but the 360 uses a triple core PPC by IBM. So unless you find some way to convert PPC code into x86 code running on 3 different threads, it's not going to happen and you WILL need a powerful PC to emulate it. 360 also has 3 Vector Units per core (afaik) and if I recall correctly, that's what slows PS2 emulation down so much. The PS2 has 2 and the 360 has 3 (plus they are faster), so you can imagine the immense CPU strain required.

[wjffkdhkf]

An Xbox360 and a PC are totally different things. The only similarities I can see between the two are the USB 2.0 capabilities and the VGA compatibility. PCs use x86 processors by Intel or AMD, but the 360 uses a triple core PPC by IBM. So unless you find some way to convert PPC code into x86 code running on 3 different threads, it's not going to happen and you WILL need a powerful PC to emulate it. 360 also has 3 Vector Units per core (afaik) and if I recall correctly, that's what slows PS2 emulation down so much. The PS2 has 2 and the 360 has 3 (plus they are faster), so you can imagine the immense CPU strain required.

Hey, then what about those quad cores that's been coming out recently? I own a custom PC with 2.4 GH quad-core, GeForce 8800 GT w/ 512MB graphic memory and 4 gigs of ddr rams. I bought this monster computer for a cheap price at Dragon Hills while I was in Korea so i can run Crysis in maximum performance.

But this one prick I know who always goes on and on about how his 360 is so awesome that he orgasms whenever he picks up the controller was dissing my purchase saying that I wasted money on a PC when i could've gotten a 360 ,which is better and more powerful than any PC, for a cheaper price. It is true that 360 is cheaper I admit, however, it seems to me that 360 follows the same format as PCs looking at how it has a proccessor, ram, hard drive and a graphic processing unit. And my computer surpasses 360 in every way! So I guess, the thing that seperates those two things apart is either the operating software, or an extra component exclusively for 360.

I know this is a childish competition that has absolutely no point. But seriously, u guys haven't dealt with this dude. Stubborn as fu**, just keeps on bringing the subject whenever he can. How 360 is so awesome and more powerful than PS3 and PC. And I don't even own a PS3 lol....;;

So, stupid and completely idiotic it may sound, I played along in his childish competition. I showed him that PCs can perform 360 games anyday by running assassin's creed and call of duty 4 (which loaded up faster than his 360 by the way.)

His final argument was that Halo 3's world is so awesome, detailed, realistic, and huge, that a PC can't hardly handle it, which is why it's xbox 360 exclusive...;;;

Look, i know it's completely stupid and childish. But this dude's seriously getting on my nerves and i need to shut him up soon. So, since i have a powerful PC, is there any way for me to mod it or install an emulator so it can emulate a virtual 360?

-edit-

Never mind, I read FatTrucker's and blueshogun's post. lol. So the processor has to pull off everything including the display adapter and ram's supposed to do? Oh wow, I'll need a PC that is 10 times more powerful than mine to emulate 360. Well, I wish I knew more about these hardware things so i can mod my PC's hardware part to run console games

[blueshogun96]

Hey, then what about those quad cores that's been coming out recently? I own a custom PC with 2.4 GH quad-core, GeForce 8800 GT w/ 512MB graphic memory and 4 gigs of ddr rams. I bought this monster computer for a cheap price at Dragon Hills while I was in Korea so i can run Crysis in maximum performance.

But this one prick I know who always goes on and on about how his 360 is so awesome that he orgasms whenever he picks up the controller was dissing my purchase saying that I wasted money on a PC when i could've gotten a 360 ,which is better and more powerful than any PC, for a cheaper price. It is true that 360 is cheaper I admit, however, it seems to me that 360 follows the same format as PCs looking at how it has a proccessor, ram, hard drive and a graphic processing unit. And my computer surpasses 360 in every way! So I guess, the thing that seperates those two things apart is either the operating software, or an extra component exclusively for 360.

I know this is a childish competition that has absolutely no point. But seriously, u guys haven't dealt with this dude. Stubborn as fu**, just keeps on bringing the subject whenever he can. How 360 is so awesome and more powerful than PS3 and PC. And I don't even own a PS3 lol....;;

So, stupid and completely idiotic it may sound, I played along in his childish competition. I showed him that PCs can perform 360 games anyday by running assassin's creed and call of duty 4 (which loaded up faster than his 360 by the way.)

His final argument was that Halo 3's world is so awesome, detailed, realistic, and huge, that a PC can't hardly handle it, which is why it's xbox 360 exclusive...;;;

Look, i know it's completely stupid and childish. But this dude's seriously getting on my nerves and i need to shut him up soon. So, since i have a powerful PC, is there any way for me to mod it or install an emulator so it can emulate a virtual 360?

-edit-

Never mind, I read FatTrucker's and blueshogun's post. lol. So the processor has to pull off everything including the display adapter and ram's supposed to do? Oh wow, I'll need a PC that is 10 times more powerful than mine to emulate 360. Well, I wish I knew more about these hardware things so i can mod my PC's hardware part to run console games

Quite frankly, the only option I see today to even imagine emulating 360 would be to use some form of static binary translation (as I stated earlier) using the x86-64 architecture (none of that x86-32 crap), but you'd still require a multi-core PC (more than 3, at least 10) to divide the work of about 12 or more threads/processes and about 1 or even 2 gigs of RAM. Each core has one vector unit and runs 2 threads. This is meerly speculation, and such ideas aren't worth trying at this time because 360 emulation is far from a reality.

Oh, and modding your PC's hardware isn't going to help.

[azoreseuropa]

It is reality.. It is just that nobody developed for 360 emulator right now. The same for PS3.. They will happen between 5 to 10 years from now and for a few playable games will happen in 15-20 years from now. Just forget it, will you guys ? :)

[yugiohmaster]

the answer to this question is pretty simple i just not practical like most of u already know making emulator is something u do with money from your own pocket and people just buy the consoles cuz of the benefits of playing online.


and besides to run and emulator of this scale u will need more than one pc runing simultaniously to atleast get a couple of pixels

[XeroForever]

Well with advances in modern technology you should probably wait a year after the next gen systems come out(the ones after these). So you will jus have to wait about another 4-6 years.

[XeroForever]

You wouldn't really need a powerful pc to have a xbox 360 emulator all a xbox 360 is is a computer designed to play only video games, dvds, and cds. if you know how to reprogram on you can remake it into a pc I DO NOT RECOMEND DOING THIS. This is time consumable and if you mess up you will have only a pile
of junk. But if you do this you can make a powerful pc butt you will still have to purchase some parts to make it work. You can also keep the program that allows
it to play 360 games therefore it has a 360 emulator. But i repeat I do not recommend doing this.

Not to mention nobody would do this, because what would be the point your really not getting anything out of this just another PC that may or may not work. And the crap on the ppl would say on youtube if someone was to post a video of it would be another reason why it would be pointless of making a PC out of a 360. Now if someone could find a way to make so the 360's Processing Power and add that to your PC's Processing power (or however that works like how Rockman and Forte did with Twilight Princess on his two PC's together) so that other emulations on your PC would work perfectly.

[THANAMELESS]

Well with advances in modern technology you should probably wait a year after the next gen systems come out(the ones after these). So you will jus have to wait about another 4-6 years.

i think this is the best statement of this thread, look at the psx wich most people can (relatively) easy emulate now. i dont know the exact release date of the psx but the lite version or just ps1 was released in 1995 so it took 13 years to emulate it. (actually a few years shorter because a few years ago it was also possible to emulate it) so it would actually take 11 years IF it wouldn't be so that the development goes faster then back then so i think it will actually take till something like 2016 or something - and then it will be for normal quately pc's-

[XeroForever]

i think this is the best statement of this thread, look at the psx wich most people can (relatively) easy emulate now. i dont know the exact release date of the psx but the lite version or just ps1 was released in 1995 so it took 13 years to emulate it. (actually a few years shorter because a few years ago it was also possible to emulate it) so it would actually take 11 years IF it wouldn't be so that the development goes faster then back then so i think it will actually take till something like 2016 or something - and then it will be for normal quately pc's-
Thank you, Nameless

[THANAMELESS]

Thank you, Nameless

at your service:happy:

[heat84]

So what about now? Is a 4-8 core CPU and 4-12 GB of RAM still not enough power for both the emulator and the OS its installed on to run practically fast enough at the same time? And couldn't you use today's GPU's for some of that processing power? If not most of it? I'm in no hurry for this(and good things come to those who wait). I've got plenty of other games on other platforms to keep me occupied. Not to mention my life.

[ulaoulao]

It depends on the method at witch its emulated. As for the growing trend, hell no. Emulation development has become ( for the lack of a better work ) lazy. High level emulation is the paradigm that allows emulation to be developed quicker and easier. The down fall is that you need one heck of a processor to make the game playable.

So yes, if someone would take the time and beat the ASM to death and revere engineer the 360, it could run on today's systems. IMO, and its just my opinion, a 360 and that silly xbox should be quite easy to emulate, heck its practicably a computer as it is. Never the less, no promising emulators are here. Since no one has really done any low-level emulation since n64 ( I think, not sure about dolphin ) I dont think you will see a 360 emulator any time soon.

[blueshogun96]

Wow, haven't been here in ages, and least expected this thread to be still alive.

So, who actually wants a 360 emulator to begin with? The only game(s) of interest (that I see) are Halo 3 and DOAX2. I'd say it's possible to do a combination of HLE (Xeon style) and static rec (Cxbx style) and maybe emulate Halo 3. The XeXDK was leaked and the version that was leaked is close to that of the one used to make the final build of Halo 3. I'd love to try myself, but I don't have the hardware necessary. Since the last time I visited this forum, I've greatly increased my knowledge of the 360's arch and found some interesting stuff that could lead up to an emulator. Hopefully my track record with Cxbx will help somewhat. How about it?

[blueshogun96]

haha xbox 360 emulation not possible for while.
Here information: http://xbox360emulator.com/

The creator of that site appears to have no technical knowledge of the Xbox 360 in general. At best, he only understands basic concepts of emulation and probably hasn't written an emulator of his own.

360 emulation is VERY possible today depending on your implementation, but the desired results such as emulating Halo 3 aren't guaranteed. First of all, for reasons already stated, you can't use traditional methods of emulation such as interpreters and dynarec because that's far too slow and on average we'd need 10x the CPU speed for it to run at any desirable speeds. Therefore, static rec is our only option. A PowerPC 64 -> x86-64 conversion prior to execution would elliminate most speed issues and we can also do an Altivec64 -> SSEx conversion as well for the vector units. Then once that is perfected, we can use HLE for everything else with the help of the XeXDK.

I'm telling you, it's very possible. It's all a matter of thinking outside the box. "Then why haven't you done/tried it already?" you might ask? Hardware limitations. I don't have a computer with the specs I need (Windows Vista/7 x64, multicore CPU, Direct3D 11 class GPU, etc.) and since I'm unemployed, I can't go out and buy the parts needed like most of you can. Sucks being poor \/_\/

[ulaoulao]

Reasons he has no clue what he is talking about.

1) The article is way to short. You can't even explain the basics of emulation with that much text. How do you expect to argue it?
2) Zero credentials, really who to hell do you think you are.
3) Every good argument has certain points it must address. He only hit one of them. The topic.
4) The only point that he addressed that had any real meaning was this "So for now you should refrain from downloading any shady programs promising you to run your favorite games for the sake you your antivirus", but only an idiot would believe the first thing they read to be true. Oh, whoops sorry Mark didnt mean to direct that to you at all, but I guess indirectly it did :x
5) One of the most obvious point in emulation is power. You need enough power to run the OS, emulator, and play the game. This is the only reason 360 emulation is far to become, yet he totality fails to mention it. And to address this point, the power of the top of the line systems today could easily do this. Though we dont really have any emulators in the works.

[Rommy]

Few years probably, the resources needs are outrages.

[FatTrucker]

Current Top End PC's are still no-where near the level that would be required to emulate current gen tech. While simulators could be made that would run 360 software on a PC, they would breach so many copyrights the authors would just be a smoking pair of shoes by the time M$ was through with them.

Emulators need to be able to emulate everything a hardware platform does using non-infringing techniques. Emulators generally have to do in software what a lot of chips do in hardware meaning the number crunching required is immense by comparison.

Old consoles with complicated chipsets (like the Saturn) still struggle to run on many modern machines and these are enormously primitive compared to current gen tech.

For about the millionth time (not that anyone actually takes any f**king notice), comparing PC specs to console specs where emulation is concerned is like comparing a garden cabbage and the Empire State Building as a means of calculating the volume of the Universe - irrelevant, pointless and ultimately retarded.

Want to play current gen games?.....go out and f**king buy them, support the industry that feeds us.