Wanted to stat a thread on this pure accuracy in emulation trend.
First to some this up in a easy to understand fashion as some of you could care less to know the in-depths of it all. The best way to describe accurate emulation in the coined word sense is, low level emulation(LLE). So what exactly is LLE? Well not getting in to detail here its emulating a console at chip level. The chip is not the lowest level you can go but its best for the argument of this topic. An example of LLE is Bsnes. This emulator has emulated each chip the console has and the game cartridge co-processors. So when the game is read its like the original environment. There is no need for game patches or hacks. All that is needed here is to emulate the chips by translating op-codes and what not. So the emulator is effectively a console cloned device in software.
High level emulation ( HLE ), perfect example here is UltraHLE. This emulator skips the consoles and emulates the games. So it Basically reads the game data and compiles code and interprets what is should do and preforms the same behavior on a computer. To do this we make guesses, and a lot of them. Think of this like a huge database of what should I do when I see x code.
Now its important to know that LLE is emulation, HLE is more like interpretation. So If I want to speak Spanish I would need 1 interpreter. me -> interpreter -> you. This is much like HLE, as the interpreter knows both languages. Now if I want to speak to the word globally, I may need many interpreters. Onc for each language. Now think of humans needing food to preform. How much food do you think a global discussion will need compared to a person to person. That is a large pile of boretto's.
This is nothing short of the truth, to accurately emulate the snes you will need a dual core cpu 3g or better. Take bsnes, the worlds only emulator that has %100 pure accuracy in every commercial game requires it.
So why does dolphin and ulraHLE look and act so good, who needs this LLE crap? Well its the subtleties you dont see and miss. To many people this is not important, if this is you, why are you still reading? Go home! Cause this topic is not for you.
There is so much more to be said but its not really that important. I just want to talk about emulators that have pure accurate emulation. Some emulators will mix HLE and LLE I know but this is for the pure of the pure. Chip level emulation, no hacks or patches. And if you think about it one day all of these electronic devises may be gone. So software much carry on the legacy.
Bsnes now part of higan has reached 100% accuracy.
higan , aims to support gb through snes ( maybe vba?), no longer going to support nds. I wish I could find a place that shows progress but I can not.
puNES I believe this is a bit ahead of higan.
cen64 Most people do not believe accurate n64 emulation will be seen in the next 70+ years. If a 3gh is need for snes... but this emu is trying.
I think there is a psx emulator trying lle but not sure. So anything else out there?
here is the most recent progress I can find on higan.
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amazingly GBA is really solid, thanks in no small part to Cydrak. The main GBA issue is that I need a database to select appropriate save types.
NES is solid as a core, too; that one just lacks broad mapper/controller support.
GB/GBC is the only core that's quite bad all throughout. Seemingly the simplest system of all, that system suffers from extremely bad documentation, and to me the Z80'ish code is very annoying to debug.
