Why does the PS3's PSx emulator suck?

[antsy]

Ok so I downloaded ePSXe and got it all set up so I could play Crash 2 on my PC because I lost my disc (No really I did i have the case but no disc this is a genuine back-up) anyway I sorted it all out set it to play at my screens native resolution and WOW this looks awesome, obviously the bit maps are just upscalled but alot on this must be vector graphics because it looks tack sharp at 1440x900 with slightly blurry textures, compared to how PSx game look on the PS3 (which I have hooked up to the same screen) it looks 10x better, so why is this, why is it not the other way around, is there some secret setting on the PS3 I am missing, and yes I have smoothing turned on.

Here is a PC Screen shot of Crash 2, note the original screenshot looked slightly better before Jpeg conversion.

Edit, not sure why the screenshot came out like that, probably I did it by mistake in Fireworks, anyway I think you get the idea.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

PC emulators render in a higher resolution through the use of DX9/10 plugins. You can put in an internal resolution setting of like 2024x2024 for the textures, then apply insane amounts of AA.

Console emulation is based on 1:1 emulation with minor smoothing/speed additions. It's always worked like that.

Look at the FFX pictures from the PC PS2 emulator thread here - https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?show...amp;p=591201480 It's rendering at 1920x1200, Final Fantasy 10 has a native res of like 640x480 when played on a console.

[TheElite]

The RSX chip in the PS3 is off bounds, courtesy of Sony.

A lack of dedicated graphics power will cause any emulation to be subpar to any PC one.

[Sethos]

That would be quite awesome if the PS3 allowed you to upscale and AA PS2 games like an emulator. Should be doable if they cared.

[antsy]

PC emulators render in a higher resolution through the use of DX9/10 plugins. You can put in an internal resolution setting of like 2024x2024 for the textures, then apply insane amounts of AA.

Console emulation is based on 1:1 emulation with minor smoothing/speed additions. It's always worked like that.

Look at the FFX pictures from the PC PS2 emulator thread here - https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?show...amp;p=591201480 It's rendering at 1920x1200, Final Fantasy 10 has a native res of like 640x480 when played on a console.

That does look good, but I would have thought the PS3 would be better at emulating older versions of it's self than a PC, and I think my PS3 is much more powerful than my Pentium D 2.8GHz?

Could Sony release an Emu that properly Anti Aliases PSx games and maybe one day PS2 games?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

That would be quite awesome if the PS3 allowed you to upscale and AA PS2 games like an emulator. Should be doable if they cared.

The issue with that is each game reacts differently to having it's internal resolution changed, and also things like AA added. Right now the PS3 will upscale PS2 games to 1080p, but it doesn't change the internal rendering resolution like these PC emulators, just upscales. The above is not upscaling for anyone interested, these emulators are actually changing the internal rendering resolution.

If you follow the PS2 emulation scene there's new beta DX9/10 plugins being put out almost weekly. These have been worked on for years also. In every game even ones that are playable from start to finish there is usually graphical errors, some pretty annoying to the point of gamebreaking, others just wrong colours/glitches. Very few games are perfect in any way at all, when you start changing engine specifics. If you run the games in native res on your PC, it's much more likely for them to be glitch free, but then they do look much more dated/rough.

For Sony/MS/Nintendo there is little give back to spending years focussing on an emulation platform like the above due to the lifespan of a console, their focus is compatibility based emulation. When a new console comes out unless it includes the physical hardware of the previous, software emulation will no doubt need to be re-written to certain extents.

That does look good, but I would have thought the PS3 would be better at emulating older versions of it's self than a PC.

Could Sony release an Emu that properly Anti Aliases PSx games and maybe one day PS2 games?

Read my reply to Sethos, you're just not going to see this kind of effort put into console emulators. The focus is compatibility and letting you play your games as they were.

[antsy]

The issue with that is each game reacts differently to having it's internal resolution changed, and also things like AA added. Right now the PS3 will upscale PS2 games to 1080p, but it doesn't change the internal rendering resolution like these PC emulators, just upscales. The above is not upscaling for anyone interested, these emulators are actually changing the internal rendering resolution.

Fair enough, But I spose you could just turn the AA off it the game reacts badly, I think the PS2 actually would AA the edges up to 640x480 when rendering PS1 games at PS2 resolutions, I'm not sure but I think the PS2 did a better job on PS1 games than the PS3!

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Fair enough, But I spose you could just turn the AA off it the game reacts badly, I think the PS2 actually would AA the edges up to 640x480 when rendering PS1 games at PS2 resolutions, I'm not sure but I think the PS2 did a better job on PS1 games than the PS3!

Remember your PS2 was most likely plugged into a standard definition TV.

Playing PS1 games nowadays on HDTVs is going to look bad, period. However played on a standard definition TV it's still going to look decent.

The native resolution of FF7 is 320x240 I think, you're playing that on a 1080p TV with a native res at 1920x1080 it's going to look like **** even with AA added/upscaling :p The PSN PS1 games work best when played on a PSP.

[Michael1406]

I never knew PS1/2 games could look that good....makes me want to get a decent PC!

It is shocking that PS3 does a much worse job, surely Sony could release some sort of tool for PS3 for advanced users so that we can achieve better emulation. Just pay the emu creators to do it :)

[hotdog666al]

Hmm ePSXe... have you tried out pSX ?

Less dodgy graphical enhancers, makes it looks like you're playing on the original console.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I never knew PS1/2 games could look that good....makes me want to get a decent PC!

It is shocking that PS3 does a much worse job, surely Sony could release some sort of tool for PS3 for advanced users so that we can achieve better emulation. Just pay the emu creators to do it :)

The emulator creators are working within a PC environment, not CELL. The PC has always been very good at doing emulation stretching years back, it's where most indie developers learn their trade with coding languages.

As I said above for a platform with a lifespan of on average 5 years (from past trends) before the next comes out, it's just not a financially sound idea to pour money into advanced emulation development when it's already challenging enough to get software emulation working with a high compatibility rate.

Then you have the fact that only a small minority of the owners probably have the emulation knowledge or PC specs to be pumping out games with the graphics above, meaning most will just be happy to play their games as they knew them. In case some of you aren't involved in the PS2 emulation scene, you need a pretty fast CPU/GPU and good chunk of memory if you plan on running games rendering in 1080p with lots of AA without slowdown.

If you want advanced emulation you'll most likely need to go down the PC route forever. However consider this also, the PS2 has been out for 8/9years, but PS2 emulation has only really picked up to good compatibility rates vs advanced rendering over the last few years. It takes the PC devs years to write these emulators, it's not easy. The Dreamcast and Saturn are two consoles that are still struggling a fair bit on the PC emulation side and how old are they now?

I play all my PS2 games on my PC, don't care that my PS2 lacks BC. However that's just because I have a good PC right now, before I upgraded to a 9800GTX+ a few months back most PS2 games ran pretty poorly on my PC if I wanted them to look really good.

[antsy]

I spose it could be in Sony's interest to make a better emu if I could have PSx games look on the PS3 the way they do on the PC by making the Emulator ?20 on PSN, I would probably buy it.

[Blackhearted]

PC emulators render in a higher resolution through the use of DX9/10 plugins. You can put in an internal resolution setting of like 2024x2024 for the textures, then apply insane amounts of AA.

In the case of PS1(or psx if you prefer that name), the main/best graphic plugin is actually OpenGL.

[antsy]

Would if be difficult for Sony in making the older games support modern graphical enhancements instead?

[Lord Zog]

Hmm ePSXe... have you tried out pSX ?

Less dodgy graphical enhancers, makes it looks like you're playing on the original console.

ePSXe has better support for plugins.. Set them up right and it will blow pSX away. :) For a while I used both as one had better compatibility than the other, but now with ePSXe 1.70, I am using it strictly now. :)

[Kushan]

The RSX chip in the PS3 is off bounds, courtesy of Sony.

A lack of dedicated graphics power will cause any emulation to be subpar to any PC one.

Except the PS emulator on the PS3 was written by Sony and has as much access to the RSX as anything else on the PS3, including games and such. That limitation applies ONLY to "OtherOS", whereby the PS3 uses a hypervisor to prevent access to the RSX.

Fair enough, But I spose you could just turn the AA off it the game reacts badly, I think the PS2 actually would AA the edges up to 640x480 when rendering PS1 games at PS2 resolutions, I'm not sure but I think the PS2 did a better job on PS1 games than the PS3!

The problem is, if you went up to your average joe PS3 owner and even mentioned the term "Anti-aliasing", they'd probably draw a blank and look at you funny. Sony can't give you a tonne of options to pick from, as nice as that would be, because it would just confuse most end users who just want their games to run. It'd cause a technical support nightmare if there were a bunch of tickboxes somewhere that could break games, just to make other games look a bit better.

Would if be difficult for Sony in making the older games support modern graphical enhancements instead?

Probably not, one of the benefits of writing an emulator is that you have complete control of the environment. That's why these PC emulators can do such cool tricks (If you want to see some REALLY cool emulation tricks, have a look at the texture enhancements made to N64 games) and there's nothing stopping Sony doing the same for their own PS1 emulator, except one thing - they don't have to. They own the PS1, they own it outrightly and since there's no real competing platform that plays PS1 games any better, there's absolutely no need to improve their own PS1 emulation. It works and that's all they care about.