What is the future plan for PCSX2?
#1
I know this been discussed to death. But I am curious what is the future plan for this emulator? This app is amazing and really enjoyable to use. One of the big question mark above everyone head is the 64 bit support. I understand that it make thing harder to transition to 64 bit. I already read threads discussing about this very thing but unfortunately they are very old thread and it the year of 2015. I noticed many big company is dropping support for 32 in the favor of 64. Even some app don't need it but they are going with the time instead of be falling behind. There is rumors that Window 10 will drop the support for 32 bit. I can understand why they are doing that because it is a lot of resource to maintain both build.

There is one article that discussed this very thing. Last year, 63% of the Window OS download is 64 bit. Since it is last year and Win10 is coming next month. I imagine that percentage will bump to 80% or 85%. and the possibility that Win10 could drop 32bit. 64 bit for consumer been around since 2002.

One of the biggest concerns is the future. If Window actually drop the support of 32 which they should have done it long time ago if it wasn't for legacy support. If Microsoft actually drop it, I am sure that this emulator will have a slight issue with compatibility with 64bit OS.

*I just look up more information. Apparently They are still support 32 but the way they sound like they don't want to have 32 support but need to support because of legacy system.

I understand that there is a need to rewrite the code to get the plugins to work in 64bit. But I believe it a good thing since it will add more flexibility and compatibility with the system in the future.

So what the plan?
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#2
It's a lot more complicated to convert an emulator to 64 bit than a normal app.

Lately, GSdx has been given 64 bit support(mostly on the Linux side) but it's still not ready for actual use.

Porting the core emulator to 64bit is a massive job. All the recompilers have to be pretty much rewritten. So mostly that = write the emu from scratch again.

32 bit isn't going anywhere for the forseeable future, and 64 bit wouldn't benefit PCSX2 that much anyway. It's better for us to use our very limited manpower in fixing bugs and broken games than porting things to 64 bit.
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#3
I'm not going to force a potential 15-35% of our users to stop using the emulator for no reason at all, so it's not going to go 100% 64bit at any time soon, maybe 2 versions, but as Blyss said, it's a huge undertaking tho translate it.

I'm very against cutting users out for the sake of it and no justifiable reason. Recently somebody wanted to remove the DX SDK and move to the Windows SDK, this would render the emulator useless on XP, although that userbase is smaller, it's still there and there is no benefit from doing so apart from being more modern (which provides zero benefit currently)
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#4
(06-10-2015, 01:14 AM)refraction Wrote: I'm not going to force a potential 15-35% of our users to stop using the emulator for no reason at all, so it's not going to go 100% 64bit at any time soon, maybe 2 versions, but as Blyss said, it's a huge undertaking tho translate it.

I'm very against cutting users out for the sake of it and no justifiable reason. Recently somebody wanted to remove the DX SDK and move to the Windows SDK, this would render the emulator useless on XP, although that userbase is smaller, it's still there and there is no benefit from doing so apart from being more modern (which provides zero benefit currently)

My question is this, are machines on XP even strong enough for a playable experience with PCSX2 anymore?
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#5
with 2d games and light 3d, sure why not. I had a Q6600 in the XP days, was more than enough for quite a few games with MTVU on.
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#6
Yep, and some people may be using XP on more beefy machines. Some people just really prefer it.
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#7
It makes now sense to have a high end rig on XP because it never even had support for DX10.
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#8
Not everybody likes PC games, but might like console games in HD.
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#9
Yeah. I mean the vast majority of users are not these ones. They are not on XP with super beefy rigs etc etc. But there are cases. And I am with refraction - I don't believe in cutting out any userbase unless the reason is extremely good.

Since I feel 32 bit will be relevant for a LONG time (imagine the catastrophe if the next CPU didn't support it. Tons of businesses would be ***** since they may rely on older apps for consistency etc) and since 64 bit really doesn't bring that much benefit, I see it as being a very low priority. Of course one day I'd like to see it, but again in my mind I think it's better to focus on fixing broken stuff and bugs rather than 64 bit.

Also there is this: https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/issues/596

Which I made based on this thread. That would bring at least some of the benefit that 64 bit would and is very easy to do.

64 bit will not make things massively faster, and may not at all. A lot of people(I know you guys aren't these people, but I wanted to say it) try to compare to Dolphin when their 64 bit was much faster and then they ultimately dropped 32 bit. But that is misleading. First, the 64 bit was faster not because it was 64 bit, but because it had some memory type stuff (I forget exactly) happening that the 32 bit didn't. Dolphin already had both 64 and 32 bit. So when the time came to choose "Port the fast memory back to 32 bit or drop 32 bit" they chose to drop 32 bit. Which is their choice, but they did upset at least some of their user base because of it(I've seen posts on here as such). Not saying they did the wrong thing, again it's THEIR choice. Just like sticking to 32 bit for now is ours.

So that's pretty much my stance on it. If we had devs that wanted to help and literally had nothing to do since all the work was taken (keep dreaming) then I'd be like "Yeah, do it up!" but since that is not the case, this is my position.
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#10
Yeah, 64 bit support doesn't provide much benefits compared to the work needed for implementing it, also I feel no need to drop the current 32bit builds, they're the best at user compatibility wise.
We're supposed to be working as a team, if we aren't helping and suggesting things to each other, we aren't working as a team.
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