As This Emu is Perfected For Better Performance, Does System Requirements Go Down?

[kabooz]

the 360 emu was used to test games before the hardware was ready
so it runs games at (at least) almost fullspeed
infact they didn't notice anything until one of the back end plates broke and uncovered the G5 to which the XBOX360 controller was attached
which was also interesting, since back then I didn't know that the controller works flawlessly on other systems

[Air]

... seeing how the XBOX 360 is a PowerPC-based cpu, that's not much of an emulation stretch.

In fact are you guys sure it was an emulator, or just the games being compiled natively to the G5 as a target?

[kabooz]

that I don't know...
but iirc did it look like the normal xbox360 interface
but that wouldn't be too hard to code XD

edit:
apparently it needed 2 G5s XD
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/show...i=2420&p=5

[Zeydlitz]

Well, it's definitely, that IBM have Xenon interpreter for some of their supercomputer's unixes (hard to tell, is it AIX or more common system), it used at designing process and has no connection to any game software at all. But for Microsoft there is no need to emulate something in Apple platform at all. Microsoft has windows cross-compilator for Xbox platform -- it's all they need to have.

p.S. Pre product testing was made at engineering samples -- the same hardware, but does not built in actual console, look like as normal computer.

[Wyclef]

A really enlightening thread.. Thanks guys for answering patiently.

This is one of the most helpful forums on the net ever.

[Air]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the G5 is just the XBOX360 "dev" machine. It's virtually the same hardware and the OS includes all the XBOX libraries (which are just the DirectX/XNA apis ported to the PowerPC); but it's a full-scale PC rather than a specialized console box, which makes it more ideal for development, debugging, and general use.

That's the same way the XBOX worked. The dev machines were just PCs with XBOX-matching video and XNA libs installed. That way you can run all your MSVCs, web browsers, etc. and have access to full debugging and exception handling facilities. There wasn't any emulation involved. Instead the games were just compiled on the dev machine with the dev machine as the target platform (which basically means that the compiler links against the matching operating system DLLs and symbols).

For final-stage console testing you compile the game for the console target, and then upload it into the console via a usb connection (or something similar). And if you followed the rules when you write the code on the dev machine, everything should work with perhaps only a few small hiccups.

[arcum42]

That's pretty much what it looks like. Here's a little bit of an interview with ExtremeTech I found:

"ET: The demos that we've seen so far—the stuff on MTV, and that was running at the press conference last night and will be at the show—is that running on the actual final hardware? The three-core CPU and the final GPU, running at final clock speed?

TH: No that's all running on Alpha Dev Kits.

ET: What is in an Alpha Dev Kit and how does it compare to the final hardware? We've heard it's a two-CPU Power PC, not dual-core but two separate CPUs, and basically a 256MB Radeon X850.

TH: Right. The best way to look at it is that, well it depends on which functions you're looking at, but in aggregate it's probably 30-40% of what the final product can do.

ET: The final product will be at least twice as fast?

TH: Right.

ET: So all the stuff we've seen running so far… Gears of War, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Test Drive, Need for Speed… all that stuff was running on an Alpha kit that is that is half or less the final system's power?

TH: Right, right. I mean different games are going to behave differently, but as a rough number, yeah. "

[Air]

edit:
apparently it needed 2 G5s XD
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2420&p=5

... that's because it was 2 LCDs, back-to-back, connected via ethernet for multiplayer.

[kabooz]

so no XBOX360 emu I stand corrected!

[Emulatong]

33% boost in the speed is very good.