I request netplay!
#1
As with ePSXe, I hope PCSX2 will have some form netplay support in the near future.

As a silly attempt to get some sort of netplay working, my friend and I used a VNC (remote desktop) program to essentially have us both use my computer and I streamed the PCSX2 window so he can see it. Yes, as you're all thinking, the latency made it unplayable. It was more or less a proof-of-concept of PS2 netplay. (And possibly some form of the world's first PS2 emulation netplay?)
*****' latency.PNG: http://www.upload3r.com/serve/170309/1237349816.png

And that's what I did today.

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#2
Possibly the most ghetto-tastic multiplayer setup i've seen. Nice.
Ninja
#3
Not really proof of concept. You'd either need to run two instances of PCSX2 and keep them in sync, with some latency and systems with fairly different specs, or streamed images and audio at a fast enough rate to be playable. You'd have to overcome one of those two issues to get it playable, you didn't show either could be overcome.
#4
Duly noted. It wasn't by all means serious, but I haven't seen anything like it done before, so yeah. Rolleyes

And if I'm not mistaken, I clearly stated in my post that it was a silly thing done out of boredom. I also mentioned the unplayable latency.
#5
I had a discussion about netplay once with drk||Raziel and Jake Stine.

we talked about both the ideas ChickenLiver mentioned in his post above.
The first method has a few problems, because it would require all PCs to get the exact same results with pcsx2.
this is not what happens currently, because different OS's/CPUs/Settings, will all effect the results of emulation; and could probably make this idea unstable.
so if netplay was done this way, it'd either be potentially inaccurate and problematic, or it would be very 'limited' to only support people using very similar systems/settings/and OSes...
or maybe it'd have to be 'synced' by saved states every so often or something...

we concluded the safest way would probably be to send compressed video/audio and just stream that.
but pcsx2 is already expensive, so compressing on the fly would have to be done on another thread, so the host PC would need to be a quad/tri core'd pc mostlikely to do this efficiently.

anyways, we're pretty swamped with getting the actual emulation to run accurately ATM.
so non-essential features like netplay are at a low priority Tongue2
#6
I assume disabling MTGS and using all single-threaded plugins (And all settings identical, no INTC hack, and whatever others might mess things up) still wouldn't guarantee sync?

Doing things at the GS level wouldn't be any better, right? Just streaming the gif tags directly from one system to the other. Wouldn't have to reload textures at least, though then you couldn't use lossy compression. Have to do audio, too, of course. (I consider the pad part of this pretty trivial, so not really worth discussion).
#7
(03-18-2009, 10:50 AM)ChickenLiver Wrote: I assume disabling MTGS and using all single-threaded plugins (And all settings identical, no INTC hack, and whatever others might mess things up) still wouldn't guarantee sync?

if we have all settings the same (advanced options + speedhacks), and disable mtgs, use the same OS, and use the same version of PS2 bioses, then it might be good-enough to run two instances of PCSX2 and keep them in sync for playability.
but i wouldn't say it'd guarantee sync.

and by 'same OS' the most distinct thing being linux VS windows.
GCC compiler + linux-only code will most-likely not guarantee us the same results as windows pcsx2.
windows XP vs windows Vista might effect some stuff as well, but not sure if it'll be relevant to the actual emulation, so its probably not as bad.

and i think drk||raziel mentioned that streaming raw GS info would be too bandwidth intensive. but i don't remember the details Laugh
#8
(03-18-2009, 11:04 AM)cottonvibes Wrote: and i think drk||raziel mentioned that streaming raw GS info would be too bandwidth intensive. but i don't remember the details Laugh
That would be megabytes per second even with compression. Just streaming the video/audio through a low latency (max 3 frames) codec could be better, the native resolution isn't too big.
#9
Holy crap. I had no idea streaming audio/video was the most viable method. I guess with some work, one can find the right tools/codec to do so.
#10
WAH! 3 devs of different PCSX2 project parts in one thread O_O
Streaming video. Technology of the future... Now PCSX2 supports only 2 cores - every 3-4 core CPU can afford video encoding Smile Also the other player can have even very old PC or laptop with integrated GPU.




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