Tehnical question

[muckijeste]

Alright, I know 0 about PS2 hardware, but one thing has made me think. We all know that software(CPU) emulation displays graphics much better than the hardware mode (it is slower, but that's not relevant right now). Now my question is: Could that be, because maybe a PC CPU is more similar than a PC GPU to PS2 GPU? Or what?

[refraction]

That's actually a good question! One Which I might struggle to Answer correctly.

As far as I understand it, hardware mode is the "fast " way of doing things, it relies on pixel shaders doing all the work. Software mode, everything is done in software, so we manually do it all, giving us much more control over post processing. As a bi product of this, speed suffers greatly.

[muckijeste]

Oh. Right. A program relies on processor to work, graphics card is there to help fasten the Direct3D actions, but that's not possible in ps2 emulation because a ps2 does not use Direct3D. So if someone made a card with a script controllable pixel shader (especially for emulation purposes), fast and good emulation would be possible. I get it good?

[refraction]

Close, but it does get quite complicated. We are restricted by directx but we can "translate" some things pretty well

[muckijeste]

Okay. Keep up the good work :-)

[StriFe]

Not only that refraction, but software-based graphics are mostly cpu intensive and aren't really use the full power of the gpu

[muckijeste]

Oh and one more thing If, as you say, you have more control of the graphics in software mode emulation, then why does Gsdx plugin support all the graphics options (Texture filtering, resolution, etc.) only in it's Hardware mode? And that AA1 is crap, doesn't work at all...

[rama]

AA1 is a GS feature. Only a few titles use it (Persona 4 text boxes and the BIOS cubes).

Hardware mode does filtering and resolution scaling as a byproduct of how it works.
If you use Direct3D to render a scene, you need to specify these settings.

Software mode is a lot more direct.
It's much like old PC games that had fallbacks to software rendering if you didn't have a 3D accelerator card.

[muckijeste]

Ohhh now I get it..I remember playing South Park on my Win95 without a GCard...Thanks for the answers