convertion from ps2 to pc
#1
There is a game named Le Mans 24 Hours. It'd been first developed for ps2 somewhere in 2000/2001 and few months later converted to pc. Of course pc version looks much better but it's not about that the most. As we all know ps2 got cpu clocked on 299MHz. Here is part of readme file from pc version of Le Mans 24 Hours:
------------------------------------------------------
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
------------------------------------------------------

- The following are the minimum system requirements to
launch and play "Le Mans 24 Hours".

Processor: Pentium II 333MHz
(or equivalent) or higher
RAM: 64 MB
Video card: Microsoft Direct X compliant
3D Accelerator card with
16 MB VRAM or higher
Sound Card: Microsoft Direct X sound
card compatible
CD ROM: CD ROM reading Quad speed (4x)
Peripherals: Microsoft Direct X Compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
Operating system: Windows 98, Windows ME or higher
Hard disk: 680 MB (approx.) free space
required to install
DirectX: Version 8.1 (included on the CD)

This obviously means that pc with cpu around 400MHz is enough to play every game converted from ps2. What takes so much pc power that to emulate ps2 on it 10 times faster hardware is needed than for simple conversion?
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#2
Uh... PCSX2 is not converting a game, it's emulating the entire PS2 hardware.

If you have the source code of the games and you "convert" it to other machine sure it's probable (just probable) to run that single game in the other machine without much of a burden (not always the case) but PCSX2 tries to emulate the PS2 itself so all stuff that runs on the PS2 (not just games, but it's what users are interested in Tongue) could run in the emulator as well and not just a single game. Just BTW, it's not easy to convert games to run in other machines even with the source code, only way it would be smooth would be if the game was developed thinking of being used in multiple platforms in the beginning maybe, it really depends on the game/engine used and well if it was so easy as converting then maybe we'd have seen more of this games for the PC anyway Tongue

Please read this thread to know why it is so slow emulating:
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Why-is-PCSX2-slow
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#3
Quote:This obviously means that pc with cpu around 400MHz is enough to play every game converted from ps2. What takes so much pc power that to emulate ps2 on it 10 times faster hardware is needed than for simple conversion?

You should read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth
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#4
Quote:This obviously means that pc with cpu around 400MHz is enough to play every game converted from ps2. What takes so much pc power that to emulate ps2 on it 10 times faster hardware is needed than for simple conversion?

The bottleneck is the overall floating point performance of the PS2 especially the VU.

A PS2 has roughly 5.5 GFLOPS and for example a Athlon @2GHz has roughly 4.1 GFLOPS which is enough to say why you need a fast system to emulate.
The other thing is that VU code can only be emulated in software due it's 'design'. Coverted games do offload the heavy graphics calculation - like the VU does - to the graphics card.

That's why you can run a PC game like LeMans24 on a 400Mhz processor.
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#5
I think he has mistaken PCSX2 with the Cxbx (XBOX Emulator) which converts an XBE to a native EXE
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#6
(06-23-2010, 12:15 AM)midlothian Wrote: There is a game named Le Mans 24 Hours. It'd been first developed for ps2 somewhere in 2000/2001 and few months later converted to pc. Of course pc version looks much better but it's not about that the most.

Totally irrelevant comparison. All of the early PS2 games from 2000 to 2003 were horrible implementations that didn't even use a fraction of the PS2's abilities. This was especially true of anything that was ported from the PC. The two systems are so completely different and, more importantly, the PS2 was just so oddly unique to game programmers at that time (who had no experience dealing with parallel processing, a fundamental concept to all things PS2), that all early conversions ended up totally sucking on the PS2.

... and that's not even taking into account the fact that the PS2's "video card" -- the GS -- is unlike any other video card ever made. It was custom tailored to suit the parallel design of the PS2, and it requires completely custom and specific coding strategies in order to take advantage of it.
Jake Stine (Air) - Programmer - PCSX2 Dev Team
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#7
(06-23-2010, 01:36 PM)Air Wrote:
(06-23-2010, 12:15 AM)midlothian Wrote: There is a game named Le Mans 24 Hours. It'd been first developed for ps2 somewhere in 2000/2001 and few months later converted to pc. Of course pc version looks much better but it's not about that the most.

Totally irrelevant comparison. All of the early PS2 games from 2000 to 2003 were horrible implementations that didn't even use a fraction of the PS2's abilities. This was especially true of anything that was ported from the PC. The two systems are so completely different and, more importantly, the PS2 was just so oddly unique to game programmers at that time (who had no experience dealing with parallel processing, a fundamental concept to all things PS2), that all early conversions ended up totally sucking on the PS2.

... and that's not even taking into account the fact that the PS2's "video card" -- the GS -- is unlike any other video card ever made. It was custom tailored to suit the parallel design of the PS2, and it requires completely custom and specific coding strategies in order to take advantage of it.

I do understand that ps2 hardware is a unique and different project if compared to all generations of pc's. But I also understand that almost all of instructions from ps2 cpu and gpu got its analogs in pc's even from the time ps2 was launched. OK, the only thing that came to pc much later are 64-bit integer units but pcsx2 does not take any advantage of 64bit cpus and I've found somwhere on this forum that it won't give any boost even if it would. So is parallelity of processes so hard to emulate?

[Edit] This Le Mans 24 Hours game is not so bad example I think. It was designed for ps2 and dreamcast mainly and pc version was just made because it was still simple to made. As far as I remember It does not goes beyond 60 fps in pc version doesn't matter what hardware you're running it on.
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#8
Quote:I do understand that ps2 hardware is a unique and different project if compared to all generations of pc's. But I also understand that almost all of instructions from ps2 cpu and gpu got its analogs in pc's even from the time ps2 was launched. OK, the only thing that came to pc much later are 64-bit integer units but pcsx2 does not take any advantage of 64bit cpus and I've found somwhere on this forum that it won't give any boost even if it would. So is parallelity of processes so hard to emulate?

Your pc is using one of the x86 instruction sets, the cpu in the EE uses a RISC instruction set(mips iii & iv).
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#9
(06-23-2010, 11:20 PM)midlothian Wrote: I do understand that ps2 hardware is a unique and different project if compared to all generations of pc's. But I also understand that almost all of instructions from ps2 cpu and gpu got its analogs in pc's even from the time ps2 was launched. OK, the only thing that came to pc much later are 64-bit integer units but pcsx2 does not take any advantage of 64bit cpus and I've found somwhere on this forum that it won't give any boost even if it would.

... uhh. The PS2's development chain and influences have nothing in common with PCs. Period. Ever. They're completely different instruction sets, different execution units, different dependency chains, etc. They literally have nothing in common.

Quote:[Edit] This Le Mans 24 Hours game is not so bad example I think. It was designed for ps2 and dreamcast mainly and pc version was just made because it was still simple to made. As far as I remember It does not goes beyond 60 fps in pc version doesn't matter what hardware you're running it on.

The only thing the Dreamcast has in common with the PS2 is that neither of them have anything in common with a PC. A lot of early games made for both DC and PS2 are poor PS2 games. They only use a fraction of the power of the PS2 which is, by the way, roughly six times the machine the Dreamcast is.

I'm also quite sure that the only real advantage the the PC version has over the PS2 version is a higher native resolution. I was comparing screenshots on gamespot and the PS2 version honestly looks almost identical, except that it's limited to the low res used by standard TVs back then.
Jake Stine (Air) - Programmer - PCSX2 Dev Team
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#10
midlothian:
Please read this *whole* article on ars technica. It'll debunk all of your flawed assumptions Wink

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/reviews/2000/02/ee.ars
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