Is there any xBox good emulator?

[Christopher1]

Emu's do require beastly machine. Give that core 2 quad an oc.

They should not really need 'beastly machine' in the real world. There are ton's of emulators out there for other things and they do not need a beastly machine. I'm really beginning to think that most of the problem with getting a working emulator is not "The machines are too puny to run them!" it is "The games and consoles in question have 'breaker' scripts that people have to figure out how to get around!"

If it is the latter, it's past time for any console over 10 years old or not sold in regular stores anymore (whichever comes first) to have all documentation released for them so that a proper emulator can be made.

PPSSPP (what I use for my legally bought PSP games to emulate them) runs fine on a 5 year old gaming class computer and a 8 year old everyday computer from Toshiba.

 

[abeer72]

THERE IS NO WORKING XBOX360 EMULATOR OUT THERE.

 

[gamerk316]

Emu's do require beastly machine. Give that core 2 quad an oc.

They should not really need 'beastly machine' in the real world. There are ton's of emulators out there for other things and they do not need a beastly machine. I'm really beginning to think that most of the problem with getting a working emulator is not "The machines are too puny to run them!" it is "The games and consoles in question have 'breaker' scripts that people have to figure out how to get around!"

If it is the latter, it's past time for any console over 10 years old or not sold in regular stores anymore (whichever comes first) to have all documentation released for them so that a proper emulator can be made.

PPSSPP (what I use for my legally bought PSP games to emulate them) runs fine on a 5 year old gaming class computer and a 8 year old everyday computer from Toshiba.

The more accurate the emulator, the slower it gets. BSNES/Higan's "Accurate" mode struggles even on my i7-2600k, running Project 64 in interpreter mode with an interpreted RSP/RDP runs about half speed, and PCSX2 via interpreter? 2 FPS if I'm lucky.

What most all emulators do is use shortcuts that, 95% of the time, work and gain large amounts of speed. But those ALWAYS result in something else breaking that someone later has to fix.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

Reference thread on this topic.

Coincidentally, we don't even have a perfect NES emulator yet. PuNES is the most accurate according to the test ROM's, but Nestopia/Nintendulator do better in actual games. But none can claim 100% accuracy.

 

[mi1ez]

What most all emulators do is use shortcuts that, 95% of the time, work and gain large amounts of speed. But those ALWAYS result in something else breaking that someone later has to fix.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

Reference thread on this topic.

Coincidentally, we don't even have a perfect NES emulator yet. PuNES is the most accurate according to the test ROM's, but Nestopia/Nintendulator do better in actual games. But none can claim 100% accuracy.

Interesting read! Cheers

 

[CharlesLam]

What most all emulators do is use shortcuts that, 95% of the time, work and gain large amounts of speed. But those ALWAYS result in something else breaking that someone later has to fix.

Because emulators do exactly what the name implies. they emulate. they are by design not to be 100% identical. if you want something 100% you would be looking for simulators. the idea with emulators is to reproduce something like it but not exact. which is why it skirted around copyright laws to develop said software.

from what it appears to me, there is a lack of interest and documentation when it comes to original xbox emulation. ps2 is finally getting polished, but it was better documented hardware wise let alone higher demand. the xbox soundstorm setup is all questions and no answers at this point. and thats just sound. i believe once 360 emulation becomes more prevalent, original xbox emulation may join that bandwagon. but at the moment it is tough to say.

 

[gamerk316]

What most all emulators do is use shortcuts that, 95% of the time, work and gain large amounts of speed. But those ALWAYS result in something else breaking that someone later has to fix.

Because emulators do exactly what the name implies. they emulate. they are by design not to be 100% identical. if you want something 100% you would be looking for simulators. the idea with emulators is to reproduce something like it but not exact. which is why it skirted around copyright laws to develop said software.

from what it appears to me, there is a lack of interest and documentation when it comes to original xbox emulation. ps2 is finally getting polished, but it was better documented hardware wise let alone higher demand. the xbox soundstorm setup is all questions and no answers at this point. and thats just sound. i believe once 360 emulation becomes more prevalent, original xbox emulation may join that bandwagon. but at the moment it is tough to say.

Documentation is key, yes. That's why the N64 is so bloody impossible to emulate to this day, for example. The more documentation, the easier it becomes, for instance, to find those weird floating point rounding bugs.

As for emulation accuracy, there's a LOT of debate in the community. The trend is toward accuracy over absolute performance, however.

 

[mi1ez]

As for emulation accuracy, there's a LOT of debate in the community. The trend is now toward accuracy over absolute performance, however.

Fixed that for you.

 

[blueshogun96]

There was an attempt at an Xbox emulator very early in development; MSFT went a little ballistic though. While emulation has been protected by numerous court rulings over the years, the developers decided that wasn't a fight worth fighting.

And what was that emulator called? Ive never heard of microsoft going mad over anyone making an emulator, if they would WINE and DOSBox would have been nuked on day one lol

So far theres only been 3 emulators for the xbox, one is cxbx, the other is dxbx which is basically cxbx but rewritten in a different programming language and nothing more, and ofcourse xeon, which works like cxbx but only plays Halo : Combat Evolved, and just the first level of it at that, and incredibly glitchy too. The sad thing about them is they arent actually emulators, just dumb patchers that try to route all calls to the xbox's hardware to that of windows, that really isnt emultion, but people got hopeful from it and rallied behind it since caustik (guy behind cxbx) came up with the idea as an experiment.

Xeon came and went as fast as it went, caustik and the guy behind xeon (_SF_) fought because he thought xeon stole cxbx code, everyone booed him even though he didnt. He never came back since he made it sometime in 2001-2002

Caustik got bored of cxbx (it was just a weird idea he came up with after all) and the project died in 2005 officially after he left it, some people though worked on it but the three other guys that made random updates to it vanished too, since then its been maintained by a guy called blueshogun, andddddd... well its been his pet that he just blogs about and nothing else happens much to it

Dxbx officially died off when they had nothing left to work with since cxbx didnt update and dxbx was just a way for its developers to play with the delphi programming language

For an emulator to actually emulate (like every single emulator that exists like pcsx2, pSX, stella, nulldc, snes9x etc..) they need to recreate the entirety of the hardware so that technically theres a virtual console and the game loads into it as normally as you would on the real thing, all xbox emulators never did that, so they failed and died, however.... recently a guy called espes did a breakthrough and used Qemu to create something that might just be the only hope left for an xbox emulator, but no news aside from its github page exists, it was/is called "xqemu"

the only thing capable of emulating xbox games and actually playing them, is non other than the xbox 360, microsoft created an emulator within it that works with specific games, its your best bet so far, however it only works with select games, and sadly it doesnt even work with half of the xbox's exclusive titles, the only other hope you have is seeing if your game was also made for the ps2 (then use pcsx2 to play it) or to the gamecube (use dolphin for that) or lastly, if it was made for the pc

Ooooooh, somebody is talking about me!

You might want to check out the latest progress on XQEMU (I blog about it on occasion when I get time). Lately, there's been a joint effort from espes, JayFoxRox, and I working on it, and we got a small handfull of games working so far. It still has quite a ways to go to catch up with Cxbx though, but this is undoubtly progressing faster and with greater practicality.

Shogun

 

[CharlesLam]

so now you are telling us it runs some games now? latest i read it didnt support any, just homebrew and diag stuff for developers to get their feet wet. keep fighting the good fight shogun! definitely want to see some xbox original stuff on the emu scene.

 

[blueshogun96]

so now you are telling us it runs some games now? latest i read it didnt support any, just homebrew and diag stuff for developers to get their feet wet. keep fighting the good fight shogun! definitely want to see some xbox original stuff on the emu scene.

Well, it's been able to run the official BIOS, dashboard and XDK launcher for quite some time now, so it's not THAT under developed...

Aside from that, it's largely untested. I don't think the other guys have as much content to run. If anyone wants to try their "luck", go ahead and give it a go; the source code is on git (https://github.com/espes/xqemu or https://github.com/JayFoxRox/xqemu ... try them both).

 

[Primon9]

What most all emulators do is use shortcuts that, 95% of the time, work and gain large amounts of speed. But those ALWAYS result in something else breaking that someone later has to fix.

Because emulators do exactly what the name implies. they emulate. they are by design not to be 100% identical. if you want something 100% you would be looking for simulators. the idea with emulators is to reproduce something like it but not exact. which is why it skirted around copyright laws to develop said software.

from what it appears to me, there is a lack of interest and documentation when it comes to original xbox emulation. ps2 is finally getting polished, but it was better documented hardware wise let alone higher demand. the xbox soundstorm setup is all questions and no answers at this point. and thats just sound. i believe once 360 emulation becomes more prevalent, original xbox emulation may join that bandwagon. but at the moment it is tough to say.

Documentation is key, yes. That's why the N64 is so bloody impossible to emulate to this day, for example. The more documentation, the easier it becomes, for instance, to find those weird floating point rounding bugs.

As for emulation accuracy, there's a LOT of debate in the community. The trend is toward accuracy over absolute performance, however.

The N64 is emulated incredibly well. I can think of only a handful of games that don't run at near-console quality. Minor glitches and bugs that don't prevent playability are common in all emulators, and most have been worked out with workarounds and special game fixes. LoZ has some map issues, Paper Mario, Mario Tennis, Crystal Shards and Gauntlet are a few that I consider to be "unplayable", but most of the n64 lineup is extremely well emulated and I would hesitate before suggesting the n64 is "bloody impossible to emulate".

 

[Kyle Hill]

Emu's do require beastly machine. Give that core 2 quad an oc.

They should not really need 'beastly machine' in the real world. There are ton's of emulators out there for other things and they do not need a beastly machine. I'm really beginning to think that most of the problem with getting a working emulator is not "The machines are too puny to run them!" it is "The games and consoles in question have 'breaker' scripts that people have to figure out how to get around!"

If it is the latter, it's past time for any console over 10 years old or not sold in regular stores anymore (whichever comes first) to have all documentation released for them so that a proper emulator can be made.

PPSSPP (what I use for my legally bought PSP games to emulate them) runs fine on a 5 year old gaming class computer and a 8 year old everyday computer from Toshiba.

I have a Quad Core with the crappy onboard ATI card but emulators like Project 64 play large 3D games like Ocarina/Majora/Banjo Tooie which that title has worlds that interconnect via secret passageways play just like on the real 64 though you have to map the analog stick to digital or you can't move regardless of control type.

 

[Kyle Hill]

There was an attempt at an Xbox emulator very early in development; MSFT went a little ballistic though. While emulation has been protected by numerous court rulings over the years, the developers decided that wasn't a fight worth fighting.

And what was that emulator called? Ive never heard of microsoft going mad over anyone making an emulator, if they would WINE and DOSBox would have been nuked on day one lol

So far theres only been 3 emulators for the xbox, one is cxbx, the other is dxbx which is basically cxbx but rewritten in a different programming language and nothing more, and ofcourse xeon, which works like cxbx but only plays Halo : Combat Evolved, and just the first level of it at that, and incredibly glitchy too. The sad thing about them is they arent actually emulators, just dumb patchers that try to route all calls to the xbox's hardware to that of windows, that really isnt emultion, but people got hopeful from it and rallied behind it since caustik (guy behind cxbx) came up with the idea as an experiment.

Xeon came and went as fast as it went, caustik and the guy behind xeon (_SF_) fought because he thought xeon stole cxbx code, everyone booed him even though he didnt. He never came back since he made it sometime in 2001-2002

Caustik got bored of cxbx (it was just a weird idea he came up with after all) and the project died in 2005 officially after he left it, some people though worked on it but the three other guys that made random updates to it vanished too, since then its been maintained by a guy called blueshogun, andddddd... well its been his pet that he just blogs about and nothing else happens much to it

Dxbx officially died off when they had nothing left to work with since cxbx didnt update and dxbx was just a way for its developers to play with the delphi programming language

For an emulator to actually emulate (like every single emulator that exists like pcsx2, pSX, stella, nulldc, snes9x etc..) they need to recreate the entirety of the hardware so that technically theres a virtual console and the game loads into it as normally as you would on the real thing, all xbox emulators never did that, so they failed and died, however.... recently a guy called espes did a breakthrough and used Qemu to create something that might just be the only hope left for an xbox emulator, but no news aside from its github page exists, it was/is called "xqemu"

the only thing capable of emulating xbox games and actually playing them, is non other than the xbox 360, microsoft created an emulator within it that works with specific games, its your best bet so far, however it only works with select games, and sadly it doesnt even work with half of the xbox's exclusive titles, the only other hope you have is seeing if your game was also made for the ps2 (then use pcsx2 to play it) or to the gamecube (use dolphin for that) or lastly, if it was made for the pc

Ooooooh, somebody is talking about me!

You might want to check out the latest progress on XQEMU (I blog about it on occasion when I get time). Lately, there's been a joint effort from espes, JayFoxRox, and I working on it, and we got a small handfull of games working so far. It still has quite a ways to go to catch up with Cxbx though, but this is undoubtly progressing faster and with greater practicality.

Shogun

Those emulators are fake requiring you to sign up to special offers you gotta pay money to or it won't activate the 'code' for you. If they are real I still won't spend 100$ for a questionable emulator. I'd rather spend that amount on a real system that's old

 

[Kyle Hill]

What most all emulators do is use shortcuts that, 95% of the time, work and gain large amounts of speed. But those ALWAYS result in something else breaking that someone later has to fix.

Because emulators do exactly what the name implies. they emulate. they are by design not to be 100% identical. if you want something 100% you would be looking for simulators. the idea with emulators is to reproduce something like it but not exact. which is why it skirted around copyright laws to develop said software.

from what it appears to me, there is a lack of interest and documentation when it comes to original xbox emulation. ps2 is finally getting polished, but it was better documented hardware wise let alone higher demand. the xbox soundstorm setup is all questions and no answers at this point. and thats just sound. i believe once 360 emulation becomes more prevalent, original xbox emulation may join that bandwagon. but at the moment it is tough to say.

Documentation is key, yes. That's why the N64 is so bloody impossible to emulate to this day, for example. The more documentation, the easier it becomes, for instance, to find those weird floating point rounding bugs.

As for emulation accuracy, there's a LOT of debate in the community. The trend is toward accuracy over absolute performance, however.

The N64 is emulated incredibly well. I can think of only a handful of games that don't run at near-console quality. Minor glitches and bugs that don't prevent playability are common in all emulators, and most have been worked out with workarounds and special game fixes. LoZ has some map issues, Paper Mario, Mario Tennis, Crystal Shards and Gauntlet are a few that I consider to be "unplayable", but most of the n64 lineup is extremely well emulated and I would hesitate before suggesting the n64 is "bloody impossible to emulate".

Yoshi's game also has severe level glitch outs making it impossible to see though I think there was a way to trick the graphics but it was many years ago so I don't remember.

 

[gamerk316]

The N64 is emulated incredibly well. I can think of only a handful of games that don't run at near-console quality. Minor glitches and bugs that don't prevent playability are common in all emulators, and most have been worked out with workarounds and special game fixes. LoZ has some map issues, Paper Mario, Mario Tennis, Crystal Shards and Gauntlet are a few that I consider to be "unplayable", but most of the n64 lineup is extremely well emulated and I would hesitate before suggesting the n64 is "bloody impossible to emulate".

The three main N64 emulators (Mupen64 Plus, Project 64, 1964] have some of the lowest compatibility for major system emulators right now; even PS2/Gamecube/Wii emulation is far ahead of where the N64 is right now. N64 emulation suffers a LOT of minor bugs that no one knows how to fix (and in some cases, what even causes the problem). Famous example: Body Harvest geometry, which is broken on EVERY emulator/Plugin combination.

The root problem is no one has ever bothered to create a low level cycle-correct emulator, entirely in LLE, to track down these sorts of problem. Notice both PCSX2 and Dolphin have these modes, and while they work slow as molasses, are important for tracking down low level emulation bugs. N64 emulation lacks this type of mode, so bugs never get tracked down and fixed.

So yes, the N64 is emulated "well" for a brute force, get 70% of everything playable route, but as far as accuracy and that remaining 30%, well, your SOL.