What Kind of FPGA Would It Take For GameCube, PS2 and Xbox? Not MiSTer FPGA
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- čas přidán 27. 08. 2024
- FPGAZumSpass created the MiSTer FPGA N64 core and everyone thought it was impossible. We also have the MiSTer FPGA Sega Saturn Core from Srg320 and the MiSTer FPGA PS1 core...also from FPGAZumSpass...so now everyone keeps asking...when is a new MiSTer FPGA board coming out and will it run GameCube? Or Xbox? Or PS2? So let's discuss what FPGA gaming means in the next generation of hardware consoles? And let's not forget the Dreamcast FPGA core...which is apparently coming to MARS FPGA. Retro gaming fun incoming!
and if you need any MiSTer FPGA review videos or MiSTer FPGA guides check the playlist! Plus we have MiSTer FPGA vs emulation videos aplenty as well as retro game console content!
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Ive done Dolphin GameCube emulation tutorials, PCSX2 tutorials and how to guides and Xemu tutorial guides...but none of those systems run on FPGA obviously...but could they? Let's find out!
Questions? Comments? Just leave them below and I will do my best to answer each and every one of them!
/ videogameesoterica
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#retrogaming #misterfpga #nintendo #nintendo64 #retrogamer #retrogames #emulator #emulation #gaming #gamingcommunity #gamingvideos #gamingvideo
Spice Orange is one of the best console colors ever made.
I do love it
For some reason audio goes from stereo to left side mono at 2:40 and back to stereo at 5:12
Ugh. Resolve can sometimes bug and not force channel 1 into channel 2 on audio assets. My Rode is like most a mono mic so the track gets duped. Randomly resolve will playback in stereo once the track is duplicated then render it as single channel. Long time bug
I noticed this too and I thought my sound system turned off and I was getting only TV audio. So I turned my TV off and then back on and it re-established the ARC connection, but sounded the same. Then I moved the video timeline back and noticed the swap over haha.
Damn resolve
I literally read this comment the second it happened lol.
Resolve can really bug sometimes. This one is rare but others like the “cursed timeline” are common. Timeline fails to render on a specific random frame. Copy the timeline to a new timeline and change nothing? Renders like a champ
One thing that Mister does well (besides near perfect gameplay) is ease of use. It just works. Setup isnt easy, you have to know what you are doing, but every time I fire it up it just works. PC emulation, hacking old consoles, RaspPi, even those cheap handhelds always seem to be hit or miss, work 1-2x, then not, then work again, etc. If they had a simple way to play PS2, Xbox, GC, etc that just worked all the time, updated the same way Mister does, I would be happy with that
Yes MiSTer does streamline a ton of what trips people up with modding or software emulation
Exactly. Its the main reason I alway shun PC gaming as I just want to play not tinker with settings. MISTer is perfect for doing just that.
You would love RGB-Pi, maybe not as perfect as MiSTer is for performance (latency) and audio quality/timings, but great for what it is, it just works, and you have PS2, DC, GC, OGXB et cetera, the upcoming Replay OS will be even better, as it will have DynaRes 2.0, which gives near real hardware video timings, proper resolution and frequency support and performance, immaculate RGB for CRTs, it's the closest we have to FPGA for 6th gen for now, plus Replay OS has some amazing features and supports real optical discs and carts, if you could use Replay OS through MiSTerCast for 6th gen consoles it would be perfect, here is a list of DynaRes 2.0 features:
Native Timings: games are displayed using native horizontal and vertical resolutions and refresh rates.
On-The-Fly Timing Changes: the system is able to make instant timing changes for games that use different resolutions during the gameplay.
Calamity Modeline Calculator: for modeline calculations, DynaRes takes advantage of Calamity's switchres dynamic library for calculating all system modelines.
Interlaced Flicker Reductionː the system automatically applies a linear filter for smoothing the flickering produced in games that use interlaced video modes (slightly reducing the image sharpness).
Software X/Y Position: it is possible to adjust the screen X/Y position via software menu option (no forced modelines).
CRT Profiles: the modelines generated by the system can be configured to better adjust to different CRT types like consumer TVs, Arcade 15, 25 and 31Khz, etc.
@@carlstokes7321
I bought a 4K gaming PC to play games but the controller issues are a huge fail. A Sony layout for Dual Shock controllers should be in every game. But, they aren't. You literally have no idea whether your preferred controller will work. Who wants to play King Of Fighters with an XBOX controller?
Honestly, everything I’ve heard and based on my personal experience it’s the opposite. Most modern emulators support per game hacks, and usually apply them automatically and are regularly developed. FPGA emulation development is slower, fewer people are in the space, and the boards are expensive to boot. If you can set up an FPGA board, you can setup and use a modern emulator - he’ll, most of them have automatic control mapping for X input controllers.
Unlike NES, SNES, Genesis etc era games where timing and memorization are critical and thus a FPGA solution is a perfect fit, later consoles games like those for GameCube and PS2 don't require perfect timing for authentic feeling gameplay. I'd love a FPGA solution to all my favorite console, but I'd settle for GameCube emulators etc that accurately emulate all effects and games with good performance. Right now even Dolphin can struggle depending on your settings and game.
I'd have to disagree with you there, the PS2 & DC are both analogue low latency consoles that use real-time OS's, they are as dependent on video & audio timings as all other analogue consoles that came before them, which is why so many DC & PS2 games are near impossible to play in soft emulation, like Space Chanel 5, Soul Calibur, Ikaruga for instance, the PS2 and DC are both sub 1ms on real hardware via a CRT or OLED display, take the DC collection on the 360 for instance, they had to completely alter the timings of the games to cater for the higher latency of the soft-emulation, and it's even worse on a Windows based PC, even the Xbox 360 is virtually zero latency when using the analogue DAC output on a CRT, Plasma or OLED display, especially with the original blades OS which was considerably better performing than later 360 kernels, the PS3 also is very low latency with real hardware, all 6th gen consoles would really benefit from FPGA just as much as previous gens.
@@Wobble2007 that guy RTL confirm PS2 would be better on a fpga setup due to how the hardware and software commutate then it would be on a PC iam not sure about the other consoles . i believe RTL is working on a PS2 on his own fpga so his opinion matters
@@Wobble2007 The tech might be low latency, but the game play doesn't require it to be enjoyed authentically for *most* games (I should have made it clear I meant most games). That's been my experience. The games you listed are good examples of exceptions where an FPGA could be ideal, and a few of my favorite games on those platforms.
100% agree.. exact timings only really seem to matter for the older generation of consoles. My guess is that the CPUs on generation 6 (Dreamcast, Game Cube, XBox) and above are just so fast that input polling is really no different than modern emulators.
@@Wobble2007yes, but it is also a matter of coding really close to the hardware. The closer you got towards the year 2000 the more high level and portable the coding got. And more friendly to emulation. if we trust that Dreamcast is doable relatively near term, the PS2 is the one who might get the big miss. Too complex to even gather its needed information. Too close coded to Hardware to be perfectly emulated. Maybe in the distant future those schematics can be created with the help of AI?
The deal is that newer generations are less sensitive for timing stuff. It doesn't really need accuracy like older videogames. As long a frame is delivered within specified time-frame everything is fine. Newer consoles fights more for bandwidth than anything else. Also, current computers can just render stuff natively, instead of recreating/mimic what the older hardware does. Well, theres a lot of reasons to just emulate PS2 and beyond games.
Still, would be great to have some FPGA or FPGA chipsets(?) that could pull that off.
Honestly it would be fun to have a mixed box. FPGA for DC and below with an ARM chip for everything above
@VideoGameEsoterica this is a neat idea. Maybe even some cheap x86 since there are good boards and they're often more capable
Plenty of options for sure
@VideoGameEsoterica I get what you are saying. Like having everything on one board. But I think at some point, the price difference to just put a small x86 board alongside the de10 nano would be a better option.
I had to explain this to someone on Reddit or YT that just would not believe me. The XBOX is probably the best example as you would have to map an entire P3 CPU in FPGA. Imagine using graph paper and mapping out every building, every room, every tree, cat, dog, rat, person of even a medium size town. Then then there is the NVIDIA GPU. Really, if you want GameCube get a GameCube, Wii w/ GC ports (
Yes there is this belief out there that an FPGA chip is basically “magic” and can do anything. Trying to set that record straight here
@@VideoGameEsoterica I am hoping that once the cost for an FPGA chip comes down to a level similar to what we have now, that AI might be able to speed up the core creation process. Or it may have decided humanity is far too annoying and wiped us all from the face of the planet by then.
Probably the latter 🤣
I got a GCLoader and a retro prism for my DOL-001 Gamecube. Not the cheapest option but half the cost of a MiSTer with all the accessories.
@@treesfebreeze7793 2x GCs, orange and platinum, both with matching GBAPlayers, PicoBoot and SP2SD. Orange one has new fan, BlueRetro I/O board from LaserBear and internal HDMI mod. Silver just uses a Kaico Labs Digital A/V HDMI adapter (same as Carby). I could have just got a Mister but I do have an Analogue Pocket and Dock.
It is interesting that the Dreamcast is simpler in complexity than the PS2, because the Dreamcast used the future technology of programmable GPU which was fixed in the PS2.
Just kinda how that works :)
Hate to “AcKsHually!” You, but I’m reasonably certain the original X-Box was the first, and only console of that generation with programmable shaders, which is IIRC the reason it was the only system of the three to see a port of Doom 3 which had a lighting/shadow engine that required them.
I think the Dreamcast GPU was more featured but not as fast, while the PS2's graphics synthesizer was cruder but extremely fast thanks to the many pixel pipelines and embedded RAM
@@Phredreeke Eh, I don't know about that, when the "Emotion Engine" was well programmed (a tricky thing to do), it was capable of things the Dreamcast likely couldn't do.
@@yellowblanka6058 the PS2 as a whole is a lot more complex than the Dreamcast
Thing is, consoles from 6th Gen don't tend to be as sensitive to timings, the code running on layers of operating system etc far less "bare metal" that's why software emulation can be so good for these systems, a much larger FPGA might be able to support them but the work involved in reverse engineering a 6th Gen system would be massive.
Exactly my point :)
Not necessarily, the Dreamcast is also a 6th gen system and they did that no problem.
Xbox will be the real challenge, but PS2 and GameCube won't be anywhere near as tough to get going.
@@BlueEyedVibeCheckerdreamcast has no fpga implementation
Let’s just all enjoy the mister running the 5th and earlier, generation consoles. There are still thousands of games that are still within the mister’s reach. Instead of worrying about 6th generation, let’s perfect the consoles that are already half working right now. Let’s get the Jaguar working, let’s get Philips CDi up and running. Let’s get the 3DO. Let’s make night slashers arcade and house of the dead. Let’s make a tiger electronics handheld core .If you keep on chasing these impossible 6th generation consoles, you’ll never enjoy the iconic ones you have already.
Hell yeah Night Slashers!
I bought a MiSTer for the 2D content. Anything 3D is just an added bonus.
@spotifyseascapessmoothjazz it really is!
Jaguar, CDi, and 3DO yeah sure everyone just loves those
Gen 6 is the end goal tbh. Arguable 7 can be emulated fine now (compared to before) but DC/NAOMI/PS2/Xbox/GC is endgame. A whole swarm of gamers will have no interest to purchase new games after an all in one solution is finally presented.
I'd love to see Outrunners as an arcade core, It needs one so badly as the System 32 emulation MAME is pretty half baked
We need OutRunners. Legit amazing game
I need System 32 just for Spider-man
Did you try fb neo? I just tried it on my Odin Lite with fbneo retroarch core. It seems to work fine though I'm not very familiar with this game.
A classic
When we get to systems that had an OS and API layer between the software and the hardware instead of writing raw machine code it makes more sense to just have emulators that reimplement the API rather than doing hardware reimplementation. The PS2 era is in that middle era just before that. With PS3 and Xbox360 the hardware was pretty much abstracted
Yes PS3 and beyond it’s not even worth attempting 15+ years from now
@@VideoGameEsoterica It also doesn't really add anything of value to be cycle accurate on those generations where you are programming to an API instead of bare metal
Exactly. There is no such thing as cycle accuracy at that point really
A perspective: Games consoles up through the mid 90's used chips and code that is more about the transistors and physical logic, and that's why an FPGA is the ideal device for accurate recreation. With the late 90's into the 2000's to now, game consoles behave much more like our PC's, to the point where the best, most accurate way to preserve the experience of playing these games might be recompilation, which is taking the written source code and modernizing it to current programming languages and CPU/GPU calls. Even with the Nintendo 64 there's been progress in recompilation of quite a few games to run on modern computers. Software emulation will always be the quick and easy solution to experience these games withing 99% of their original experience, but a combination of hardware emulation and recompilation may be the answer to being able to get an authentic feel with complete accuracy.
Yes the real question is “do we even need it”
I just play GameCube and wii games on my series x with RetroArch. The way it can upscale those games is insane it's like playing a real remaster.
How is the Retroarch version? I use the stand-alone ver. of Dolphin and have no complaints on my series S.
I haven’t tried it either
It is a nice feature
@@nimbylive it's awesome from my experience. No complaints as far as gc/wii emulation is concerned
@@nimbylive trying to emulate more obscure things like the pc-98 was a headache though lol
What is missing here a bit is the amount of information available and the work to gather that information. I can rather see someone recreating a FPGA clone of a PowerPC processor (which is relatively well documented) than decapping all specialized chips in a PS2. The work for just creating schematics for that increases exponentially because the amount of transistors within those chips do.
You probably wouldn’t decap at this generation but reverse engineer in a diff manner
Having the 6th gen consoles on an FPGA in the next 10 years is still a good timeframe. Fingers crossed.
I certainly would play them haha
I have my steam deck for all of those :D.
Same. And a dozen other devices lol
I think a lot of folks forget that if you get the right model, you can just soft mod a Wii for GameCube stuff (plus you get the Wii itself and software emulation of every Nintendo console up to that point).
The PS2 softmod isn’t hard to do either and the DC optical drive mod doesn’t require any soldering.
The bottom line is you’re better off just using actual hardware if you wanna do 6th Gen stuff. Saving up my pennies for a MiSTer now. lol
Agreed. I don’t see that gen really benefitting much at all from FPGA
It’s an interesting topic, especially with recent talk of more powerful FPGA systems coming like Replay 2, MARS, etc I’d be more interested in seeing systems like Sega Model 3 coming to FPGA than more consoles, although as others have mentioned after Dreamcast it becomes a lot more challenging. Still waiting for 3DO, VBoy, and of course a working X68000 core.
I’d much rather see that too. This era of hardware is easily obtainable and not expensive
A more powerful FPGA by itself will not improve anything. Current cores will not run "better". And a new FPGA will not magically fix all current problems (the N64 core didn't run out of FPGA "cycles"). It has to come with cores or at least prospects that those can and will be done. Realistically PS2 and GC will be out of reach for a long time, thus the next gen FPGA will have to focus on IGS PGM, CV1000, DC, Naomi, maybe even Naomi2. I cannot see other things coming, what srg320 and Robert Peip did recently was astonishing enough, pushing the MISTer to its boundaries.
No it’s a latency issue for N64 so that could be taken care of today on a more powerful FPGA
@@VideoGameEsoterica I guess that there is more to it, especially the RAM design will be interesting.
I think that if you already own Mister, it is very difficult for me to justify the purchase of the future Mars at the price they advertise. It is not that the FPGA is more powerful, but that there are developers capable of making cores that take advantage of these characteristics. Each console generation leap is absurdly more complicated than the previous one. This is evident from the moment we have been seeing memes for a year and nothing real, like the supposed Dreamcast core
Yes the jump in complexity from N64 / PS1 Saturn gen to the next gen is massive. Maybe the biggest jump of all
We need to remember, Nintendo 64 took "Robert" one year. He seems to be a genius level developer. So imagine how long it would take someone not on his level.
Exactly. Something like GameCube would take multiple talented coders longer than N64.
getting paid also helps, as it justifies taking time away from other stuff
Yes. People can’t dedicate the hours needed for something like a PS2 core like it’s their full time job for nothing
@@VideoGameEsotericaThere does seem to be a lot of entitlement among emulation enthusiasts (and gamers in general). I don’t think they appreciate how much work goes into these projects.
I fully agree with everything you said. At least for a hobbyist, 6th gen consoles are unrealistic in the near future.
However, if AMD Corporation wanted to make one, they probably have the Spice files for the necessary CPU cores and the ATI flipper GPU. They also have the fab contracts in place to manufacture it at a reasonable price. So something that's unrealistic for hobbyists could be completely realistic for a large CPU corporation that already has the designs and the manufacturing.
Maybe in an alt universe somewhere. I’d love to see it
Could totally see Nintendo release a "Mini Gamecube" That literally was a stripped down Gamecube inside it's already within price point as far as the physical hardware is concerned.
Would be interesting to see
I look forward to your video update in 2034.
Haha you never know
And here I was just hoping for 3DO, Jaguar, and maybe cd-i.
One day I’m sure
Hoping they could do a NDS core with DSi support so that people can play the DSiWare Games Dark Void Zero, Mario vs Donkey Kong Minis March Again, Cave Story DSi, Shantae Risky's Revenge, Cut the Rope, Four Swords Anniversary Edition, and Bloons TD 4 on the Mars FPGA.
That won’t happen on MiSTer sadly
@@VideoGameEsoterica Yes i know, but the DS and DSi Core will be Happening on Mars.
Gamecube was epic...Is there any real reason to use a Gamecube if you use a modded Wii, other than nostalgia?
Modded Wii is as good as GameCube
Don't even need to mod the Wii.
It can help though with some improvements
@@VideoGameEsoterica Hmm, interesting. I like using my Wii U, but you lose out on the Game Boy Player functionality and some of the GBA linking stuff, I think. Though you can just emulate the GBA games on it.
Mi2Ter could do it...
Haha we don’t know what it’ll even be yet
If the Sega Saturn core was finished and a completed CPS3 core magically came out today, I wouldn't need to update my mister ever again 😆. I'm sure that down the line we will all be upgrading to some new FPGA device but I think that's still a ways away. I'm very happy with the Mister and what it's done so far.
Yes we really can’t complain with what we have on MiSTer. It’s 11/10 good
The system I'm most interested in for a next gen FPGA platform are Windows 9x games utilizing the most mainstream hardware at the time. Pentium CPU's, 3DFX Voodoo 1/2 3D accelerators, and Sound Blaster Live soundcards. So far, the only emulator that attempts to recreate the hardware from that era is PCEm, but it's development has slowed since the founding dev left the project. Unlike DOS games which are covered well by DOSBox variants, and Windows XP games which mostly require simple patches, Win9x games aren't covered nearly as well, and these games are nearing the 30 year mark.
Voodoo would be good for arcade stuff too
this is exactly what people said about Nintendo 64 on the MiSTer. "it's a decade out" and "not possible on the MiSTer" and however many other things that were said that turned out to be completely false in hindsight. I don't think that the PS2 or the GC are possible on MiSTer, but I highly doubt that these are a decade away. They will come sooner than that, just not on the MiSTer.
The decade thing is cost associated. Is there an FPGA chip TODAY that could fit PS2? Yes. But it’s in excess of 50,000 USD
That was a specific RAM timing issue, which Robert obviously resolved. It was never about raw power or chip architecture complexity.
@@matthewhall6288 not 100% resolved, but nearly every game runs great
2:42 left ear moment
Resolve bug. Rare but happens
People also need some reality check. These CPU's and GPU's are really complex. The Jump from that the PSOne/N64/Saturn Gen to the one after that is immense. Like even the Dreamcast (Which already did a lot of tricks to keep up). But if you then see just how many transistors the PS2 or Xbox is.... it's night and day difference in complexity.
Yep. It’s a wholly diff era of technology
hum am I the only one to get a left side mono sound ?
No seems like Resolve but it’s rare but possible bug on render. Just listen to my soothing voice from one ear today!
@@VideoGameEsoterica Haha already did :) as good as always :) just bit one sided imo xD
🤣
Your future: I see unending iterations of this topic because people won't stop asking until it comes out
Haha probably
The n64 was developed before 1995, the hardware was already done by that point, but software wasn't so the launch was delayed. The hardware was in development throughout 1994.
The other day i was checking out the AMD Versal FPGA (which has, like, one of everything on it -- including an AI core).
I had a thought that what if we could create a Convolutional Neural Network that could infer the programming for the FPGA by being fed in heat maps of actual hardware running. I was thinking it would probably be the easiest to set up for 80's and 90's arcade hardware, but maybe after a lot of training, it could work for something like a gamecube...
For anything beyond the N64, you will need an FPGA in the Virtex or the beefier Altera's range, and you would probably want it to come with fixed CPU cores built in... These mean big bux you know. And unfortunately the PS2 has a MIPS CPU which no existing FPGA has fixed cores you can use directly.
Then, you have to replicate a shader programmable GPU (the EE V0 and V1 in the PS2 and the Flipper in the GC). No one has been able to replicate a Fixed Pipeline GPU in FPGA (3DFXes, Nvidia TNT2s, ATI Rage's, etc) (openGPU doesn't count as basically was a "coin airdrop" from the old Number Nine engineers who liberated it... also is a Fixed Pipeline processor), now imagine attempting to replicate a programmable pipeline GPU.... Like someone else said, is easier to just patch the API to leverage on a modern GPU and de/recompile to your native CPU architecture.
Yes it’s not like we don’t have large and impressive enough chips to do this today. They just cost as much as a new BMW 5 series and up
I appreciate you putting the scale in perspective. I kind of assumed this was going to be the case and have hardware for 6th gen+. Got a fat PS2, a 360 (with RGH for expanded OG Xbox compat), and a Wii U (which plays GC and Wii games natively). The system I did not pick up is Dreamcast. It's a little pricier to do all the mods for that, so I'm really counting on a next-gen FPGA to support it. Here's hoping!
Honestly a Dreamcast with a VGA box and a clone GDEMU isn’t too bad
@@VideoGameEsoterica if they are scart capable, they can get a rgc dc cable with the video mode switch
Gamecube and Xbox cores will be awesome.
Maybe one day
TBH I think 3D consoles on FPGA are kinda excessive. The disadvantages of software emulators are much more of a problem on 2D consoles. Once game devs started dumping polygons to the GPU and letting it run at whatever speed it could crank out, we stopped really needing nearly as accurate a reproduction of the exact results. Most game designs were tweaked so they didn't require nearly as much frame accuracy to play well. This was of course partially due to games becoming more polished, but also because devs had to work around stuff like the player not always having a perfect camera angle available to them. It's also part of why platformers are ever-present in 2d, but proved so hard to get right in 3d (especially in first or third person, and not as a side-scroller).
Most 3d games just play differently, and IMO those differences mean high level/software emulation really doesn't leave much or anything to be desired for those systems.
Not excessive for what we have but if that’s the last gen of 3D we see in FPGA I’d be fine with it
The Dreamcast is a 6th gen console like the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox. Like others have said, this is the first generation to fully make use of abstraction layers like DirectX and some form of OpenGL, so the benefits of using an FPGA from there is negligeable. Therefore something like the Radxa X2L which is the cheapest X86 SBC available that might do the same job will do fine.
I think of it as like 5.9 gen
for a lot of newer systems i wonder if reverse engineering straight to a fabrication would be seen sooner than FPGA hardware that can actually correctly simulate the hardware. With semiconductor density not really getting any further these days, it's hard to say that FPGA hardware will ever reliably run at a fast speed (over 1, 2 Ghz). This is just speculation but, from a computer engineering standpoint, the speed of digital hardware is limited particularly by the distance that the electricity has to travel. That's why more semiconductors in tighter space run faster, which is the pattern we see with computer hardware from 80s to 2010s. The more widespread use of FPGAs is actually really on account of that limitation. We have more or less found the limits of synchronous, sequential logic and have begun focusing on parallel processing, which FPGAs are amazing at. That all said, reverse engineering something like the emotion engine or the PS3 cell processor would be a giant task so I don't imagine that a refabrication is going to come any time soon for any consoles released after N64 gen
A little addition to this, though. Certain parts and IPs are more available than others. Certain processor/processor compatible IPs are still being sold/licensed today and it's possible to make silicon recreations of those IPs. FPGAs could serve to replace the slower, parallel video logic. See commander x16
If you could reverse engineer it and somehow get it to a new fab process perhaps
I suspect we might see PS2 on REPLAY 2 with a hybrid solution, the CPU in FPGA and the GPU emulated on the SoC so you can get those other enhancement benefits. This hybrid method is not unlike what Sony did with the PS3 a year after launch for PS2 backwards compatibility.
At that rate software emulation would be just as effective IMO
@@VideoGameEsoterica If you have a PC for sure, but even on high end ARM devices That aetherSX PS2 emulator still struggles on various games.
By the time you could do it on FPGA the lower end hardware will probably have progressed enough for that not to be the case would be my guess
@@VideoGameEsoterica have you read some of the reply's RTL has made when it comes to ps2 in his view he has said PS2 will never run right on a PC base on how the hardware and software interact with each other in a real PS2 he believes it will better on a fpga
Original PS2, GameCube and Xbox using a crt or retrotink 5k on a 4k tv and I am happy 👍
Nothing wrong with that!
People used to hate on ps2 not having anti aliasing, but I find that makes it look WAY better on a CRT than Xbox or GameCube. I love that crispy 480i look.
But it only looks good on CRT unless deinterlaced IMO
@@VideoGameEsoterica With the Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing from the Retrotink 5x it looks good on my 4k tv ^^. You need to have realistic expactations of course. it is still 480i upscaled to 1080p on a 55" tv
Dreamcast manages to look superb in both 480i and 480p. I'm always amazed with how good it looks on the Oled
Isn't Analogue doing an N64 fpga console? I remember when the SuperNT came out, Kevtris (the designer of the SuperNT fpga) saying that anything more complex than the Super Nintendo would be too complex to reproduce on fpga.
Yes they are doing an N64 now
Interesting subject indeed. Even without _emulation_ as development often happens on FPGAs too before consoles hit the market or even PC hardware.
I mean I'd love to see a FPGA that can handle 6th gen (including Dreamcast) but it sure is no necessity as I'm good with software emulation too.
Leaves more excitement for MiSTer clones and future Raspberry Pis.
I more want powerful future FPGA chips for 3D arcade hardware but that’s me
I wonder if we could actually get all new "virtual consoles" that never existed built from the ground up in FPGA. Something like a PICO-32 say
100% but you’d need an SDK along with people who wanted to develop for it
or genesis with 2x 68000
Something went wrong with the Audio, somewhere at circa 3 Minutes it wents all on the left :D
Resolve bug. Randomly it’ll not save stereo channel assignments but only on export. So I dupe a mono mic track to force the voice over track across left and right. It’s left and right in my headphones…then it disappears randomly once exported. Rare but it happens
I'd love to see a video on the Flipper/3D0 M3!
Soon :)
@@VideoGameEsoterica Awesome!
It’s a fun story
Todos os Sistemas de Consoles da Sexta Geração, com suas diferentes Arquiteturas, foram desenvolvidas ainda na Década de 1990 ainda no Século 20...
Ano de desenvolvimento do Hardware:
Sega Dreamcast 1997
Nintendo Game Cube 1997
Sony Plastation2 1998
Microsoft Xbox Original 1999
Ano de Lançamento Comercial do Hardware:
Sega Dreamcast 1998
Sony Plastation2 2000
Nintendo Game Cube 2001
Microsoft Xbox Original 2001
Com isso concluímos, que os fatores estão associados a Arquiteturas totalmente diferentes, e não ao ano de Lançamento...
At this level it seems like ports are a better use of resources, like the n64 port project.
I’d def agree
Bummer but this makes sense! Luckily emulation on 6th gen isn’t too bad. Love my mister though.. nothing compares.
And software emulation will just get better. NAOMI has seen some solid improvements in the last couple years
It would be incredible for Dreamcast, GCN, PS2, and Xbox FPGAs to happen, but I'm not holding my breath for it any time soon. We'll see if MARS actually does Dreamcast, but even that is sketchy in my opinion.
But let's all be honest here, the real hype is the return of cat pen! 😻
Cat pen is always around. He just chooses when to participate
So what you're saying is that Pepsiman is really the one running the show. You're just a figurehead!
Pepsiman does it all. I just set it up for him. Next video “MiSTer FPGA vs Wet Food”
Pepsiman understands the audience like none other!
@METR0lD he also worked on the Killing Time remake. Lead cat
I think I heard what I wanted to hear in this video: "There's no reason to hold out for new hardware when the MiSTer is already here."
Exactly :)
I'd really love something that had both an FPGA and a regular PC style processor so it could do both hardware and software emulation with one OS.
Something that could run the MiSter cores, but then switch to dolphin or ps2 emulation would be nice.
I bet you see that eventually
@@VideoGameEsoterica it might make sense as an expansion card for pc slots
sorry this will be long.
1. You are absolutely right in the the progress of technology. For my High School Graduation and Golden Birthday may parents bought me a Pentinum II, DVD-Rom, Zip Drive beast in 1998 so I would have it for college. It was $2K (I bought the printer and monitor). By my fourth year of college the computer as a freshman dunked on all others was a near paper weight when it comes to gaming. Compared to this Zen 1 computer I built almost seven years ago for $1k which is way less obsolete.
2. Pretty much up to Dreamcast most console's and handheld's were all ASIC chips instead of modified off the shelf chips and required a lot more timing issues.
3. From the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube games were ported more to the PC and every console since has been.
4. No offense to Robert, the dude is beyond legend, but I planned on replaying Majora's Mask and after seeing decompiled to PC version of that game, I'm going with that. I feel like that would be a better option for even PSOne and N64 going forward instead of FPGA.
5. Xbox Series S/X and Xbox One can play a lot of XBox games, this is why Xenia is so far behind in my mind compared to PS2 Emulator's and Dolphin.
I think the community understands what people want going forward for FPGA.
1. Maximizing the FPGA to handle things, like Cartridge/Disc Readers and Upscaler. I only want to spend money on one baller FPGA, even if I have to give Mike Chi a $100 to convert an improve the upscaler in the new chip.
2. Improve the current cores and add a few Arcade Cores and possible up to Dreamcast.
3. Create a handle that is serviceable.
4. If you really want GameCube, why doesn't someone just create a board that moves the output of an OG Wii (Gamecube) into a controller chip that lets you switch from an Wii/Component-Composite in/MiSTer and maybe even do some fancy soldering for all in one power supply and redirecting a M.2/SATA slot into the USB connection for a large hard drive.
The recompiled Majora is a look into the other future of playing retro games for sure
There’s still quite a bit of ignorance around emulation/FPGA and just what it takes to emulate/simulate consoles. If the FPGA cores for relatively simpler consoles like SNES etc. still have quirks, not sure why people would assume something like PS2 FPGA is on the horizon.
i’m more interested in PSP/DS, any idea if those might be more feasible on MARS?
I’d have to look more into it
We can hope for chepaer, better, with better tools for FPGA, that make development much much easier.
With time that will happen
My hope would be a fpga that can run all the dos games and arcades machines (think needs to get up to a vodoo card level of power) and a vm running on current machines with real time os to handle the newer consoles that can't run on the fpga :). Think this may be possible soon :)
3D arcade stuff would be amazing. Give me some Model 3 / System 22 please
This was a gut punch, but I thank you for it. lol Consider my reality, checked. 👍🏻
That’s what I’m here for :)
2:40 the narration goes mono, left channel only, doesn't recover until 5:13.
Bug in resolve. Happens but it’s exceedingly rare. This was that exceedingly rare instance
@@VideoGameEsoterica I challenge you to make an episode in iMovie or something similar 😂
Haha I’ll take the random bug. No thanks
93.75 dude that's basically 94 and you round DOWN to 93! why you do my boi so dirty like that? lmao
I'm Kool with saturn ps1 and some arcade. plus your going to start to see more and more fan games for the ps1 & saturn its a good time to retro
I want more arcade stuff. But that’s me
The audio switches from stereo to mono...
Rare Resolve bug on export
Ohhhh. The salivating topic
Haha one way to put it
Can Mister run something like Evil Night? Maybe with a guncon? Is that insane to ask?
Most likely not but funny enough I was just playing that one yesterday
@@VideoGameEsoterica dang, what about the Mars thing you cover? If I could get the last gen of CRT light guns at home id be pleased as punch
Maybe. M2 isn’t a light system
@@VideoGameEsoterica thanks for the info. Maybe I should look into OpenIR, got burned hard on the Sinden light gun as I dropped over 500 for my setup and never really got it working the way I like
"so take these broken wiiiings!" 😊
The long term Easter egg
Personally, I don't need FPGA for Dreamcast, GC, Xbox and above. The original consoles already have good options for ODEs and inexpensive ways to get HDMI out. From the GBS-C to things like the CARBY and other HDMI converts.
Emulators already do what you would need them to for this generation, and scaler options abundant these days.. Plus these consoles are not hard to find, where as the Mister covers Hardware and Scaling for many consoles that are hard to find.
I don't ever see a need for an FPGA console above the MARS, and probably mister is enough for most people. The real last piece of FPGA emulation that is missing for many is the Nintendo DS and 3DS systems. The other handhelds have options already, like PSTV. We either need good consolizers or FPGA options to come out for those systems, and hopefully something like MARS can do that. Beyond that, original hardware and emulation is in a good spot to cover the rest.
DS / 3DS / PSP would be welcome additions one day
it also gets harder to map all the controls to non-og controllers
Fortunately Gamecube and PS2 are easy and cheap to find and mod to run any number of games. Xbox can easily handle a hard drive upgrade to fit all the games you could want. Dreamcast is kind of expensive to mod though.
The real question is would a GameCube FPGA use .iso, .rvz, or .nkit.iso?
.bmp lol
I wonder if a mixed approach wouldn't be wiser down the line using FPGA to recreate most of the system but not the CPUs or GPUs. But i don't know what I'm talking about. 😂
I mean at that point it’s not really worth it honestly :)
Probably be best to just make a new hybrid architecture, and try to find a modern (PPC/ARM/X86) CPU, and AMD GPU that could get close enough to the real systems, and then maybe have a FPGA pick up the rest.... Like 20% emulation, 25% FPGA, and 55% real hardware too..... Also yea I'd love to hear more details on the GPUs, if you want to make a video.
I may make that video soon :) more gaming history for all
honestly recomps are probably the better way of doing that generation of games. higher fps, higher resolutions, better colors... i can't say i was a fan of the, uh, "artistic style" of that era (disgusting gray-brown and janky 10fps animated models).
Recomp is going to be next new hotness for sure
some n64 games are quite low rez and skate by with all the blur, plus benefits from crt
Did your microphone started working in mono mode? 2:40 it was kinda weird 😅
Resolve bug
imma just glue an xbox, ps2 and wii and call it a day
Haha good idea
I think AI assisted FPGA code writting will help make these doable in the next 20 years, when it wouldn't have been possible at all before no matter the size of the FPGA logic. While it is true the PS2 and Gamecube are in a good place emulation wise, the Xbox is still far from being emulated well.
At least OG Xbox is cheap and plentiful
Not current AI, that's for sure. AI excels at helping people write code that has been written hundreds of times already.
Current AI is telling us to put glue in our pizza sauce 🤣
@@VideoGameEsoterica it's already trying to get rid of us.
A lot of us probably deserve to get SkyNet’d lol
Forget FPGA, we don't even have an Xbox emulator that is even all the way there. Sure there have been improvements, but it's nowhere close to Dolphin or PCSX2.
Yes Xbox emulation is def in third place for that Gen
Just subbed getting into mister fpga and had no idea you made videos other than switch news 😆
Haha I do all sorts of things
The benefits of FPGA are negligible once you are dealing with out of order execution cpus and systems with software abstraction layers like DirectX. Cycle accuracy does not confer a benefit to games that don't rely on fixed timings like older consoles do.
Pretty much. Hardware modding / software emulation with new features will drive this gen and every other gen
it costs thousands of thousands of dollars
Sadly, after Dreamcast the transistor count of subsequent consoles goes way up, it basically rises exponentially, so I wouldn't expect any FPGA implementations of those consoles any time soon (I am talking at least 10+ years). The FPGA hardware required to implement those either doesn't exist or is extremely expensive, so it makes no practical sense.
Skyrockets if we are being honest
Fine, so I don't ask about the Xbox 360.
Haha
I honestly believe a PS2 emulator would be easier than the DC, the DC's Yamaha AICA sound processor is 67Mhz on its own, the DC's GPU is considerably more powerful and can push more raw pollys @ higher resolutions than the PS2, the PS2 has to really sacrifice resolution just to push the same ballpark amount of pollys as the DC can, the PS2's strength is its MIPS III CPU thanks to it's extended instruction set and the coprocessors, making it a good deal more powerful than the DC's RISC CPU, the PS2 CPU has a lot in common with the N64 MIPS III CPU, which has to mean that some of the hard graft has already been done as far as progress for the PS2 CPU being converted to FPGA, a fun fact, the DC can actually emulate the PS1 better than the PS2 Slim can, as they removed the PS1 hardware from the PS2 Slim it has to emulate PS1 games, many of which are not compatible, the DC emulates many of the top tier PSX games at better resolution and with higher quality texture filtering than the PS2, read into that what you want.
AS far as the PS2 getting an FPGA core, it's up there with the most beneficial consoles for FPGA, PS2 emulation still far from perfect, perhaps even far from good, only 1.5% of the PS2 library is classed as perfectly playable, though most of the library can be played with emulation related glitches and bugs, audio quality is not great (you need real discs for CDDA for one thing) and there is much higher latency than real hardware (the PS2 original has sub 1ms latency on CRTs thanks to that PCRTC aka CRT controller chip), many PS2 games are just not worth playing without real hardware, FPGA would change that, the PS2 would massively benefit from the video quality improvements it would bring whilst retaining the real-hardware performance levels, and if it used a legit optical drive you could also have proper CDDA & Dolby Digital audio, just being able to use an FPGA PS2 in 480p would be incredible.
One last thing, I think the best way to achieve the first generation of PS2 and DC FPGA cores is to use a hybrid setup of an FPGA and a real GPU, or if possible multiple FPGA's to keep cost down as much as possible, but perhaps if everything other than the rasterization was done o FPGA, it would be much easier to pull of in a shorter amount of time, a full PS2 FPGA could be developed later down the line when more powerful FPGA's are available at more reasonable prices.
Judging by transistor count, PS2 chips are ~5 times more complex than DC. That makes it impossible for FPGA implementation in the near future.
@@kosmosyche Certainly not impossible, given even the latest Intel X86 CPUs are prototyped in FPGA, and given the progress of MiSTer on a lowly academic FPGA board has seen, anything goes to be honest, anything could happen at this point, even if just experimental.
@@kosmosyche Also transistor count does not represent how advanced the corresponding manufacturing technology is, a better indication of this is transistor density which is the ratio of a semiconductor's transistor count to its die area, for which the PS2 is 43,800 vs the DC's 55,400, putting the DC ahead in complexity.
@@Wobble2007 Impossible in a practical sense. As in FPGA platform that might be developed in a near future, which you can buy for reasonable money. In theory, everything is possible, of course. It just won't happen.
@@kosmosyche Safe to say you not optimistic then hehe, fair enough, time will tell :).
I honestly don't see the point in an FPGA implementation for these consoles. They're basically modern computers. The complexity of the hardware is super high and their graphics pipeline is a relatively close fit unlike 8 bit and 16 bit consoles that don't have a framebuffer and draw things scanline by scanline. Feels like some FPGA fans have just been conditioned to think "software emulation = icky"
I don’t either really. But it’s a question I get asked a LOT
10 years = can emulate if rich... 20 years = retro.... 30 years = fpga-able.... 40 years = runs fine on $20 aliexpress handheld
40 years = half of us will be in the dirt
The 6th gen console in my opinion isnt worth of getting FPGA treatment because of time it will ne needed to analyse the design and hte processing power to accomodate that design. When SD845 device could emulate Ps2 ,GC and Wii just fine it wont make sense chasing fpga route due to complexity of the processor utilised in that console (there is a reason why Amd stop reverse engineering intel processor since 486 era because its getting harder and longer to do combine with lawsuit from intel itself
I’d tend to agree
I think Dreamcast is much better than those systems. You'd need major deblurring options to make 480i look good and worthwhile (for me). It would be a very powerful piece of hardware. I suggest at least 3 years away.
Dreamcast looks the best still IMO
I think ChatGPT will help speed up the code writing for developers working on future cores.
Maybe one day
No Dreamcast? 😢
Probably a diff video ;)
@@VideoGameEsoterica Sweet!
Nothing special about the Graphics Synthesizer, just a simple rasterizer. Most complex thing about PS2 are the Vector Units in the Emotion Engine. The MIPS R5900 core also is very simple. Bandwidth will also be difficult to emulate.
IMHO everything beyond N64 and Sega System 32 level arcade boards should be emulated. With consoles like Dreamcast, PS2 and Gamecube 16bit color rendering sticks out like a sore thump. Model 2/3 and up are emulated perfectly these days.
The future are with the DE10 Nano clones and emulation.
Model 2 emulation could use some improvements. Very impressive but not perfect
What if AI designed it?
AI isn’t that smart yet
Is FPGA even needed for the original XBOX? It's a Pentium III, it would only need a translation layer, AFAIK.
I’d say in this gen of systems FPGA isn’t needed at all. Between how the frame buffer operates and the fact the hardware is cheap and emulators are amazing FPGA isn’t really bringing that much to the potential party
Almost Input lagless native experience on good ol crts would have been nice for some titles. Besides, as you know some 480i/p era games were still relying on special effects designed to be seen crt. SH 2-3 still use dithering like their ps1 predecessor. Same goes for blurryness of gta sa, dmc 3 and other games. Although, frankly speakimg i often launch pcsx2 in softwwre render and just play on my vga crt and its just fine for me
@@VideoGameEsoterica I tend to agree and dare even say that such effort should be put towards ROM hacking PS3 games to take full advantage of the amazing (at the time) hardware, since many PS3 games were poorly optimised/developed.
But I'm biased because I'm not too fond of software emulation.
@@user-se1ro4sy4z that's great! Besides my home office monitor, I only have CRT TVs and monitors around, great to know there's still people loving their CRTs ;)
@@user-se1ro4sy4z ps2 is a nightmare of 480i
FIRST!
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There are some parallelable FPGAs that you could use two of to run PS2 a complete system probably run about $2K. If you want Gamecube or Xbox I would put a CPU of the same family on it and run it through Hybrid Hardware emulation. An FPGA paired with X86 instead of ARM would have great potential considering how many consoles have been x86 but outside the Xbox we are talking about things we just started hitting with Software emulation so many of us are likely going be dead before that time comes.
It’s certainly going to be a minute til it’s feasible