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[Akuji]

How does Jade cacoon 2 run and is the sequal anywhere near as good as the ps1 sequal?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I wonder how good the Mac support is and if it's native for Apple Silicon with good performance

Macs already natively support Dualshock and Dualsense controllers including haptics so they would theoretically be great for PS2 emulation

 

[Panajev2001a]

One of these two groups is a collection of fans working largely for free to reverse engineer a complex and bespoke hardware and software stack. The other is the multi-billion dollar corporation who literally build said hardware and software stack and has access to literally everything. I feel expectations are set accordingly.

No, not really. Unless the issues are all IOP and SPU2 related (I/O and networking and sound), the information you have in the HW today are essentially the same… all docs are out (some people even sell old TOOL performance analysers too). You also overestimate the amount of PS2 knowledge those at Sony today have.

Still, sure, corps can pay more experts to work on it, but it can become impractical/bad ROI and people are still too harsh on their efforts IMHO.

 

[KeepThemEyesOpen]

How does this compare to using original hardware with an OSSC? Because that what I have my PS2 set up with and was thinking of either getting a Retrotink 5x or modding it with the RetroGem. Never been too fond of emulation but if it's actually leaps and bounds better I might make the switch. I'm not really too fussed about the graphical improvements because even tho an OSSC isn't an optimal way to play the PS2 it still looks good to me.

Honestly since you have all this setup already I would just stick with what you got. The emu is fantastic but if you want the pure experience with no concerns with emu errors then just play on your original hardware. I personally use both depending on the game. For example, MOH Frontline has an unlocked framerate that's never consistent on the ps2. On PCSX2 you can crack up the clocks speed so that it runs alot more consistently. Mind you it's still not perfect but it's much better then before.

 

[Rivdoric]

Now where did i put my old Harry Potter PS2 games.

 

[KeepThemEyesOpen]

Yeah, as someone who was using the nightly releases and updating them regularly, i didn't understand what's all the fuss about. The difference between this new 2.0.x version and the last 1.7.xxxxx was literally just a single commit. So basically, just a brand/name change.

I suppose it's a HUGE update for whoever was still using the 1.6. stable. But why would anyone still use that?

It's also curious how this brand/name change happens shortly after Dolphin's own changes. They too had a ridiculously obsolete "stable" version for many years and now it's gone from the downloads page while the version naming has changed. I suppose they finally had enough of people downloading such old versions of the emulators and filling the bug report pages with issues that were fixed long ago. So that's good.

I was thinking the same thing, so if we were already on the nightly builds, this new "stable" update isn't really anything new to us now is it?

 

[ZehDon]

No, not really. Unless the issues are all IOP and SPU2 related (I/O and networking and sound), the information you have in the HW today are essentially the same… all docs are out (some people even sell old TOOL performance analysers too). You also overestimate the amount of PS2 knowledge those at Sony today have.

Still, sure, corps can pay more experts to work on it, but it can become impractical/bad ROI and people are still too harsh on their efforts IMHO.

"Everyone knows everything about the PS2, except Sony because no one works there or wrote anything down, but they have lots of money to hire people who do, but its a bad business model, which is why they're selling their emulators, but its ok that they're worse than the free ones because I said so".

Good Lord, talk about throwing shit at a wall.

 

[adamsapple]

No, not really. Unless the issues are all IOP and SPU2 related (I/O and networking and sound), the information you have in the HW today are essentially the same… all docs are out (some people even sell old TOOL performance analysers too). You also overestimate the amount of PS2 knowledge those at Sony today have.

Still, sure, corps can pay more experts to work on it, but it can become impractical/bad ROI and people are still too harsh on their efforts IMHO.

As opposed to amount of knowledge fans working for free have?

 

[SF Kosmo]

Love PCSX2. But man, can someone explain to me why, for all the enhancements, we can force games to run in proscan?

 

[nkarafo]

I was thinking the same thing, so if we were already on the nightly builds, this new "stable" update isn't really anything new to us now is it?

Yes, the transition from the previous 1.7.5980 nightly to 2.0.1 was a single commit update, just like all nightly updates for some time now. At least according to the Discord Dev-Builds section.

It's not like they had 100+ important commits waiting in the oven to release them together with 2.0.1.

For stable release users it's a massive update, almost 6k commits (like the version number 1.7.5980 suggests) but that's only because the previous stable was ancient/obsolete code that should have been purged years ago.

For nightly users it depends on how often you were updating. I had already updated a few days before the 2.0.1 release so i didn't notice anything new. Might as well be another regular nightly update.

Anyway, i hope that's clear now. In the end this was a good/necessary move only because this new stable version replaced the previous one so new users won't have to confusingly download some obsolete version anymore.

 

[Dr.D00p]

Virtua Fighter 4 with non interlaced and widescreen patch at 4K is a thing of beauty.

..just a damn shame that UI elements can't be cleaned up with res scaling.

 

[StereoVsn]

As opposed to amount of knowledge fans working for free have?

Yep, super ridiculous statement about “poor Sony”, lol.

A large corpo with a huge budget apparently needs more love for its mediocre emulation efforts of the world own hardware. And that’s vs a ragtag open source devs working for free.

 

[nkarafo]

As opposed to amount of knowledge fans working for free have?

In the emulation field i trust the fans/homebrew people more to make a good emulator VS some paid employees in a company. The later see it as a job or errant, for the former it's a passion project.

When Nintendo released the N64 VC on the Wii for the first time i was also thinking the same thing, that they are the people who made the N64 so the emulator is going to be 100% accurate right? RIGHT?

Well, it turned out that it was barely any better than the homebrew N64 emulators at the time (and at the time N64 emulation wasn't nearly as good as it is now). And also, the released games were already running well on older HLE emulators since they were some of the most popular games. The only game that had better emulation was F-Zero X because there was a certain effect no GFX plugin was able to emulate at the time but it also had some new texture issues that weren't present in said plugins. So you gained some and lost some.

The whole thing was a mixed bag at best for me and i was disappointed. And after the Parallel RDP plugin was released, Nintendo's own N64 services never came close. In fact, they got worse, the original Wii VC is still considered a better emulator than whatever the Switch has.

Anyway, since then, official emulation efforts are still behind homebrew and not just Nintendo's. And let's not ever speak about the mini consoles... If you want the best, most accurate emulator for any system, you are going to get a homebrew/fan made one. The only exception that i know of is the Atari Jaguar emulator BigPEmu. This is the best Jaguar emulator (and the only one that emulates the Jaguar CD) and it was created for an Atari games compilation (and thankfully there's a free Windows version).

 

[StereoVsn]

I wonder how good the Mac support is and if it's native for Apple Silicon with good performance

Macs already natively support Dualshock and Dualsense controllers including haptics so they would theoretically be great for PS2 emulation

I will let you know after the weekend. Finally going to have a bit of time to fire it up on my MBPro.

 

[ZehDon]

In the emulation field i trust the fans/homebrew people more to make a good emulator VS some paid employees in a company. The later see it as a job or errant, for the former it's a passion project...

I don't disagree as a general rule, but's it doesn't absolve these companies of their fucking awful paid emulation efforts. Charging a subscription to emulate a thirty year old SNES game reads like a forgotten punchline from a 90's cyberpunk paperback. The one and only counter example I have to offer up is, oddly enough, Microsoft. Their BC efforts are a labour of love, and it shows that someone somewhere within Microsoft kinda-sorta-maybe actually gives a shit.

 

[BobbyColtrane]

the memory card settings for each game are huge for me personally. i play a lot of sports games that need their own memory card in slot 1 to auto load settings, rosters, etc.

 

[Panajev2001a]

As opposed to amount of knowledge fans working for free have?

Some fans could be ex or current developers working on open source projects, but we know that open source can only deliver a few billion dollars worth projects like the Linux kernel and more .
Sure, Sony pays developers well and they have good engineers that can be diverted and learn what they have to, but PS2 specific mastery? It is likely that yes most of the PS2 expertise is outside of Sony now, it is not like they have used those skills or needed them for their day to day jobs in years (maybe have left the company since then, many started the company after the console was shipped and almost in its twilight years).

Probably you think it makes sense to get veterans like Cerny himself doing emulator code, but you know how BS RoI wise that idea is. Then again, I am not sure how honest your advice here is sooooo...

There is a levelled playing field, PS2 knowledge wise, aside from two components (I/O CPU and the SPU2 sound chip and if those were the last two items that need to be cracked I would agree with you more) and the bar for Sony is kept high, very high.
Then again, I am not arguing it should not be kept high, but then again do not complain progress is what it is on consoles where people still really coded to the metal and employed all sorts of side-effects of the tools and HW to their advantage including undocumented behaviour . In some cases we already have seen a better approach to upscaling they even patented, the "up-rendering" technique (i.e.: re-run the same graphics pipeline multiple times with very very small camera offsets and merge the results... this does not mess up any tricks devs may have been doing on the GS as from the point of view of the GS nothing changes, not the size of buffers, nor the memory layout, nothing, etc...) and it did leave a lot less problems than more standard approaches emulators may have taken.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yep, super ridiculous statement about “poor Sony”, lol.

A large corpo with a huge budget apparently needs more love for its mediocre emulation efforts of the world own hardware. And that’s vs a ragtag open source devs working for free.

I am not sure why you call it mediocre given the overall titles compatibility and overall visuals. Sure, they faked up with the Primal PS2 emulation on PS5, but looking at all their other classic releases the emulator is doing more than fine (probably it supports MANY more titles, but they need some custom work per title... unless you were happier with the standard of quality people say it is amazing for projects such as this... amazing without a "despite you know you get what you pay for"...).

You have every right to be angry, being angry does not change things though, nor the validity of the reasons for it to be what it is (beyond the it would be so easy, just lazy dev/greedy Sony, etc...), .

 

[Panajev2001a]

I don't disagree as a general rule, but's it doesn't absolve these companies of their fucking awful paid emulation efforts. Charging a subscription to emulate a thirty year old SNES game reads like a forgotten punchline from a 90's cyberpunk paperback. The one and only counter example I have to offer up is, oddly enough, Microsoft. Their BC efforts are a labour of love, and it shows that someone somewhere within Microsoft kinda-sorta-maybe actually gives a shit.

I agree, they have an empire built upon backwards compatibility, deeply ingrained in their company culture from the DOS and Windows days.

Emulating their Xbox 360, Xbox One, etc... is easier than it is for Sony to emulate PS2 and PS3... even OG Xbox should be easier (but more difficult than Xbox One and Xbox 360 and we do not have 100% compatibility with OG Xbox titles either, even for Xbox 360 we do not have near 100% coverage).

 

[StereoVsn]

I am not sure why you call it mediocre given the overall titles compatibility and overall visuals. Sure, they faked up with the Primal PS2 emulation on PS5, but looking at all their other classic releases the emulator is doing more than fine (probably it supports MANY more titles, but they need some custom work per title... unless you were happier with the standard of quality people say it is amazing for projects such as this... amazing without a "despite you know you get what you pay for"...).

You have every right to be angry, being angry does not change things though, nor the validity of the reasons for it to be what it is (beyond the it would be so easy, just lazy dev/greedy Sony, etc...), .

You are confusing criticizing Sony and being disappointed with being angry.

I have vast majority of games I would play on original disks anyways, and ripped them for emulation as well. I just don’t get stanning for giant corpos.

 

[Panajev2001a]

"Everyone knows everything about the PS2, except Sony because no one works there or wrote anything down, but they have lots of money to hire people who do, but its a bad business model, which is why they're selling their emulators, but its ok that they're worse than the free ones because I said so".

Good Lord, talk about throwing shit at a wall.

Different point have different context, not controversial, but surely being aggressive helps .

I am not sure about being worse than the free ones (the titles they do support do a good emulation job overall, some solutions like uprendering is quite clever and patented), they did experiments with the PS4's PS2 emulator I believe and it did support tons more titles than Sony enabled, but I would think that if they had done that they would have gotten a lot of complaints because the expectations are different so you are getting a different release pace... and their emulator was far far in better shape than the N64 one they released on Switch.

Everyone knows everything about the PS2, except Sony because no one works there or wrote anything down

Did not say this, but I do not think you have a tons of ex PS2 wizards left AND that would love to go and code a PS2 emulator (so yes you would need to hire them and Sony yes is not broke, so what is your point? Talk about throwing stuff at walls)... everyone could as 99% of the docs and tools are out there (Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesiser's developer docs have been released by Sony when the PS2 Linux kit came out... including tools pro devs would have used and some better tools than the ones pros would have [for a while]: VU compiler was great, the visual VU/VIF/GIF and GS debuggers were awesome and quite unique). At least the argument about the community only doing reverse engineering vs Sony having docs and tools is... well... not correct.

Is it a great business model spending tons of money on PS2 emulation to speed releases up at a much greater pace (they are investing in it, but more slowly than we would like sure)? Is that the argument you are making?

 

[Panajev2001a]

You are confusing criticizing Sony and being disappointed with being angry.

I have vast majority of games I would play on original disks anyways, and ripped them for emulation as well. I just don’t get stanning for giant corpos.

That is fine, enjoy what you want to enjoy. "criticizing Sony and being disappointed with being angry" you are splitting hairs here, I did not say you were foaming at the mouth (not being aggressive towards you or dismissive) . Nor I consider myself stanning for them, you might... ok . I am trying to argue a point, I know when it is not at one polar opposite or the other it will be cast as such... eh... it is ok .

 

[butane bob]

*edit - disregard* :^)

 

[YCoCg]

I suppose it's a HUGE update for whoever was still using the 1.6. stable. But why would anyone still use that?

Most not in the know just see "stable" and go with that even though it's year out of date by that point, the most recent example is actually Season 2 of Smiling Friends a few weeks back, for the Burnout Revenge gameplay they recorded it off PCSX2 but it was the 1.6 build as it had the black sky bug.

 

[Gp1]

I was waiting to visit every PS 2 Ace Combat but every time i had a graphic bug.

Looks like it's finally fixed! Here we go...