3DS Emulator

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Barraccus
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3DS Emulator

Post by Barraccus » Thu May 21, 2015 8:51 pm

Has there been any consideration to make a Drastic 3DS emulator? It does not have to display in 3D, just to play 3DS games.

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huckleberrypie
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by huckleberrypie » Fri May 22, 2015 10:49 am

It has been answered before, but fyi, no, not a chance. At least for now that is, as the 3DS is still being documented.

Sean
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by Sean » Fri May 22, 2015 3:31 pm

The Citra 3DS emulator has made quite a bit of progress, some commercial titles are playable if you don't take speed into account. But DraStic is a completely different emulator that emulates NDS hardware, which is completely different from 3DS hardware and it will never support 3DS games.

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ericbazinga
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by ericbazinga » Fri May 22, 2015 4:41 pm

Sean wrote:The Citra 3DS emulator has made quite a bit of progress, some commercial titles are playable if you don't take speed into account. But DraStic is a completely different emulator that emulates NDS hardware, which is completely different from 3DS hardware and it will never support 3DS games.
Perhaps, if we are lucky, in the near future we WOULD be able to play 3DS games, albeit probably in a separate emulator.
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TkSilver
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by TkSilver » Fri May 22, 2015 10:03 pm

Nintendo DS processor: 133 MHz ARM946E-S & 33.514 MHz ARM7TDMI

3DS processor: 268 MHz dual-core ARM11 & 134 MHz single-core ARM9 not including the graphics processor

You are taking the fastest processor the ds has an making it the slowest the 3ds uses and adding a dual core cpu with each core being 2x the speed of the fastest core of the DS. You also have a higher screen resolution on the 3DS.

So yes there will probably be a nintendo 3DS emulator but it will take time and that is good because we will probably need faster devices to run it anyway.

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huckleberrypie
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by huckleberrypie » Sat May 23, 2015 10:22 am

It'll take Dolphin-level system specs for that to be emulated reasonably well. And even with that it won't be until the next five or so years that the hardware will be more thoroughly documented.

Exophase
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by Exophase » Sat May 23, 2015 12:01 pm

TkSilver wrote:Nintendo DS processor: 133 MHz ARM946E-S & 33.514 MHz ARM7TDMI
That's actually DSi, plain old DS is 66MHz.

The approaches to emulating DS and 3DS would probably be very different, I wouldn't want to try to compare how demanding emulation would be based on specs. For reference, it's typical for DraStic to spend something like 20-30% of execution time on emulating the CPU instructions themselves (and that's open to further optimization)

TkSilver
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by TkSilver » Sat May 23, 2015 2:24 pm

Exophase wrote:
TkSilver wrote:Nintendo DS processor: 133 MHz ARM946E-S & 33.514 MHz ARM7TDMI
That's actually DSi, plain old DS is 66MHz.

The approaches to emulating DS and 3DS would probably be very different, I wouldn't want to try to compare how demanding emulation would be based on specs. For reference, it's typical for DraStic to spend something like 20-30% of execution time on emulating the CPU instructions themselves (and that's open to further optimization)
I picked the fastest DS type hardware and the slowest 3DS hardware to compare, just to give the smallest incremental change between the power of each device.

I also do realize that there are differences in how you emulate one system to the next and even systems in the same family (gameboy color to gba) are sufficiently different enough that simple apples to apples comparisons do not really work. With that said it is a fair assessment that so far to emulate any system you need a more powerful system then the one you are emulating. It is also one of the easier ways to explain why X system will not either run smoothly on lower end hardware when something else ran and why newer systems are not emulated yet. All without having to go into system design choices causing massive issues (PS2) or why a speed based snes emulator needs 300MHz of prodessing power while an accuracy one need 3GHz to display the same game with little to no noticable differences (heavily game dependent).

zelda's ocarina
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by zelda's ocarina » Mon Jun 01, 2015 12:19 am

wow why not just go and purchase a real 3DS? you want to play right? it's so cheap.

TkSilver
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Re: 3DS Emulator

Post by TkSilver » Mon Jun 01, 2015 4:30 am

zelda's ocarina wrote:wow why not just go and purchase a real 3DS? you want to play right? it's so cheap.
Price is not always the reason people emulate systems. For me I prefer to use an emulate version of ps1 on my tablet then even using my psp which has the psn store version. The reason is not cost since I already paid For the pspgo and the game on psn. The reason is emulator have savestates which for mobility sake should be a requirement on any portable format. The psp has a hacked semi working version of a savestates systems thanks to cfw (custom firmware) developers but even that is no where close to an emulator's savestate ability. Other people prefer to see if they can enhance the looks of an emulated game by use of either resolution enhancement or shaders.

There are many reasons people use emulators besides just trying to run downloaded (stolen) game. Just like not everyone who mods a console or phone or device is not a pirate either. And yes sometimes money has absolutely nothing to do with it at all.

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