[HN Gopher] Dolphin Progress May and June 2022
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Dolphin Progress May and June 2022
Author : driscoll42
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-07-07 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dolphin-emu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dolphin-emu.org)
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| If all progress reports were as technical and interesting as
| dolphins I would just be reading them all week.
|
| Always fun to see what they have been working on and it's a bit
| inspirational to see such dedication long after the emulator had
| accomplished near total coverage at native framerates and has at
| this point implemented even it's userbases stretch goals. Now
| it's just building out features to understand and help teach us
| mere mortals, and I'm thankful for each lesson my lizard brain
| holds onto.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Im not familiar with dolphin or dolphin-emu and thought this was
| going to be a wildlife conservation report or simething
|
| Edit: since this is being downvoted I'll add more constructive
| thoughts. While I was unfamiliar with dolphin/dolphin-emu before
| visiting the posted link im very glad GameCube emulators for
| pc/Mac exist. Will know how to play Wind Waker if the desire ever
| arises, until then I'll stick to the n64!
| amilios wrote:
| Something I always wondered: the Gamecube had an IBM PowerPC
| processor with a RISC instruction set. ARM is also a RISC
| instruction set. Is there some performance boost in running
| Dolphin on ARM-powered hardware, or is it more or less the same
| as running it on an x86-based chip? My sense is that RISC -> RISC
| potentially would be more straightforward?
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| To my understanding the only way you'd see a performance
| benefit is if Dolphin were running on a machine with a PowerPC
| or some other POWER-based CPU, since most or all instructions
| would no longer need to be emulated, making it closer to
| virtualization.
|
| It'd be interesting to see old G3, G4, and G5-based Macs
| repurposed as deluxe GameCube and Wii emulators. Potentially
| Wii U too, but I'd imagine that would be restricted to tail-end
| models of multi-CPU G5 towers with the best GPUs those machines
| can handle.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Correct, plus big-endian, plus any emulation for opcodes not
| supported by the host CPU (like paired singles, or mcrxr on
| G5 and up), plus any cacheline size impedance mismatches. It
| should be possible to run such code in the standard PowerPC
| problem state but it wouldn't be trivial.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| They elaborated on this a little more in their post about
| Dolphin on the M1: https://dolphin-
| emu.org/blog/2021/05/24/temptation-of-the-ap...
|
| > AArch64 does have its advantages, though. Namely, the
| processors have 31 registers, compared to the 16 available in
| x86-64 processors. The PowerPC processor we are emulating has
| 32 registers, and while it is rare for all of them to be used
| within a single code block, more registers is always nice to
| have. Another difference is that AArch64 and PowerPC have 3
| operand instructions while x86-64 only has two.
| PPC: A = B + C AArch64: A = B + C
| x86-64: A = B, A = A + C
|
| > As you can see, it makes emulating some instructions much
| cleaner and easier than on our x86-64 JIT.
|
| So yes, it is certainly more straightforward: the JIT can do
| something closer to a one-to-one translation without having to
| spill registers as often. But they don't go into detail about
| how much of a performance benefit that is; I'd imagine a small
| boost but not something too drastic.
| looperhacks wrote:
| The way I remember is that RISC is just a class of computer
| design. The different architectures aren't necessarily close to
| each other (only that they have a reduced instruction set
| compared to other systems), so I can't imagine that this helps.
| gundamdoubleO wrote:
| Hands down the best emulator I've ever used. Ever since they
| added GBA link compatibility I've been amazed at the passion and
| dedication poured into Dolphin.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Ever since they added GBA link compatibility
|
| Wow.
| googlryas wrote:
| I'd love to know more about the people working on this and their
| motivations. Extremely, extremely talented hackers working on
| open source emulation of video game systems from 21 and 16 years
| ago.
|
| Are they financially independent? Do they have a day job?
| fordacious wrote:
| The ones I know have day jobs but many are students and
| contribute out of a combination of passion and a desire to
| learn. Often the emulator work is put to pasture when they
| leverage it to get hired unfortunately.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Whatever their motivations they are such a gift to humanity.
| Preserving art for generations to come, it's incredible!
|
| How many old iphone games are just completely lost now because
| it's a closed system?
| Cyph0n wrote:
| One datapoint: I follow one of the devs on Twitter and he was -
| until very recently - a software engineer working on security
| infra at Google.
| ComputerCat wrote:
| Love the color scheme in the banner at the top! Great update!
| whoopdedo wrote:
| They say there are too few Windows 7 users to justify support.
| But the way they measure that is with the automated usage
| reporting. Here's the problem with that, people using Windows 7
| are still doing so because they don't like sending automated
| usage reports. They're not going to show up in your telemetry. In
| addition to that, because this is a retro game application, the
| reason to stick with Windows 7 may be to preserve compatibility
| with older games. Knowing that the operating system is
| unsupported and lacking in security, one would be wise to only
| use it in offline mode. That means, again, your application won't
| be sending automated usage reports.
|
| I don't doubt that Windows 7 usage is dwindling, but it's largely
| a self-fulfilling prophecy as developers miscount the size of
| their legacy user base which makes the application break on older
| systems and then the users either stop updating which means
| developers see fewer users in their metrics. It's unfortunate
| that the Dolphin team couldn't see the value in continuing legacy
| support and even more unfortunate that it's Qt's fault they had
| to abandon it.
| petters wrote:
| Old versions of Dolphin will presumably still work, so it's not
| a huge blow to the Windows 7 users.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| If there's a lot of demand, I bet it wouldn't be that difficult
| for someone to maintain a Windows 7 fork of Dolphin.
|
| I personally have a fork of Dolphin that retains compatibility
| with OS X 10.9 Mavericks. The hardest part was building QT 5.9
| with Mavericks compatibility.
| bbkane wrote:
| Good points, but I do feel like people who turn off telemetry
| should understand and accept that this means their use cases
| won't be considered for product development.
| skeaker wrote:
| The Dolphin team is comprised of volunteers, and a single guy
| was supporting Windows 7 up until a little while ago presumably
| for personal reasons like lack of time. I don't think the
| Dolphin team can really be put at fault in good faith.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _In addition to that, because this is a retro game
| application, the reason to stick with Windows 7 may be to
| preserve compatibility with older games_
|
| How does Windows 7 preserve compatibility with older games?
| Dolphin's goal is to be compatible with all Gamecube (and Wii)
| games. If Windows 7 is _impeding_ that goal, I don 't see how
| Windows 7 will have better compatibility with older gamecube
| game.
|
| Also, from the perspective of Windows 7, every Gamecube game
| had already been released by the time Windows 7 was generally
| available (the Gamecube's EOL was in 2007; Windows 7 came out
| in 2010). No game could have "targeted" windows 7.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| It's about compatibility with older _PC_ games, something a
| Windows 7 box dedicated to retro gaming might run besides
| Dolphin.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| > Here's the problem with that, people using Windows 7 are
| still doing so because they don't like sending automated usage
| reports. They're not going to show up in your telemetry.
|
| At this point - that's the users problem. Don't say you don't
| want to engage with the developers of your software and then be
| flabbergasted when they stop supporting you.
| speps wrote:
| Excellent work as always! I like the humourous ending ;)
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(page generated 2022-07-07 23:01 UTC)