Xemu version 0.5 Trailer: is OG Xbox emulation finally a reality?

[Hayama Akito]

If you followed what happened with Xbox emulation in the last two years you probably already know this, but finally Xbox emulation has making serious progress after more than a decade of being stuck with no progress at all.

The xemu team has released a Trailer for their new version 0.5 and holy shit... just look at it, the speed improvement is absolutely nuts on this, almost historical on Xbox emulation... to the point that this is the first time I think is getting close to the accessible, "working" way. This year is Xbox 20th anniversary, so for me this is almost poetic.

For me this is incredible news because I think, in my humble opinion, that this has a special meaning for people outside the US: yeah, I know Xbox was hugely popular there thanks to Halo and some other games, but for some other countries Xbox was completely erased by the success of PS2 and even Gamecube. I'm from a country that, even if I played Xbox from time to time, the console was overall pretty obscure here, it's really hard to find original physical games or a console that isn't priced as an "import" and the more alternative, Japan-only, weird catalogue is a total mystery for me, so believe me, I'm pretty excited for this.

 

[Karlinel]

Great news, I had a Xbox that gen and enjoyed its particular brand of games coming from psx/saturn, glad more people will.
As an aside, considering the architecture of the xbox, I had always assumed it was the easiest to emulate. Always learn stuff in ERA!

 

[Jawmuncher]

This is really impressive. It has taken a long time to get here, but it's nice to see that full OG Xbox emulation on the horizon. Some of the stuff there was running pretty good. OG Xbox is such an interesting system that I think doesn't get enough love. Stuff on that system was indeed typically multi-platform but the history there is still interesting.

 

[Deleted member 23158]

Just googled if Otogi 1 and 2 are playable on it. These games are highly rated From Software games that are only playable on the original Xbox (never got added to BC). I see that they are playable, with significant visual errors on v0.4.0. This seems promising.

 

[Atolm]

This is a full emulator right? Not taking the "Wine approach" like cxbx.

 

[Stalker]

Great news, I had a Xbox that gen and enjoyed its particular brand of games coming from psx/saturn, glad more people will.
As an aside, considering the architecture of the xbox, I had always assumed it was the easiest to emulate. Always learn stuff in ERA!

Click to shrink...

Lots of uninformed people throw around architecture like it's some magic bullet but it's far from that. For reference Emulation is HARD. Accurate Emulation is even harder

Emulating a well documented x86 CPU is an insane task, a lot of the time there's no real coding around the process we have to wait until Hardware can brute force it's way, for something similar to the Xbox Custom Pentium III CPU something that is not as well documented the task gets more difficult. x86 instruction sets are large, very large and they all have to be emulated and that's just the start.

Next you have the GPU, A custom Nvidia GPU - NV2A, It;s close enough to NV20 line but does have NV25 capabiltiies. thankfully it's command format is the same and that's somewhat documented. Nvidia stuff has huge registers sets and most of them are unknown black holes of info. That said it's not a 1 for 1 thing, the whole memory mapped I/O address space is different and requires pairing. Then you have to deal with the fact that the GPU driver sits within the game itself and not at a system level and account for translating that with each and every game.

Then there's a host of other shit to deal with, The very poorly documented Nvidia SoundStorm MXPC, The CPU's CISC to RISC Microcode. The fact the BIOS does funky stuff and needs fully documenting. Just rabbit hole after rabbit hole of issues.

That said in the past 10 years a lot of very clever clean room RE tools have been created that allows recording of commands sent from one part of the system to another and documentation is on the rise and understanding amoung emulator developers is actually pretty great right now.

The fact we have emulators like Dolphin, Yuzu, Ryujinx, Xenia and RPSC3 are a testament to how insanely dedicated, clever and passionate these communities are.

 

[dlauv]

lol, Loons. This is really cool though. I hope once the ball starts rolling it'll have a ton of compatibility. Current state of this gen's emulation compatibility doesn't give me great hope tho.

 

[sir_crocodile]

How is Orta emulation now?

---edit

Panzer Dragoon Orta Compatibility | xemu: Original Xbox Emulator

A free and open-source application that emulates the original Microsoft Xbox game console, enabling people to play their original Xbox games on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems.

xemu.app

Looks like it's already playable before this release. Will have to find my disc and rip it.

 

[Bing-Bong]

Wow, nice to see that OG XBOX emulation is a thing! I got a modded Xbox last year and it has and amazing catalogue to play. I'm glad to see more people will be able to enjoy it.

 

[Karlinel]

Lots of uninformed people throw around architecture like it's some magic bullet but it's far from that. For reference Emulation is HARD. Accurate Emulation is even harder

Emulating a well documented x86 CPU is an insane task, a lot of the time there's no real coding around the process we have to wait until Hardware can brute force it's way, for something similar to the Xbox Custom Pentium III CPU something that is not as well documented the task gets more difficult. x86 instruction sets are large, very large and they all have to be emulated and that's just the start.

Next you have the GPU, A custom Nvidia GPU - NV2A, It;s close enough to NV20 line but does have NV25 capabiltiies. thankfully it's command format is the same and that's somewhat documented. Nvidia stuff has huge registers sets and most of them are unknown black holes of info. That said it's not a 1 for 1 thing, the whole memory mapped I/O address space is different and requires pairing. Then you have to deal with the fact that the GPU driver sits within the game itself and not at a system level and account for translating that with each and every game.

Then there's a host of other shit to deal with, The very poorly documented Nvidia SoundStorm MXPC, The CPU's CISC to RISC Microcode. The fact the BIOS does funky stuff and needs fully documenting. Just rabbit hole after rabbit hole of issues.

That said in the past 10 years a lot of very clever clean room RE tools have been created that allows recording of commands sent from one part of the system to another and documentation is on the rise and understanding amoung emulator developers is actually pretty great right now.

The fact we have emulators like Dolphin, Yuzu, Ryujinx, Xenia and RPSC3 are a testament to how insanely dedicated, clever and passionate these communities are.

Click to shrink...

Aye, in my field eeeverything is extremely documented, I tend to think every other domain is equally obsessed with getting every possible use and outcome written down.
So, genuine question, does a similar architecture imply a degree of "compatibility" when coding for an emulator, or each and every piece needs a bespoke code to get it running half decently?

 

[Stalker]

Aye, in my field eeeverything is extremely documented, I tend to think every other domain is equally obsessed with getting every possible use and outcome written down.
So, genuine question, does a similar architecture imply a degree of "compatibility" when coding for an emulator, or each and every piece needs a bespoke code to get it running half decently?

Click to shrink...

A degree is implied yeah, The closer consoles get to "off the shelf" parts the easier it gets.

 

[Dannepannepuff]

Oh maybe Toejam & Earl 3 becomes compatible soon then! Or Sega makes it BC on Series...

 

[BrunOz]

Ninja Gaiden Black

 

[SinCityAssassin]

Now put that into something the size of a lunchbox with a screen.

 

[TechnicPuppet]

Gonna need to find Burnout and Virtua Tennis disks.

 

[Acidote]

Ninja Gaiden Black & 2, Crimsom Skies, JSRF and Otogi 1 & 2. Give me that and I'm satisfied.

 

[blonded]

I know its upscaled in the video but I can't stop thinking about how insane these graphics must have been in 2001

 

[Fowler]

Lots of uninformed people throw around architecture like it's some magic bullet but it's far from that. For reference Emulation is HARD. Accurate Emulation is even harder

Emulating a well documented x86 CPU is an insane task, a lot of the time there's no real coding around the process we have to wait until Hardware can brute force it's way, for something similar to the Xbox Custom Pentium III CPU something that is not as well documented the task gets more difficult. x86 instruction sets are large, very large and they all have to be emulated and that's just the start.

Next you have the GPU, A custom Nvidia GPU - NV2A, It;s close enough to NV20 line but does have NV25 capabiltiies. thankfully it's command format is the same and that's somewhat documented. Nvidia stuff has huge registers sets and most of them are unknown black holes of info. That said it's not a 1 for 1 thing, the whole memory mapped I/O address space is different and requires pairing. Then you have to deal with the fact that the GPU driver sits within the game itself and not at a system level and account for translating that with each and every game.

Then there's a host of other shit to deal with, The very poorly documented Nvidia SoundStorm MXPC, The CPU's CISC to RISC Microcode. The fact the BIOS does funky stuff and needs fully documenting. Just rabbit hole after rabbit hole of issues.

That said in the past 10 years a lot of very clever clean room RE tools have been created that allows recording of commands sent from one part of the system to another and documentation is on the rise and understanding amoung emulator developers is actually pretty great right now.

The fact we have emulators like Dolphin, Yuzu, Ryujinx, Xenia and RPSC3 are a testament to how insanely dedicated, clever and passionate these communities are.

Click to shrink...

This is amazing, thank you so much for explaining! If you don't mind, I have a really noob-y followup question: How is the Xbox apparently the hardest one of the three consoles of that gen to emulate? Surely the issues you describe with the custom CPU and GPU are even more apparent for the PS2 and GameCube, but those emulators are far more advanced. Is it just a question of more people working on emulation for the other two systems?

 

[LuigiMario]

I know its upscaled in the video but I can't stop thinking about how insane these graphics must have been in 2001

Click to shrink...

Playing on Xbox that generation (compared especially to PS2, a little less so Gamecube) felt like playing the PS4 Pro/One X versions of games. Was always blown away as a kid playing stuff on Xbox where it looked great and ran really well and going to a friends house and playing the PS2 version and how almost universally better the Xbox version was. Anything multiplatform, Xbox was the way to go, only issue was the controller wasn't as good as the PS2 controller.

 

[RedShift_]

How does this compare to CxBx? Last time I checked that had quite a few playable (and upres'd?) games as well.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Ninja Gaiden Black

Click to shrink...

Ninja Gaiden Black

 

[arcadepc]

I wonder whether they studied the emulators inside Xbox One and if that also helped a great deal in understanding and improving Xbox and Xbox360 emulation even further. Because prior to XB One emulation of those platforms went at a snails pace compared to DC, GC, PS2 and PS3 that also had open source emulators

 

[FormatCompatible]

Damn that's incredible progress. Been waiting for a good Xbox emulator for so long.

Give me that HD Gunvalkyrie.

 

[russbus64]

Looks great. Initially I just wanted THPS 2X emulated, but other games like Mechassault would be fantastic.

 

[Stalker]

This is amazing, thank you so much for explaining! If you don't mind, I have a really noob-y followup question: How is the Xbox apparently the hardest one of the three consoles of that gen to emulate? Surely the issues you describe with the custom CPU and GPU are even more apparent for the PS2 and GameCube, but those emulators are far more advanced. Is it just a question of more people working on emulation for the other two systems?

Click to shrink...

Bingo. The right people in the right place can make all the difference in the world. Documentation helps too.

I wonder whether they studied the emulators inside Xbox One and if that also helped a great deal in understanding and improving Xbox and Xbox360 emulation even further. Because prior to XB One emulation of those platforms went at a snails pace compared to DC, GC, PS2 and PS3 that also had open source emulators

Click to shrink...

This did not happen

 

[Borman]

Xbox emulation's biggest issue for quite a few years has just been the low amount of people working on it.

One of the other things to keep in mind is how the Xbox "scene" differed from other homebrew communities. Look at the toolchains available for most consoles at this point, be it Dreamcast, PSP, Wii, whatever. They all have something in common: true homebrew tools. The community built SDKs and other software that really allowed the systems to live on and move beyond the original software. Contrast that to the Xbox, where leaked source code powered most of the BIOS and dashboards at one point or another, where leaked development kits made it all but impossible to legally distribute binaries.

That sort of thing can have a profound impact on homebrew, and certainly did on Xbox. Things that should have been documented back in the day either were never made public, or never done at all in a legal way, which has left the Xbox emulation scene playing a lot of catch up.

But here we are, they certainly have caught up in many ways, and it continues to be super impressive!

 

[SapientWolf]

I wonder whether they studied the emulators inside Xbox One and if that also helped a great deal in understanding and improving Xbox and Xbox360 emulation even further. Because prior to XB One emulation of those platforms went at a snails pace compared to DC, GC, PS2 and PS3 that also had open source emulators

Click to shrink...

Most of Xenia's recent progress was due to Triangle's DX12 implementation. I'm not sure about Xemu.

The complexity of emulating the console OS is a big part of the problem with Xbox and 360 emulation.

 

[BennyWhatever]

JSRF and Sega GT 2002 are at "Playable" Status so that's pretty dope. Those are both exclusive to OG Xbox and were a big part of my childhood.

 

[Fowler]

Bingo. The right people in the right place can make all the difference in the world. Documentation helps too.

Click to shrink...

Thank you! This makes sense.

Xbox emulation's biggest issue for quite a few years has just been the low amount of people working on it.

One of the other things to keep in mind is how the Xbox "scene" differed from other homebrew communities. Look at the toolchains available for most consoles at this point, be it Dreamcast, PSP, Wii, whatever. They all have something in common: true homebrew tools. The community built SDKs and other software that really allowed the systems to live on and move beyond the original software. Contrast that to the Xbox, where leaked source code powered most of the BIOS and dashboards at one point or another, where leaked development kits made it all but impossible to legally distribute binaries.

That sort of thing can have a profound impact on homebrew, and certainly did on Xbox. Things that should have been documented back in the day either were never made public, or never done at all in a legal way, which has left the Xbox emulation scene playing a lot of catch up.

But here we are, they certainly have caught up in many ways, and it continues to be super impressive!

Click to shrink...

Ahhh, love this too. Have learned a lot from this thread, thanks all!

 

[swnny]

Wow, thanks to this thread, I was made aware that there is an Xbox emulator that decently runs actual commercial games. Went the extra mile to set it up and popped my Double Agent disk and holy fuck it not only booted, but it was playable almost full speed and I completed the first mission. There were some visual glitches, especially in areas with lighshafts and only the night vision worked correctly. But shiiiit, I didnt even expected it to boot.

 

[HalStep]

nice ,i've a load of games i've never even put in my xbox.

i'm wondering about the required spec ,all the FAQ says is " most relatively modern systems should be able to run xemu. "

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

This is a full emulator right? Not taking the "Wine approach" like cxbx.

Click to shrink...

what does that mean? the wine?

 

[Gitaroo]

I hope devolver can remaster Otogi 1 and 2 since they did metal wolf. The game would benefit greatly in 4k 60fps.

 

[Deleted member 79451]

what does that mean? the wine?

Click to shrink...

Well CXBX is basically running the game natively on your PC, translating Xbox API calls to DirectX (?) calls. It isn't simulating a x86, for example.

WINE is Windows emulation.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

Well CXBX is basically running the game natively on your PC, translating Xbox API calls to DirectX (?) calls. It isn't simulating a x86, for example.

WINE is Windows emulation.

Click to shrink...

oh WOW had absolutely no idea! so its theoretically technically not emulating the xbox console at all? its more "wrapping" the game to run natively on windows?

 

[Deleted member 79451]

oh WOW had absolutely no idea! so its theoretically technically not emulating the xbox console at all? its more "wrapping" the game to run natively on windows?

Click to shrink...

Yep. There is a reasonable number of emulators that have replaced calls with native calls historically (as opposed to replacing instructions). Then there's 'emulators' which take it even further like the sketchy TeknoParrot which is more or less a copyright circumvention device for arcade games that run on Windows x86 PCs.

You can think of emulators as doing this on a sliding scale. I think it's slightly arbitrary to say which counts as valid.

 

[Sargerus]

Ninja Gaiden Black

Click to shrink...

 

[BaconHat]

Yep. There is a reasonable number of emulators that have replaced calls with native calls historically (as opposed to replacing instructions). Then there's 'emulators' which take it even further like the sketchy TeknoParrot which is more or less a copyright circumvention device for arcade games that run on Windows x86 PCs.

You can think of emulators as doing this on a sliding scale. I think it's slightly arbitrary to say which counts as valid.

Click to shrink...

Sorry to inject myself in this conversation, but i had to ask : Is there definite upsides/downsides to using either approach for emulation?

 

[Fhtagn]

Just googled if Otogi 1 and 2 are playable on it. These games are highly rated From Software games that are only playable on the original Xbox (never got added to BC). I see that they are playable, with significant visual errors on v0.4.0. This seems promising.

Click to shrink...

about 50 seconds ago I was wondering about OG Xbox emulation specifically because I want to play Otogi 1 & 2 eventually... and here's this thread and this post.

Hope someone on the team is a passionate From fan that wants to get these games in particular working...

 

[arcadepc]

Most of Xenia's recent progress was due to Triangle's DX12 implementation. I'm not sure about Xemu.

The complexity of emulating the console OS is a big part of the problem with Xbox and 360 emulation.

Click to shrink...

I am not sure if it is related, but is it for the same reason (lack of documentation) virtualization software and wrappers are still unable to simulate or emulate native Direct3D support for Windows 95/98 games that do not have NT/2000 support?

Eg I remember Dungeon Keeper 1 had a Direct3D patch to run under Windows and it looked on par with Dungeon Keeper 2 with anti-aliasing. Same for WW1 plane simulator Flying Corps. Also even today old re-released of WIndows 9x games like Xwing vs Tie Fighter or Dark Forces still lack Direct3D and run in software mode. Because of this they look worse than in the 90s, unless run natively on a Windows 9x PC with a good D3D card.

 

[Deleted member 79451]

Sorry to inject myself in this conversation, but i had to ask : Is there definite upsides/downsides to using either approach for emulation?

Click to shrink...

Even for the user, yes.

For one, if you get a virus infected Xbox iso, it may be able to infect your PC. It would certainly be possible to make a virus that infects your PC when you load it into cxbx.

Replacing calls is sketchier work than the more exhaustive replacing instructions or even analog behavior - more ways things could go wrong in edge cases which would take a lot of painful work to resolve every possible situation, however replacing calls is definitely a faster and easier way to make an emulator that works on some level, and it'll usually be tons faster too. However, you'll probably never get close to very high accuracy on one of those very high level emulators.

However, obviously if there isn't a good API match, replacing a Xbox DirectX API call with some call in a very different API might not be possible. This means the call-replacing emulators won't port as easily, and in some cases won't be portable code at all.

I'm sure others can think of other differences that aren't coming to my mind immediately.

 

[SapientWolf]

I am not sure if it is related, but is it for the same reason (lack of documentation) virtualization software and wrappers are still unable to simulate or emulate native Direct3D support for Windows 95/98 games that do not have NT/2000 support?

Eg I remember Dungeon Keeper 1 had a Direct3D patch to run under Windows and it looked on par with Dungeon Keeper 2 with anti-aliasing. Same for WW1 plane simulator Flying Corps. Also even today old re-released of WIndows 9x games like Xwing vs Tie Fighter or Dark Forces still lack Direct3D and run in software mode. Because of this they look worse than in the 90s, unless run natively on a Windows 9x PC with a good D3D card.

Click to shrink...

Possibly, because there are Glide wrappers that work just fine for the older titles, due to the API being open source. It may also be a consequence of the rewrites MS did to the early versions of D3D, which were not as user friendly as OpenGL at the time.

And of course, MS itself had no problems emulating the consoles on x86 processors.

 

[Deleted member 2620]

The whole library (every game) needs to be emulated and Microsoft wasn't ever going to do it. This is great to see.

 

[Bluelote]

give me some PGR2!

 

[Sprat]

Looks like kung fu chaos works flawlessly. I guess I don't need to buy another xbox now to play my copy.

 

[Gabbo]

wasn't getting great results with the few attempts ive tried on cxbx, so im going to give this a shot, after watching the video

 

[Deleted member 23158]

Hope someone on the team is a passionate From fan that wants to get these games in particular working...

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I hope someone puts work into this. Ideally, From Software (and SEGA?) would just release a port. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Fhtagn]

Yeah, I hope someone puts work into this. Ideally, From Software (and SEGA?) would just release a port. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Click to shrink...

if From is going to port any of the old games, I want Shadow Tower Abyss first, as the localization was done but it never got released. But Otogi would be really nice to play again, it's been about 17 years since I played it?

 

[BlockABoots]

Hmm so ive just ripped my copy of Buffy to an iso format got xemu setup and after the Xbox Boot animation is ask please 'insert an xbox disc' which i load the Buffy iso file but the message stays on the screen and the game doesnt load.

Any ideas?

 

[Eiji]

Imagine Xenia and Xemu running on the Xbox Series consoles via RetroArch!

I hope to see this in the future.