Emscripten support is possible?

[webysther]

I asking this because with WebGPU becoming a thing and projects starting to move more and more to the web will be great to see what maybe is possible with this one.

Ref:
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/blob/master/pkg/emscripten/README.md
https://github.com/linuxserver/libretrojs
https://github.com/linuxserver/emulatorjs
https://playjs.purei.org
facebook/igl#2
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/webgpu-release

[stenzek]

Gosh no. Just because you can have fairly high speed wasm execution doesn't make it practical for the PS2.

None of those emulators run systems as complex as the PS2, and/or run at acceptable speeds.

[webysther]

10 years ago this was truth to compare PS1 to SNES either. My point is why not starting put in the workflow to compile and generate a report to see how big the issue will be?

[stenzek]

Computers haven't become 10, let alone 100 times faster in the last 10 years, which is what would be needed.

But if you're so confident, please go ahead and prove me wrong :)

[RedDevilus]

I don't see how it would be relevant for PCSX2. It's a nice hobby for some but this would likely need a HLE BIOS which play/purei has but not PCSX2 and even if it did compatibility would drastically decrease. Let alone the speeds.

[stenzek]

The BIOS isn't really an issue, that can still be loaded, just like a game.

The issue is more having to write JITs that spit out JS or WASM instead, which may not even have vector instructions => very slow. Backpatching, block linking, fastmem, etc are all impossible.

Lets say you manage to get 5fps in a game. That means you need to make it 20 times faster for full speed. That kind of speedup isn't possible unless you're doing something very inefficiently.

[webysther]

I think 5fps really okay as start point, iGPU get better and better and code will become better with time, starting now maybe is a good move.

[stenzek]

iGPUs have nothing to do with it. None of the components I mentioned have anything to do with GPUs.

I'd recommend having a look at the source code of PCSX2, particularly the root and x86 directories, to get some idea of how much non-GPU complexity there is.

[webysther]

For PSX on my notebook with this project (https://github.com/linuxserver/emulatorjs) is rock solid. My concern is more about the loading because the chd images are bigger. Looks like minor games (<300MB) works well on https://playjs.purei.org for some reason, some get slow because run using only one core and don't get good transpiled to wasm.

[refractionpcsx2]

I'm sure it would be a fun PoC project for somebody, but honestly, we have enough stuff going on, and it's not really feasible to do this sensibly for PS2 (covering a wide number of games).

If somebody wanted to fork and use PCSX2 as a base, then more power to them, I guess lol

[stenzek]

You're linking a repository talking about emulating sub-10mhz CPUs..... it is not even remotely comparable to a PS2. Where you have 3 of them at ~300MHz, plus the GS.

If you want to do this, go nuts, but be prepared to spend months rewriting the recompilers. Rewriting PCSX2's dynarecs for AArch64 took me several months, and that's arguably a simpler target than JS/WASM, since it's a proper processor.

[RedDevilus]

In the end you still need enough PC power, no matter how good of coding you do or help you get to make it fun for people to even use unironically. So the limitation will still be online doesn't have a ton of resources to do it. Besides filesize of games are going to be the least of your worries.

If you still feel motivated and positive about it, that's more than me.

[webysther]

No, I just curious about because don't find nothing about in the project. I tested Play vs PCSX2 and mostly everything is better with PCSX2. Play targeting the web browser I thing is a long term move, nowdays the tech don't have enough juice to PS2 but I thing in the next 5-10 years, I got exciting because webgpu, I know Emscripten only translates direct *GL. I'm happy using PCSX2 with moonlight.