It' s from IGN mailbag and it kind of sux :

Half Life 2 Emulated
Mr. Perry, don' t know if you' ve had a minute to experience the wonder of Half Life 2 emulated on the 360. if you haven' t, let me fill you in on the greatness that is. during the " water hazard" mission with the air boat, almost all walls and are able to be driven through allowing for a view of the under side of the map and then total blackness, making that section of the map a tiptoeing adventure, as to not fall into the dreaded sideways 8 of source code. Then during the " we dont go to ravenholm" mission any and all physics don' t apply to inanimate objects that can be manipulated with the gravity gun. Desks, tables, barrels, and saw blades don' t respond to any collision detection, physics or gravity for that matter!!!

What?!?

you' re familiar with the game and the car on the crane puzzle in Ravenholm, yet once the switch is thrown the cars float upward into the atmosphere and the out of sight...literally. making advancing beyond this point impossible. Seeing as though i tried stacking every piece of furniture in the level to reach my destination, but to no avail.

So here' s my question, do you know if Microsoft is doing anything to fix any of the emulator problems out there? HL2 looks damn good in 720p, and the game to this point was incredible, but glitches, man...glitches. Thanks

I think Microsoft rushed these backward compatible games and they' re in the process of trying to fix them -- perhaps with downloadable patches. I would hate to think MS would be so bold as to ignore them completely.

--Douglass

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs
Just wondered if you folks were aware of problems with games that Microsoft CLAIMS are backwards compatible, but only are in a limited fashion. As far as I can tell from several tests, games like Forza, RSix3 and RS3:Black Arrow, work in the 360, but only if you don' t try to do System Link to older Xboxes...then it all falls apart...hangs, failure to connect, failure to see games created on the Xbox consoles, etc.

If you haven' t seen this, can you look into it?

If you' ve seen this, could you please REPORT on it to give Microsoft a nudge to ensure that games touted as b/c are really b/c in all modes?

I' m collecting data on issues like this. Thanks for the heads up.

--Douglass

MS are well aware of it i think. They claim every game is tested individually and has to go through a stringent procedure to ensure it all works correctly.

It' s mostly lies though!

Ninja Gaiden, Halo 2 and Ghost Recon 2 all work perfectly for me, bar some slowdown in Ninja Gaiden.

I couldn' t get Darkwatch to work at all and on some of the stages (the ones that use lots of weather effects and blurring) on DoA3 are virtually unplayable due to the bad framerate.

I really wanted to be able to plays Conker, Strangers Wrath, Timesplitters 3 and DoA Ultimate though and can' t. Some stuff is missing because they don' t want them on there, like PGR2, Doa Ultimate, Burnout Revenge etc because with PGR3 and DoA4 out and the 360 version of Revenge out soon, it would likely affect sales.

It' s not fair that they touted backwards combatability as a major feature of the console and then didn' t deliver. I doubt Sony will even bother.

Expect the bugs to be worked out and more titles to be added in future releases of the emu software. Don' t get rid of your Xbox games if you already got rid of you Xbox, they' ll no doubt work eventually!

ORIGINAL: Majikdra6on

It' s not fair that they touted backwards combatability as a major feature of the console and then didn' t deliver. I doubt Sony will even bother.

Expect the bugs to be worked out and more titles to be added in future releases of the emu software. Don' t get rid of your Xbox games if you already got rid of you Xbox, they' ll no doubt work eventually!

Actually Microsoft never played on backwards compatibility as a major feature - heck they were close to scrapping the whole idea. They were never really serious about it which is why it' s probably not as extensive as some might want.

Emulation is NEVER perfect. It' s pretty much impossible to get " perfect" emulation of older games on different hardware. You' re probably right about the bugs being worked out - it' s still early days for the X360 so these things happen and I can only begin to imagine how complex it is to emulate an Xbox game on a system with completely different archiecture. I mean, modern computers these days have trouble emulating simple N64 and PS1 games - so I feel sorry for the poor programmers who took up this mammoth task.

Mm your right,its a emulator therefor there will be bugs need to be fixed etc that they need to look over.

Emulation is NEVER perfect. It' s pretty much impossible to get " perfect" emulation of older games on different hardware.

Not true - Zelda OoT was perfect for GCN.

And NeoGeo Games work perfectly on PC , Xbox.

I' m not saying it' s easy to emulate a powerfull system like Xbox but if they say they will and they don' t do it right - then it' s a lie.

Sony' s PS3 will play PS2 and PS1 games perfectly with small exceptions.I don' t care if they emulate or do something else - they said it is backward compatible and they will make it so.That' s waht I' m talking about.

You need to be at least that close to perfection to state that your system is Backward compatible.

They want me to download and patch games to run good? Man what the fuck is this ? I can get a PC and patch every stupid bug lame developers made but I' m a console gamer I value my comfort and games stability.

X360 is a very rushed system and it' s going to get back at them at some point.
It' s so MS - Launch now we need it now - instead of launch when it' s ready.
It was the deal with Halo2 and then with Perfect Dark Zero.And both could' ve been so much more.

I don' t care for backward compatibility thing for 360 but it is something that only American or European Hardware manufacturer could' ve done so lame.

Would you buy a great car that won' t work if they told you you' ll get it fixed in a month? I bet you' d rather wait a month.

rushed system and it' s going to get back at them at some point.
It' s so MS - Launch now we need it now - instead of launch when it' s ready.
It was the deal

I tend to disagree on this - no vendor has attempted backwards compatiblity on such a scale, I' m still surprised they went through with it at all as the architecture of every new gen is normally so radically different.

I cant fail to be blown away with the fact they hav pulled it off at all - when downloading the map packs for Halo2 you notice the whole former bios is emulated, as is the Live routing etc.. Most emulators take years to get right.. take MAME as a result, its still miles from perfect, and imho is getting worse not better!

The emu' d game patches download themselves, most the of games arnt that badly emulated, the only one I' ve seen myself which is poor is the framerate in Forza, which is pretty woeful, but im pretty sure they will get there in the end. The fact the list is ever-growing is good news for me, just need them to include either of the rallysports! I need my 4 player racing fix!

Do sony really emulate?
If i remember right,they done so their ps2 has whatever it took to play ps games into them.whatever that is now but not a normal psx emulator.
like with a pc...
while xbox360 got a emulator in itself,that must emulate games,much like those you dl over at ngemu.com

PS2 had a PSone processor doing the I/O duties so the machine used that to play PSone games. PS2 only used software to partially emulate the games, most of it was done with the PSX CPU they used inside the PS2.

I think there going to be doing something similar with PS3 and using miniturized PS2 chips to do most of the work, then use software to fill in the blanks.

Due to this I doubt PS2 games will feature any HD support beyond possibly having every game use 480p. If they even bother with that as they don' t really need to compete with Microsoft in that department. Bad, because I would like to see VF4 Evo running in progressive scan without having to buy a Naomi 2 arcade board.

I' ve only ever tried one Xbox game on the 360, being Shadow The Hedgehog. Unfortunatly it puts up bit borders at the sides of the screen as it' s not widescreen and I don' t know how to fix it or if I *can* fix it.

Man, seriously you don' t want to play this game :)

ORIGINAL: ]GaNgStA[

Man, seriously you don' t want to play this game :)

Yeah, it IS vile. I expected waaay more from Sega!

the 360 was rushed a bit, but it' s still a powerful console, it' s right up there along with the ps3. The backwards thing, they weren' t gonna do it, but then changed their mind and now they' re just wasting money if u ask me, who cares about the backwards compatibility, let them start fresh.

The ps3 will be able to play even ps1 games...they made the laser head so it can read at diff wavelengths (that being red and blue). How is it gonna play the games? don' t know, but i think emulation and part hardware.


**Half-Life 2 ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ORIGINAL: KiLLeR

the 360 was rushed a bit, but it' s still a powerful console, it' s right up there along with the ps3. The backwards thing, they weren' t gonna do it, but then changed their mind and now they' re just wasting money if u ask me, who cares about the backwards compatibility, let them start fresh.

The ps3 will be able to play even ps1 games...they made the laser head so it can read at diff wavelengths (that being red and blue). How is it gonna play the games? don' t know, but i think emulation and part hardware.


**Half-Life 2 ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This amuses me!

Ha, " ..It' s right up there with PS3.." ha! So you' ve seen what PS3 can do already have you? Err, no! Maybe you saw I8 and MGS4 at E3 and TGS respectfully, but I8 only looked as good as Call of Duty 2 on 360 (running on 2 of 3 cores), and MGS4 was just a realtime cutscene. Remember ALL of MGS cutscenes look way better than when you are actually playing it.

Sony are really getting to some people. It looks like the Sony hype machine is doing it' s job fairly well. But i suggest you either wait until you see something concrete or listen to 3rd party developers who are saying both machines as pretty much as powerful as each other.

Bear in mind that only CoD2 used more than 1 core and 360 has 3. Developer say 360 launch games show around 15% of it' s overall power.

I am NOT gonna want to play PS1 games on PS3. They say it' s going to be backwards compatible because Nintendo and Microsoft are. But look at all the trouble MS is having. You think Sony could do better?

people are only speculating , some say crap and some in my opinion say part of the truth . one thing though magicdragon, i think as most people around this globe think, ps3 will probably be more powerful than x360, now wheter it' s signifacntly or slightly more powerful that i " really" don' t know...

i' m not buying sony talk, i' m just following history and some other factors that are facts... if ps3 is the last one that will land in this gen then most probably it' ll be more powerful right??? ok

sony is still a giant in electronic and those japanese are huge in that field, i can expect anything from them, just look at nintendo.

sony with it' s ps2 didn' t " really" overhype it as many people say, in fact it met most of its initial promises so i don' t know why you keeping assaulting sony sony sony bla bla bla.

Microsoft have more money than Sony, more connections and have put together a console reported to cost them $789 to make, which they sell for about half that. And it' s because they can afford to lose money. They don' t see it as losing money, rather buying themselves a large percentage of a growing industry.

Sony can' t afford to do that and instead, all they' re doing is talking bllshit like " ..HD doesn' t begin until we say so.." When they show us playable games and final ingame graphics etc, then we' ll see.

I' m not going at PS3, but Sony in general. They let people down with the amount of games for PSP, and talked the usual shit at E3. They say PS3 will still launch in spring 2006 but have only just sent out dev kits.

They are talking about how the PS3 will be more powerful because they don' t want people to buy 360s, can' t you see that?

The developers are the only people you should be listening to. Not Microsoft or Sony, just 3rd party developers, and they say the machines are comparable. Do i really want to pay £400 for a machine that is using a medium that won' t be a success and can only do around or about the same as my 360?

I' ll still likely buy a PS3, but right now i' m not convinced seeing as they' re still dancing their dance.

Console power doesn' t appear to mean much as technique.

For instance, Nintendo has stated that they will use a wrap-around technique to produce high quality onscreen visuals.

The article I read, stated that this technique will easily produce equally-impressive visuals as offered by both Sony and MS, but requiring significantly less polygon counts per onscreen item - thus requiring processors with less power to produce equally impressive visuals.

All that...and at a lower cost to the gamer!!!

So, while all you folks fight over who' s best...Sony or MS... I will be enjoying the thought that the Revolution will not only be of comparable visual-quality, but it will be backward compatible all the way back to the NES!!!

Posts: 969
Joined: 24 Jul 04
RE: Xbox360 Akward Compatibility (in reply to ]GaNgStA[)




I' ve only ever tried one Xbox game on the 360, being Shadow The Hedgehog. Unfortunatly it puts up bit borders at the sides of the screen as it' s not widescreen and I don' t know how to fix it or if I *can* fix it.

Hm...
I just hope NR is strong enough to give me the hyrule i always dreamt of,z64 was closeby but i wanted small towns and other things...and more widespace to ride with epona...

You' ll probably get all that with Twilight Princess. Btw what does that has to do with this thread?

ORIGINAL: DaRoosh65

Console power doesn' t appear to mean much as technique.

For instance, Nintendo has stated that they will use a wrap-around technique to produce high quality onscreen visuals.

The article I read, stated that this technique will easily produce equally-impressive visuals as offered by both Sony and MS, but requiring significantly less polygon counts per onscreen item - thus requiring processors with less power to produce equally impressive visuals.

All that...and at a lower cost to the gamer!!!

So, while all you folks fight over who' s best...Sony or MS... I will be enjoying the thought that the Revolution will not only be of comparable visual-quality, but it will be backward compatible all the way back to the NES!!!

Backwards compatible for only 1st party Nintendo games though right?!

And it' s nit wrap-around anything, it' s displacement mapping, or at least a new Nintendo patented kind of displacement mapping. The same kind of thing was used in RE4 and allowed both versions (GC and PS2) to look at good as anything on Xbox, so yeah it definately works.

Thing is, developers will be using the same kind of thing for games on PS3 and 360. Capcom is already using an advanced version of the technique in RE5, so while Revolution games won' t look worse than 360 launch titles it' s unlikely they' ll look better, while 360 and PS3 will quickly advance on that. Power does mean a lot in a console and i' d rather have both to be honest, whicj we' ll get with both 360 and PS3!

I think they said that the Rev was defenately going to be backwards compatible with all of Nintendos first party titles and the rest of the games would be up to their respective publishers.