Hands-On With PS4’s PlayStation 2 Emulation

Megalith

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It wasn't announced with much fanfare, but many PS4 owners will be thrilled at the possibility of playing their favorite PS2 titles again on the newest Sony console. Here’s a vid that provides a look at how some games look in comparison to their originals.

Original PlayStation 2 titles ran at a range of pixel counts, but 512x448 and 640x448 were commonplace (God of War 2 even let you choose between the two). It's still early days in our analysis, but first impressions suggest that the emulator resolves a native resolution of 1292x896. Two black lines are added top and bottom to the image, before receiving a final upscale up to full 1080p. In effect, we're looking at around 4x the pixel count - possibly higher, depending on the title. Texture filtering also looks improved, but on close inspection we think that the increased quality is probably down to the extra resolution alone.
 
Wish I never got rid of my old PS2 games...now the market is going to be nuts on price for them. This is all assuming we can use the disc to read the games and not based on downloads.
 
after making a mint off ps1 games on ps3 and the ps3 money ps2 remasters made. i seriously doubt they will let us. the fan base for god of war, and team ico games means theres money to be made
 
The first batch of backwards-compatible games requires you to buy it, doesn't it? And it was only created as a tie-in with all the Star Wars stuff going on.....if we get old PS2 games emulated, why isn't this being done as Playstation Now......<shrug>.
 
Wish I never got rid of my old PS2 games...now the market is going to be nuts on price for them. This is all assuming we can use the disc to read the games and not based on downloads.

I highly doubt they will allow disc emulation, these are all going to be paid titles I'm sure.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.
 
On PC, the biggest issue I have with PCSX2 emulator is emulating the VU. Some games just wouldn't play nice with multi threaded VU, and the usual single threaded approach still requires too much single core performance.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.

Depends on the game for how beefy. I did FFX 7-8 years ago on a laptop with a ATi 3470 or similar spec at higher IQ than a PS2. A game later in the systems life though definitely requires more power (FFXII) but some will never hit 60fps (Drakengard won't break about 40) just from how they originally ran and were made.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

I really don't think it has anything to do with the power of the hardware. Sony has always held their patents and tech very closely. They are clearly at liberty to make it work in ways which would bring colossal lawsuits if any 3rd party did it.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.

Really?
I was under the impression that an older models of i5 could run PS2 emulation with ease (gpu being pretty inconsequential as long as you had one).
 
I sold off all my PS2 games when I bought an Xbox 360 (I was in College and money was a concern), so I'm willing to pay for each new game, this is exciting!

As for comparing this to PCSX2, you're comparing a reverse-engineered system to one built with all of the information the people who designed the PS2 had. And there is a big budget difference. Also, I suspect that this emulator has game-specific optimizations and source code access. Emulating the Xbox on the Xbox 360 has been done already and that was a CRISC system on top of a RISC system (which is very complex). Emulating a PS2 on a PS4 is child's play by comparison.
 
I really don't think it has anything to do with the power of the hardware. Sony has always held their patents and tech very closely. They are clearly at liberty to make it work in ways which would bring colossal lawsuits if any 3rd party did it.

Indeed, but PCX2 developmet has been going for like 15 years and it took a while to become usable. I think by 2006 or so games were actually playable and from there it got faster, and with better compatility.
 
Glad they brought over Jedi Starfighter. Great game that few people seem to have played. Co-op in the campaign was nice. I ended up buying the original Star Fighter for PC some years back.
 
Really?
I was under the impression that an older models of i5 could run PS2 emulation with ease (gpu being pretty inconsequential as long as you had one).

I played through Final Fantasy 9 with a Q9550 and a GTX460 video card, yeah there were some moments of stutter but it was playable (considering the game isn't a fast action type of one)
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.

Having the inside knowledge and exact hardware and software specs can make a huge difference. Rather than trial and error, they are doing it from the ground up with that knowledge, something that the PCSX2 and Xenia dev's don't have. With that, you can do more with less hardware requirements because you're doing it much more efficiently.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.

It's not emulation. Not even the most expensive extreme edition Intel processor has the horsepower to do that at a reasonable speed. Rather, the developer takes existing XBox 360 games and compiles them against a shim library that translates XBox 360 API calls to XBox One API calls (similar to how Winelib allows you to compile Windows programs for *nix).
 
I haven't finished any of my PS2 games

I would try God of War 2 again I got stuck
 
I played through Final Fantasy 9 with a Q9550 and a GTX460 video card, yeah there were some moments of stutter but it was playable (considering the game isn't a fast action type of one)

I would hope it ran well considering 9 was a PS1 game.
 
I would hope it ran well considering 9 was a PS1 game.

Hahaha, good catch, I meant 10. Which while was my favorite PS2 FF game, it had the worst mini-game, which was the whole underwater water polo bullshit, I do recall that part of things did bog down the game.
 
So are there titles available?
I am looking forward to Twisted Metal 3 download, as PS4 has no Twisted Metal titles.
 
I was impressed by the quality of the emulation. The game looked noticeably sharper and smoother. If PS2 emulation becomes a thing on PS4 I'll be playing mine more for sure.
 
Oh boy oh boy, hopefully the decompilers get their hands on the emulator and recompile it for PC use. I imagine the Sony emulator is head and shoulders over the PCSX2 software.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.

Well, in the case of the Xbone, both it and the original XBox are x86, so there wouldn't be too much to port, and very little to emulate.
For the PS4 and PS2 emulation, though, I agree.
 
I'm impressed that PS4 hardware can emulate a PS2 with better IQ and higher res. You need a beefy PC to get PCSX2 to do the same.

The fact that the Xbone does it with xbox games is even more impressive, but I think in that case is some sort of "porting" rather than pure emulation.

While not perfect, i have a 660m laptop that works fine with PCSX2 and it's games. There are a few that doesn't work well, but that's more due to the protections on them I think.
 
Bring on Metal Gear Solid 3 at decent framerates.

Oh, and Armored Core 3. That game was bitchin'
 
Well, in the case of the Xbone, both it and the original XBox are x86, so there wouldn't be too much to port, and very little to emulate.
For the PS4 and PS2 emulation, though, I agree.

I meant xbox360
 
but first impressions suggest that the emulator resolves a native resolution of 1292x896

da fuck is this?

im running PCSX2 at an internal res. well beyond 4k.

youre telling me the PS2 emulator is going to run as resolutions lower than PS4 games? da. fuck. is. this.
 
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