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Comment by anthk

15 hours ago

On the PSP recomp, I wish they could somehow target GL 2.1 video cards (ancient Intel iGPU's) so legacy users like me could play most of the games on an n270 netbook.

17 comments

anthk

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fps-hero  14 hours ago

Man, the netbooks were amazing for their time, but even by 2008 standards, they were not powerful computers.

At the time you needed a fairly capable gaming PC for PS2 emulation, which is a far cry from the igpu in an atom. Given a PSP is basically a cut down PS2, I don’t think emulation on that calibre hardware is an achievable goal. An atom doesn’t even have a hardware programmable vertex shaders, on windows I don’t even think they had GL 2.1.

I never thought I’d see the day where an atom would be vintage tech, and people would still be rocking said vintage tech. It’s amazing you’ve kept it running and usable. Modern PCs can’t even keep up with modern OS, and you’re still rocking the good old days of single core single thread. Rock on!

  • anthk  12 hours ago

    'Recompiled' is not the same as emulated by any stretch. Native PSP games could perfectly run under an Atom if they used SSE2 instructions and GL 2.1 plus some hacks to mimick some FX (or just some reduced graphic settings).

    I've got GL 2.1 running under n270 perfectly well, up to the point to test Yandex Maps to roam around Prypiat.

    Even for emulation PPSSPP was far less demanding than PCSX2.

  • ant6n  13 hours ago

    I used to play GTA San Andreas on an n270 netbook, I believe at 1024x600. Didn’t run well, but was definitely playable.

pjmlp  13 hours ago

I agree with the sentiment, however it needs to be at least OpenGL 3.3, and take advantage of shaders.

  • Narishma  13 hours ago

    GL 2.1 supports shaders.

    • pjmlp  13 hours ago

      I know, but it still has lots of baggage and missing features, which is why game engines that support OpenGL tend to target OpenGL 3.3 as the minimum baseline, given that it used to be widely deployed.

      4 replies →

m00dy  15 hours ago

I don’t think it’ll happen. The market is too small, and the token costs don’t seem worth the potential upside.