eli5 If video game consoles are essentially just weaker computers, why did it take so long for PCs to get 7th gen console emulators, why are we only just getting 8th gen emulators, and how long until we see 9th gen emulators?
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When you take a program down to its most basic level it’s just a bunch of simple instructions to a processor/memory/gpu. Compiling takes human understandable code and turns it to machine code that the computer understand.
Machine code to add two numbers might be something like:
X1: Load number 1 from memory into the cpu
X1: Load number 2 from memory into the cpu
A1: Add number 1 and number 2
X2: Put result back into memory
The game logic itself will be in machine code.
First step is to work out what all the machine code means. It’s not like the console manufacturer gives you that info, so we don’t know what X1/X2/A1 means. This takes a lot of reverse engineering to figure out!
After you work out what the instructions do, often some instructions simply don’t exist on your pc (and vice versa), so now you have to convert them into equivalents. The console may have an instruction to add 100 numbers together in one go, but the closest instruction with your pc adds 16 numbers at a time – so you have to do that 16 number sum 7 times, and you have to partially fill the 7th time with zeros because 100 doesn’t divide by 16 exactly. This is way slower. Some instructions are exceptionally awkward/difficult to emulate/convert – which is why some games that use these features can be particularly difficult to emulate. Going further, some functionality can’t even be emulated, or only approximately.
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