Why can most computers run modern games really well but extremely stutter when emulating old games

Question

Why can most computers run games like RDR2, Cyberpunk, etc. Really fast but when emulating ps3/Xbox360 games it lags and can barely run it?

In: 690

Answer 1

Emulating a game is basically translating the game into another language.

So, say, for example, the command on the console was “output (“Hello World”)” to print the worlds “Hello World” to screen. In the computer however, the command may be “print “Hello World”;.

So you need to translate from one to the other, IN REAL TIME. The real time is hard enough, but it gets harder when the commands get significantly more complicated.

For example, the console probably had specific commands for drawing things, resizing sprites, rotating sprites, etc. The computer likely does not have these same commands. Because why would it? The computer does not really ever have to resize or rotate sprites. Modern 3d graphics don’t work the same way. So say, rotating a sprite may be easy on the console, but EXTREMELY time consuming, or requiring many commands to do so on the computer.

Of course, this is all high level. In reality we’re converting from one INSTRUCTION SET to another. And those instruction sets are VERY specific to the hardware built. This is the reason why intel and AMD processors for your computer aren’t interchangeable.