I've tried recently. It was the only game I really wanted the emulator for and it ran terrible. It was like half speed at 17 fps and half of the textures were missing.
Why do you say there will not be?
The old school Xbox is just an x86 computer with DX7.somewhat and a fairly well documented Nvidia GPU (We've kicked its ass over in nouveau). It's pretty likely that once any real interest in maintaining it hits that it will get an emulator, though it would probably be more efficient just to translate the games into something targeting PC native APIs for most games.
The Xbox and the Xbox 360 really don't have all that weird weird hardware quirks about them, unlike the PS2 and PS3. They are pretty straight forward x86 and PowerPC computers.
And yet there is a greatly functioning PS2 emulator, and not one of an xbox or 360.
Even though the Xbox and Xbox 360 use Direct X, it still has not been able to port to PC emulation. It's been nearly 10 yeaars for xbox, and much longer for original xbox.
The best emulator for xbox only plays ONE game, and it even runs at crappy framerates. The 360 can barely be emulated at all, little on with a retail game.
So no, it will not be emulated. People have tried and failed. Just because the hardware is "similar" doesnt mean it can be emulated.
Hell, the ps4 and xbox one have very similar hardware to a PC, but the wont be emulated, either, because there ARE proprietary hardware and tweaks. Yes, the CPUs may be x86, but the APIs used, and the way the software works with the hardware is very difficult for a PC to emulate.
A big reason for this is that the PC does NOT have direct hardware level access, as of yet.
All Turing machines can perform any task that any other Turing machine can. So, yes, because the hardware is 'similar' does mean it can be emulated. If the Xbox relied on analog components there is a possibility that it could not (e.g. C64 SID mathematical approximation for filters. So close yet so far :< ), but it's digital all the way down.
There is nothing that is stopping an xbox emulator from being written. It is not an impossible task, and who are we to say that in the future there will not be interest in creating one?
There WAS attempts, and a want to. But it just has not been able to be accomplished. My proof of this, is that there are several ones that can either only run homebrew, or play only one retail game.
Prove that it can be made, and the argument will be over. There's more discussion about this in the "ps4 emulation" thread.
Another failed emulator is the PSP. Which TONS of people want to emulate, but still we only have sub-par emulators for it. Just because it can be done in theory, doesnt mean it can be done practically.
There is really many reasons why there will not be an emulator for Xbox and Xbox 360, here is a few just to get started.
1. Little to no fan base for anyone to waste their time with it.
2. the consoles are beyond easy to mod in the first place especially with options like being able to use external storage devices that you were not really capable of doing on more original consoles, which is what half the hype of emulation is about, "digital storage and not having to burn media" or have awkward adapters running from your console to your PC in order to run the emulation.
3. games sizes are large as far as emulation is concerned. sure storage is cheap, but its still just a lot of wasted space to store games you probably will hardly ever play "which argue if you want, but the majority of people in emulation want ALL the games they can get, not just a couple" Look at the Wii for a perfect recent example
and in future comings, aside from a proprietary release here and there, most all games are going to be cross platform which will alleviate any need to make future emulators of consoles, we already see this anyway and it will just become more relevant as time passes.
So there is my last .02 on this topic, I'm not even really sure why this is still being discussed to be honest, seems pretty straight forward to me as to why it's not here, and wont be here, it would really be kind of an idiotic waste of time to bother coding an emulator for Xbox or Xbox 360 when they can emulate themselves on themselves already with some extremely easy methods.
That is true, We have a modded 360, ps3, and wii, all of which play games from external storage.
360s a bitch, though. requires hardware.
Some hardware, yeah, but its not to shabby, If you were lucky to be on an original dash version you didn't always need the hardware, could do the updates to the new dashboards that didn't force a "legit" kernel upgrade. not sure how long ago you got into modding it, maybe you already know this information.
I actually use a DVD bypass mod. Its a chip that sets between the DVD drive and the Motherboard. It basically tells the motherboard that a game is in the drive, and when the Xbox tries to read the game, it gets redirected to the ISO.
Its plug and play. no soldering, no software mods. I can even play online, completely safe.
Yeah, I've seen those, I have several boxes laying around here still, Some original JTAG's, couple RGH's. Never got around to trying out one of the simpler methods like the one you linked.
I'm going to shoot you a pm a little later if that's cool, I have to take off for a bit here, but I got an idea to throw your way I have been thinking about doing and based on this topic and some other posts you have made else where I think you would be interested, it's however not appropriate for public posting on the forums here.
It can be made. There is literally no digital system that can not be emulated on a Turing machine with access to sufficient storage. As any Turing complete system is capable of simulating a Turing machine, any Turing complete system can run any conceivable computer algorithm and thus emulate any conceivable computer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness
That's cool.
All of those are theories or hypothetical solutions.
Hard evidence, facts, an example of a working xbox emulator. Those are proof.
That is hard evidence.
Unless you are claiming that computers don't work.
In which case... *shrug*
No, proof that an xbox emulator can be made would be.. A working xbox emulator being made.
They havent made one by now, they arent going to. Why would they?
Because it's possible.
And seriously, there is literally nothing more hard evidence than a mathematical proof when it comes to determining computability :P
Yes there is. It actually existing.
Want proof that a PS2 emulator can work? Which is better. A mathematical formula saying that it is theoretically possible? or an actual freaking ps2 emulator that works?
A mathematical proof is the better proof it is possible. A black box ps2 emulator has no gurentees of being universally applicable and is only a single practical application of the original mathematical proof.
Welcome to realm of Computer Science, where we like our Mathematics like we like our Kandinsky paintings: Abstract.
Welcome to the realm of people that want something to show for it.
Let's say that you are right, and a working 360 emulator will be made. Then what? You think youl;l actually be able to emulate the games for it?
No.
It takes a pretty decent PC to run PS2 and Gamecube games at a playable FPS.
You need SUBSTANTIALLY greater hardware to run an emulator than what is required by the console itself, because you dont have direct hardware access.
So even if there was one, no one would be able to emulate it, or run it at all anyway.
You claimed it was impossible.
I know it definitively is possible.
The challenging aspects of 360 emulation are pretty trivial for early games using straight D3D, PPC emulation is not difficult. Later games would require a good knowledge of the internal shader bytecode used by AMD GPUs but it's still trivial to decompile them into shader model compliant shaders.
100% emulation of any machine is non-trivial in hardware requirements, but dynamic recompilation is not.