Is OS4 emulation under WinUAE usable for Demos & Games

[andyhants]

Plse forgive me if this isn't in the right sub-forum but I'm looking for advice on the extent to which the OS4 / PPC emulation under WinUAE is fast enough to be usable for OS4 Demos & Games.

I'm thinking about buying the OS4.1 Final Edition to get the ROMs etc & maybe the FlowerPot option with AmiKit but I only want to invest in this if the emulation is fast enough to run stuff like OS4 Demos & OS4 native games like Wip3Out at a 'normal' speed (ie no noticable delays).

Appreciate any advice from those running an OS4 system under WinUAE.

Thanks

[Pyromania]

I doubt WinUAE can take advantage of powerful GPU hardware yet for running AmigaOS 4.x in emulation. But it would be nice if it could.

[fl@sh]

UAE/WinUae is stuck on OS1.x/2.x/3.x emulation, it's targeted mainly to run old games.
So it's all retroemulation for nostalgics.
PPC/OS4 support is very limited and there's no real interest about it.
It's also very slow/buggy and limited/slow in graphics driver support and fpu emulation.

I consider it a BIG missed chance, it could be the most powerful NG Amiga due lack of modern and cheap hardware for NG platforms.
I supsect behind this choice there are many different reasons, from missed agreements with Hyperion to legal issues with Cloanto.

[andyhants]

Originally Posted by fl@sh

UAE/WinUae is stuck on OS1.x/2.x/3.x emulation, it's targeted mainly to run old games.
So it's all retroemulation for nostalgics.
PPC/OS4 support is very limited and there's no real interest about it.
It's also very slow/buggy and limited/slow in graphics driver support and fpu emulation.

I consider it a BIG missed chance, it could be the most powerful NG Amiga due lack of modern and cheap hardware for NG platforms.
I supsect behind this choice there are many different reasons, from missed agreements with Hyperion to legal issues with Cloanto.

Thanks - that's what I suspected but good to know the reality.

Realistically there's more than enough going on in Amiga 68k-land to keep me happy.

[BastyCDGS]

Originally Posted by andyhants

Thanks - that's what I suspected but good to know the reality.

Realistically there's more than enough going on in Amiga 68k-land to keep me happy.

Sad but true, I tried PPC even back at the end of the 90ies with a BlizzardPPC, as amazing it was to have two fully concurrent CPUs of even completely different architectures (long before dual cores, etc. became common, BTW), it was rarely that useful.

On a real PPC Amiga, for me the main benefit was, that I could e.g. play 32 channel XM modules (or MP3s) on the PPC while being able to work normally on the 68k side without any slow downs.

Yes, games like DOOM and Quake perfectly ran fine, but they do that even better as native executables running on the host your Amiga emulator is running in.

[steveis2]

Originally Posted by andyhants

Plse forgive me if this isn't in the right sub-forum but I'm looking for advice on the extent to which the OS4 / PPC emulation under WinUAE is fast enough to be usable for OS4 Demos & Games

Appreciate any advice from those running an OS4 system under WinUAE.

Thanks

Hi

I have tried the descent freespace and gorky 17 demos from Hyperion's web site in my OS 4.1 emulation. They do play but it's not like having actual hardware. I didn't think it was worth buying the full games. It's not up to the standard I think you want.


On the other hand it's an interesting experiment.


It would be good if there was hardware either new or second hand available at a reasonable price to run OS 4.1, but that isn't the case at the moment. I regret not buying a PPC computer many years ago that was on ebay for £100. You won't get one at that price now.




Steve