Talk:PC Emulator Comparisons

MIDI, soundfonts and software synth solutions in Sound Cards section?

Lots of projects there for this job either via software implementation or FPGA solutions (similar to FPGA-based emulators, this also needs to be mentioned in that page *FPGA), any volunteer?

Here's why using soundfonts and MIDI is beneficial for emulators like DOSBox-Pure;

• https://youtu.be/LRy8brZ7DVc?t=1727
• https://youtu.be/zbeatn3BVJw

useful resources;

• https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=52977
• https://www.philscomputerlab.com/roland-midi-emulator-project-20.html
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/munt/
• https://github.com/skjelten/emusc
• SC-55mkII emulation WIP
• FluidSynth with MT-32 (demonstration)
• Roland SC-55 Soundfont by EmperorGrieferus (useful for DOSBox forks)
• PhilsComputerLab: General MIDI and Soundfonts (useful for DOSBox forks)
• PC emulators built-in solutions etc...

Ahayri (talk) 15:47, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

CD/DVD copy protection emulation

As i mentioned earlier in Talk:Main_Page#New_page_for_CD.2FDVD_copy_protection_emulation section, i think it's worth to mention this kind of software in here. Ahayri (talk) 16:21, 15 March 2024 (UTC) Done

Suggestion: Move rest of x86 emulator section here

This page has everything except the list of emulators. It's odd that IBM PC emulators don't have a page of their own, and that x86 stuff takes up so much of a page with "Pong Consoles" in its name Phredreeke (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Suggestion: remove Gravis Gamepad

There's nothing particularly special about the Gravis GamePad that an emulator would require specific support for it; it's a standard game port peripheral with two axes and four buttons. The entire listed row of emulators should support it. Perhaps an 'Input Methods' category would be better suited, and Game Port could be added as one of the categories.

PCBox

PCBox is a fork of 86box that continually merges all upstream commits. Therefore it should really mirror the 86box categories in the case where anything is marked 'unknown'

UTM?

Perhaps this should be added to the list? It uses QEMU and runs Windows XP and onwards on Macs

+ What about the 3D acceleration capabilities of UTM, is it good? According to their website UTM currently lacks 3D acceleration for Windows due to no GPU emulation/virtualization support (like OpenGL or DirectX). So, software rendering seems like the only option. [1] Ahayri (talk) 23:48, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

- I don't have a Mac so I can't test it. I think it technically qualifies but it's not developed for games Phredreeke (talk) 11:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

+ I previously added UTM to the Hypervisors page because of its virtualization capabilities. However, I don't think UTM emulator belongs to this page at this moment. Perhaps we should wait for further development or news about the project before adding it here. Ahayri (talk) 11:40, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

- Agree. UTM is kinda in a unique position in that it does both emulation and virtualization. And from my understanding if you want to use VirGL (which is Linux only) you have to run the guest in the emulation backend as it's not supported on the virtualization backend. Phredreeke (talk) 11:49, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

+ Yeah UTM certainly stands out in its approach. Regarding VirGL, since we already mentioned that project in the Windows 2000/XP/Vista emulators#Type 1 Hypervisors section, it might be best to add UTM there as well for consistency? Ahayri (talk) 12:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Operating system support column

I could see two ways to go with this column. Either go with a Windows centered approach (since this is what would most likely be used) and list a range of Windows versions supported, ie Windows 1.0-Windows 98. Alternatively list every family of OS that is supported on the emulator (possibly with Win9x and Win NT as separate entries). However I think other OSes (such as OS/2, Linux and BSDs) are so niche that it would be better served with just a separate section at the bottom of the page. Phredreeke (talk) 11:44, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

+ Well, there's already a PC Emulator Comparisons#Operating systems section that covers your suggestions. I think we just need to incorporate a concise summary of that information in the "Operating system support" column, but I'm unsure of the best way to achieve that. Ahayri (talk) 12:37, 26 June 2024 (UTC)