The Future of Homebrew - Pandora Console ?

[wolfpack]

could you imagine playing unreal gold on this thing? heheheh

im pretty sure the source code is out for unreal 1 anyways, correct me if im wrong, but if its out, this thing would be awesome to play on even though the keyboard is kinda ugly on it, but oh well, im pretty sure if a source code was out it would be ported to psp, but the problem would be lack of buttons, pandora however......well if its gonna look pretty close to this pic, then this is a possible psp killer...

[krakenx]

For all the people saying that this isn't supposed to be a PC, I quote from the original post

What is the device designed for?
It is designed as an ultra portable open source computer with gaming controls.

Hm... no.



No it isn't. EEE is $400, Pandora is estimated to be $320-$340.

I paid $346 shipped for a 4g surf EEE, which is about the same price as a Pandora. Thats the mid grade model, I could have gotten a 2g surf for $296 shipped, which is cheaper.

You don't really know that. The CPU might end up being more powerful (when clocked all the way on EEE), but I'm going to bet on the GPU on Pandora (it has shaders for one thing)

The thing is, because of all the ARM based handhelds that have been out a lot of high performance ARM code has been written. I imagine that no one is going to bother writing a DS emulator that's fast enough to run well on EEE. On Pandora it's a totally different story.

I didn't realize that the Pandora had an ARM. That's even worse. As far as I know, very few emulators have even been made for the ARM, and those that have are very slow and inefficient. I have a cell phone with a 333mhz ARM and it struggles to emulate an SNES. Ditto for emus on the DS. On the upside, GBA emulation should be easy, but without two screens, DS emulation is infeasible even if the system was powerful enough, which it isn't.

But power is more than just the processor, and 128MB of RAM is very small nowdays. Much like an XBox, you would probably have to use special tricks to emulate larger roms, and forget running multiple things at once. The 3D card, if it has one and doesn't just do openGL in software rendering could be huge, but there are no details given.

You can practically say the same thing about PSP.

True, but we weren't really discussing that. At half the price, with tons of existing homebrew, and with the ability to play fully 3D retail games too, neither this nor the EEE is better for purely gaming.

Let's see. I've emulated console games on a PC keyboard before and there's no way I'd ever use it over a gamepad, especially if analog is involved. I've used laptop keyboards, and they're much less comfortable than desktop ones. And finally, EEE's keyboard is supposed to be even less comfortable. I think I'll pass, give me a d-pad, face buttons, shoulder buttons, and analog for emulation and 2D games.

Very true about normal desktop/laptop keyboards, but the EEE's keyboard is actually quite different. Its small enough such that you can hold the whole computer like a gamepad, and the keys, unlike a normal keyboard, line up vertically. Thus you can actually map it like a D-pad and it feels like a D-pad. It does lack shoulder buttons, but I think the Pandora does also?

One thing you didn't mention is battery life - because EEE is an x86 design (and not even using an especially low power x86 CPU, although those are quite a bit less powerful) I can promise you that the battery life will be much worse than it will be on Pandora.

My EEE gets around 3.5 hours with heavy use (wifi on, max brightness, playing SNES). My PSP gets around 2 hours(max brightness), and my DS around 4.5 (supercard slot 2...). I imagine the Pandora to be 3-5 hours, which is the same basic range.

[pkmaximum]

Are ARM processors really not that good?

[one winged angel]

Are ARM processors really not that good?

no, you can compare them to a mips which si a risc cpu too they are not bad or worse

[bah]

krakenx: The DS has a 67mhz ARM processor, and has some amazingly impressive emulators, quake, and now freaking quake2 (thats due to the pure skill and dedication of the coder, simonjhall, though).
The GBA has a 16.8 MHz ARM processor and I was playing Master system games on it perfectly ffs.

It's about graphics hardware (which Exophase has said appears to be better in the pandora) and optimisation, phones are the worst platform for that as they are all different, so devs have to make speed sacrifices for compatibility.

The gp2x is ARM based, and not only has a lot of great emulators it's a platform that is pretty damn relevant seeings as its the direct predecessor of the pandora.



Exophase: 1300 cubic meters ?
Dang that is kind of bulky.

6 orders of magnitude or 5 letters (centi) off.

Ok I'm just being a smartarse with this one, sorry. :P

[Eyedunno]

Is this the handheld that was talked about months ago that Craig and co were working on?

The only negative I can see from this is the positioning of the gaming controls. They seem a little high up and possibly uncomfortable to use. Apart from that this looks excellent. I never bought a GP2X after thinking long and hard I was put off by being powered by AA batteries so this could be the homebrew console I've been waiting for.

Ditto, the batteries, the d-pad, and the design flaws in terms of dual processor use turned me off to the GP2X. This appears to correct all three things, so I want one.

And I don't care about DS emulation. As long as it can emulate SNES, Genesis, CPS1&2, and PSX, I'll be a VERY happy camper.

[Exophase]

For all the people saying that this isn't supposed to be a PC, I quote from the original post

It's not a PC because it isn't x86. Don't read so heavily into the marketing spin. Considering that several GP2X developers are getting free units it should tip you off that off the bat the Pandora is going to have software that's very similar to GP32/GP2X/etc which are most certainly not PCs.

I paid $346 shipped for a 4g surf EEE, which is about the same price as a Pandora. Thats the mid grade model, I could have gotten a 2g surf for $296 shipped, which is cheaper.

I didn't realize there were lower end models now, of course a difference in specs can totally throw off my comparisons... The 2G is supposed to be limited to 570MHz, which takes quite a lot off of your "much more powerful" remark.

I didn't realize that the Pandora had an ARM. That's even worse. As far as I know, very few emulators have even been made for the ARM, and those that have are very slow and inefficient.

You couldn't possibly be any more wrong. The number of optimized interpreter cores for ARM is staggering, not to mention recompilers for PS1 (MIPS) and GBA (ARM) (x86 doesn't even have a publicly available GBA emulator with a recompiler, much less a DS one...)

Just add up all the emulators made for GBA, DS, GP2X, it completely dwarfs the number of emulators made for PSP (for instance).

I have a cell phone with a 333mhz ARM and it struggles to emulate an SNES.

That's because your phone is probably Symbian based or has some other OS that people don't like developing for. Compare that to SNES running on GP2X.

Ditto for emus on the DS.

DS is a pathetic 67MHz ARM9 + 33MHz ARM7 and STILL manages to emulate SNES and Genesis at full speed for a large number of games, with sound (of course it helps that it has 2D graphics to shoulder the load)

Pandora's going to have at least 8-10x more useful CPU power than DS.

On the upside, GBA emulation should be easy,

Wrong, GBA emulation is much more demanding than SNES. Or are you one of those people who think that just because it's ARM it should be easy to emulate on another ARM platform? Should I go into my usual explanation for why virtualization doesn't work on ARM?

but without two screens, DS emulation is infeasible even if the system was powerful enough, which it isn't.

Sorry, but the "it doesn't have two screens!" argument is rubbish, as I've already pointed out in an earlier post. If you can't play the game without having two physically separate screens then something is wrong with you. I'd love to hear a coherent rebuttal to this.

And I happen to think that it's quite likely that Pandora WILL be powerful enough to handle DS emulation. I'd also love to hear your technical explanation as to why it isn't (warning: I have a much better technical understanding of what it'd take to emulate it than you do)

But power is more than just the processor, and 128MB of RAM is very small nowdays.

Not for a game and web browsing machine, which it is. It's perfectly standard for a handheld, which it also is. It's 2x what PSP and GP2X has, sounds like the right kind of step to me.

Much like an XBox, you would probably have to use special tricks to emulate larger roms,

Larger ROMs? What ROMs do you have in mind that are over 100MB? Or do you mean ISOs that are not directly mapped to begin with?

Boy, if only Linux had some kind of "virtual" memory to facilitate this. Sorry, I'll stop talking nonsense

and forget running multiple things at once.

You must be suggesting that no one was multitasking anything until they had over 128MB of RAM...

The 3D card, if it has one and doesn't just do openGL in software rendering could be huge, but there are no details given.

Try doing some research. The OMAP3430 has a PowerVR SGX, which is a DirectX10 level chipset (with shaders) in PowerVR's line (there was a PowerVR chip in the Dreamcast. This is similar technology, but probably better).

And yes, it supports OpenGL 2.0 ES.

True, but we weren't really discussing that. At half the price, with tons of existing homebrew, and with the ability to play fully 3D retail games too, neither this nor the EEE is better for purely gaming.

On the other hand, this is much better at playing games than the EEE ever will be thanks to the control layout. When it comes to homebrew this has a lot more potential than PSP ever had.

Very true about normal desktop/laptop keyboards, but the EEE's keyboard is actually quite different. Its small enough such that you can hold the whole computer like a gamepad, and the keys, unlike a normal keyboard, line up vertically. Thus you can actually map it like a D-pad and it feels like a D-pad. It does lack shoulder buttons, but I think the Pandora does also?

Of course the Pandora has shoulder pads. Do you really think they'd give it analogs and not shoulder pads? I don't believe your EEE description for a minute. For a d-pad to be effective it has to have a unified pivot point, and not just be four buttons. That's why the GP2X F200 has a subpar d-pad.

My EEE gets around 3.5 hours with heavy use (wifi on, max brightness, playing SNES). My PSP gets around 2 hours(max brightness), and my DS around 4.5 (supercard slot 2...). I imagine the Pandora to be 3-5 hours, which is the same basic range.

Your EEE has 2.5x to 3.5x the battery capacity of a PSP (original vs Slim), and I think your numbers sound insane. My PSP gets 6+ hours on medium brightness and a bit worse on high brightness. This is without the UMD drive spinning, of course, but there wouldn't be any such thing going on in the Pandora either. Your DS numbers are also far lower than anything I've ever heard. In fact, your numbers in general sound extremely optimistic for EEE and extremely pessimistic for the other two, so you'll have to forgive me for thinking you're exaggerating the hell out of them. Wikipedia even says 2 hours 45 minutes for the Surf (that's a 4400 mAh battery)

Anyway, with a similar capacity battery to EEE the Pandora would completely blow it away in battery life, and craigix has said on several occasions that he's intent on putting in the highest capacity battery he can manage to.

[bah]

I was sceptical of the wisdom behind the button placements, but then I held a DS (fat) in the way you would to use the pandora's layout and it seemed quite comfortable.
Perhaps more so than using the DS's layout as my thumbs were more stretched out and less cramped.

Using a touch screen (especially now its on the top of the clamshell) while holding the thing in 1 hand for a long while may be uncomfortable though, just as it is with the DS (for me, anyway).

[Exophase]

I was skeptical of the wisdom behind the button placemtns, but then I held a DS (fat) in the way you would to use the pandora's layout and it seemed quite comfortable.

A lot of us (devs commenting on it behind the scenes) were/are worried about the control placement, and the keyboard layout and all that. I have very small hands, but I've been assured that a child will be able to use it comfortably. Right now I'm basically trusting the people who have said that they find the mockup(s) comfortable to use, including one person who is very critical of pretty much everything.

I think MWeston's plastic mockup looks the most convincing. It's also reassuring to know that a number of people are trying this out and that it has been tweaked so that it feels good, and isn't just a design slapped together with no real testing. I get the feeling that a lot of commercial designs suffer from this, putting all their effort into making it look nice and little effort into making it work the best it can.

Perhaps more so than using the DS's layout as my thumbs were more stretched out and less cramped.

Using a touch screen (especially now its on the top of the clamshess) while holding the thing in 1 hand for a long while may be uncomfortable though, just as it is with the DS (for me, anyway).

I think it could potentially be even worse than the DS, since you're pressing on the top instead of the bottom. I expect the hinge to be very sturdy (hopefully more so than the fragile DS ones) to help make this less of a problem. I don't really expect the touchscreen to get very heavy extended usage. To me it's more of a "nice to have" kind of thing, but if DS emulation happens then I hope it'll be at least somewhat in the same ballpark as using one.

[bah]

Yeah, the hinge needs to be pretty stiff or have some form of lock-in-place mechanism so you can tap the screen without unwanted movement.

I guess when your holding a hand-held like the DS the screen is normally fully opened (almost flat rather than the 90deg angle shown in the render) so it's more an issue of strength of the hinges than their stiffness.

If you were to use it sitting on a desk like a mini laptop for some reason then it would be a big deal though.