Poll of the Day > PC/Xbox One Ports

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I saw that post about how Morrowind may be playable on X1 soon. I asked if it would run better with the upgraded hardware, and was told that it might even run worse because the X1 is emulating the Xbox.

As I understand it, with PC, if you upgrade your RAM, graphics card etc it will run older games even better, so what is the difference between the PC and X1 in this case, and why can't it work the same way?
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When you run an emulator, you're basically running a second operating system (a gross oversimplification, but I think it works for this purpose), which in many cases involves altering how your computer runs in order to try and emulate fundamental differences in processor architecture. That can be extremely demanding once you get into more modern systems. In the case of consoles, they often aren't built with that kind of computational flexibility in mind, nor do they have much by way of spare power. If the system wasn't designed for backwards compatibility from the start, you may see performance suffer.

In the case of the PC, though, you're not emulating Morrowind. You're just playing it. A PC 20 years ago was fundamentally the same as a PC today, just slower. With really old games you sometimes do have to emulate the older operating system in order to play them, and can still run into issues (like the game speed being based on CPU speed, which can have some hilarious results with processors that are orders of magnitude faster), but it's a lot more straightforward than having to emulate a console.
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Okay. Thank you. I read and understand all of it. My question now is, why wouldn't they have this in mind? Backwards-compatibility has been around since 360 gen. So by now you would think they would come up with a way from the start for (all) those games to run and run well with the newer hardware. Is there specific programming in the game's code or the discs of the older games that won't allow for it? (As in it requires the newer consoles to "fake" the disc into thinking it's being played on its intended console.)
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Building backwards compatibility into a console requires one of two things:

-The console's fundamental architecture closely resembles prior systems' to enough of an extent that you don't have to change that much to get older games running (Wii, GBC)
-The console includes hardware that is dedicated to running older games (DS)
(Note that my examples may not be the most accurate, because I'm not an expert here. I welcome corrections)

The former option imposes a pretty significant limit on the console's power, since new architecture is often developed for the sake of squeezing more power out of the little box than you could get with the older systems. The latter option limits power less, but still imposes a bit of a limit (space is finite, after all) and/or increases the system's size, plus it drives up the cost compared to just not doing that.

The question, then, is whether or not adding backwards compatibility provides enough benefit to justify those drawbacks. As we get into more and more powerful systems, and the previous generations get harder to emulate, that answer's often no.
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Screw it adjl covered it more than I could. >.>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekCq5K9cm54" data-time="

morrowind has been bc for a while now

and it runs fine. on the 1x it is 16x the normal resolution, 60fps, and loading times are single digit seconds.

on a normal x1, it's upscaled to 1080, I don't quite think it's 60fps but it is uncapped, and loading times are like 12 seconds.

you have to understand, what Microsoft has done with bc on the x1 is considered magic. bc games run far better than they did on their native consoles.

they are essentially free remasters, and in the case of a few games, actually look better than their remastered version.
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