xqemu VS Ryujinx

These projects are called compatibility layers, or "translation layers" sometimes. I think XQEmu (OG XBox on PC) works the same.

Yes:

https://xemu.app/

https://xqemu.com/

Are both original Xbox emulators built off of QEMU. I've only used Xemu, but performance was pretty good for the games I tried on it (it doesn't have a way to upscale rendering yet though).

It's indeed a bit like a kexec.

On system initialization, kernel routines are copied into RAM by the bootloader[1]. Executables run in ring 0, and have a jump table to call kernel routines in their own address space (IIRC) [2].

As such, loading any executable counts as a soft reboot.

Also, there is a functioning open source emulator, Xqemu [3] (and its sibling/fork focused on speed and compatibility more than accuracy, xemu [4])

I recommend reading "17 mistakes Microsoft made in the Xbox security system", which is very informative [5].

[1]: https://xboxdevwiki.net/Boot_Process

[2]: https://xboxdevwiki.net/Kernel

[3]: https://xqemu.com/

[4]: https://xemu.app/

[5]: https://xboxdevwiki.net/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xb...

There is one emulator currently that does do that, the "XQEMU" emulator for the original Xbox https://xqemu.com/

It's in its infant stages at the moment according to the "Emulation General" wiki and focuses heavily on "accuracy" over performance

Other emulators such as CXBX-Reloaded have made larger strides, currently emulating roughly 10% of the software library

It's also worth stating, while the Xbox seems like an "easy" target, being based on an ia-32 (Pentium III) PC with an Nvidia GeForce chip (somewhere between a Geforce 2 and 3 at the time) it is an absolutely monstrous beast with minimal documentation about its hardware and numerous "gotchas"

It also has a very small library of 'exclusive' content which detracts from gaining many developers

Their C# JIT [1] generates x86_64 or ARM native code. This is why it's fast.

1: https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/tree/master/src/ARMeilleu...

This isn't true anymore. It was their first approach, but since then they have switched to their own JIT recompiler. You can read their rationale here: https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/pull/693

For the MacOS port, they explain in the blog post you linked that they use an hypervisor, meaning the original game binary runs untranslated. (with the option to use an ARM-to-ARM JIT)

Thanks for the guide. I am new to Ryujinx, but is there a version that runs Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak? I searched on reddit and github but I got lost on the part where gdkchan tried to solve the issue here. Maybe it doesn't work on Mac?

Same as previous post. Latest version did change things related to hashing https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/commit/58907e2c290473326e5ab74bdfe1429b8a518ba4 so probably bug?

Did you try the build in here: https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/pull/4899

As it’s emulator, you can’t be sure about games performance as a whole. Some perform better, some - worse, some won’t run at all. You can have a quick look at this video for example https://youtu.be/9XyjErqV3pI Then you should check if the games you’re interested in are considered playable https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/wiki/ Actually, there is another one emulator Yuzu and some games may perform better with it. BTW I have a bit better 5500u processor with 16 dual-channel. It performs quite well even with aaa games till 2020. But there are also so many good old games :) Currently I’m playing Warcraft 3 and it still looks and plays very well.