I don't think that it's because "there isn't enough cpu power". It's because true cycle accurate ps2 emulation is exceedingly difficult to ever accomplish because it is a very complex system. The Dreamcast and Gamecube are probably easier despite being faster systems.
I don't entirely disagree with this. But I think that complexity also impacts performance requirements. That's why for example mednafen needs a significantly beefier PC to emulate the Saturn, than it does to emulate the PS1, even though the two consoles are fairly similar in what they can do. Accuracy also tends to correlate with higher system requirements like in the example with the PS2's floating point format.
Another example is the dual core hack in Dolphin. It's a very important feature, performance-wise, but it also breaks some games (e.g. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle will randomly crash with it enabled).
Pretty often I read from PCSX2 and Dolphin developers saying something along the lines of "We know how to fix this problem, but doing so would murder performance, so we're going to settle for a hack for now."
So yeah, I don't disagree that there is a lot of missing information, but I think that CPU power is an almost bigger, if not bigger, issue.
But you can't call a resolution change, a hack. Otherwise, ALL emulators are now hacks, which is just silly. I mean, it simply isn't possible to run these old systems at their original resolution, and refresh rate, on a modern PC and display, modern monitors don't go down to such a low resolution. So, you either run them in a really tiny window, or you run them at multiples of their original resolution, or as close to them as your display will get.
This is apples and oranges. You can take a real SNES, connect it to a Framemeister or an OSSC, and have a 1080p or higher output going out to your TV or monitor. That is of course _not_ a hack. It doesn't change how the console functions internally.
In the same way, most 2D console emulators will have the same resolution internally as the real console, and they will only apply upscaling as a post-processing step. This method is accurate. On the other hand, there is now a feature introduced by bsnes-hd, where the actual internal rendering resolution is changed to make the Mode 7 effect look better. That is a hack. Whether that is good or bad is subjective. I find the feature quite enjoyable, but I also appreciate that I can turn it off if it makes a game glitch too much.
But also, because of all the power we now have, we can improve those systems way beyond their original design.
Yes and that's great. I love playing around with those features. But usually I will turn them off at some point because they introduce various glitches that annoy me more than the original hardware's flaws.
To me, this isn't a hack, it's a feature.
Hacks _are_ features, otherwise they wouldn't be added in there. But every feature has a side-effect. It's all a trade-off.
There is way too much FPGA snobbery in these forums,
I don't see any "FPGA snobbery" in this thread or forum. I for one use software emulators pretty frequently, even inaccurate ones. Inaccurate emulation is better than none at all, and just about every emulator or FPGA core author has learned from other projects that already existed. It's just that when given a choice, some of us prefer the most accurate solution with the most predictable performance.
But this stance isn't enough for some people. Instead you have to pretend that inaccurate emulators are perfect, because the "best" games "look beautiful in 4K", and pretend that FPGAs don't have _any_ benefits over a typical PC whatsoever. That to me is ridiculous.
and I think it's a little unfair when emulation, which we've ALL benefitted from over the years, continually gets a kicking from the FPGA snobs.
Just what are you talking about? Every MiSTer user that I've come across is also a fan of software emulation.
