Good news for fans of PlayStation Vita – a new project from [Sergi “xerpi” Granell] allows users to run software written for Sony’s earlier handheld system on Nintendo’s latest money-printing machine, the Switch. To be clear, there is still a long way to go before the vita2hos project can run commercial games (or ever). But it’s already capable of running simple CPU-rendered Vita homebrew binaries on the Switch, showing that the concept is good.
Running a Vita CHIP-8 emulator on the Switch. Credit: Modern Vintage Gamer
On a technical level, vita2hos is similar to WINE, which allows POSIX compatible operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS, and BSD to run Windows programs as long as they use the same processor architecture. Since the Switch’s ARM v8 processor is capable of executing code compiled for the Vita’s ARM v7 while running in 32-bit compatibility mode, no emulation is needed. The project needs to provide the running program with work-like routines soon enough, and no one is the wiser. That is of course a lot easier said than done.
According to the project page, the big hurdle now is 3D graphics support. As you can imagine, many Vita games would have pushed the system’s graphics hardware to its limits, making it extremely difficult to accommodate all the minor edge cases that will no doubt arise when and if the project expands to include commercial titles. to support. But for homebrew Vita games and utilities that may not even use the system’s 3D hardware, adding compatibility will be much easier. For example, it can already be run [xerpi]’s proprietary CHIP-8 emulator.
[xerpi] provides instructions on how to install vita2hos and the Vita executable to test on an already hacked Nintendo Switch, should you give it a shot. But unless you’re experienced developing for the Vita or Switch and willing to lend a hand, you might want to sit this out until things mature a bit.
Thanks to [NeoTechni] for the tip.
This post Nintendo Switch runs Vita software with Vita2hos
was original published at “https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/nintendo-switch-runs-vita-software-with-vita2hos/”
