Halo 3 is a game that a lot of PC gamers wanted to play (especially since Halo 1 and 2 came out on our platform) and it appears that this will be possible in 2019 via the Xenia Xbox 360 emulator. YouTube’s ‘Emulators for PC’ has shared a video comparing the original X360 version with the emulated Xenia version using the DX12 API.

As we can see, the game currently lacks some lighting effects that make the Xenia version look washed out. Moreover, there are some shadow imperfections (shadows look square-ish in the Xenia version) and some texture issues (texture also appear to be more low-res on Xenia though this could be due to a shader issue).

Furthermore, the emulated DX12 version also lacks some environmental effects (like the bullet holes on surfaces and the water ripples when firing a gun) and there aren’t any gun muzzle effects.

There is no doubt that the Xenia team has a lot of work to do and although the game is missing a lot of effects, it appears to be playable. Performance also seems to be fine. Emulators for PC used an Intel Xeon e3-1240 V2 at 3.6Ghz with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050Ti 4GB and was able to run the game with 20-30fps. Since the game is locked at 30fps on X360, we can assume that more powerful modern-day PC systems can offer a 30fps experience.

Enjoy the comparison video. Do note that the comparison between X360 and Xenia DX12 starts at 7:30. Prior to that, there is a comparison between Xenia’s Vulkan and DirectX 12 APIs!

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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