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The state of PS3 emulation

Guilty_AI

Member
Thought this was relevant with the recent events




-Simpler, homebrew games are easier to emulate
-In recent years, RPCS3 made great progress with games that utilize the ps3's CPU to a fuller capacity
-Almost 60% of the ps3 library is already playable (no game breaking glitches or significant performance issues)
-Emulating ps3 games on a ps5 could've been possible, but its likely the gains wouldn't justify the research costs for Sony.
-In theory, RPCS3 could be ported to the ps5 considering the advances they made emulating cell on AMD cpus

RPCS3 Site
Do consider supporting the developers on their patreon if you like what they're working on
 
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ACESHIGH

Banned
I wonder if all that happened would result on a significant push of RPCS3.

And Sony could easily come up with an emulator. They gave all the documentation and the manpower.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
It's been in what I'd call a "good" state for over a year now provided you've got decent hardware.

Considering the knowledge Sony have about the inner working of the PS3 I have no doubt they would be able to get something much better than RPCS3 running on the PS5 but... You know... Jim Ryan doesn't like old games and doesn't think people want to play them.
 
I’ve played Demon’s at 4K and it was really nice. Didn’t run at 60fpa but still good. Playable.

Original hardware is always ideal though. PS3s can also play PS1 discs so it is two systems in one.
 

JackQQ89

Neo Member
I wondered, can someone post video comprasion between 8 cores and 6 cores modern CPUS benchmarks?

There seems to be gain between 8 from 6 cores.
 

Cryio

Member
Recently finished the Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones HD variant on PS3. The port has a lot of issues compared to the original release, but the textures are either significantly higher rez, or textures are changed entirely with new takes that look great. For a fan of the game, I'd say best way to play Two Thrones is PC (4K60, great textures), GameCube via Dophin (4K30 or 4K60, better water, BETTER widescreen support AND better lighting with functional bloom. It does have lower rez than PC). Finally, PS3 for the amazing looking textures, which make the game look surprisingly more modern than the original.

Currently playing God of War 2005 due to how much better it runs on RPCS3 than emulated from PS2, lol.
 

kiphalfton

Member
Maybe steam deck will give the emulator devs an incentive to speed up progress on the emulation front. That way we can stop hearing people complain about switch and other emulated console games crashing and being barely playable.
 
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Ozzie666

Member
I don't know much about current PS3 emulation, but is the steam deck technically capable of good ps3 emulation? not sure how much CPU power it takes these days.
 

RaySoft

Member
Because many emu devs strive for 1:1 emulation and when new hardware enters the scene they always get interested.
This hardware is one of the few who actually has potential to emulate most of the consoles even on the go. (portable)
They do their shit because they can and will. Never underestimate that.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
Because many emu devs strive for 1:1 emulation and when new hardware enters the scene they always get interested.
This hardware is one of the few who actually has potential to emulate most of the consoles even on the go. (portable)
They do their shit because they can and will. Never underestimate that.

Are you just saying this will motivate them more? More incentive to do what they are doing?
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
Because many emu devs strive for 1:1 emulation and when new hardware enters the scene they always get interested.
This hardware is one of the few who actually has potential to emulate most of the consoles even on the go. (portable)
They do their shit because they can and will. Never underestimate that.
But there will always be more PCs than Decks, and they are working on the emulator already. The Deck changes nothing. If anything it would hold them back because they would have to worry about making things playable on that low powered hardware.
 

GHG

Gold Member
But there will always be more PCs than Decks, and they are working on the emulator already. The Deck changes nothing. If anything it would hold them back because they would have to worry about making things playable on that low powered hardware.

Oh how the tables turn.

Please explain how an emulator that is already capable of running on hardware with less power than the deck would be held back by the deck.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Sony should include an emulation program of their own on PS5.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
Don't games need to be "learned" in a process between the developer and Nvidia to work on DLSS? They submit asset images and it goes toward the deep learning algorithm? Kind of rules out this type of application.
Not anymore. Dlss is available to all devs now via SDK. It's not a simple upscale like amds though, it needs to be properly integrated and uses precious frame data and motion vectors etc.
 

Larxia

Member
The emulator is quite impressive and some games are definitely playable. I've been able to play Skate 3 at a solid 60fps (and even more) 90% of the time, only rare drops here and there. Using a Ryzen 3700x.

However, I find it very unfortunate that to get really good performances you need to have a specific kind of intel cpus. Not too old but not too recent either, that can support TSX instructions, which intel doesn't support anymore due to various reasons (intel 9th generation is the last one supporting it), and isn't compatible on most motherboards either anyway since a few years unless you can flash them, so yeah... that's a quite niche audience that can run rpcs3 in great conditions.

Tony Hawk's Project 8, one of the games I'm the most interested in emulating on ps3/360, can run between 60 and 120 fps with a 9900k and TSX enabled, but if you run it on any other cpus without TSX support, it's 30-40 fps, with some drops in the 20s.

So it seems that the 9900k is still the best cpu for this emulator, and probably for a while until there's some other performance boost elsewhere.
 
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MrFunSocks

Banned
The emulator is quite impressive and some games are definitely playable. I've been able to play Skate 3 at a solid 60fps (and even more) 90% of the time, only rare drops here and there. Using a Ryzen 3700x.

However, I find it very unfortunate that to get really good performances you need to have a specific kind of intel cpus. Not too old but not too recent either, that can support TSX instructions, which intel doesn't support anymore due to various reasons (intel 9th generation is the last one supporting it), and isn't compatible on most motherboards either anyway since a few years unless you can flash them, so yeah... that's a quite niche audience that can run rpcs3 in great conditions.

Tony Hawk's Project 8, one of the games I'm the most interested in emulating on ps3/360, can run between 60 and 120 fps with a 9900k and TSX enabled, but if you run it on any other cpus without TSX support, it's 30-40 fps, with some drops in the 20s.

So it seems that the 9900k is still the best cpu for this emulator, and probably for a while until there's some other performance boost elsewhere.
Yeh it's pretty frustrating that games like God of war 3 still run between 25-40 fps on my Ryzen 7 5800/RTX3070 machine. Killzone 2 is almost a nice stable 30fps. I've got lots of games that run perfectly though, but they're mainly the less demanding ones like the God of war remasters and games like Ni no kuni etc. TLOU is still terrible, so was one of the uncharteds last time I checked.
 

SNG32

Member
PS3 emulation is starting to get really good. I have a laptop with a Ryzen 5900hx and 3070 and pretty much runs all fighting games and Japanese games perfectly. So I’m happy with the progress.
 
Just get Duckstation for PS1 stuff.
Duckstation has issues with Castlevania sotn 🤮

Otherwise it's great, I set it to supersample games and output them at their original resolution. It makes Games with prerendered backdrops integrate the polygons very smoothly, this all look natural, and the full 3d games keep their original graininess, but they get top AA.

I can't be bothered to go look at the actual options names.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
I am happy over FSR. Fuck DLSS and nvidia fanboys
Bit of a weird thing to say. FSR isn't even in the same league as DLSS. DLSS actually needs input from the game engine like motion vectors of things, and uses previous frames to fill in the data for the upscaling. FSR just upscales each frame.

FSR is better than nothing, but it's technically nowhere near DLSS. Why exactly don't you like DLSS?
 

nkarafo

Member
What's the point of FSR or DLSS in an emulator?

Aren't all emulators CPU dependent? The GPU is always going to have an easier time as it's not doing any emulation work, it just displays the graphics. And PS3's graphics should be a piece of cake for any GPU. Even something like a GTX 1050 should be more than enough to easily display PS3 stuff at 4K native.

At least that's how every other emulator works for me, i haven't tried this particular one yet.
 

Md Ray

Member
What's the point of FSR or DLSS in an emulator?

Aren't all emulators CPU dependent? The GPU is always going to have an easier time as it's not doing any emulation work, it just displays the graphics. And PS3's graphics should be a piece of cake for any GPU. Even something like a GTX 1050 should be more than enough to easily display PS3 stuff at 4K native.

At least that's how every other emulator works for me, i haven't tried this particular one yet.
Xenia (X360 emulator) was completely GPU-dependant, the total opposite of RPCS3 when I tested it.
 
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yurinka

Member
Thought this was relevant with the recent events




-Simpler, homebrew games are easier to emulate
-In recent years, RPCS3 made great progress with games that utilize the ps3's CPU to a fuller capacity
-Almost 60% of the ps3 library is already playable (no game breaking glitches or significant performance issues)
-Emulating ps3 games on a ps5 could've been possible, but its likely the gains wouldn't justify the research costs for Sony.
-In theory, RPCS3 could be ported to the ps5 considering the advances they made emulating cell on AMD cpus

RPCS3 Site
Do consider supporting the developers on their patreon if you like what they're working on

Many of the most popular games still aren't properly emulated because part of its hardware can't be emulated at full speed and no glitches with the hardware available on current PC and consoles, and won't be in many years.
 
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