PS3 emulator RPCS3 making progress, can now play After Burner Climax fairly smoothly

[TopWargamer]

Source: http://kotaku.com/heres-a-ps3-game-emulated-and-running-on-a-pc-1756697682?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Facebook&utm_source=Kotaku_Facebook&utm_medium=Socialflow

 

The PS3 emulator project PSCS3 has been making huge leaps in the last few months overcoming great technical hurdles. They've gone gone simple homebrew "games" and 3D objects to being able to load title screens, to being able to load parts of certain games, and now it can play actual PS3 games. Well, just 1 game right now as far as I know. That game is After Burner Climax, and runs... Really playable actually. There's a bit of stutter here and there, but it's perfectly playable. That's some damn good progress emulating a system that not even most of the original developers couldn't fully grasp thanks to the Cell architecture (although it was super powerful). 

For comparison, compare the current progress (video above) to last month's progress (video below, in spoiler tag). It's a world of difference.

Spoiler

 

 

 

After Burner Climax is by no means the most intensive PS3 game ever, so don't expect to be playing any first party or even more modern titles in general any time soon, unfortunately. The emulator is using DirectX12, so that's a positive thing, and probably a large part as to why After Burner Climax actually runs smoothly. Maybe not. I dunno, I'm not a super super technical person. 

 

The repository for the project can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3

[Virtual01]

So... how long until Demon's Souls is playable?

[SImoHayha]

Thats amazing. WE ARE GETTING THERE LADS. WE ARE ALMOST THERE. PC MASTER RACE SHALL UNITE ALL CONSOLES AND PC INTO ONE GIANT LAND!

GODS WE NEED TO WAIT A COUPLE OF MORE YEARS AND WE CAN PROBABLY PLAY CONSOLE EXCLUSIVE GAMES LIKE THE LAST OF US!!!!

( Yes I was yelling in my mind )

[TopWargamer]

Just now, Ramamataz said:

Thats amazing. WE ARE GETTING THERE LADS. WE ARE ALMOST THERE. PC MASTER RACE SHALL UNITE ALL CONSOLES AND PC INTO ONE GIANT LAND!

GODS WE NEED TO WAIT A COUPLE OF MORE YEARS AND WE CAN PROBABLY PLAY CONSOLE EXCLUSIVE GAMES LIKE THE LAST OF US!!!!

( Yes I was yelling in my mind )

Mmmmmmm, Last of Us was so good. My dad and I (unevenly) split the cost of a PS4 just to play that game. Totally worth it.

[SImoHayha]

3 minutes ago, Virtual01 said:

So... how long until Demon's Souls is playable?

Isn't that basically Dark Souls?

[TopWargamer]

Just now, Ramamataz said:

Isn't that basically Dark Souls?

First in the series, in fact. 

Demon's Souls ---> Dark Souls ---> Dark Souls 2 ---> Bloodbourne (spiritual successor) ---> Dark Souls 3

[Memories4K]

6 minutes ago, Virtual01 said:

So... how long until Demon's Souls is playable?

One of the few reasons i care about a PS3 emualtor

2 minutes ago, Ramamataz said:

Isn't that basically Dark Souls?

The predecessor to Dark Souls.

Demon's Souls is the origin of the Soul's series and it's my personal favorite in the series.

[azurezeed]

Great, now we need a Xbox emulator

 

[TopWargamer]

4 minutes ago, azurezeed said:

Great, now we need a Xbox emulator

 

To be perfectly honest I'm surprised that a PS3 emulator is making more progress than an Original Xbox and Xbox 360 emulator COMBINED. The Original Xbox runs a modified Pentium 4 (or 3?), yet there's no good emulators afaik. The Xbox 360 is running a funky architecture when compared to the PS3, but Cell is still much more funky, again, afaik.

[patrickjp93]

I'm actually surprised it's taking this long. The PowerPC instructions aren't hard to translate into x86, especially since the PS3 didn't have vector instructions yet. I know the Cell coprocessors were used sort of in lieu of a true graphics unit, but sheesh...

 

For the most part emulators should only be an exercise in cross-compiling. I'd be perfectly able to help on the CPU side, though I have no Direct X experience at the assembly level.

[azurezeed]

7 minutes ago, TopWargamer said:

To be perfectly honest I'm surprised that a PS3 emulator is making more progress than an Original Xbox and Xbox 360 emulator COMBINED. The Original Xbox runs a modified Pentium 4 (or 3?), yet there's no good emulators afaik. The Xbox 360 is running a funky architecture when compared to the PS3, but Cell is still much more funky, again, afaik.

I know, supposedly people can't make progress with Xbox because there's not enough documentation iirc, maybe someone will try to use dx12 to make more progress with the Xbox emulator as well

[Virtual01]

28 minutes ago, Ramamataz said:

Isn't that basically Dark Souls?

 

Pretty much, but Dark Souls 1 and 2 are already on PC, and Demon's Souls has some strengths (and weaknesses) that are not matched by either Souls game.

[Daegun]

This and the Citra 3DS emulator have me very excited. Someday, I'll be able to play all these games on the go on my laptop/smartphone.

[bobhays]

This is awesome but it would be great if the ps2 emulator worked properly too. It's been years and even that one doesn't work with a lot of very popular games including sony exclusives.

[cesrai]

5 hours ago, Ramamataz said:

Thats amazing. WE ARE GETTING THERE LADS. WE ARE ALMOST THERE. PC MASTER RACE SHALL UNITE ALL CONSOLES AND PC INTO ONE GIANT LAND!

GODS WE NEED TO WAIT A COUPLE OF MORE YEARS AND WE CAN PROBABLY PLAY CONSOLE EXCLUSIVE GAMES LIKE THE LAST OF US!!!!

( Yes I was yelling in my mind )

CAPS ARE COOL.

---

I just want to play infamous.

[minibois]

Yeah this is awesome  

Just years ago this all seemed impossibe, but impossible is just a word used by people who don't want to believe in it

[That Norwegian Guy]

6 hours ago, TopWargamer said:

To be perfectly honest I'm surprised that a PS3 emulator is making more progress than an Original Xbox and Xbox 360 emulator COMBINED. The Original Xbox runs a modified Pentium 4 (or 3?), yet there's no good emulators afaik. The Xbox 360 is running a funky architecture when compared to the PS3, but Cell is still much more funky, again, afaik.

 

I can't think of a single exclusive Xbox or Xbox 360 title I want to play.

But PS3 at least has The Last of Us, which I'd like to play if there was an emulator.

So it could just be a simple motivation issue.

[Master Disaster]

6 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

I'm actually surprised it's taking this long. The PowerPC instructions aren't hard to translate into x86, especially since the PS3 didn't have vector instructions yet. I know the Cell coprocessors were used sort of in lieu of a true graphics unit, but sheesh...

 

For the most part emulators should only be an exercise in cross-compiling. I'd be perfectly able to help on the CPU side, though I have no Direct X experience at the assembly level.

Isn't that the difference between HLE & LLE or am I getting something mixed up?

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Isn't that the difference between HLE & LLE or am I getting something mixed up?

For the CPU part of it, you have to do HLE. For the graphics processing, that's where it gets tricky.

[lightningterror]

4 hours ago, bobhays said:

This is awesome but it would be great if the ps2 emulator worked properly too. It's been years and even that one doesn't work with a lot of very popular games including sony exclusives.

 

Actually the ps2 emulator (pcsx2) has also made a lot of progress lately. You also get daily beta updates which is pretty cool.

[TopWargamer]

2 hours ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

 

I can't think of a single exclusive Xbox or Xbox 360 title I want to play.

But PS3 at least has The Last of Us, which I'd like to play if there was an emulator.

So it could just be a simple motivation issue.

Halo? Gears of War? 

[That Norwegian Guy]

6 minutes ago, TopWargamer said:

Halo? Gears of War? 

 

No interest what so ever

[Bouzoo]

I'm in a bit out of loop here. Is it optimized for 1-2 threads and depends on how "strong" your core is or can it use on more threads? 

Also glad to see it's happening, even though I always thought the development would be faster. 

[samcool55]

Awesome! let's hope more and more skilled programmers want to put some effort into it and keep up the development of it.

It's nice to see this. And as we learned from PCSX2, we will get there, if we are patient enough

[LokiFire]

This is awesome and top work from the devs, this emulator has come miles along in such a small amount of time, put's most game devs to shame haha.