RPCS3 PS3 Emulator – January 2019 Progress Report | Hacker News Reader

RPCS3 PS3 Emulator – January 2019 Progress Report

rpcs3.net

181 pointspplonski8661 comments

These reports are amazing, even though it's hardly understandable if you're not on the project.

I recommend the Dolphin emulator blog as well. The last one: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2019/02/01/dolphin-progress-rep...

I remember vaguely something about them using a visual difference tool as a regression test, really cool!

> I remember vaguely something about them using a visual difference tool as a regression test, really cool!

FifoCI! One of the coolest ideas to come out of that project.

https://fifoci.dolphin-emu.org/about/

Please donate if you can afford it: https://www.patreon.com/Nekotekina

This project is very important to preserve one of the largest console of the past generation.

To be honest, i think $3k per month is already pretty generous, considering the amount of work the lead dev does. I followed the project closely couple of years ago and even back then it obvious for anyone who studied the codebase, that nekotekina lost all enthusiasm about the project a long time ago.

They should consider switching to per-task payment model, so maybe some other talented people can participate, because nowadays devs supported by that patreon page do just enough work to put at least something in the monthly changelog.

2 lead devs now (kd-11) and they're making amazing progress every month.

kd-11 was fine, the criticisms is mostly directed at "the main dev" nekotekina. Go through the git history of the last 4~ years. It's not amazing or impressive by any stretch of the imagination.

hmm, the Patreon claims ($4k/m) is to support both of those developers "full-time". I have to agree the commit history (for both) seems a bit thin. Although not to the point it's alarming or anything, as work is being done. I'm also well aware that's not always the best measure of contributions to software. Especially given the high-quality work going into documentation on this blog...

A fair bit of this would be testing, reverse engineering, etc. If you look at the commit history of any of the devs where I work, it'd look a bit thin too, but we're all working 8+ hours / day.

An emulator can be very easily and objectively judged on the number of games it supports. That is what its for.

How much of the PS3 library can be played?

Once an emulator gets fairly polished, it's not unusual to spend a week or two on a bug to discover you need to add one bitwise and to mask a couple of bits out of a value somewhere.

Good to hear that emulation development is still alive and well, for so many reasons. As consoles became more locked-down emulation seemed to stall, what with the unusually long generational span of the 360/ps3 era. Someday it will be outrageously expensive to find a working ps3 or Xbox 360, and when that day comes emulation will be the only way to enjoy the titles from your childhood, especially for non-blockbuster titles with little chance of remakes. Scanning preserves our photographic history, digitalization preserves our film history, and emulation is how we preserve our gaming history.

Microsoft's proprietary emulator for Xbox 360 provides access to 551 out of 2100 released games on the Xbox One. One of the main reasons I bought one (pretty amazing I can LAN party Halo Reach between my 360/One X).

I can't see any reason they wouldn't keep improving the emulator and bringing it to their next consoles (which are very likely to be AMD machines and thus have near native backwards compatibility with Xbox One).

They would stop the very moment it ceased being profitable.

> threads relating to RSX, SPU and PPU have higher priority, audio threads are delayed during bottlenecks leading to crackling or complete loss of sound

This is an interesting choice, given that almost everywhere else it seems like audio is given the high priority to prevent stutters like these.

As an aside, the font size is a bit small on my iPad (nothing Reader mode couldn’t fix, though).

In Dolphin for example, if games are not smooth I disable the audio (not mute, disable) and games are a very smooth (looking at you Mario Kart Wii)

Not just that, but it's common to sync video to audio. Obviously it's a lot purtier to lose a frame of video than a chunk of audio.

What is the legality of emulating proprietary hardware like this?

It's a simulation, not a reproduction.

I don’t think the MPAA would look kindly upon your attempt to “simulate” a movie…

But video players are legal.

Yes, as long as the media you put in it was legally acquired.

the video player stays legal no matter where the files it plays came from...

Yes, the video player is legal. What you’re doing with it is not legal.

What you or the video player is doing is not in itself illegal. The "illegal" part, if you want to use that terminology, is the purchasing and/or possession of an illegal copy of copyrighted material. The fact of copyright infringement doesn't magically emerge through the process of playing it.

There are not—as far as I'm aware—any laws against watching copyright infringing materials; intentional possession is the entirety of crime.

Interesting. Are there any rules against watching copyrighted materials you know were obtained illegally?

No. Copyright is about making a copy. It’s literally in the name: right to copy. A file downloaded illegally means someone made a copy without being authorized by the IP holder.

What you do with the copy is irrelevant.

There are 'performance rights' that are separate from the direct copyright infringement. i.e. if you buy a DVD legally and show it to your church's youth group, you'll be infringing on the performance rights. AFAIAA there isn't an 'enhanced' punishment if you got the IP illegally, just two separate offenses.

I think the distinction to make here is that in the case of RPCS3 it's more like creating a projector in software than recreating a film in software.

I can tell you that it is explicitly illegal to have the files you load into the emulator to play a certain game if you haven't purchased a copy of that game yourself.

Yes, I know the distinction; that's why I replied to the comment since I felt it was not an accurate portrayal of the situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator#Le... has some notes and links to court cases.

TL;DR emulators are legal, as long as you use game files you have legally acquired by buying the game and dumping it yourself. Using game files from online is illegal.

It can be fine as well if it can legally be downloaded. For example, it's possible to get the official firmware directly from Sony or play some homebrew software.

And I'm sure it's possible to find some game demos as well.

They do have a tendency to chase after those who are emulating active systems as opposed to deprecated consoles.

Not even. There was an emulator for the Wii U while the console was still seeing new releases, and no "chasing" happened. Similarly, there are at least 2 Switch emulators in development, and I haven't heard of any legal trouble from their side. Same for the 3DS, etc.

There has been at least one case of such a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit

Bleem was amazing. I remember the emulator itself had copy protection that baffled cracking groups for longer than anything I'd seen at the time.

Sony don't seem to mind anymore, considering the Playstation Classic console uses the opensource pcsx emulator:

https://www.dualshockers.com/playstation-classic-emulator-pc...

Sony doesn't seem to care about emulation of old systems. The reality is that old games doesn't bring in much money for them and the people who run emulators are a niche.

Piracy of the PS4 would get their attention.

How interesting. So they actually emulate the whole deal? Cell, GPU, peripherals? Cool.

I had one of those running Linux and got one of the lights of death. Bummer. Into the trash.

If you still have it, keep it. They can be repaired pretty easily and you can use it to dump your games for emulation.

Yes, they emulate the whole deal (DS3 support isn't there yet) but RSX and Cell, yeah.

You can even run PS1 classics (emulating an emulator!)

How's the game that shall not be named running these days?

Which game is that?

It'll be this one: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/atlus-wants-to-cut-of...

If you mean MGS4, it doesn't run. It uses a ps3 feature which no other game uses, so it hasn't been prioritized.

Or if you meant TLOU, 12fps on a very high end system, give it more time.

Which feature?

sys_overlay

> sys_overlay, a special way for games to load external code. While it is very much a work in progress, it shows real promise because Metal Gear Solid 4 needs it to run

https://rpcs3.net/blog/2018/01/03/progress-report-december-2...

I don't think that PR ever got merged. It was barely in-game anyway.

Also check here:

https://rpcs3.net/compatibility

Project M is a wii title ;)

I'm slow, I just remembered this (and assume it's what you're referring to): https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/atlus-wants-to-cut-of...

Can we please not have news about software that supports piracy and disrespects authors' rights on the front page? Why isn't this banned outright?

I wonder how Stallman would feel if Apple were to take GCC's source, add support for e.g. Swift and keep it closed source while violating the GPL and then post blog posts about what great engineers they are.

We also have posts about hackers and all sorts of shit. It's here because it's technically interesting.

Projects like this are also critical - tons of media running on proprietary hardware/software will be lost without projects like this. Think about DOSBox, or even just Flashplayer games, or how rare an n64 is. All of the art produced on these platforms will be lost unless we build software to run it.

Emulators are also, generally, ~5-10 years behind the consoles. At that point the consoles themselves are likely deprecated in favor of the next platform. PS3 has been out for 13 years. Do you really believe this code will negatively impact sales of games, when it's usable nearly 2 decades after release?

*edit

And a side note - I believe PCSX2 was the first program I ever compiled, as a teenager. It was at least some part of what interested me in computers - I wanted to know why some games were slow or fast, or what role the GPU played. Emulators are some of the coolest projects out there, I think, and posts about their implementation seem very fitting for HN.

> or how rare an n64 is

I may be reading this completely wrong, but are you implying the N64 console is rare?

They're no longer manufactured, and therefor the numbers are only decreasing. A quick look at amazon prices one at ~100 dollars. What do you think that'll be in a decade?

Certainly some games are already quite pricey as there are fewer and fewer copies out there (check out prices for SSBM).

To be banned by who? How would you ban a movement of hackers developing incredible engineering projects in their spare time?

Emulation has been legal in the US since the Sony vs. Bleem! case was decided. As long as they do a clean room reconstruction of the hardware's functionalities it remains legal.

What you are aruging is essentially that clang is guilty for not using GPL because it also compiles code written for gcc. This is not how things work in OSS.

Taking Open->closed is loads different than taking closed->open. Clearly, Stallman likes only one of those two paths

Copyright holders (not synonymous with the authors, btw) don't actually have a right to be the sole distributors of a product for all of eternity. The law says they do, but it's a dumb law, and you don't have any moral obligation to follow dumb laws.

But the authors of this emulator don't even support unauthorized downloading, as far as I know. You can easily play legally obtained games on RPCS3 by ripping them with an ordinary Blu-ray drive.

What about any of this is closed source?

https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3

>> The world's first free and open-source PlayStation 3 emulator/debugger, written in C++ for Windows and Linux.

Point out the disrespect.

I think Stallman would applaud software that allows freedom from locked down hardware.

That's a poor analogy. It's an understandable mistake to make if you're not familiar with emulator development, but (most) emulators do not rely on stolen source code or other stolen proprietary secrets. They reverse engineer these secrets instead, which is completely legal (and, imo, morally and ethically valid.)

I don't know what Stallman's view on video game emulators is, but I'd expect he'd be opposed to them, like how I'd expect he'd be opposed to the original game consoles because they enable the use of proprietary software, since almost all commercial video games are proprietary. However, Stallman is normally in favour of reverse engineering proprietary systems to allow interoperability with free systems, even when that runs the risk of enabling piracy: just see DeCSS/libdvdcss.

It's fascinating to see comments like this, indicating that the rights owners groups propaganda has been so effective in some segment of the population, that they actively advocate against their own interests and rights.

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