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Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

This emulator was great but always felt dated and clunky compared to things like RPCS3 and Dolphin. After their reboot using QT framework, it become so much smoother and easier to use. It's wonderful! It's really plug and play.

Unfortunately even with a 12900k and a literal RTX 4090, Shadow of The Colossus still lags below 60fps in many situations. That's my "white whale" for PS2, like Metal Gear Solid 4 is for PS3. That game also doesn't work perfectly in it's PS3 emulator.

Here's what the update dialog looks like: https://files.catbox.moe/fky7br.png

Here's what the emulator itself looks like with real usage: https://files.catbox.moe/pa3m30.png

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To be fair shadow of the Colossus has pretty bad frame rates even on the original hardware, averaging 15-20 fps. So I'd say if anything that's an accurate recreation of the original experience :)

From https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2012-10-breakdown-shadow-of-the-c... :

  > Well, SOTC is a game whose frame rate can increase and decrease 
  > wildly. Actually, we have incorporate the variable frame rate 
  > in the design - it increases and decreases with load balancing. 
  > Although there are cases when it reaches 60 fps, there are also 
  > times when it falls to the 15 fps range, but the motion blur helps 
  > to smooth over this, and the player's sensation of frame rate 
  > changes is held down to a minimum.

Does the PS4 remake fare better?

The remake is a consistent 30 fps, or an optional consistent 60 fps mode on the Pro (or PS5).

Unlike the PS3 remaster - the PS4 remake is built on a completely different engine and doesn't share any assets (except maybe some audio) with the original.

That's actually not true, the remaster is running the original engine in sync with the modern one:

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-shadow-of-the-...

What does "load balancing" mean in this context?

I'm not sure, it could be a reference to the dynamic terrain loading that adds and removes pieces of the land as they are visited by the player.

They rereleased that game like 5 times

I just beat it on PS5, it further upscales the PS4 version or something but I’m not invested enough to care about the semantics

Enjoyed ending those Colossi

I'm on a pretty old version of pcsx2 but for Shadows of the Colossus I've had good luck enabling speedhacks, setting EE cyclerate to -1 and VU Cycle Stealing to 1. With these settings I'm getting a rock solid 60fps in the temple. Removing frame rate limit gets me between 100-120fps in game. This is with a old Ryzen 5 and an old R9 Fury.

Yeah I really wanna run through B.L.A.C.K. again, but last time I checked it was unplayable on my setup.

Black! Takes me back, first game I ever 100%d.

However, when I revisted it on real PS2 hardware 10 years ago, I was shocked how clunky it was compared to my memories.

You know what else? You probably first played it on a CRT, which was brighter with a far better gamut than a plasma or LCD TV, so it looked a lot brighter and clearer.

GTA:SA looks like a sad and dull imitation of itself on a modern TV.

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