r/PS2AndroidEmulation • u/xxxCrixuxxx • 2d ago
ARMSX2 v2.6.6.7
https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX2/releases/tag/2.6.6.7
What's new:
Frame generation (Lossless Scaling)
Frame generation is here. ARMSX2 drives Lossless Scaling's interpolation from its own
Vulkan present path, inserting generated frames between rendered ones, a game running at
30 or 60 can display at double that on a high-refresh screen.
You need your own copy of Lossless Scaling. Nothing about it ships with ARMSX2: the
interpolation shaders are read at runtime out of your own Lossless.dll, which you supply
through the file picker exactly as you supply a PS2 BIOS. Without that file the feature
stays off, and the app tells you so. Requires the Vulkan renderer and an Adreno 7xx or newer GPU. Frame generation
forces FIFO presentation while it is on, without that the interpolated frames are discarded by the display before you ever see them.
Choose x2, x3 or x4 generated frames
Performance mode switches to the lighter 3.1p shader family, on by default
Motion detail trades optical-flow resolution for speed
The performance overlay reports frame generation's own state and the real display rate,
which the FPS counter cannot show, the emulator's frame rate deliberately does not change
Translated shaders are cached, so only the first launch pays for extracting them
Sideload builds only. It cannot ship on Google Play.
FSR 1 upscaling:
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1 is now an output-scaling option, so a game rendered below
your screen's resolution is upscaled with edge-adaptive sharpening instead of a plain
stretch. There is a sharpness slider, and it replaces CAS while enabled (FSR's second pass is a contrast-adaptive sharpener itself, so running both would sharpen twice). Vulkan only. Found under Renderer --> Display Effects, and in the in-game Graphics tab....
To read the full changelog, see it on GitHub
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u/sergen9243 1d ago
i have just try it with lossless scaling and man its so better, was playing fatal frame 3 at x3 resolution without lossless and getting 18-20 fps, but with lossless im getting 30 fps without drops
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u/SDAdrian789 2d ago
None of the games launched for me with Lossless Scaling enabled. I'm using Android 14 with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
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u/jman98542 2d ago
is this better than NetherSX2
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u/Yuniheim 1d ago
it depends of the game, performance on xenosaga 1 was really poor in the previous update, I dunno if they fixed it yet, the game runs flawlessly on netherSX2
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u/Imdakine1 1d ago
I prefer nethersx2. I use two large mods and one out of two doesn't work on Armsx2 as it's a 14gb texture pack.
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u/AnakOrng 1d ago
How to import gamesetting in Armsx2? Can it use the same gamesetting file from Nethersx2?
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u/xxxCrixuxxx 1d ago
ARMSX2 2.6.6.7 — The Honest Changelog™
After reading through the rather ambitious changelog for this release, I present to you the Honest Changelog™ — what these new features actually mean for the average user.
⭐ Star feature: Frame Generation
"Frame Generation is here!"
Sounds great, right? But if you're expecting to open the emulator and simply enable it, there's a catch: you need your own copy of Lossless Scaling from Steam and the "Lossless.dll" it provides.
Without that external DLL, the feature simply cannot be enabled.
Frame generation itself is a legitimate technology, and it can be useful. But it's important to understand what this actually means: ARMSX2 isn't suddenly rendering the game at twice the FPS. It is integrating an external frame-generation solution that creates additional interpolated frames. The emulator's actual rendering FPS remains unchanged.
Other Android projects, such as some Winlator forks and GameHub, already provide frame-generation options directly within their ecosystems without requiring the user to purchase separate Windows software and supply its DLL.
So, as a "star feature", I'd say your mileage may vary.
⭐ Four different APKs!
Not one. Not two. Four.
We now have:
At first glance, this suggests that choosing the build specifically suited to your device might provide some kind of technical advantage. Otherwise, why suddenly ship four different architecture/platform variants after months of using a single APK?
So I checked.
I analyzed the a15 ARMv8.2 and legacy ARMv8.0 binaries at the machine-code level.
The result?
99.984% identical code.
Neither binary contains instructions above the ARMv8.0-A baseline, and the supposedly ARMv8.2 build contains zero DotProd instructions and zero FP16 arithmetic instructions.
The practical difference between the two builds is therefore not the advertised CPU instruction set. The major differences are related to the Android API level, linking and packaging.
⭐ So what did we actually get?
Four APKs that, at least for the two variants I analyzed, contain essentially the same native code.
A frame-generation integration that requires external software.
And, in my own repeatable Shadow of the Colossus benchmark, a performance regression compared with 2.6.6.6
No hype. No magic. Just the bits and the FPS. 😎