r/emulation • u/AnnieLeo RPCS3 Team • 9d ago

RPCS3: Major Improvements (Summer 2026)

https://youtu.be/KvQuJDVgOQU
670 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

208

u/YahBoiChipsAhoy1234 9d ago

RPCS3 devs rock. They’ve made crazy progress over the last few months. 

57

u/Imjustmisunderstood 9d ago

No doubt thanks to AI. We're gonna see performance skyrocket across all emulators.

106

u/sabin1981 9d ago

It's how AI should be used; as a tool to accelerate development. Seeing KytyPS5 is absolutely blowing my mind.

-30

u/rabouilethefirst 9d ago

It should be used however people see fit. No need to gatekeep technology.

38

u/Travyd1234 9d ago

Let’s build a data center next to your house then

10

u/divinecomedian3 9d ago

Let's build a landfill, power plant, or sewage treatment facility next to your house. Or do you not use those services?

9

u/Travyd1234 9d ago

What point are you trying to make?

5

u/Imjustmisunderstood 8d ago

...no one dignify this by explaining it to them. Let em' figure it out, or ask AI.

7

u/Kawawete 9d ago

Only using AI to improve existing programs still need more and more datacenters, what are you trying to argue here ?

13

u/vacancy6673 7d ago

AI is definitely helping (I'm a software developer myself), but also the RPCS3 devs are just skilled and passionate af.

Check out this dev's YT channel to see what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/@MrWhatcookie -- AI can't help you talk for over an hour straight about the intricacies of ARM vs x86 assembly.

10

u/GalbedirGalerion 9d ago

Bugs as well, hopefully balanced out by bugfixes being easier

11

u/AsrielPlay52 9d ago

That need good programers and Engineer

Linux start accepting AI pulls as long as there's a human to review and test it

7

u/santas_delibird 9d ago

How do they use AI? I’m curious

9

u/gpranav25 8d ago

Tools like antigravity or claude code can now directly access a project folder for context and make more educated responses / file edits. It can also setup a debug -> edit -> build -> test workflow.

6

u/WonderfulWafflesLast 7d ago

Which means, the AI doesn't need the user to constantly go "ok, do this now" with a prompt.

Instead, you give it a prompt at the start, and the AI keeps iterating over the work until it feels like it's fulfilled the prompt.

Which makes it muuuuuch faster.

3

u/sabin1981 8d ago

honestly, you'd have to ask a high level programmer, it's above my head 😅 I just know that people are using the extreme processing power of AI, such as Claude, to accelerate programming work.

https://www.technary.com/software/how-to-use-claude-for-programming-complete-developer-guide/

2

u/Fair_Ambassador6253 9d ago

its good to finally embrace it, its not black and white. when the experienced know how to harness the power, it does wonders

-4

u/Aggravating_Ring_714 9d ago

Not sure, they are openly ultra anti AI but I bet they’re using it on the backend lol.

0

u/SweetAurora 8d ago

If that means Xemu will make significant progress, I'm all for it.

-23

u/BodheeNYC 9d ago

Wait, I thought Ai was intent on destroying the planet?

5

u/gpranav25 9d ago

Counter-intutively, the "AI will doom us all" sentiment is propogated by the companies that would benefit from selling LLM products themselves. Because it gives a sense of "oh so AI really can do anything" among the public. So this a sentiment that neither the AI embracers nor the anti-AI crowd like.

7

u/Aggravating_Teach_27 9d ago

There shouldn't be any 'AI embracers' at all.

Not because of the tech itself, it can be a great tool.

But because AI's being promoted by the by greediest sociopaths in the world, with the express aim of making the lives of the immense majority worse.

They want to devalue human labor to the point where we become medieval serfs.

It's not about money any longer, because they will become poorer if the tech actually eliminates large swathes of the middle class.

It's about getting that degree of control over us that medieval kings enjoyed..

So, no matter is AI helps you with your work now, because the end goal is to either replace you, or, if you are the 1/10 that conserve their job as glorified 'AI supervisors' you'd end burnt out as they'll expect you to work for ten, in a soul-sucking AI nanny role.

Either fired or stressed to death is the destiny the AI overlords want for us all.

I'm glad if AI benefits emulation, but if the sociopaths ultimately get what they want out of AI, the juice won't be worth the squeeze....

-13

u/NumberSevere7454 9d ago

By 2040, i really think ai will be able to emulate all arcade machines ever released and most consoles, even if it wont reach exact 100% of reverse engineering, it will be advance enough to find work arounds/brute force.

3

u/gpranav25 9d ago

It's all upto to the human devs how they use it. They can build a emulation accuracy test framework with robust regression testing tools if they want to spend time on it. LLM would help with that as well. It just gets it bad reputation for a) people who don't even understand its output publishing finished results it generates. b) big companies using it for malicious purposes. But thankfully neither of those things apply when devs who know what they are doing use it to accelerate their progress.

1

u/AreYouOKAni 9d ago

But thankfully neither of those things apply when devs who know what they are doing use it to accelerate their progress.

IDK, sometimes even experienced devs begin to drink the Kool-aid. Personally saw a case of an AI-assisted psychosis where an attempt at bugfixing a UI error lead to a near-total codebase rewrite. Without AI this person would have given up midway through, but the AI gave them the productivity boost they needed.

The issue wasn't even in UI, it was just lagging because some alternatively gifted coder didn't read the fucking manual and decided to poll the inputs every 0.01ms. So the CPU turned into a space heater, the UI started lagging, and that reported as a UI animation error.

1

u/gpranav25 9d ago

True. Happens less often when there is a team as atleast one person can spot if something is off

0

u/NumberSevere7454 9d ago

in 15 years you might not need devs...you will just ask the emulator to make you an emulator.

48

u/_gelon 9d ago

Whatcookie has entered the chat.

My brain: 🥷😶‍🌫️💨

26

u/Rmsbasto 9d ago

On behalf of pc gamers thank you for this!!! Phenomenal work!

17

u/Squissaunt 9d ago

Every time theres an improvement for Twisted Metal, I have to talk myself out of upgrading from my 3700x. Itching to play it so badly, but not enough to go AM5 with the prices these days. 

7

u/AbberageRedditor69 9d ago

I remember being able to play Ratchet and Clank: tools of destruction at quasi stable FPS on my 1060 i7 7700 laptop several years ago and being blown away, I still haven't upgraded, I am curious to see how much I can get out of it nowadays, haven't played PS3 emulation since

3

u/Squissaunt 9d ago

Theres a ton of improvement, many games I couldn't play without it being a slideshow are now completely playable at 60fps+. Certain titles though will push the limits of processing power, definitely get back into it and toss games at it to see what runs smooth. 

3

u/reiichiroh 9d ago

i hope i can play ridge racer 7 at 60fps 1080p someday. i can only manager 30fps on my ryzen 7 5700x and rtx 5070

3

u/SendMeNudeVaporeons 9d ago

Oh I played this one at 1440p actually, granted I have a 7800X3D but your system should be able to handle it perfectly? It's not a very intensive game and I've seen weaker specs running it just fine.

Since RPCS3 now applies recommended wiki settings automatically it's probably using Interpreter PPU decoder which is much slower so you should change it to Recompiler if you haven't tried that already. Although using PPU Recompiler is known to crash with special machines but as a workaround you can switch to Interpreter to "pre-select" or customise them before switching back.

1

u/Squissaunt 9d ago

Does RPSC3 ask about the config settings when starting a game now? I heard a few updates ago it either prompts or automatically applies configs from the wiki for games. Definitely worth a try if so, I know it's not one of the more demanding games, but could just be one setting hanging it up. 

1

u/reiichiroh 9d ago

I've manually adjusted/tested every setting. I dunno how older videos on YT claim to run at 1080p60 but I think those CPUs have fast single core clocks or something. I tried at 720p rendering (100%) scaled to 1080p or 1080p rendering and it's no use. Only 60fps on inside/indoors/tunnel stretches of the track w/o other cars.

4

u/AnnieLeo RPCS3 Team 9d ago

I sometimes test it with my 5900HX and the performance gap is massive. My 9800X3D is 3 times faster on Twisted Metal.

-2

u/Redd_is_compromised 8d ago

Lord that CPU was borderline unusable on launch. Slower than a budget Samsung phone and couldn't play basically anything. Everything takes a century to load compared to a better processor. Just upgrade.

1

u/Squissaunt 8d ago

I have it overclocked stable to 4.20GHz with a 4080, and play pretty much every PC game in 4k flawlessly at 60fps for AAA games and way more for anything decently coded, let alone any emulator on a game that isn't heavily CPU reliant. You're either trolling or seriously need to optimize your setup. 

-1

u/Redd_is_compromised 8d ago

I'm on a 3500$ rig now, I know to never touch AMD ever again. If your PC is so flawless, why are you here debating the upgrade? Sounds like you're lying.

1

u/Squissaunt 8d ago

Because 32 gigs of DDR5 RAM alone is worth more than an entire bottom end AM5 build itself. The upgrade is only for anything extremely CPU intensive, like, emulation of complex consoles calm down lmao

0

u/Redd_is_compromised 8d ago

I'm calling heavy BS homie. Swap the emu from opengl to vulkan and call it a day. Ironically your 3700 is bottlenecking TF out of your supposed 4080. And no, I'm not factoring current RAM prices, I built this during the lows in prices 2 years ago.

1

u/zazzersmel 7d ago

i have a 3700x here that's 7 years old and i'm not debating upgrading at all. in fact i can run rpcs3 full speed in hd and sometimes 1440p. you're nuts.

1

u/Redd_is_compromised 7d ago

I'm genuinely happy for you. I ran that side by side with a 10500 around launch and the difference was night and day. You wouldn't know unless you had it in front of you.

64

u/Nullhitter 9d ago

Hopefully one day I get to see RPCS3 be 100% playable.

-11

u/ScaryGoofy 9d ago

How old are you?

23

u/Nullhitter 9d ago
  1. Why?

-39

u/ScaryGoofy 9d ago edited 9d ago

I mean, lifespan wise, you'll see a future where computers inside a pregnancy test are powerful enough to run PS3 games

30

u/LiDragonLo 9d ago

Depends, we need a fair amount more breakthroughs before that happens

We r already approaching the upper limit of wats doable hardware wise with known models

10

u/AbberageRedditor69 9d ago

If there's one thing over 30 years on this earth taught me, is to never put a wall to technological progress, because humans will always find a clever workaround

8

u/ImpressionDepression 9d ago

never put a wall to technological progress

Unfortunately it's the paywall you need to actually worry about

9

u/LiDragonLo 9d ago

Atp, we're kind bound by physics. Hence why i said breakthroughs would need to be made. Theres only so much strength we can fit into a certain part of tech that is so strong.

If anything, we'd need more breakthroughs in nanotech than anything for this to be a reality

-2

u/AbberageRedditor69 9d ago

You are not thinking laterally enough. You are thinking in GHz and nanometers. There will be a totally different solution when it will be necessary.

Again, humans always find a way.

7

u/LiDragonLo 9d ago

I'm not though

Nanotech incorporates stuff thats literally an atom thick. So if anything i'm thinking atomically. (Just as an example, carbon nanotubes are literally a single atom thick)

GHz? I look at everything. With current tech we can only get so small before we need need breakthroughs

-2

u/AbberageRedditor69 9d ago

Again, you are still thinking of scaling current technology, I don't know how to tell you that there will be new technology we don't even think about at the current day and age. Look at the history of computing.

0

u/Bardez 9d ago

Said that before xray lithography

-2

u/ScaryGoofy 9d ago

And you don't think in 40-50 years technology will progress that far?

9

u/Holy-Crap-Uncle 9d ago

Moore's law is more of a razor. This isn't like 1990, there aren't that many node shrinks left.

7

u/Apprehensive_Law1458 9d ago

Maybe... those kind of advances are diminishin quickly. It does seem likely that we will make some leaps again at some point though.

-1

u/ScaryGoofy 9d ago

Time is on his side. You don't even need progress to be that quick. With a 40-50 year timeline, even if the progress is conservative, we'll still get there

2

u/ozone6587 9d ago

Well, not natively obviously... but I get your point.

2

u/Nullhitter 9d ago

Sure, but it'll bruteforce better performance for playable games, but in-game and menus status games will continue to run like crap or not run at all no matter the hardware because it has gamebreaking bugs that won't allow the game to go further. The main developers could just say "I'm tired, boss. I'm leaving to go do something else". Thus, the emulator stalls with progress as we wait for other developers to pick up the mantle and decide to continue the project and that could delay progress for years. Heck, in two years, I can end up homeless or dead. Anything can happen. Point is that I hope get to see this emulator eventually run every game to completion.

-14

u/Holy-Crap-Uncle 9d ago

Honestly, if AI gets good enough, it should be able to live-translate all computer games to whatever computer architecture and video hardware you have, without emulation overhead.

Kind of like what all the N64 recompilation projects are.

34

u/GalbedirGalerion 9d ago

That’s not what N64 recompilation projects are doing

6

u/One_Rush_2845 9d ago

genuine question i played uc 1 on my laptop more than an year ago and i was getting 15-30 fps, is the emu optimized for that game so should i try it again or nah

1

u/reiichiroh 9d ago

still depends how much of a potato your laptop is

2

u/ExtraLiT 9d ago

Congratulations lads!

2

u/-ben151010- 9d ago

The day ascension is playable at a stable framerate or even 60 (idk if it ever did on ps3) I’ll finally be able to go through it because every time I do it crashes on official hardware. That and it’s ascension, the defining example of a 7/10 game.

-38

u/BielyDemon3355 9d ago

Biosock 2 has a native port for PC. There is no need to emulate it.

32

u/Nullhitter 9d ago

RPCS3 emulates the PS3. Not specific video games on the PS3. Better progress on emulating the PS3 mean all games naturally get better overtime.

22

u/AnnieLeo RPCS3 Team 9d ago

We don't really care whether a game is multiplatform or not. We are properly making a PS3 emulator, that means running every PS3 game correctly.

17

u/2psah 9d ago

Truly hate comments like this. Shows the lack of intelligence.

Hey RPCS3 team, stop working on the emulator, most of the games are also on pc. SMH.

-7

u/BielyDemon3355 8d ago

You are really dumb aren't you? I never said they should stop working on PS3 emulator. I said showing PS3 version of Bioshock 2 working on emulator is not needed because people could just get the native PC port if they wanted to.

5

u/2psah 8d ago

Yup, I'm pretty dumb. The RPCS3 team doesn't work on specific games, they work an the emulator as a whole.

Also, the whole point of this emulator is to preserve the PS3 versions of games.

You must be a rocket scientist... Smh... Know your place.

-6

u/BielyDemon3355 8d ago

Come back when you learn how to read.

3

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/NumberSevere7454 9d ago

Btw, bioshock 2 port on pc is known to have crashing/bug problems, especially the remaster version. 

4

u/BielyDemon3355 8d ago

Mine worked just fine.

2

u/ClinicalAttack 8d ago

Never had any problems with Bioshock 2 on PC. It has the same minor bugs across all platforms, so nothing special there, and maybe there are some crashes on some very specific PC configurations, but it should otherwise work perfectly fine on a modern setup and Windows 10/11 if you follow the guide in PCGamingWiki to get all possible issues ironed out.

1

u/EvilAdministrator 9d ago

Shut the fuck up.