# PCSX2 PlayStation 2 emulator adds Vulkan renderer in latest build



## ZeroFX (Jan 9, 2022)

oh, so they stitched a vulkan renderer to the main mess. Good job!


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## kcajjones (Jan 9, 2022)

I'm interested to know what performance differences there are and how it varies on different hardware.


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## Mama Looigi (Jan 9, 2022)

It’s pretty weird to me that no one bothered to implement Vulkan before for the most well known PS2 emulator


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## Jayro (Jan 9, 2022)

It's about damn time.


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## omgcat (Jan 9, 2022)

this is great news for people with an xbox series S|X. the ps2 emulation wasn't great at all due to having to use angular for to add compatibility for the opengl backend from what i understand. once ported there could be a significant boost to PS2 emulation on SS/SX consoles.


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## ChoChoCup (Jan 9, 2022)

finally my amd laptop will had a 60fps for gta 3


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## tabzer (Jan 9, 2022)

Wonder how this will fare for the PS4 Linux.


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## Cris1997XX (Jan 9, 2022)

It's about frickin' time. Let's try this Vulkan renderer on my shite laptop


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## Sonic Angel Knight (Jan 9, 2022)

Well time to try out some stuff, gonna be a busy weekend.


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## MissingN0pe (Jan 9, 2022)

Good stuff


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## MarkDarkness (Jan 9, 2022)

Great to see Vulkan slowly become viable in everything.


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## Reploid (Jan 9, 2022)

DX render was also always mostly alright on PCSX2


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## Marc_LFD (Jan 9, 2022)

PS2 game ports were poor compared to Xbox, but playing it enhanced on PC, PS3, PS4, and someday on PS5 surely makes it hella nice.

I used to avoid PS2 ports, now it's what I want.


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## mrcroket (Jan 9, 2022)

Marc_78065 said:


> PS2 game ports were poor compared to Xbox, but playing it enhanced on PC, PS3, PS4, and someday on PS5 surely makes it hella nice.
> 
> I used to avoid PS2 ports, now it's what I want.


Still I wish that someday we have a xbox emulator with this level of polish. Third party games are almost always better on xbox.


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## soup1 (Jan 9, 2022)

ZeroFX said:


> oh, so they stitched a vulkan renderer to the main mess. Good job!


is the emulator horribly made or


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## PatrickD85 (Jan 9, 2022)

Neat to see PCSX2 development steps at the start of 2022.


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## kristianity77 (Jan 9, 2022)

Decent improvements on my setup.  I can now get a locked 60 at 4k on Gran tursimo 4 which was a system killer beforehand.  Also, I now get a lock in shadow of the colossus and also the original jak and daxter.  Nice speed improvements.


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## Sheimi (Jan 9, 2022)

I am now able to do one Surfboard level in Klonoa 2 without lag. Before I had to turn down the graphical settings for the level because it would lag. Now it doesn't have any stuttering on max settings.


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## mrcroket (Jan 9, 2022)

I tested it and it works fantastic on speed side but I saw some graphics glitches on time splitter 2, this is normal because its new though.

Great job PCSX2 team and the other guy!


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## Snintendog (Jan 9, 2022)

FinalElixir1 said:


> is the emulator horribly made or


its a buggy mess that relies on Action replay codes to fix alot of the games but given ps2's Ducktape engine i dont expect much until we get an FPGA equivalent or a Reverse Engineer board.


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## GDPOVER9000 (Jan 9, 2022)

Looks like the rapid progress of the RPCS3 emulation team has lit a fire in the belly's of the rest of the emulation community; a high tide raises all ships.

Keep moving forward with the emulation progress, guys!


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## Deleted member 534570 (Jan 9, 2022)

I'll just wait until it's more "stable".


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## GDPOVER9000 (Jan 9, 2022)

Snintendog said:


> its a buggy mess that relies on Action replay codes to fix alot of the games but given ps2's Ducktape engine i dont expect much until we get an FPGA equivalent or a Reverse Engineer board.


An FPGA core of the PS2 would be the Miracle on 34th Street.  That would justify a price increase of the Mister by another $100, in my humble opinion...


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## Tigran (Jan 9, 2022)

Still can't play Transformers.


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## Marc_LFD (Jan 9, 2022)

mrcroket said:


> Still I wish that someday we have a xbox emulator with this level of polish. Third party games are almost always better on xbox.


For sure.

You ever played Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions? That game still looks incredible today. Heck, most still hold up very well.

For Splinter Cell, the Xbox platform is ideal, but PS2 had some exclusive missions so that's something I wanna check out as I love SC.


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## Marc_LFD (Jan 9, 2022)

Tigran said:


> Still can't play Transformers.


PS2 had a good Transformers game? Which one was that?

I'm only aware of the one developed by Platinum Games that's actually good.


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## Zeze (Jan 9, 2022)

Snintendog said:


> its a buggy mess that relies on *Action replay codes to fix alot of the games* but given ps2's Ducktape engine i dont expect much until we get an FPGA equivalent or a Reverse Engineer board.


I mean, when you have such glorious games like Xenosaga 1 that bug out because you actually *do *emulate accurately, its one or the other.

PS2 is such a treasure trove of insanity that I'm not expecting to see  anywhere near 100% accuracy for most of my life. FPGA or not.


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## ChrisMCNBVA (Jan 9, 2022)

Marc_78065 said:


> PS2 had a good Transformers game? Which one was that?
> 
> I'm only aware of the one developed by Platinum Games that's actually good


they had several one was japanese but had english voice acting (very bad english voice acting) called call of the future with the original series, they had transformers armada, they had transformers the movie and revenge of the fallen as well


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## Tigran (Jan 10, 2022)

Marc_78065 said:


> PS2 had a good Transformers game? Which one was that?
> 
> I'm only aware of the one developed by Platinum Games that's actually good.


@ChrisMCNBVA was correct, there was several, but the the Transformers Armada game was exceptional. Huge levels for a PS2 game, lots of loadout customization with the minicons, and the bosses could follow you through almost the entire level if you tried to run away.

And then there is Tidal Wave.


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## Naster (Jan 10, 2022)

I have no idea what it is


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## Lv44ES_Burner (Jan 10, 2022)

Wonder what the Vulkan backend will do for CPU-intensive games like the first four Ratchet & Clank games... Those are typically harder to run even with a good GPU and CPU paired up. APUs like the Ryzen can eat this pretty badly if they're not up to snuff; I should know, trying to run R&C2 on my Ryzen 5 3550H in my PC was a struggle to keep at 40fps on native resolution.


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## dominater01 (Jan 10, 2022)

omgcat said:


> this is great news for people with an xbox series S|X. the ps2 emulation wasn't great at all due to having to use angular for to add compatibility for the opengl backend from what i understand. once ported there could be a significant boost to PS2 emulation on SS/SX consoles.


except pcsx2 core never ran on angle it ran on d3d11/12 also theres no vulkan driver for xbox one/series consoles


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## Marc_LFD (Jan 10, 2022)

Lv44ES_Burner said:


> Wonder what the Vulkan backend will do for CPU-intensive games like the first four Ratchet & Clank games... Those are typically harder to run even with a good GPU and CPU paired up. APUs like the Ryzen can eat this pretty badly if they're not up to snuff; I should know, trying to run R&C2 on my Ryzen 5 3550H in my PC was a struggle to keep at 40fps on native resolution.


PS3 has an emulator on PC, right? Have you tried it?

Sorry for asking if you have.

PS3 has a decent amount of R&C games making it easier for fans to get most of them in one place.

I've bought a HD Retrovision Component Cable for my PS2 Slim (with a tiny Samsung 128GB USB) and also have a PS3 CFW (with a blue light mod if it overheats), but what I use most these days is PS4. Yeah, it can't play every PS1 and PS2 title though what I have makes me very, very satisfied.

Hopefully in the future that changes.


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## Lv44ES_Burner (Jan 10, 2022)

I know the PC has RPCS3. I wouldn't ever play the PS3 port of the original R&C trilogy and Deadlocked. That port is too jank and buggy for a good experience.


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## Marc_LFD (Jan 10, 2022)

Lv44ES_Burner said:


> I know the PC has RPCS3. I wouldn't ever play the PS3 port of the original R&C trilogy and Deadlocked. That port is too jank and buggy for a good experience.


Didn't know that.

PS3 had some very unfortunate ports. Splinter Cell Trilogy was another one. I'm hoping Prince of Persia Trilogy works fine 'cause I love Warrior Within and on PS4 it's very glitchy.


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## Luke94 (Jan 10, 2022)

How about photorealistic fur?


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## ChaoticCinnabon (Jan 11, 2022)

The steam deck will appreciate this big time.



ChoChoCup said:


> finally my amd laptop will had a 60fps for gta 3


Honestly just do the source code decomp, that will likely run best out of all the GTA3 options.


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## soup1 (Jan 11, 2022)

Snintendog said:


> its a buggy mess that relies on Action replay codes to fix alot of the games but given ps2's Ducktape engine i dont expect much until we get an FPGA equivalent or a Reverse Engineer board.


that's sad to hear, but to them and to normal consumers if it works it works


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## Pacheko17 (Jan 11, 2022)

ChoChoCup said:


> finally my amd laptop will had a 60fps for gta 3


GTA 3 never ran above 30FPS on console.


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## Desconocido90 (Jan 11, 2022)

ZeroFX said:


> oh, so they stitched a vulkan renderer to the main mess. Good job!


I feel curious: Which emulator do you think is not a mess? The retroarch core? The one called _"Play!_"? AetherSX2? Or maybe... DamonPS2? (*heaves in malware*)

AetherSX2, the best of the list, isn't better than PCSX2, it matches it, because they share most of their code. Play! is unripe (unsurprisingly, made by a single programmer, although its HLE BIOS is an archivement). DamonPS2 is unstable buggy crap.

Face it: All emulators look like messes to you because the hardware they try to emulate is a total mess (a wonderful, yet crazy mess). that can't be translated well to modern PCs.

The code of the games is usually a similar mess, relaying in racing conditions, disk timings, undocumented HW bugs, subpixel accuracy that breaks scaling, the interlacing...

PCSX2 team, with less developers than Dolphin's, has done a quite amazing job emulating PS2... and in the last years they had done huge improvements and modernization (code clean-up, plugin merge, improved OpenGL and D11, more stable MTVU, hacks removal, QoL...) and with a lot coming soon: The 64 bits version is almost finished, they're working in a OSX port with Metal, a new QT interface...

If it's not enough for you, you can develop your own emulator.



Mama Looigi said:


> It’s pretty weird to me that no one bothered to implement Vulkan before for the most well known PS2 emulator



Vulkan has some perks, but they're not enough to make it overwhelming superior and a priority for PCSX2 team.
Every new alternative mode means more work for devs: writing it and later maintaining. Making Vulkan as good as the other modes would take effort and time, time the team couldn't dedicate to fixing bugs or adding other kind of features.
They thought a decent Vulkan mode would require *VK_EXT_fragment_shader_interlock*, an optional extention AMD refused to implement in their drivers, so they wouldn't consider working on a Vulkan mode until AMD changed their mind. (Luckly, Stenzek found a replacement to that extension)
Since Vulkan is a more recent, less popular API, during the first years there weren't many devs familiarized with it.


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## ZeroFX (Jan 12, 2022)

Desconocido90 said:


> I feel curious: Which emulator do you think is not a mess? The retroarch core? The one called _"Play!_"? AetherSX2? Or maybe... DamonPS2? (*heaves in malware*)
> 
> AetherSX2, the best of the list, isn't better than PCSX2, it matches it, because they share most of their code. Play! is unripe (unsurprisingly, made by a single programmer, although its HLE BIOS is an archivement). DamonPS2 is unstable buggy crap.
> 
> ...


Oh god pcsx2 fanclub team send their rep. lawyer to me. Pcsx2 being a spaghetti code mess is a joke even between the devs... so yeah I was also joking. The fact that pcsx2 has became such an object of divine adoration between some crazy fucks that you can't even joke blows my mind. Also throw those "facts" you brought into the trash, me and 90% of the forum knows all of that 
To calm you down though: pcsx2 may not be the greatest emulator but achieved a lot and it is what we have, and I like it despite it's flaws. Not everything is black on white or polarized the way you think it is.


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## ChoChoCup (Jan 13, 2022)

Pacheko17 said:


> GTA 3 never ran above 30FPS on console.


i think i have a forced FPS output setting on


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## Snintendog (Jan 13, 2022)

Zeze said:


> I mean, when you have such glorious games like Xenosaga 1 that bug out because you actually *do *emulate accurately, its one or the other.
> 
> PS2 is such a treasure trove of insanity that I'm not expecting to see  anywhere near 100% accuracy for most of my life. FPGA or not.


yup I have 2 models of Ps2 just so i can play all my ps2 games. The damn Revisions have different game compatibility with different HW bugs that developers relied on. Its the Genesis Issue but far far more complicated and insane.


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## Luke94 (Jan 15, 2022)

Did someone try Ratchet and Clank 2 on pcsx2 emulator on PC with 8K textures quality aesthetics?


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## Pacheko17 (Jan 27, 2022)

ChoChoCup said:


> i think i have a forced FPS output setting on


Ye, makes sense. You can unlock games to run higher than native.
But be warned, the GTA trilogy can have their physics severely screwed up at higher framerates.


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## Ericthegreat (Mar 13, 2022)

Took long enough.


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## monkeytrident (Oct 28, 2022)

Thanks for this !


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