Emulation of games has been around for decades, but the technical requirements for emulating the last generations of consoles games has proven to be a challenge. However, the PlayStation 3 emulator, RPCS3, has made constant progress to try and figure out the PS3, and now, the developers have made a massive breakthrough by fixing how graphics were rendered in hundreds of games. With this, more games are now either playable, smoother looking, or are one step closer to achieving perfect emulation.
This huge breakthrough mostly comes from user kd-11, the core graphics developer of RPCS3, who ended up rewriting the texture instructions and allowed texture inputs to use srgb colorspace. Basically, PS3 games that ran on the Unreal Engine 3 now have the correct display for bloom and shadows, so now many are no longer too bright, too dark, or have weird graphical issues. In addition, the render output unit control has been rewritten for the RPCS3 and also positively affected the emulator’s GPU, Alphakill. As a result, gamma now displays correctly while in-game while also improving on the rendering of graphics. As an added bonus, a few minor fixes have eliminated broken 3D cell shading, weird yellow filter issues, and text errors.
Many of the games that have been affect still have not yet been documented, but there are a few highlighted games that have had a vast improvement, and some have even been deemed perfectly playable by the developers. First up, games that benefited the most from these changes were Drakengard 3, Asura’s Wrath, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. These three titles have had most of their issues and crashes effectively phased out, and they should play almost perfectly now.
The yellow filter issue, which is a glitch where a yellow tint is added to some games, has finally been fixed. The likes of Dante’s Inferno, Uncharted, LittleBigPlanet Karting, and most sports games can now be played without the obnoxious yellow color getting in the way of gameplay. While still far from perfect, games like Uncharted, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Silent Hill: Downpour, and even Red Dead Redemption were improved upon by fixing the gamma, shadows, and bloom, and better optimizing Alphakill. Now, these games look and perform more similarly to their original PS3 counterparts. Games that utilize cell shading, such as Ni No Kuni, Tales of Vesperia, and Tales of Xillia no longer have garbled text and also received some character model fixes.
More documented changes will appear in RPCS3’s monthly progress report by the end of the month. Until then, February’s progress report will keep those interested in the loop with the emulator’s optimization progress.