Rapid PS5 Emulation Progress
Few projects in the software world have experienced such rapid evolution as PlayStation 5 emulation. A video popped up of Demon's Souls Remake running at 40-50 FPS, seemingly with accurate graphics, as progress on emulators like KyTyPS5, SharpEmu, and AnyPS5 accelerates.
The demonstration video is short and shows select sections of the game. Even acknowledging that the hardware specs displayed comprise an RTX 5090 and a Core i9-14900K, having a game working this well graphically only a month after barely working is a notable milestone.
Performance Milestones
KyTyPS5 was running Demon's Souls Remake at 1-2 FPS on actual gameplay three weeks prior and struggled to reach 30 FPS shortly after. The same emulator has previously run GTA V at 40-60 FPS, though that older title places different demands on the system.
Architectural Similarities and Roadblocks
The fact that the PlayStation 5's architecture shares similarities with a standard PC aside from unified memory helps drive speedy progress. Current roadblocks involve writing compatibility layers for the console's operating system and drivers, including converting native graphics shaders to Vulkan's SPIR-V language.
Shader Compilation Challenges
Given the demo video's lack of stuttering, the captured footage likely followed an initial run to prevent shader recompilation hitches. This aspect of emulation remains a consistent hurdle, as predicting required game shaders beforehand is exceedingly difficult.
The current approach relies on asynchronously compiling and collecting shaders from playthroughs to build a community database for preloading. This concept gained prominence via RPCS3 around 2018.
While Nvidia and AMD drivers cached shaders in limited fashion for years, RPCS3's methodology predated later industry solutions aimed at addressing shader compilation and delivery challenges.
