{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "PCSX2 Blog", "home_page_url": "https://pcsx2.net/blog", "description": "PCSX2 Blog", "items": [ { "id": "https://pcsx2.net/blog/2025/pcsx2-2.6", "content_html": "

Nearly six months after the release of PCSX2 2.4.0, we are excited to unveil PCSX2 2.6.0! We're even more excited to showcase the things that we have been working on.

\n

New Year - New Build​

\n

Now that the dust has settled down from our biggest single release to date, we decided to step back a bit and give more love and attention to the interface, quality of life features and accessibility. There are also more performance improvements to be seen, which we are very excited to show you! Our contributors have been hard at work further refining the foundation that has been laid out since 2.0.0 to make PCSX2 more accessible to everyone!

\n

Major New Features​

\n

Better Feature Parity Between Big Picture Mode and Qt Interface​

\"SternXD\"
127401294413294
\n

SternXD has been on a mission to achieve feature parity between Big Picture Mode and the Qt interface. Thanks to his work, you can now adjust Network & HDD Settings, create a Memory Card, as well as login to RetroAchievements directly from Big Picture Mode!

\n
\"\"
\n

New icon for RetroAchievements Qt login dialog (#13718)​

\n

Alongside Big Picture Mode getting a new RetroAchievements login dialog, Qt's login dialog also gets a small facelift! It now shows the actual RetroAchievements icon instead of a generic login icon.

\n
\"\"
\n

Korean Game Titles​

\"TheTechnician27\"
13199
\n

Despite having nearly 700 known NTSC-K serials, the GameDB has for a long time only had Latin versions of the titles. These titles were pulled from the NTSC-U/PAL name or from a Romaji version of the Japanese name. PCSX2 now has 100% complete Korean translation on our Crowdin (at the time of writing), a milestone which has been a long time coming. TheTechnician27 has been working on adding Korean game titles to most NTSC-K serials which did not previously have them.

\n
note

If you have spotted any inaccuracies with the Korean game titles, please report such problems on our GitHub issue tracker.

\n

Game Shortcut Creation Feature​

\"kamfretoz\"
12746
\n

KamFretoZ set his sights on adding the ability to create desktop (or start menu) shortcuts for your games from inside PCSX2. Motivated by this GitHub issue and lots of feedback on Discord, this was a very popular ask from users!

\n
info

This feature is only available for Windows and Linux at this time.

\n
tip

This feature can be accessed by right-clicking the game you want to make the shortcut with on the game list and selecting \"Create Game Shortcut\".

\n
\"\"
\n

Custom Background Support​

\"kamfretoz\"\"SternXD\"
1272213410
\n

What started as a silly idea between KamFretoZ and JordanTheToast to see what's possible with Qt, ended up becoming a full blown feature. With this, you can now set a custom background (even animated ones too!) on your game list to your heart's content.

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Emoji Support for Big Picture Mode​

\"TheLastRar\"
1300912678129701297012837
\n

Allows emojis to be shown in Big Picture Mode and the fullscreen pause menu. RetroAchievements popups would often use emojis; these are now able to render as well.

\n

Not all emojis are supported; this is a limitation of ImGui, the library we use for this.

\n

For the longest time, our Big Picture Mode UI was unable to display emoji due to limitations with ImGui. This was especially apparent when displaying emojis from certain RetroAchievements sets. Thanks to ImGui fixes and AirGamer's efforts, we have finally implemented emoji support in PCSX2's Big Picture Mode.

\n

On a more technical level, previous version of ImGui required us to provide ranges of characters we needed. ImGui would then generate a font atlas from this. This required that we either hardcode, or generate these ranges for any languages we support in PCSX2. With ImGui 1.9.21, we can now rely on ImGui to dynamically adjust its font atlas on its own, removing the maintenance burden of fixed character ranges.

\n

Before:

\n
\"\"
\n

After:

\n
\"\"
\n

Big Picture Mode Icon Refresh​

\n

Big Picture Mode just got a small facelift! You might have noticed inconsistencies where some options had an icon while others did not. Now, every settings entry has an icon to go along with it.

\n

Additionally, we can add emoji as icon too! 🔥

\n
\"\"
\n

Various Blending and Hardware Renderer Improvements​

\n

GS/Direct3D12: Added Feedback Reads Support​

\"TheLastRar\"
13653
\n

Upon looking through the Direct3D12 documentation, it was found that aliased resources (two resources sharing the same memory) could be used to bind the same texture as both a shader resource and render target.\nThis relies on the two resources being able to inherit data from each other, the requirements of which can be satisfied using simultaneous access textures.

\n

This allows us to speed the Direct3D12 renderer up substantially, with some systems seeing over 5x improvements on specific games.

\n
Loading Chart Data
\n

While NVIDIA and Intel Arc GPUs had no issues, lightningterror discovered that some AMD GPUs showed issues. While the Direct3D12 documentation implies that data inheritance should work even with undefined memory layouts, the texture layout needed to be specified for some generations of AMD GPUs. Once this issue was identified it was fortunately an easy fix to implement.

\n

While reviewing the code, lightningterror spotted and fixed a regression with handling stencil DATE one.

\n

There have also been other enhancements to the hardware renderer where games such as Enthusia gained a significant 9% improvement in Direct3D11.

\n
Loading Chart Data
\n

GS/Direct3D11/12: Support Multidraw Framebuffer Copy​

\"lightningterror\"
13164131971320613365
\n

Add implementation for Multidraw Framebuffer Copy for Software Blending, Framebuffer Masking, Software Destination Alpha Testing. In order to replicate the current behavior on our more accurate renderers such as Vulkan and OpenGL without the use of Texture Barriers, LightningTerror discovered that we can achieve the same accuracy with the use of Texture Copies albeit at a slightly higher performance cost compared to using barriers which Direct3D11 doesn't support. Direct3D12 does and such implementation is already implemented later on by AirGamer.

\n

To give a bit of context why we need copies/barriers, it is because a texture cannot be bound at the same time as a render target view and shader resource view, a copy is created from the same render target so we can have two separate textures with the same data instead of using the same one which is a hazard, Vulkan and OpenGL use texture barriers that nullifies the need for a copy which allows one texture to be used for both.

\n

To alleviate some of the performance hit, we later on added some optimizations which will be mentioned in the report.

\n

To keep it short this makes Direct3D11/12 as accurate as Vulkan and OpenGL.

\n

Here is some comparisons for those looking for visuals. It will be almost impossible to post all the fixes games since there are a lot, so here's just a few:

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

GS/Direct3D11/12: Implement Depth Testing and Sampling​

\"lightningterror\"
131801353913344
\n

Similar to our issue with software blending, our old implementation for depth testing and sampling used copies for Direct3D11/12 to avoid the texture binding hazards being bound as a depth stencil view and shader resource view at the same time. However when we use a depth texture if we are not writing anything to the depth buffer in the case where both the source and destination texture are the same we can bind them at the same time:

\n\n

Some nice benchmarks showing the difference in cutting off the texture copies that we previously used:

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

GS: Texture Copies and Barriers Optimizations​

\"lightningterror\"\"TJnotJT\"\"TellowKrinkle\"\"refractionpcsx2\"
13276132981330513354135951357612969
\n

In #13276 and #13298 following the implementation of software blending on Direct3D11, LightningTerror decided to improve the function itself that deals with texture copies. Some optimizations that were previously not present on OpenGL, Direct3D11 and Metal were backported from Direct3D12 and Vulkan which reduces the number of copies in some specific scenarios, and aborting invalid copies. This gave us a small boost in some games that used texture copies regardless of renderers as copies were required.

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Afterwards in #13305 some ideas were floating around how to further improve copies/barriers so TJnotJT decided to take on the task, the improvements are as follows:

\n
    \n
  1. \n

    Unify and batch triangle primitives. This allows us to reduce the number of copies/barriers per draw.

    \n
    2. \n
  2. \n

    During texture copies, only copy the region that we need, not the entire draw. This makes texture copies faster and use less VRAM on Direct3D11/12.

    \n
    3. \n
\n

Why this is faster?

\n\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Next up in #13354, TJnotJT also implemented another optimizations which further reduces copies/barriers on all renderers:

\n
    \n
  1. Added utility functions for detecting when vertices form axis-aligned right triangles or quads.
    2. \n
  2. Updated primitive overlap detection to account for pairs of triangles that together form axis-aligned quads.
    3. \n
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

But wait there's more!

\n

A while back, we added extra barriers to fix some bugs in Time Crisis. In #13595 TellowKrinkle discovered that those barriers were getting added on all GPU vendors. Upon further inspection, it appears as an NVIDIA driver bug, rather than actual issues with our OpenGL API usage. This allowed us to cut down the barriers on OpenGL on other GPU vendors by a lot.

\n

Here are the top 5 highest barrier reductions we have found:

\n
WRC 4
Barriers: -6604 [13473=>6869]

Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Barriers: -2125 [4250=>2125]

James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire
Barriers: -1646 [3284=>1638]

Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies
Barriers: -1304 [1306=>2]

Avatar: The Last Airbender
Barriers: -999 [17716=>16717]
\n
info

The less barriers there are, the better

\n

More, more!

\n

Following the adjustments by TellowKrinkle, LightningTerror has discovered that we can further cut down the barriers on OpenGL in #13576. We do this by only issuing a barrier when we modify the previous draw call or render pass. This ensures that writes are properly ordered.

\n

The optimization involved the case where we were issuing both a render pass and barrier. The render pass already behaves as a barrier, so we skip the barrier and only do a render pass.

\n

Here is even more barrier count reductions that we found:

\n
Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies
Barriers: -1302 [1306=>4]

Final Fantasy XII
Barriers: -1144 [2291=>1147]

The Getaway
Barriers: -1001 [2002=>1001]

Keroro Gunsou - Mero Mero Battle Royale
Barriers: -1530 [3071=>1541]

Need for Speed - Carbon
Barriers: -2073 [3769=>1696]

Need for Speed: Most Wanted Black Edition
Barriers: -2125 [4250=>2125]

Stuntman
Barriers: -2026 [4053=>2027]

Transformers Special Edition
Barriers: -2160 [4320=>2160]

WRC 4
Barriers: -6603 [13473=>6870]
\n

MORE!

\n

In #12969, Refraction found a way to improve dirty and readback handling.

\n

This optimizations cuts out readbacks on some games (Dark Chronicle, Eveybodys Golf/Hot Shots Golf Fore, Kamen Rider- Seigi no Keifu) which brings massive performance boost. Here is more benchmarks:

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

GS/Texture Cache: Optimize Block Offset Calculations​

\"lightningterror\"
1333913349
\n

An optimization was found in several loops where we can swap the x and y coordinates resulting in higher performance. This is because how CPU caching works where x is linear memory and y needs to jump around causing a cache miss every time, so by swapping them around it allows us to better use CPU caching.

\n

We also added some extra conditions to avoid going through the loops, as well as some more caching mechanisms for even better performance.

\n

Here are more benchmarks:

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

GS/HW: Abort Unnecessary Draw Calls​

\"lightningterror\"
135261361213651
\n

In some specific scenarios, draw calls can be skipped when the render target remains unchanged and depth is not written. Expanding these conditions allows us to cancel unnecessary draw calls. This reduces GPU work, barriers, and copies, leading to significant performance improvements in some cases.

\n

Here are even more benchmarks:

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

GS/Direct3D11/12: Destination Alpha Testing Optimizations​

\"lightningterror\"
13549135751369613525
\n

With software blending added on Direct3D11/12, we can optimize some features. When software blending is already active, destination alpha testing can be done directly in the shader, which is faster than multiple passes. Texture copies are already enabled, allowing us to reuse them for destination alpha testing and eliminate the extra passes previously needed.

\n

Some optimizations are missing on Direct3D12 like #13525 but will be implemented during the v2.7 dev cycle.

\n
\"\"
\n

GS/HW: Shuffle improvements​

\"TJnotJT\"\"refractionpcsx2\"
13142131381300513685
\n

Several fixes have been made to texture shuffle emulation in order to fix some long-standing issues with games.

\n

Handles Texture Shuffle With Pixel Reversals (#13142)​

\n

We now detect when a game (Colin McRae Rally 2005) is doing a texture shuffle and (a) flipping pixel locations horizontally in columns and (b) correcting the pixel locations by flipping pixels horizontally again. We can then ignore both flips so that they cancel out. To keep it short, this fixes Colin McRae Rally and it is now playable with no hardware rendering issues.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Handles Texture Shuffle Sprite Not 16-pixel-multiple Wide (#13138)​

\n

Do special handling for texture shuffling sprites that are not 8 pixels wide or a multiple of 16 pixels wide. Align such sprites to 16 pixel boundaries horizontally. This fixes some issues on Alter Echo.

\n

Add CRC for Sand Grain Games Palette Shuffle Effect (#13005)​

\n

We have no way to do this effect directly without having 50-100 readbacks per frame, which is very very slow. This emulates the effect they're trying to achieve (G→A shuffle with palette).

\n

This fixes some long-standing issues with Cabela's games, image comparisons below:

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Detect offset shuffle on TexIsFB (#13685)​

\n

Updates our “current texture is the framebuffer” heuristics to handle horizontally offset shuffles. This fixes a Timesplitters 2 issue where the wrong data was copied.

\n

GS/SW: Do Pre-Clamping of ST Coordinates When They May Overflow​

\"TJnotJT\"
13240
\n

The input texture ST coordinates can sometimes be extremely large or NaN, for reasons that aren’t fully clear (it could be due to emulation quirks or game bugs). When these coordinates reach the rasterizer, they can cause issues with calculating vertex trace values, determining texture bounding boxes, and other related computations. These problems may lead to graphical glitches downstream. This PR aims to address these issues by applying the following fixes:

\n
    \n
  1. Add checks in the vertex trace for NaN ST values.
    2. \n
  2. Add checks in the SW renderer for ST values that would overflow the fixed point format used for texture coordinates in rasterizer.
    3. \n
  3. Rewrite vertices and clamp the problematic ST values to a value less that the maximum representable by the rasterizer. Rewrite any NaN values to 0.
    4. \n
\n

Here is an example comparison:

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

GS/HW: Remove Handling of Provoking First Vertex in Early Pipeline​

\"TJnotJT\"
12986
\n

Remove the handling of provoking first vertex in early pipeline. This is mainly for Direct3D11/12 as other renderers usually support provoking first vertex early in the pipeline.\nThis allows us to fix some issues on Direct3D11/12 in some games where provoking first vertex isn't supported.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

GS: Miscellaneous Fixes​

\"lightningterror\"\"TJnotJT\"\"TellowKrinkle\"
133691312713028130841309413300129831350513171
\n

Various smaller PRs which address crash fixes, bug fixes, regressions and such:

\n\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n\n

The Resizing Saga​

\"TheLastRar\"\"govanify\"
136821369713614
\n

It all started with #13613. One of our testers, JordanTheToast had recently upgraded to a Radeon RX 9060 XT. He noticed that resizing PCSX2 while in-game causes massive lag/delay during the resize. This ended up turning into a deep dive that confused the team for days. A look into GPU driver bugs, and the way Qt handles window resize events slowly uncovered the problem.

\n

GovanifY put up a fight (#13614) by fixing the way Qt handles window resizing in order to make it not fire up multiple resize events per millisecond (yes, multiple per millisecond).

\n

Following #13614, it was noticed that smooth rescaling stopped working on NVIDIA.\nThis issue arose from how we handled swapchain recreation on resize. We were accidentally recreating it at the end of the frame, only on the NVIDIA platform.

\n

During resizing, the swapchain would become invalidated between the end of one frame and the start of the next, causing rendering to appear frozen.

\n

The fix was to simply defer recreating the swapchain until the beginning of the frame.

\n

But It doesn't end there...

\n

It was also noticed that RDNA 4 would experience significant delay in resizing even after #13614 was merged.

\n

This was determined to be due to a Vulkan function vkAcquireNextImageKHR taking two seconds to complete following a swapchain re-creation. A workaround for this driver bug was to not link the old swapchain to the new one.

\n

While implementing this fix, support for VK_KHR_swapchain_maintenance1 was added. This may reduce the memory usage from resizing on AMD GPUs with updated drivers. NVIDIA supported the older version we had already been using, so no change is expected there.

\n

Quality of Life Improvements​

\n

Add Qt Buddies and Tabstops​

\"TheTechnician27\"
13388
\n

This addition to PCSX2's menus improves accessibility by allowing screen readers to more reliably navigate the interface. It also significantly improves the order of screen elements when navigating with keyboard keys like tab.

\n

Buddies​

\n

Buddies are properties in Qt which associate a label with an interactive element. This is transparent for most users, but for users with a screen reader this means you can actually tell what an interactive element does. It's a win for accessibility!

\n

For example, focusing a dropdown will just say that you've focused a dropdown without saying what it's supposed to be for – rendering much of our UI totally unusable. With a buddy, it will read out the label on top of the element type. As an example, with buddies the OSD scale option will read approximately as \"OSD Scale: Spin Box 100\", but without, it will only read \"Spin Box 100\".

\n
\"\"
\n

Tabstops​

\n

Have you been in a situation where you have to use a keyboard to navigate your way through PCSX2 and found out that the ordering between options are complete nonsense? Tabstops are here to help!

\n

Tabstops are another property of Qt which allow an explicit ordering of elements when tabbing through a widget (i.e. focusing on one element then pressing Tab). Without them, the tab order is subject to the physical ordering of the elements in XML, which does not inherently correspond to the row/column order displayed and is highly unreliable and unrealistic to maintain.

\n
\"\"
\n
\"TellowKrinkle\"
1282912830
\n

TellowKrinkle, our resident macOS housekeeper, has been working on adding file type associations for some of the file types that can be opened by PCSX2. This includes game dumps (ISO, CSO, ZSO, CHD, etc), save states, GS dumps, PNACH patches, and more.

\n

PCSX2 on macOS Now Uses Qt 6.10​

\"TellowKrinkle\"
13407
\n

For a long time, macOS has been stuck on Qt 6.7, due to Qt 6.10 dropping support for older macOS versions. It turns out Tellow discovered that it's trivial to patch compatibility for older macOS versions back into Qt 6.10. The rest is history!

\n

Improved Display Surface (And Wayland!)​

\"TheLastRar\"
13466128641336013555135571357712864
\n

We have enabled Wayland support by default since PCSX2 2.4.0 release and in this cycle, AirGamer has yet again spearheaded the work to improve Wayland support even further. This time we're cutting out the cruft, resolving technical debt, and implementing it the way it was intended with Qt.

\n

For more technical details, previously the way we rendered into a \"surface\" was to render it to the widget directly. While this was the canonical method for older versions of Qt, the Qt maintainers mentioned that this was not recommended and a newer method was better suited. This has caused some issues, especially with Wayland.

\n

Instead, this new method now uses a Qt Window instead of a Qt Widget, avoiding issues inherited by the previous method and allowing for the removal of a number of Wayland specific workarounds. This further improves Wayland compatibility with PCSX2.

\n

Simplified Wayland Plugins AppImage Bundling (#12864)​

\n

linuxdeploy doesn't correctly deploy some Wayland dependencies with the Wayland client modules.

\n

Previously, we manually copied these dependencies into the AppImage. However, it was discovered that specifying the Wayland compositor module will copy the needed client dependencies. This allowed us to simplify our AppImage build script.

\n

New Gamma Adjustment Option​

\"Gonzalosilvalde\"
12653
\n

Gonzalosilvalde has worked on adding gamma adjustment to shade boost within the post processing options. Adjusting the gamma allows you to intensify the shadows while keeping the overall color balance intact.

\n
\"\"
\n

Adjustable Position for Various In-Game Overlays​

\"SternXD\"\"flavionm\"
1295312698
\n

SternXD and flavionm have worked on a feature where you can adjust the positions of all overlays inside PCSX2 (such as achievements and OSD notifications).

\n
\"\"
\n

New Hotkey to Swap Memory Cards​

\"Haisom\"
12640
\n

Allow users to swap Memory Cards slot on demand using a hotkey (unbound by default).

\n

To quote Haisom:

\n
\n

This is really useful on shared machines, specially with kids around (Forget kids accidentally overwriting your save games with over 100 hours of gameplay!).

\n
\n

Organize Game Screenshots by Name in Folders​

\"fthomys\"
12934
\n

Have you ever been in a situation where your snapshots folder turns into a disorganized mess of recordings and screenshots after you have used these features for a while?

\n

Thanks to fthomys (This is also their very first contribution, thank you!), you can now organize your snapshots folder by game names.

\n
\"\"
\n

New Indicators for Texture Dumping/Replacement​

\"SternXD\"
13590
\n

Ever wondered if your texture replacement is working? Tried eyeballing it to no avail? Worry no more! You can now enable the Texture Dumping/Replacement indicator to find out if you have the textures being dumped/replaced correctly.

\n
\"\"
\n

Various Smaller Improvements in 2.6​

\n

Automatically Launch Big Picture Mode on Startup​

\"kamfretoz\"\"SternXD\"
1284812945
\n

For those who want the true living room couch gaming experience, you can now launch PCSX2 directly into Big Picture Mode and start gaming right away!

\n

Customizable Game List Column Header​

\"TheTechnician27\"
13559
\n

You can now customize the columns of the game list, such as adding/removing and re-ordering the columns as you see fit!

\n
\"\"
\n

Improved Mouse Lock DPI Handling​

\"TheLastRar\"\"F0bes\"
1340313592
\n

This improves upon #13403 while also fixing issues introduced in the Qt Window update. This fixes mouse lock on setups with multiple monitors using DPI scaling greater than 100%.

\n

Now mouse lock should function correctly regardless of your monitor setup on Windows and Mac.

\n

Support Full Axis Binds of SDL Gamepad Axes​

\"TheLastRar\"
13623
\n

In SDL, a controller has both a joystick instance and gamepad instance (if SDL has a mapping for it). An SDL joystick is just a collection of buttons and axis and an SDL gamepad has those buttons mapped to a standard gamepad layout. In PCSX2 we accept binds for both the gamepad inputs and any joystick inputs that SDL hasn't mapped. You might recognize these as \"Axis X +\" or Axis Y -\".

\n

Previously, we had separate code for loading joystick axis binds and gamepad axis binds, with only the former supporting full axis binds. This change adds support for \"Full Axis\" gamepad inputs, which should improve support for special input devices which have axes but do not necessarily have a positive and negative direction, such as the pedal on a wheel.

\n
\"\"
\n

Improved Hotkeys Section​

\"TheTechnician27\"
13015
\n

TheTechnician27 worked on rearranging and reorganizing the hotkey section to give you a more cohesive user experience.

\n
\"\"
\n

This is only a small sample of the changes made for this release! If you are interested in all the other fixes and additions that made it into this release, a full list of commits can be found on GitHub.

", "url": "https://pcsx2.net/blog/2025/pcsx2-2.6", "title": "PCSX2 2.6.0 is now out!", "summary": "PCSX2 2.6 Release Post", "date_modified": "2026-01-04T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "KamFretoZ", "url": "https://github.com/kamfretoz" }, "tags": [ "devblog" ] }, { "id": "https://pcsx2.net/blog/2025/pcsx2-2.4_2.2", "content_html": "

It's been almost a year since the release of PCSX2 2.0. Since then, we've released PCSX2 2.2.0, and today, we're excited to release 2.4.0! We're even more excited to showcase how we've refined what 2.0 brought and then ramped up again – back to bringing you bold new features. We present this chronologically to show you the trajectory we're on and therefore what to expect for the release of 2.6.0 – tentatively scheduled for late 2025.

\n

PCSX2 2.2.0​

\n

PCSX2 2.0 may well have been our biggest single release to date. With several major contributors stepping back, including longtime PCSX2 lead developer refraction, the remaining team – still energized to contribute – confronted reality: for the first time in a long time, we'd delivered what we had to offer in the way of big, bombastic new features. What we resolved for PCSX2 2.2 was to take it out of the furnace, let it cool, and hammer it into something more refined before getting up to speed again in 2.4. For this period of a few months, the word on everyone's mind was \"polish\".

\n

New Emulated Peripherals​

\"Florin9doi\"\"joestringer\"
1161411616116171163011633117151172312157
\n

Almost immediately after 2.0, contributor Florin9doi got to work chipping away at the list of peripherals we haven't implemented yet. Not long after, first-time contributor joestringer began working on train controller support. Thanks to them, in just about the first month of 2.0, we now have support for:

\n\n

On top of that, PCSX2's EyeToy emulation now has audio support, and Buzz! devices now have a custom UI!

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Will It Blend?​

\"lightningterror\"
1173711748
\n

That is the question! PCSX2 team member and graphics expert LightningTerror has improved upon our existing per-pixel alpha blending (PABE) implementation, increasing both accuracy and speed. Software blending, run in shaders on the GPU, is highly accurate but incurs a performance hit as it forces us to tell shaders run for one triangle to wait for all previous triangles' shaders to complete before starting to prevent them from fighting with each other over the values of pixels that overlap between the triangles. Hardware blending is run in special hardware blending units on the GPU, which are built to avoid this fighting, but can only run a very simple set of operations. The supported operations don't cover everything the PS2's blending unit can do, resulting in worse accuracy as PCSX2 tries to select the closest (but often not identical) supported operation.

\n

The new PABE implementation blends (heh) software and hardware, specially crafting values in the shader such that when sent to the hardware blend unit, they result in accurate emulation of the PS2's per-pixel alpha blending for supported PS2 blend configurations.

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Symbol Parsing Overhaul​

\"chaoticgd\"
1022411901
\n

Courtesy of contributor Chaoticgd is a massively improved debugger. This overhaul, in the works for almost a year, allows the debugger to read MIPS debug (.mdebug), SNDLL (.sndata), and ELF (.symtab) symbol tables from a game's executable binary if it has them included. If the .mdebug section is available, the debugger can now display information about global variables, local variables, and parameter variables, including data types. This means you can explore data structures in memory as a structured tree. He subsequently added settings that give you fine-grained control over how and when PCSX2 performs symbol analysis passes. A few games that shipped with their debug symbols include Pac-Man World 2, Sega Soccer Slam, Fatal Frame, and hundreds more shipped with symbols in general. Below is a screenshot showing the tree of global variables and the list of functions in Pac-Man World 2.

\n
\"\"
\n

Savestate Compression Options​

\"KamFretoZ\"
11848
\n

Thanks to KamFretoZ, you can now configure both the compression method and the level of compression for savestates! These formats are Zstandard (default), Deflate64, and LZMA2, and there are four compression levels for each. You can also choose to leave your states uncompressed if your 40 TB NAS feels lonely. Higher compression will result in lower file sizes but may increase the time needed to save the states.

\n
\"\"
\n

DEV9 Fixes​

\"TheLastRar\"
1188511911119081192511931
\n

After 2.0, longtime contributor AirGamer launched into an effort to fix our DEV9 emulation and try to get PS2 Linux and PlayStation Broadband Navigator (PSBBN) working on PCSX2. His work has brought us tantalizingly close: as best we can tell, our lack of full emulation for the PS2's translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is now the only barrier still preventing PS2 Linux and PSBBN from working. Whoever steps up and conquers the TLB will bring the penguin to PCSX2.

\n

Various Smaller Improvements in 2.2​

\n

Before we move on to 2.4 and the big changes it brought, we want to stop and spotlight the smaller work that goes into making PCSX2 a polished experience. Below are just a few among hundreds, and we're grateful for every single one.

\n\n

PCSX2 2.4.0​

\n

After 2.0, the 2.2 development cycle had let us catch our breath and – for the most part – focus on finer details. Brewing under the surface, though, were fresh ideas and the zeal to bring them to life. We all wanted to get back to innovating, so that's what we did. The 2.4 development cycle comes with many performance improvements and new features.

\n

RT in RT Support​

\"refractionpcsx2\"
11461
\n

For his capstone contribution to PCSX2 after over 20 years of unimaginable dedication, former lead developer refraction turned to his unfinished work on RT in RT support. Feeling duty-bound not to leave this to rot after he left, he agonized for months to get this working, and the end result is something to behold. First, though, let's address what this even is.

\n

\"RT in RT\" stands for \"render target in render target\". If a game wanted to render to a subset of an image (e.g. only the right half) on the PS2, it had two options. The first, which is the way PC games have to do it, is to draw with triangles whose coordinates are positioned over the subsection they want to draw over (in the example, making sure all the triangles are positioned over the right half of the image). The second is to take the memory address of the pixels in the image and adjust it so it starts at the right half (so the new RT pointed to memory that was inside the old RT, hence the feature name). Now, drawing to the top left corner of the render target actually writes to the top left corner of the right half of the image (and drawing to the right half of the render target would corrupt the image, so don't do that).

\n

Games that chose this second option confused PCSX2 very badly, and it would end up drawing to a separate RT that it never properly merged with the outer RT, effectively deleting all the triangles drawn this way. No longer! With this change, PCSX2 now recognizes when this is happening, figures out what section the PS2 game was trying to draw to, and moves the triangles accordingly, converting option 2 draws into option 1 draws, which PC APIs know how to handle.

\n

This brings massive fixes to a huge variety of games – at minimum, multiple games with two-player splitscreen (such as Jak X: Combat Racing), multiple games that no longer need a hack to work (such as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), multiple games whose effects now work (such as Drakengard; comparison below), and multiple games that would only work before in software rendering (such as Hitman: Contracts; comparison below).

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Custom Real-Time Clock​

\"TheTechnician27\"
12208
\n

The PlayStation 2 uses a real-time clock (RTC) to keep track of the date and time in the real world. Games often use the RTC in order to seed pseudorandom number generation (RNG) because of its high variability. Additionally, save files show a timestamp in the BIOS, and these timestamps are sometimes shown in-game too. However, some games use the RTC in a more interactive way. Ratchet & Clank 2 and Ratchet & Clank 3, for example, let you teleport to the post-game Insomniac Museum area from 03:00–04:00, bypassing completion checks. The Simpsons: Hit & Run, The Simpsons: Road Rage, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, and Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights have holiday-exclusive Easter eggs. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 displays the date and time on a camera recording when you get busted. And Metal Gear Solid 3... if you know, you know.

\n

By default, when a user starts a game, PCSX2 sets the RTC to the date and time from the user's desktop. For input recordings which require perfect determinacy to function correctly, we instead used a fixed, arbitrary date and time after the release of Metal Gear Solid 3 (which crashes if the date is too old). With the introduction of RTC settings by TheTechnician27, you can now optionally select a custom RTC starting point in the per-game settings (Game Properties > Emulation > Real-Time Clock). This provides niche benefits for regular users (especially Ratchet players and enjoyers of Hideo Kojima's antics), and it brings PCSX2 closer to having a mature suite of tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) capabilities.

\n

This currently requires you to have your BIOS set to GMT+0 and daylight savings time (DST) set to Summer Time (this is the default PCSX2 creates if no .nvm file exists). Additionally, it will only work within the bounds of 2000-01-01 at 00:00 and 2099-12-31 at 23:59, which is the range of an actual PlayStation 2. Below is the Halloween-exclusive title screen from The Simpsons: Hit & Run.

\n
\"\"
\n

HDR Optimization​

\"refractionpcsx2\"
12254
\n

The PS2 doesn't have HDR support, so why does PCSX2 use HDR textures? When two numbers are added that sum to a result that won't fit in the output, like adding 200 + 200 with an 8-bit result (which can represent the values 0-255), there are two main ways computers may deal with this. The first is overflow / wrapping, famous for looping counters back to zero after they cross 255 in many NES games. In this case, the number wraps back around to 0, so 200 + 200 would result in the value 144. The second is clamping, where numbers greater than the maximum representable value are clamped to it, so 200 + 200 would equal 255. When rendering graphics, most humans consider clamping to look more visually pleasing than wrapping, since having brighter than white turn into white looks better than it turning into black or gray. As a result, PC blend hardware clamps the results of math on all 8-bit textures. But the PS2 lets developers pick between clamping and wrapping, so how do we emulate wrapping?

\n

Well if we don't want the result to clamp, why not just use an HDR texture, which can store values much larger than 255. We can draw all the triangles to this texture, letting the numbers accumulate more and more, then at the end, run a separate shader that wraps them all back to 8 bits. One minus of this approach is that there's still clamping, it just happens at a value much larger than 255, decided by the HDR format we use. For a while we used 32-bit float textures, which could accurately represent values up to 16 million, allowing a minimum of 65 thousand overlapping triangles before problems started appearing, but a while back we switched to 16-bit normalized integer textures, which many GPUs process at twice the speed, giving a minimum of 257 overlapping triangles before problems. This was enough for all the games we tested.

\n

But performance still wasn't great, so former lead PCSX2 developer refraction (codename: \"One Last Job\") came back from retirement swinging with a major optimization. Previously, for every group of triangles the game rendered, PCSX2 would convert the texture to an HDR texture, render the group of triangles, and then perform the wrapping while converting the texture back to non-HDR. But some games would render multiple groups of triangles in a row, and for each group, PCSX2 would convert, wrap, and convert again. Now, PCSX2 converts to HDR once at the beginning, and leaves the results in the HDR texture until the game stops using the wrapping mode, greatly reducing the number of conversions needed in games like Sly 2: Band of Thieves and Big Mutha Truckers.

\n
Loading Chart Data
\n

Direct3D 11 Comes Back with a Speedy Vengeance!​

\"lightningterror\"
128841290712905
\n

The Direct3D 11 renderer might have been the second-class citizen for some time now, but not this time! Graphics expert LightningTerror has come back with a toolbox in an attempt to revitalize the elder. How did he do it? The first phase was to lay out the groundwork by fixing the Direct3D 11 Resource Hazard API warnings, which paves the way of enabling him to implement Resource Shader Caching that manages to give noticable performance boost in quite handful of games. And as if those optimizations weren't enough, the daredevil himself has backported even more optimizations from other renderers which gives quite a performance boost in many games.

\n

Don't believe us? Here is the benchmarks:

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Signed macOS Binaries​

\"F0bes\"
12255
\n

macOS requires all code binaries to be signed. If not, macOS' Gatekeeper will report that the program cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer, thus it \"cannot verify that this app is free from malware\". This was a headache for users, who needed to explicitly allow an unsigned programs to run. As such, PCSX2's lead developer, fobes, worked to get PCSX2 formally signed. This means that when you download and run PCSX2 on macOS, it will now open normally.

\n

Wayland by Default​

\"GovanifY\"
12333
\n

In the Linux world, the last remaining hurdles to PCSX2 running on Wayland by default are finally gone! Thanks to upstream fixes in Qt 6.9 and some clever work by team member GovanifY, the I_WANT_A_BROKEN_WAYLAND_UI flag is history! This does not mean that no Wayland-specific bugs exist, but it means we've failed to find any we consider showstoppers. If your desktop environment uses X11, nothing will change, and we'll continue accepting reports for X11-specific bugs for the foreseeable future. If you find a Wayland-specific bug, the QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb environment variable can take you back to XWayland while we work to fix it.

\n

New Upscaling Fix​

\"refractionpcsx2\"\"JordanTheToaster\"
12350126361264512705
\n

Thanks again to former PCSX2 lead developer refraction, PCSX2 now has a brand-new tool in its arsenal to fix misalignment issues caused by upscaling. Based on the existing Align to Native (AtN) half-pixel offset (HPO) option, Align to Native with Texture Offset (AtNTO) often combines the best of AtN and another HPO option called Special (Texture) to make a lot of games much sharper when upscaled. Thanks to a massive effort by GameDB specialist JordanTheToast, PCSX2 now applies this new setting automatically to over 100 games. These include Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, the Sly Cooper trilogy, God of War and God of War II, and Shadow of the Colossus. Below is a before and after comparison of Ace Combat 04.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Debugger Redesign​

\"chaoticgd\"
12241
\n

Thanks again to months of work by Chaoticgd, the debugger has received a huge redesign using KDDockWidgets, massively improving usability. Not only can you now create a custom layout for your debugger (saved as a JSON file), but you can actually create and switch between multiple such profiles on the fly. Thanks to a new event system allowing widgets to communicate, you can even open multiple widgets of the same type – for example, two memory viewers looking at different areas of memory. We can't wait for you to try it out!

\n
\"\"
\n

SDL3 Upgrade​

\"TheLastRar\"
12311
\n

The right answer to \"What does SDL do?\" is \"What doesn't it?\", but PCSX2 uses it to handle gamepads and audio output. In January 2025, SDL's release of its newest major version, 3.0, threatened to lock us out from its great new features if somebody didn't step up and make our codebase compatible. GameDB specialist and dependency coordinator JordanTheToast – along with his emotional support TheTechnician27 – boldly took action. Days later, DEV9 expert and resident lifeguard AirGamer noticed both drowning in the deep end and decided to save them. Thanks to weeks of work by AirGamer, PCSX2 now uses SDL3. The SDL Wiki has a comprehensive list of new features, but for PCSX2, the immediate benefits are full support for DualShock 3 on Linux and a cleaner API for easier development and the ability to utilize new features as they come. Special thanks goes to the unsung heroes at the SDL Wiki who wrote this guide and especially the authors of this symbol rename script who made this transition feasible.

\n

Various Smaller Improvements in 2.4​

\n", "url": "https://pcsx2.net/blog/2025/pcsx2-2.4_2.2", "title": "Welcoming PCSX2 2.2.0 and 2.4.0!", "summary": "PCSX2 2.4/2.2 Release Post", "date_modified": "2025-07-01T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "KamFretoZ", "url": "https://github.com/kamfretoz" }, "tags": [ "devblog" ] }, { "id": "https://pcsx2.net/blog/2024/pcsx2-2-release", "content_html": "\n

Present Day, Present Time​

\n

It has been over four years since the last stable PCSX2 revision released. A lot of things can happen in four years, but we could not have predicted just how much progress would be made in that time. PCSX2 has received over 6000 changes, passed 100 million downloads, and celebrated its 20th aniversary! There are lots of design changes, technical discoveries, and more to discuss. Let's jump right in and get started with the highlights from four years of development.

\n

The Elephant in the Room: PCSX2 Enters Its Qt Era​

\n

You might know the name wxWidgets from its time as PCSX2's choice of GUI, or from other emulators like Dolphin which used it before migrating to Qt. For a long time, it served us sufficiently well, but its age and implementation began to show rather quickly. Threading issues resulted in deadlocks and race conditions, because it was not properly separated from the emulation core. The technical debt started high and only got worse as the project tried to keep moving forward.

\n

But now, wxWidgets is gone. No more desktop experience reminding you of what Windows desktop apps looked like in 2006. Qt brings with it a slick appearance, more efficient UI backend, and provided the perfect opportunity to redo all our menus and widgets. The addition of themes allows you to personalize your PCSX2 to your liking. The result is by far our best user experience to date. Massive thanks to Stenzek for bringing his Qt expertise from DuckStation and leading the charge on PCSX2's new Qt design!

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

Saying Goodbye to Plugins​

\n

We had a good run with plugins, but their time has come. A relic of a simpler time, plugins were once hailed as the solution where there was no single great solution to the challenges of emulation. Don't like one plugin's design? Use another. One plugin breaks a game? Use another. But in the modern era where accuracy is paramount and user experience is of ever-increasing importance, their limitations, fragmentation of the development space, and antiquated codebases have shown their age. It is time to say goodbye, and GovanifY spearheaded this major piece of development.

\n

A difficult decision had to be made: how do we get rid of plugins, but keep feature parity with what they once had? Getting rid of plugins fixes a number of issues, but it would bring up many more if features or accuracy were lost. A middle ground was reached: plugin authors were contacted, and their code was assimilated into the core PCSX2 project. This meant the program could be built out of a single project file; no longer were plugins compiled separately and dynamically linked! You will find that there are a lot of similarities but also a lot of differences in how PCSX2's settings work now. Many common terms and options remain, while others have been upgraded, changed, or removed to keep up with the times.

\n

Simplifying Configuration With Automatic Game Fixes​

\n

A major priority for the team has been a focus on automation. How many things are there for users to deal with that they really shouldn't need to? The answer was... A lot. Really, a lot. You might recall our old interface had graphics fixes buried in the graphics plugin. Or perhaps the CPU modes which were handled in their own tabs. Speed hacks had another tab. More graphics settings were on their own – somehow not connected to the plugin. Game fixes which were somehow supposed to be different from everything else... We could keep going. It was confusing.

\n

But then we had a thought: since we are already shipping a database file with information on games, why not include more information about what settings a game needs to run correctly? And so PCSX2's new \"game index\" was made a reality. It contains a complete list of all known games, and with this index, we now ship pre-configured fixes to ensure your games will automatically run smoothly. You no longer need to remember to enable those graphics fixes every time you switch games - PCSX2 will already know what that game needs and do it for you!

\n

Goodbye Goldfish Brain, Hello Per-Game Settings​

\n

A long-standing issue from wxWidgets was the burden of changing your settings every time you switched games. Even though automated game fixes have mostly solved this problem on their own, there remain any personal touches you might make. Say you want to run different games at different resolutions; that's still something you have to change every time you switch games, right? Not any longer!

\n

PCSX2 now includes per-game settings which are detached from your global settings. The per-game settings will always default to inherit from your global settings, but they allow you to explicitly set a value for one game in particular. Now if you want to run a game at a higher resolution than the rest or use specific memory cards for different games, you can set it once in your per-game settings and forget about it.

\n
\"\"
\n

The Final Frontier of Compatibility​

\n

Game compatibility has always been an odd duck in the PS2 space. For the most part, there aren't nasty surprises keeping games from running, and the number of problematic games relative to those which are fine is extremely low. However, those few problem games continue to be incredibly stubborn. Right now, the list of games which aren't playable has been whittled down to a small handful with servers which have gone offline, highly obscure peripherals that no one has replicated in emulation yet, bizarre FPU math causing games to break themselves, or over-engineered engines which would bring even the best PC hardware to a literal crawl if it were emulated correctly.

\n

All that remains of the 'Nothing' category is a single game which refuses to boot on Windows. Boot a game in PCSX2 besides that one, and it will at least get you into a menu. Provided no one uncovers any more obscure PS2 games that have been lost to time, it is safe to say PCSX2 has entered the final frontier of compatibility. The challenge now is to get the last few games up and running.

\n

Big Picture Mode: Coming Soon to a TV Near You!​

\n

Couch gamers have been making themselves increasingly known in the emulation space, embracing the thrill and enjoyment of their classic games with the convenience and simplicity of a controller, couch, and a TV comfortably at the other end of the room. PCSX2 classically has been a desktop application, and it sure handled like one. While those roots haven't been abandoned, what we've done is add the option to pick what experience you'd like to have.

\n

PCSX2 now has a big picture mode! Want to use your controller to navigate PCSX2's menus on the big screen? Just hit the big picture button, or skip the main interface entirely and start PCSX2 directly into big picture mode with a single extra parameter in your shortcut. Using a brand new ImGui implementation courtesy of Stenzek, you can boot your games without getting up from the couch, and all critical PCSX2 menus now have a Big Picture accessible option. There are other parameters too, for things like fullscreen or closing PCSX2 when you shut down your game. See our documentation for a comprehensive list of supported CLI arguments you can add to your shortcuts or launchers.

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

A Fresh Approach to Translation​

\n

Translation historically has been cumbersome and time-consuming. One of the limits of wxWidgets used to be a rather clunky translation system where PO files had to be manually updated and managed. We also needed dedicated resources to maintain individual languages. This ended up being a significant time delay for our 1.6.0 release. That all changes going out from here!

\n

PCSX2 is now on Crowdin, and our build system is set to automatically update translations as they are made. Anyone can contribute to translations, and the best contributions – as voted on by the community – will be what you get in the emulator. If you see something in your language that isn't translated or doesn't look right, consider going over to our Crowdin page and making some suggestions!

\n

PCSX2 Joins GitHub Sponsors​

\n

We made the move to set ourselves up on GitHub Sponsors! PCSX2's GitHub Sponsors page is available for anyone who wants to help us keep the lights on with donations. All contributions are greatly appreciated and go towards keeping our servers for the website and forums nice and healthy.

\n

The... Mastodon in the Room?​

\n

For over 14 years, PCSX2 has retained a presence on the microblogging platform Twitter, and that continues to this day. In addition, however, PCSX2 joins the fediverse as it creates a brand-new Mastodon account where we'll be giving you tips and tricks, regular updates, and even juicy sneak peeks. We hope to see you over there.

\n

The Requirements Update​

\n

As times change, so do we. Our priority as a project is always to improve, and unfortunately that means saying goodbye to some old tools and tech that we've come to love (or hate) over the years. This time is no different.

\n

Windows Minimum Version​

\n

With this release, Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 support are gone. The new minimum Windows version is Windows 10 build 1809. We dropped support for these operating systems at the same time as Microsoft. PCSX2's functionality on these operating systems has since ceased as modern features such as fastmem, covered later below, are added to propel PCSX2 into the future.

\n

The Rumors Were True, MacOS Is Back!​

\n

For a while, Mac support had disappeared into the void, and now it has returned in full capacity! TellowKrinkle has brought PCSX2 to macOS, and you can now enjoy feature parity with Windows and Linux. PCSX2 is still recompiling to x86-64 and will work natively on older Intel Macs and with Rosetta on newer Apple Silicon Macs. The minimum version of macOS required is Big Sur (version 11.0).

\n

Introducing PCSX2 Patches! Kind Of.​

\n

With the new era comes a partial reconstruction of how cheats and patches work. The same pnach system remains, but with some alterations and additions to make it simpler to use.

\n

The Pnach 2.0 Format Has Arrived​

\n

Pnach 2.0 is an incremental update to the patching system which introduces INI-like labels to pnach files. The addition of these labels allows for significant quality-of-life improvements. Each individual cheat or patch can now be labelled, and each labelled cheat or patch will appear as its own item in the PCSX2 UI! This lets you then enable or disable individual cheats or patches from your per-game settings without ever having to touch the pnach files.

\n
\"\"
\n
\"\"
\n

The PCSX2 Patches Repository​

\n

The PCSX2 team now has a separate repository set up for collecting and tracking version history of patches. Any patches present in this repository will be shipped with the emulator. As of now, we generally accept widescreen, no-interlacing, and 60 FPS patches. We have also included a small selection of well-tested, hand-picked quality-of-life improvements for especially troublesome games.

\n

Please note that we do not create or fix patches; we operate this repository as curators, and the success of patches depends on the patch authors to reliably test their work. Like our game index, this repository is a constant work in progress and will need community feedback to succeed!

\n

The Core Exploded! Wait, No It Didn't!​

\n

PCSX2's emulation core has been a major focus with a lot of work going in to reduce inconsistency, improve stability, and reel in a bunch of speed improvements.

\n

Introducing Fastmem!​

\n

Stenzek introduced \"Fastmem\", shorthand for \"Fast Memory Access\", to PCSX2's EE and VU recompilers to accelerate host memory access. This produces significant speed increases with no penalties to accuracy – not even any side effects from games doing unusual memory operations! It was quite literally free performance. No configuration changes necessary, just lean back and enjoy.

\n

Tying Up Loose Ends: New Recompiler Instructions​

\n

A few scarce CPU instructions for the Emotion Engine finally got recompiler support! Previously thought to be unimportant, these instructions were found to create a noticeable performance hit for certain games which abused them in unusual ways. With proper recompiler support, these instructions no longer incur huge performance penalties from dropping down into the interpreter.

\n

EE and VU Recompiler Optimization​

\n

Stenzek brought us some of his expertise from DuckStation and helped tidy up some instructions which were not running efficiently. Results can vary depending on how frequently these instructions were used by games.

\n

Who Needed Infinity and NaN Anyways? Gran Turismo 4 Does!​

\n

If you've occupied the same space as a PS2 emulator developer, you might have heard them using floating point math terms in place of swear words. One of the benefits of that unbridled rage is that they might go and fix some long-standing floating point math errors.

\n

The kind which caused issues like Gran Turismo 4 needing different clamping modes depending on what events you were doing. Yep, that's right Gran Turismo friends, rest easy now as you no longer need to touch your clamping settings! It's automatically handled for you now.

\n

The Bane of Developers: Graphics Improvements​

\n

The graphics scene has been flipped on its head. Starting with kojin cracking the case on some of the GS backend's mysteries, the torch was passed on to Refraction and Stenzek, and kept aflame by the efforts of our testers along the way. Many games which looked to be broken beyond belief suddenly have a fresh coat of paint.

\n

A New Challenger: Vulkan Enters the Fight!​

\n

The newest, feature-complete challenger to the graphics world, Vulkan is our long-term solution to the evolving challenges of converting PS2 graphics into tasks understood by modern computers. Vulkan combines the feature completeness of OpenGL with a fast backend to give you the best experience possible.

\n

But Perhaps an Automated Solution Would Be Better!​

\n

The GPU world has become increasingly confusing. To keep performance up and accuracy with it, PCSX2 calls upon some advanced GPU features which, while within specification, aren't exactly handled well by all GPU vendors. Intel iGPUs crash randomly with Vulkan or OpenGL. AMD still has OpenGL performance issues. Direct3D still can't draw the majority of blending effects because of its limited feature set. It's become a bit of a mess, and users shouldn't have to deal with that.

\n

That's where PCSX2's Automatic renderer comes in. Our testers have gone through the pain of figuring out what renderer works for what GPU architecture, and PCSX2 is now set up to pick the best option for you. Priority goes first to stability, then accuracy. Trust the Automatic renderer, and it will not lead you astray.

\n

Blending Gets a Face Lift​

\n

As if using floating point math terms as swears wasn't enough, blending effects haunt graphics developers with nightmares that make even the best horror films look like a joke. Blending is a special technique seen in PS2 games generally used to blend two layers of graphics together. If there's a really cool looking light, bloom, shadow, transparency, reflection, or overlay in your game, there's a fair chance blends are making that happen.

\n

Blending performance overall has been substantially improved and is a major reason for overall graphics performance improvements. Three major techniques are used in PC graphics to help replicate blends: barriers, render passes, and readbacks. These have received a lot more attention than usual, because too many of these means performance begins to fall off a cliff. These counts are down across the board, meaning more frames for you. Plus, now these statistics are viewable directly in our new and revamped on-screen display (OSD)!

\n

Historically, some games may need higher blending accuracy than basic to emulate certain graphical effects, which can absolutely tank the performance – especially on older GPUs. That is no longer the case as basic blending should cover a good chunk of it across all renderers!

\n

Here are some benchmarks in a few selected games:

\n
Loading Chart Data
\n
Loading Chart Data
\n
Loading Chart Data
\n

Ghostbusting with Native Scaling​

\n

A long-standing issue with upscaling games has been with misaligned bloom, or \"ghosting\". In some games, this ghosting becomes so bad that it renders the game nauseating to play. Created by Refraction and refined by Stenzek, native scaling is a new option which we automatically apply to games that need it. This clever trick attempts to detect a game's efforts to downscale the picture in order to do post-processing bloom effects. These effects were intended to be done at native resolution and tend to break down when upscaling.

\n

In short, native scaling unbreaks the bloom when upscaling. Other automatically applied tools such as new, more sophisticated half-pixel offset modes mean that hundreds of games are now more playable than ever when upscaled.

\n

Everybody's Shufflin'​

\n

Blending isn't the only star of the show. Shuffles are another advanced graphics technique used by PS2 games to exploit the memory layout of the GS and perform crazy effects within its limited space. A lot of optimizations went into these to keep them working nicely with blends, and along the way this fixed some graphics bugs and brought a lot of performance with it too.

\n

Video Capture With FFMPEG​

\n

You might remember if you ever tried to capture video with PCSX2's built in capture tools that it was clunky at best. All of that is gone now... And replaced with a shiny new implementation using FFMPEG! You can now enjoy modern file formats and encodings, including the highly anticipated AV1 (hardware support permitting, of course).

\n

Due to licensing restrictions, FFMPEG libraries cannot be distributed directly with PCSX2. You can find our FFMPEG bundle in our dependencies repository.

\n

A Coat of Paint: Texture Replacements!​

\n

A major limitation to upscaling is that, while you can make a high-resolution framebuffer to get super smooth edges, your source textures can't magically have detail restored to them. Texture replacement is the solution; yank out those low-resolution textures and replace them with your own!

\n

PCSX2 now supports texture replacements! You can dump textures from any game, edit them, and load them back. Not interested in doing it yourself? Have a look around and see if anyone's made a pack for your game!

\n

Here is Crash Twinsanity for comparison (with texture replacements applied):

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

That said, we would like to be serious for a moment and set some ground rules for these.​

\n

Texture pack users: The PCSX2 community does not provide support for texture packs or allow sharing packs on any PCSX2 sites. This includes our forums, Discord, GitHub, etc. Issues with texture packs should be sent to the creators of those packs.

\n

Texture pack creators: Due to the design of the PS2 GS and how many games use it, there are some textures which will not be replaceable, as they generate new hashes every time they are loaded. This cannot be worked around, this cannot be fixed, this is the PS2 GS working as intended. This is a side effect of the GS having no restrictions, or really any standard API at all. It is possible these hashes will continue to change as emulation gets more accurate, so be prepared to update your packs as PCSX2 continues to change. We are glad to answer any technical questions about what may have changed, but we cannot assist in fixing your packs.

\n

Graphics Honorable Mentions​

\n

Among the pile of graphics improvements, some games deserve shout-outs because they have been problematic for so long. Some are more interesting than others, some more popular than others. See if anything stands out to you!

\n

Burnout​

\n

The Burnout community joked about putting anime characters in the sky to get the PCSX2 team to fix the game. We will tell you correlation doesn't equal causation, but ultimately it's up to you whether you trust us on that one! That said, there's no more black sky in Burnout games, so you can enjoy hues of blue again.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Ratchet and Clank​

\n

These games were relatively solid considering how temperamental they can be. However, one pesky remnant was the pause menu background, as well as the main menu background some of the later games, only rendering correctly in the top left corner. This is resolved, so you can now properly see the background in all the games!

\n

Destroy All Humans!​

\n

This game was a complete fever dream and really just not working correctly at all. Thanks to some serious work by Stenzek and Refraction, it is now actually playable without software rendering! Some oddities do remain, but it is quite manageable now compared to where it began.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Ace Combat​

\n

Everyone had their own way of fixing this game, and then it turned out software rendering was the only solution that worked. No more! The black plane and lighting issues are resolved, and hardware renderers are all capable of running these games now.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

Need for Speed​

\n

Remember how these games just slowed to a crawl for no good reason? Turns out blending was the reason! A lot of work has gone into optimizing blends, shuffles, clears – all the special effects that made PS2 games look great. And because of that, we now get a lovely, accurate, and fast way to play Need for Speed games. All those shadows, lights, and reflections should look nice and crisp now without taking too many frames away.

\n
\"\"
\"\"
Before
After
\n

The Sound of Everything but Silence​

\n

Sound has been a point of continuous improvement over the last few years. Little details seem to keep popping up with big effects on how sound emulation works. There never was too much fanfare about sound, and we generally noticed that no one really seemed to care that much. That is, until we realized exactly how off things really were. Our thanks go to Ziemas for overhauling sound as well as most of the improvements to how your games now sound!

\n

Less Attack, More Sustain!​

\n

A tweaked ADSR envelope helps prevent hangs and makes your games sound better. You heard that right: games can hang if you don't handle their ADSR envelopes right! You might not be able to hear too much difference, but you might catch a little smoother and less abrupt of a stop on sequenced sounds now.

\n

Fresh, Buttery Smooth Interpolation!​

\n

PCSX2 has always had a pile of interpolation options for sound. Historically, this was to let users squeeze every bit of power out of their PC by sacrificing sound quality. In modern times, this has become negligible if not pointless, and emphasis has switched almost fully to making things sound the best they can. Older interpolation methods generated harsh peaks and valleys in the waveforms they output. The new Gaussian mode is buttery smooth in comparison and was validated against actual PS2 audio. The audio levels are the same!

\n

Your Ears Can Relax Now!​

\n

You might also notice your ears find things to be a bit quieter. Quieter, but also more pleasant! Older SPU plugins were cranking the output higher than it needed to, and this resulted in overall louder audio that could even cause clipping. Audio output levels have now been lowered and should match what a real PS2 would put out.

\n

The New Era of Controller Mapping​

\n

A particular weakness of PCSX2 used to be the fragmentation of controller code across operating systems. Windows and Linux used different plugins, and these plugins handled things quite differently. LilyPad only supported XInput and DInput. OnePad used SDL and a database file to store static, unchangeable mappings. Something had to change, and with Qt came the perfect opportunity to bring new life to controller setup.

\n

The New Input Options​

\n

PCSX2 now has a cross-platform input system that still offers multiple options where available. SDL services Windows, Mac, and Linux and is an all-in-one solution supporting most controllers with little to no effort on your part. For compatibility with other controllers on Windows, XInput and DInput remain as options.

\n

Introducing Automatic Mapping​

\n

With the introduction of SDL and Qt came the opportunity to add automatic controller mapping. What does this mean? For anyone using SDL or XInput, you're just two button clicks away from mapping your controller. Simply click the button, then select your controller from the list. Done!

\n
\"\"
\n

Achievement Unlocked!​

\n

Do you like hunting for achievements? Well you're in luck as PCSX2 now supports RetroAchievements (also known as Rcheevos)!

\n

RetroAchievements is a community which brings modern achievements to games which were released before the concept existed. This community-driven feature supports more than 500 games so far as of the writing of this blog.

\n

PINE Isn't a Tree, It's a Protocol!​

\n

Introduced by GovanifY, PINE is a protocol we adopted for networked software to access PCSX2. If you've ever wanted to have external software be able to probe PS2 memory, write into it, or even command savestate loads or saves, it's your lucky day. PINE opens the door to automation like never before and gives developers the opportunity to make companion apps for PCSX2. Apps like KAMI have already been made to add native mouse support to games, and we can't wait to see what else people come up with!

\n

Debugging Just Got Less Buggy​

\n

The wxWidgets PCSX2 debugger might have been the \"Old Yeller\" of the project. Abandoned. Then run over with a truck. And for good measure, set on fire. So it's no surprise then that fobes, in his maddening quest to explore the world of PS2 homebrew, took it personally and began the quest to replace it.

\n

It started as a fresh coat of paint. Paint turned into more register views. More register views turned into more breakpoint features. More breakpoint features turned into memory searches. To top it all off, those of you interested in the lesser of the two main CPUs in the PS2, the IOP, will be pleased to find native support for exported function symbols in the debugger. The PCSX2 debugger is now a wonderfully rich companion for anyone trying to debug PS2 games in real time.

\n
\"\"
\n

All Aboard the Compression Train​

\n

Compression started becoming a critical component of emulation when emulators for the PS1 and other disc-based consoles began to pop up. The rapid growth in size relative to PC storage space at the time meant solutions had to be found to squeeze every bit of size out of games. Over the years compression methods have only improved, and PCSX2 is proud to introduce support for two popular compression methods!

\n

The Long-Awaited Arrival of CHD​

\n

Support for CHD has arrived! For anyone unaware, CHD is a compression format similar to CSO in performance. Unlike CSO which is specifically designed for the DVD-based ISO format, CHD can operate on both the DVD-based ISO format and the CD-based BIN/CUE format. You can compress your entire library with CHD, or pick and choose depending on which format works best for you. Refraction has made a Windows script that can compress to or extract from CHD and CSO. If you have a lot of games you wish to compress, here are some scripts to help speed up the process.

\n

Introducing ZSO: A Cross Platform Compression Option​

\n

Those who use OPL on their PS2 might be familiar with ZSO. It has become a bit of a hit lately with OPL's recent experimental support, and now you can use it on PCSX2! For those who want to only keep one copy of their games and have them compressed, ZSO is a great option because you can now use them both for OPL and PCSX2.

\n

A Wild Automatic Updater Has Appeared!​

\n

A long-standing pain point of PCSX2's wxWidgets era was that every update meant extracting a new archive file. Then you would have to move your saves, settings, and other files around; this led to lots of confusion and problems with all the files moving around. With the introduction of Qt, PCSX2 has also introduced an automatic updater! The updater will let you know when a new PCSX2 version is available and let you download and install it with the click of a button.

\n

Looking Towards the Future​

\n

It has been quite the journey getting to this point, and we all still have plenty more we want to see done. So much of this wouldn't be possible without your support, and we hope to see you around. If you ever need help, are looking for ways to get involved, or just want a place to talk all things PS2 and PCSX2, consider joining our Discord. Special thanks goes to our hardworking team of testers, codebase contributors, translators, documentation authors, community moderators, and everyone else whose passion makes this project possible. We hope you enjoy the latest we have to offer for PCSX2!

\n

— The PCSX2 Team

", "url": "https://pcsx2.net/blog/2024/pcsx2-2-release", "title": "Introducing PCSX2 2.0!", "summary": "PCSX2 2.0 Release Blog Post", "date_modified": "2024-07-12T00:00:00.000Z", "author": { "name": "RedDevilus", "url": "https://github.com/RedDevilus" }, "tags": [ "devblog" ] } ] }