Playstation 4 emulator that works and requires Linux

Honest question.

What was released on the PS4 and not on the PC that would warrant using this?
 
And Ghost Of Tsushima. Damn that game was good, at least for an old Samurai movie lover like me.
Tbh by the time GoT is playable on this (if ever) it'd likely have a PC port, given Sony's PC releases (and rumored website leaks recently).

That said seeing a early, functioning emulator for the PS4 is neat.
 
it's no use getting your hopes up, if it becomes too good they will just use lawyers to intimidate the creator to take it down.

I don't think that has been the case with previous playstation emulators. Though the PS4 is a good deal more recent than the one PS1 emulator I tried to run Katamari Damacy on years ago. (It worked great, I just didn't ahve any controllers, and that game us unplayable without dual joysticks)
 
I think there's legal precedent that allows reverse-engineered emulation, after various Nintendo lawsuits, from memory.
that is clean room reverse engineering, however it is impossible to do as a team of 1.
 
I don't think that has been the case with previous playstation emulators. Though the PS4 is a good deal more recent than the one PS1 emulator I tried to run Katamari Damacy on years ago. (It worked great, I just didn't ahve any controllers, and that game us unplayable without dual joysticks)
I'm pretty sure they sued bleem! out of existence, which was a commercial emulator. Sony didn't win, but buried them in legal costs, ultimately forcing them to go bankrupt.
 
I'm pretty sure they sued bleem! out of existence, which was a commercial emulator. Sony didn't win, but buried them in legal costs, ultimately forcing them to go bankrupt.
yup, however there was a company behind that emulator with the intention of being profitable. there was even a hardware ps1 card made that could be installed in a MAC at the time. Sony went after them because they had to break the anti-pracy stuff in the games to get the emulator to work, thus allowing piracy of their IP.
 
I'm pretty sure they sued bleem! out of existence, which was a commercial emulator. Sony didn't win, but buried them in legal costs, ultimately forcing them to go bankrupt.
That was where the issue came from. If they didn't sell bleem! commercially then they probably would not have had an issue. Even at the time of release, though, bleem! was one of the worst PSX emulators out there. Being able to run your PlayStation games on a Dreamcast was probably nice, though.
 
I don't think that has been the case with previous playstation emulators. Though the PS4 is a good deal more recent than the one PS1 emulator I tried to run Katamari Damacy on years ago. (It worked great, I just didn't ahve any controllers, and that game us unplayable without dual joysticks)
The Geo guy that first hacked the PS3 was sued by Sony.
 
I'm pretty sure they sued bleem! out of existence, which was a commercial emulator. Sony didn't win, but buried them in legal costs, ultimately forcing them to go bankrupt.
yup, however there was a company behind that emulator with the intention of being profitable. there was even a hardware ps1 card made that could be installed in a MAC at the time. Sony went after them because they had to break the anti-pracy stuff in the games to get the emulator to work, thus allowing piracy of their IP.

Yeah, some reading suggests Sony killed off both Bleem and Connectix through combinations of lawsuits and acquisitions, but there are plenty of open source emulators which have survived.

Playstation:
- ePSXe
- PCSX Redux

Playstation 2
- PCSX2

Playstation 3
- RPCS3

This one for the Playstation 4 would be a first. There was a website flying around for a PCSX4 for a while but it was a scam/malware.

Sony seems content to go after commercial emulators (like Bleem and Connectix), seemingly leaving open source folks alone. At least unless they get too close to current gen.

It would seem current gen Playstations should be much easier to emulate, now that they are running on AMD APU's. You don't really have to emulate the CPU/GPU at all, just run it as a VM. All you need to worry about is the software environment.

I'm pretty impressed they are able to properly emulate the PS3's cell CPU.
 
That was where the issue came from. If they didn't sell bleem! commercially then they probably would not have had an issue. Even at the time of release, though, bleem! was one of the worst PSX emulators out there. Being able to run your PlayStation games on a Dreamcast was probably nice, though.
Bleem actually was the first emulator that could give a decent experience with Gran Turismo. It wasn't perfect, but it was best for a short period of time while it was being developed. epsxe and pcsx or what was the other only overtook it after bleem was killed off.
 
yup, however there was a company behind that emulator with the intention of being profitable. there was even a hardware ps1 card made that could be installed in a MAC at the time. Sony went after them because they had to break the anti-pracy stuff in the games to get the emulator to work, thus allowing piracy of their IP.
I'm pretty sure you could run bootleg games on freeware emulators as well. The difference was that bleem didn't require you to have a PSX Rom dump, but the others did. Which was only available through piracy.
 
the ps4 (and really probably ps5, though it is unconfirmed as yet) use FreeBSD as the system OS. honestly i figured some sort of emulator would happen sooner than it did. The reason it ended up on linux is that Sony never publicly ported the GPU driver back to BSD. So linux has GPU drivers and BSD compatibility.
 
I'm pretty sure you could run bootleg games on freeware emulators as well. The difference was that bleem didn't require you to have a PSX Rom dump, but the others did. Which was only available through piracy.

You couldn't dump it from a physical console if you owned one?
 
It's cool it works at all and might be fun to tinker with, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather just buy a used console for $100-$200 and enjoy a stable game. PS4 exclusives have been most of the best games I've played in the last several years too, so def worth buying one just for them IMO. You can get a lot of them with the PS+ collection alone, which frequently can be bought online for $30/year. Most of them have been upgraded to 4k/60 on PS5 too, which gives me a good reason to go back and replay them.
 
the ps4 (and really probably ps5, though it is unconfirmed as yet) use FreeBSD as the system OS. honestly i figured some sort of emulator would happen sooner than it did. The reason it ended up on linux is that Sony never publicly ported the GPU driver back to BSD. So linux has GPU drivers and BSD compatibility.

Are the drivers really that different from AMD's standard open source GPU drivers? I mean, the thing just runs on an APU. You'd think minor tweaks of existing open source drivers should do the trick.
 
You couldn't dump it from a physical console if you owned one?
Not without specialized tools and disassembling the console. And if I had a PS one, I wouldn't have had a need for emulators in the first place.
 
Are the drivers really that different from AMD's standard open source GPU drivers? I mean, the thing just runs on an APU. You'd think minor tweaks of existing open source drivers should do the trick.
feel free to delve into that rabbit hole. Bring beer if you do.
 
Not without specialized tools and disassembling the console. And if I had a PS one, I wouldn't have had a need for emulators in the first place.
Not true. Early PSX consoles could boot custom software using the Gameshark that connected to the serial port, so you could boot a burned CD with a dumping utility to either send the BIOS to a memory card or a connected device through the serial cable. Later versions of the console got rid of the serial cable and they closed the software boot exploit. It's why most BIOS you see distributed around the internet is version SCPH1001. You can still do it with later console revisions, but you need a modchip to do so.
 
feel free to delve into that rabbit hole. Bring beer if you do.

I'll fully admit. I've never written a driver in my life. But we know the architecture is the same, they just differ in the number of SP's enabled.

Since the hard work of writing an open source driver for the architecture is done, and since that driver has to work across all GPU's in the architecture family, I'm assuming it is just modular, allowing you to configure specifics for the specific GPU (number of SP's, VRAM and clocks).

In my ignorance of the topic I may be oversimplifying it though.
 
I'll fully admit. I've never written a driver in my life. But we know the architecture is the same, they just differ in the number of SP's enabled.

Since the hard work of writing an open source driver for the architecture is done, and since that driver has to work across all GPU's in the architecture family, I'm assuming it is just modular, allowing you to configure specifics for the specific GPU (number of SP's, VRAM and clocks).

In my ignorance of the topic I may be oversimplifying it though.
there is no full driver available for public use in any BSD.
linux has the open source driver and some closed source modules to get 'FULL GPU SUPPORT'.

the PS4 (and PS5 we think) have a custom driver for the BSD based OS.

an 'emulator' on BSD is impossible as there is no way to map 3d currently.

my GUESS is that linux has enough of a working 3d environment to map calls to the driver level that are natively understood.

you are thinking about the driver affecting different GPU's, that is not the issue. the issue is different operating systems. (and lack of public BSD driver)
 
there is no full driver available for public use in any BSD.
linux has the open source driver and some closed source modules to get 'FULL GPU SUPPORT'.

the PS4 (and PS5 we think) have a custom driver for the BSD based OS.

an 'emulator' on BSD is impossible as there is no way to map 3d currently.

my GUESS is that linux has enough of a working 3d environment to map calls to the driver level that are natively understood.

you are thinking about the driver affecting different GPU's, that is not the issue. the issue is different operating systems. (and lack of public BSD driver)

Right. I was thinking about it backwards for some reason (getting a third party OS to run on Playstation Hardware, not getting playstation software to run on other hardware) Been a long day.

And actually, running a full PC OS on a modern Playstation/Xbox would be more interesting to me than an emulator.

Especially in this market, a current gen Playstation/Xbox would make for an amazing bang for the buck entry level game capable PC.

Back in 2010 you could - with a little ingenuity - build a mid range PC for about $500 (dual core Athlon, unlocked to quad core Phenom II and overclocked over 4Ghz, and maybe a GTX 460?) but today that is completely and totally impossible.

If you could install a PC desktop OS on a Playatation 5 or Xbox Series X it would be pretty damn nice.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make that happen.

It would probably take some sort of custom BIOS like was done in hacking chromebooks/chromeboxes.
 
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Right. I was thinking about it backwards for some reason (getting a third party OS to run on Playstation Hardware, not getting playstation software to run on other hardware) Been a long day.

And actually, running a full PC OS on a modern Playstation/Xbox would be more interesting to me than an emulator.

Especially in this market, a current gen Playstation/Xbox would make for an amazing bang for the buck entry level game capable PC.

Back in 2010 you could - with a little ingenuity - build a mid range PC for about $500 (dual core Athlon, unlocked to quad core Phenom II and overclocked over 4Ghz, and maybe a GTX 460?) but today that is completely and totally impossible.

If you could install a PC desktop OS on a Playatation 5 or Xbox Series X it would be pretty damn nice.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make that happen.

It would probably take some sort of custom BIOS like was done in hacking chromebooks/chromeboxes.
it is possible to get linux onto a PS4, and PS4 pro, and thanks to the linux driver for the GPU, you end up with a not terrible but somewhat older linux PC.
 
it is possible to get linux onto a PS4, and PS4 pro, and thanks to the linux driver for the GPU, you end up with a not terrible but somewhat older linux PC.

Yeah, that's usually the problem. These consoles would make decent low to mid end PC's at launch, but by the time the community gets around to figuring out how to do it, the platform has usually aged enough that it isn't really worth it.
 
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