RPCS3 receives Blu-Ray support & several effect fixes

The talented developers behind cross-platform PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 continue to impress with new features and fixes for the emulator, now including the ability to boot games from supported Blu-Ray drives. The same drives can now also be used to decrypt PlayStation 3 games with 13xforever's disc dumping tool—but more on that below. For now, let's focus on the other new RPCS3 features and fixes.

One major improvement is in game booting itself. Now, RPCS3 will automatically apply recommended RPCS3 database configuration settings on boot, barring game patches, resolution scaling, anisotropic filtering, and debug configurations. Since those are typically unnecessary for getting a game to work properly (and may also boil down to personal preference,) they are left untouched by this update while still making it easier to get games up and running before opening up an RPCS3 Wiki page.

Another major feature addition is the game booting UI, which allows you to reorder game list columns (such as playtime, compatibility, etc), making it easier to sort games within the RPCS3 UI. By far the most important updates are to game effects themselves, though. Reflections, shadows, skyboxes, lighting, and various other effects have been fixed across dozens of games in the RPCS3 library, further improving accuracy and fidelity for the emulator. We've listed known-impacted titles below.

Games With Effect Fixes In The RPCS3 May Patch

• The Orange Box
• Resistance 2
• Ratchet & Clank: Into The Nexus
• Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time
• MX vs ATV Untamed
• MLB 08: The Show
• Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
• Remember Me
• Life is Strange
• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
• The Darkness
• SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs
• Heavy Rain
• Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Tomb Raider
• Deadly Premonition
• ...among others. None of the fixes to reflections, shadows, and other effects were game-specific, these are just the titles highlighted in the video. Obviously, most PS3 games did not have these issues, but a few historically-noteworthy titles like Uncharted have long been bogged down by issues like these. Your obscure PS3 favorite(s) may also have been fixed by this patch!

The full breadth of games with improved emulation is unknown even by the RPCS3 team, but what they've shown is fairly impressive for fans of emulation and game preservation alike. On the note of preservation, RPCS3 now supports both decrypted and encrypted ISOs alongside Blu-Ray drives, and the RPCS3 Quickstart page now includes a full list of compatible Blu-Ray drives at the bottom. 

Alongside the recent (unrelated) release of OmniDrive firmware, we're seeing an impressive push on part of developers in the emulation scene to improve support for booting and backing up games from real media without the need for a jailbroken console. Hopefully, these efforts continue making emulation easier without the need to resort to piracy or bloating a perfectly-good SSD with a game you already have on a disc.