The Complete Guide to Playstation 3 Emulation - RPCS3

hey guys what is up and welcome back to the channel this is my full and complete setup guide for rpcs3 the playstation 3 emulator this guide is going to cover absolutely everything you need to do to get the best possible visuals and performance in any compatible games you're going to play on this playstation emulator as with most of my guides it's going to be split into separate sections all of which you can find down in the chapters in the timeline or in the timestamps you can find down in this video's description on top of showing you all of the best settings for any of your games i'm also going to be showing you how you can download the latest update versions to make your games as compatible as possible on top of this i'm also going to show you how you can use the awesome new patch manager utilizing this manager you can dramatically boost the performance visual quality and the general game compatibility of many many games on this emulator there's a lot to cover in this guide so let's jump straight across to my desktop and get our setup started the first thing you want to do is open up all four of these links the rpcs3 website your firmware link the link to the compatibility page and the rpcs three wiki you will find links to all of these down in this video's description next we're going to come to the download page on the rpcs3 site you can see we have windows and linux bills since this is a setup guide for windows we're going to select download for windows and then save this build to our desktop while that downloads we're going to come to our ps3 system software page and download this ps3 firmware update now sometimes if you click this button for some reason it doesn't seem to work if this happens to you you want to right click it and select open in a new tab this will achieve the same result it's going to download the firmware for you to install in a few moments i'm not sure why it does this maybe it's something to do with the ad blocker i'm using but if you encounter this problem simply right click and select open a link in a new tab this will resolve the problem once you have your build and your firmware downloaded let's minimize our browser for now you should have this build folder and this firmware update what you want to do is right click on the build using 7-zip select extract to a folder of its own once it's extracted you're going to right click on it then we're going to be selecting rename simply rename this to rpcs3 once renamed you're going to open this folder then drag into it this playstation firmware update next we're going to close this folder since we're actually going to be moving this to a separate location what you want to do is open file explorer then on whichever one of your disk drives has the most storage space you are going to be storing this rpcs3 folder simply right click select cut then paste it to this location the reason for doing this is that rpcs3 can take up quite a large amount of space so it's best to store it on a large drive next we're going to come into this rpcs3 folder then drag and drop the exe for the emulator onto your toolbar this gives you easy access to load this emulator regardless of which area it is stored on your computer our next step is to load the emulator itself and get our firmware installed when you launch rpcs3 for the first time this message is going to pop up simply click both of these boxes hit continue then this is the emulator's gui to install your firmware you select file then you select install firmware this should bring you straight to your rpcs3 folder next you need to select this ps3 update.pup select open and this is going to begin the process of installing your firmware now please be aware that depending on the power of your system's cpu this process can take a large amount of time so please just have patience and wait for it to finish once installation of your firmware is complete this window will close if you get this or a similar error message do not pay any attention to it it is just a normal error produced by the emulator our next step is to set up and map our controllers before this stage you need to make sure to connect your controller to your computer be it via cable or bluetooth all you need to do is select your input device from this drop down window if you use a ds3 ds4 or dual sense controller selected these if you're using an xbox one 360 or xbox one x or series x controller select x input since i use a dual sense controller i'm going to select dual sense and you can see in the bottom right hand corner my controller inputs are indeed being detected in the device class section here in the center you can see different input devices like guitar drums the dj board dance mat and so on if you're playing any games that use these peripherals please make sure you have the correct one selected if you wish to use a mouse and keyboard all you need to do is select the keyboard input you can see it's automatically going to have default inputs for you for mapping your mouse to right thumbstick input all you have to do is click on the up down left or right buttons then you right click and hold and drag in whichever direction it is you are mapping it's literally as simple as that all you have to do is follow on screen instructions and your mouse is going to be correctly mapped to each of these directional inputs as i said previous if you are using a controller and not mouse and keyboard all you have to do is select your controller type from the drop down in the top left hand corner i'm now going to show you how you can set up input profiles in the event that you wish to create custom mapping schemes for your own specific game controller all you need to do is hit the add profile then i'm going to call this one ds5 and hit ok you can see that this has created the ds5 profile so in the event that i wanted to remap any of these buttons i can do so no problem at all now in the event that any of your controllers have a thumbstick drift for example say you load in here and your thumbstick is showing out of bounds like so all you need to do to stop automatically walking or having a thumbstick drift is adjust your analog stick dead zone exactly like i have done here so that the red circle appears outside of the blue dot if you do not have any issues with drift or dead zones you can simply ignore this section you can also enable or disable vibrations though for the most part you should leave them enabled make sure to hit save once you have your input mapping successfully completed you can see that my controller is now being detected by the emulator and showing up in the log window next i'm going to show you how you can add your games to the emulator be them disk or digital versions what you want to do is come to file add games then navigate to wherever on your system you have your disk format games shown what i mean by disk format is that they show up as directories like so for example with asura's wrath you can see i have my ps3 game and ps3 update folder this is a disc format game all that you need to do is make sure all of these format games are in the same folder then select the folder that contains them once you select that folder as the target of your games list all of your games are going to detect in your games list exactly like so the installation of a digital format games is a little bit different what you want to do is navigate to wherever you have your digital format game stored for example i have a digital copy of metal gear solid 4 so it comes in two parts one is the pkg for the game itself then it also has a wrap which is the license file allowing you to play the game on the emulator to install this digital png format game all you need to do is drag and drop it onto the emulator window it's going to show that it's going to install itself select yes then just wait for this game to install depending on the file size you're installing this process can take a long time so again please be patient once it has installed there is still one step left to allow you to play this pkg game on the emulator you need to install this wrap or license file again as with the pkg for the game itself all that you need to do is drag and drop this wrap file into the emulator window if you're looking for a guide on dumping any of these disk or digital game formats you'll find one down in this video's description next up i'm going to show you how you can acquire and download digital game updates this is going to require you to use the rpcs3 discord server an invite to which you can find it down in this video's description what you need to do is load up discord then you're going to come to the bot spam room in the rpcs3 discord server handily enough the creators of this emulator have created a bot that allows you to acquire and download these updates and since these are provided for free by sony it is absolutely illegal for them to provide these all that you need to do is use this very easy to use bot command i'm going to show you exactly how you can use this right now for example for a game like gran turismo 5 or gran turismo 6 you can see that there is an update available right here now gran turismo 5 works best on base game but for gran turismo 6 it is most stable on update 1.05 what you want to do is select copy info select copy serial then into this update command you want to paste the serial here once you have this command formatted exactly like so you want to copy it then come to the rpcs3 but spam room select paste and then enter this command the bot is going to find and give you a list of updates which you can download you can see here this is update 1.02 which as i said is the most stable at time of making this video for gran turismo 6. while we download this file we're going to create a separate folder into which you are going to be storing your playstation 3 game updates again come to a large storage drive on your computer make a new folder and call this whatever you want i'm just going to call this ps3 game update files then i'm going to be using this folder for storing these updates i'm going to be downloading inside of this folder again i'm going to create another folder this time let's just call it gt6 or something similar then into this gran turismo 6 folder i'm going to save this update file again depending on the download speeds you currently have this process can take a long time especially so if you're downloading a large update like this one which is 1.2 gigabytes so please just be patient and wait for it to finish downloading once it has finished downloading the installation process is super super easy let's just minimize our browser again for now minimize discard also then open the folder into which i downloaded this file i'm going to come to my playstation nope not that folder that's the one i created earlier i'm going to come to my playstation game update files folder my gt6 folder then again just to drag and drop this pkg for this game's update into the emulator window select yes and this update is going to be installed onto your game this is exactly how you install any update on this emulator though there is a slightly different method of installing newer updates on rpcs3 than you may have experienced on other emulators for example if you wished to install the latest update for this game 1.22 which by the way you shouldn't be doing you would need to download every single one of these updates then install each one one after the other this is a very important step since you will absolutely be missing game files if you try to install updates in any other way on this emulator basically all you need to do is download all of the updates for your specific games then highlight them all and drag and drop them onto the emulator window exactly as i showed you in the previous example again let's just do an update to a god of war version 1.03 since again that is the best version for this game all you need to do is add the serial to the end of the command which you'll find down in this video's description then just copy it and paste it into the bot spam room over on the rpcs three discord server as soon as i enter the command the bot's going to find god of war 3's latest update again i'm going to click on it select yep then as i previously did i'm going to come to my update folder create a new folder call this god of war 3 or something similar then into this god of war 3 folder i'm going to save this pkg for the 1.03 update for this game as i did before installing this update is as simple as it could possibly be just come to the folder where you stored it then drag and drop the update onto the emulator window this is going to instantly install the 1.03 update which as i said is currently the best update for compatibility with god of war 3. now that we've covered installing games and game updates i'm going to show you some of the best default settings which you can apply to your emulator's global configuration what you want to do is come to your top bar select configuration then click on either cpu or gpu starting off in this cpu section to be honest there's absolutely nothing you should be changing here the defaults are best however when coming into the gpu section i would highly advise never changing a default resolution however you should change default resolution scale to something higher than 720p for example i can change this to 150 to 1080p or if you have a gpu that's very powerful you can go even higher now to be honest there's not really anything else you should change in this gpu section if you wish to do so you can swap to opengl though for the most part the vulkan api back end is by far the most stable and compatible back end on rpc s3 the only other thing you may want to change is in this gui tab if every time you launch rpcs3 and you do not wish to update to its latest version all you need to do is change yes to a background this is still going to check for updates and allow you to download them however instead it will appear in the top right hand corner that an update is available and you can simply download and install it by clicking that notification for most people if you want to just use the latest builds leave this at yes though i know some people do want to change this so they do not get notified every single time they launch the emulator once you have these settings changed simply click the apply button then you can hit either save or close to close this window our next step is probably the most important part of this guide showing you how you can find the best settings for any of your games for any game you want to try out on this emulator you should come to this rpcs3 wiki then just search for your game in this top bar all you want to do is type your game into this window find it on the wiki once you've found it just scroll down and if there are any settings that are different from the defaults i've already given you they will be listed right here in this configuration section all that you need to do is transfer those settings from the wiki page over to your game to do so right click select create custom configuration then for example if it says change spu block size to mega you come back to your cpu tab change sp block size from safe to mega it then says gpu configuration we set our frame limit to 60 and enable right color buffers so we come to our gpu tab we're going to turn on right color buffers and then we're going to turn on our frame limit as it says from off to 60 then our final step is coming to advanced configuration and changing driver wake up delay from its default to a 50 or a value higher now this driver wake up delay can be very very helpful for some games on this emulator for example a god of war 3 or the last of us by setting this to a value between 50 and 250 you can dramatically improve the stability of your game you can see this little icon denotes the fact that god of war is going to be launching with a custom configuration file this is exactly what you need to do for any game you're searching for example again i'll search the last of us then on the last of us configuration wiki page you're going to see all of the best possible settings for getting the best possible stability rendering quality and performance in this game again i just right click select create custom configuration then i need to transfer over any of the settings advised in this wiki page all you need to do is change this to the default of 100 change resolution scale threshold to one by one then the last thing we need to do for this game right now is apply a frame limit of 60. well the wiki tells you to use right color buffers we do not need to use that at this point in time since in a moment i'm going to be showing you how to enable a series of patches that dramatically improve the performance in this and many other games the final thing we need to do for the last of us is adjust our advanced configuration settings we need to turn on accurate rsx reservations and read color buffers so all i have to do is come to my advanced tab enable rsx reservation access then simply tick the box beside read color buffers again driver wake up delay can greatly help the stability of the last of us and other games that have a few stability issues on this emulator currently so i would advise a value between 50 and 250 for this game and its best stability once everything is set click apply then click save or close now as always if you are having any issues with games don't be afraid to ask either on my discord server or the official rpcs3 discord server for the most part you are absolutely going to have the best compatibility by simply searching whatever game you're trying to play on the rpcs3 wiki then applying the set configuration settings this rpcs3 wiki is absolutely invaluable to anyone trying to get the best performance and compatibility if you want to see if your game is playable from start to finish you can do so by searching it on the rpcs3 compatibility page so for example if i want to see how well asura's wrath runs and if it's playable i can search it on the page and indeed see that this game has been playable for the last two years now that i've covered game compatibility and how to find and apply settings i'm going to show you how to download and apply patches which can massively improve your performance on many of the most popular games for this emulator like god of war 3 or the last of us what you want to do is come to manage at the top then select game patches once this window opens we want to click the download latest patches button in the bottom left-hand corner you should regularly click this button to make sure you're using all of the latest and greatest game patches for performance and compatibility what i like to do is click this only show owned games this is going to filter your list by the games you have currently installed on the emulator now in order to activate these patches it's very very easy for example for demon souls you simply expanded these trees by clicking the little arrows if you want to play your game at 60 frames per second you can simply click unlock fps this is going to unlock the frame rate from the limit of 30 the game natively ships with allowing you to play the game at 60 frames per second or higher you can also apply other patches like this skip intro videos patch or if you wish to do so apply this 21 9 or a 32 9 patch applying patches for other games is equally as easy for persona 5 for example if you wish to play this game at 60 frames per second you just click this 60 fps button this is going to unlock the game to its 60 frames per second potential you also have tons of other mods which you can read exactly what they do in the little notes section in the bottom right hand corner for example for this 4k mod patch you can see that unless you are using a specific mod that you have installed you should not be using this patch it is very important that you read the descriptions of these patches to know exactly what you do before you turn them on for a game like the last of us this game has a lot of patches that can dramatically improve its render quality and performance i would highly advise that anyone trying to play this game apply the exact same patches that i am applying right now all of these patches paired together dramatically improve this game's performance by between 2 to four hundred percent offering on very high-end systems with very good cpus almost playable performance similarly for games like god of war 3 it has a lot of patches that dramatically improve the game's render quality and performance if all you're looking for is the best possible frame rate then i would highly advise activating every single one of these patches as i said it's very important to read the descriptions of some of these patches some of them are more obvious like disable bloom obviously disables bloom however this disabled layered fog patch removes the depth fog from this game which for some people can maybe spoil the experience since it makes some areas of gameplay very very clear or sharp looking for literally hundreds of games there are hundreds of patches so please make sure that you're not missing out on any potentially great performance boosts by applying a simple patch like we've just done for the likes of god of war 3 the last of us persona 5 and demon souls as with everything before once you're happy with the patches you have applied click the apply or save buttons to make sure that any changes you've made are correctly applied now that i've shown you how to apply custom patches and how to find your game settings i'm going to show you a few custom settings that can greatly benefit a few games the first game we're going to be taking a look at is persona 5 a very popular rpg for the playstation 3. now what you first need to do is make sure that persona 5 settings are matching with whatever settings are on the wiki at time of making this video the setting i'm about to show you is not currently listed though i have added it and it should be noted in the future in this special notes section now what you want to do is come back to your rpcs3 version and first of all you need to create a custom configuration all i'm going to do is i'm going to change this resolution scaling from a 1920x1080 to 1440p then i'm just going to hit save or apply in the bottom right hand corner once i've made this custom configuration file we can proceed what you want to do is right click your game then you want to come to open custom config folder once this opens your custom config that you currently want to edit is going to be highlighted in blue simply double click this to open it i'm just going to expand this window so i can see what i'm doing then i'm going to search for this line approximate explode equals true you want to change true to false this setting alone can give you a very nice little performance boost in persona 5 on this emulator as always make sure to click file save you can now close this window you now have the most optimal settings for persona 5. yet another game that can greatly benefit from a few settings which are currently not listed on the wiki but will be in future is red dead redemption now most of what i'm about to show you is listed on the wiki page and can be copied directly from there as i showed you previously you want to set sp block size from a safe to mega moving to your gpu tab you want to disable anti-aliasing especially so if you have a very weak gpu this can greatly help performance but it does make the game look a little bit pixelated so please use at your own caution in order to fix broken lighting at night time you need to enable right color buffers and finally the last two settings we need to change are in the advanced tab you should be enabling relaxed sequel sync this setting greatly helps performance and on top of this you want to set sleep timer accuracy from you sleep to as host this setting can again greatly improve performance with pretty much no stability penalty once you have applied all of the settings i've shown you in the gpu and advanced tab hit apply and you can now close this window the final few settings we're going to be taking a look at are in relation to your manage drop-down window from here you can access your save data your trophy data for any games you've been playing if trophies interest you and you can also access things like screenshot and as i showed previously your game patches as i've said countless times throughout this guide if you're looking for the best settings for any particular game all that you need to do is consult the rpcs3 compatibility page to see if your game is even playable then if your game is playable head on over to the rpcs3 wiki page to make sure that your settings are correctly matching what is listed there as i also said it is massively important that you apply the correct patches to your game following the section that i showed you earlier on on enabling them for example if i was not using the performance and graphical patches for god of war 3 i will be running at close to 25 frames per second instead of the 60 you can currently see me playing at right now as always if you're still confused on anything i've shown in this guide do not be afraid to ask me either in a comment down below this video or over on my discord server i'll link to which you can find it down in this video's description and i will help you out with your issues absolutely no problem at all additionally if you need any other help the guys over on the rpcs3 server are also very very helpful so don't be afraid to ask for assistance in their help channel over on their discord again a link to which you can find in this video's description that's going to be it for this video guys once again thank you all very much for watching i greatly appreciate it as always remember to like this video if you liked it dislike it if you didn't and subscribe to my channel if you want to see all future videos from me

Channel: BSoD Gaming

Views: 237,744

Keywords: RPCS3 Guide, RPCS3, Playstation, Playstation 3, PS3 Emulator, PS3, PS4 Emulator, PS5, PS5 Emulator, Emulation, Persona 5, Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us, Metal Gear Solid 4, MGS4, God of War, God of War 3, PS3 Game downloads, PS3 Game Updates, RPCS3 Discord, BSoD, Cemu, Xenia, Yuzu, Ryujinx, Console emulator, Playstation emulator, PS3 Firmware, RPCS3 Patreon

Id: t_fbcgzmxHs

Length: 26min 16sec (1576 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020