Orbital
| |
| Developer(s) | AlexAltea & Orbital community |
|---|---|
| Latest version | N/A |
| Active | Yes |
| Platform(s) | Windows Linux |
| Architecture(s) | x86_64 |
| Emulates | PlayStation 4 |
| Website | phi.nz/Orbital |
| Support ($) | Patreon GitHub Sponsor |
| License | MIT |
| Source code | GitHub |
Orbital is a free and open-source, virtualization-based PlayStation 4 emulator for Windows and Linux. It can only boot the firmware. Do not expect to play commercial games with it. It is a low-level emulator.
Overview[edit]
The lead developer, Alexandro Sanchez (AKA 'AlexAltea'), started working on the Orbital program the day he launched it publicly on GitHub on October 29, 2017. On 18 March, 2019, AlexAltea revealed on Twitter that Orbital was able to boot into Safe Mode from PS4 5.xx kernels on PC, with graphical output.
According to AlexAltea, Orbital relies on "hardware-accelerated virtualization, not emulation, so it yields near-native performance. If anything, there could be bottlenecks in GPU rendering, e.g. due to UMA, but [he had been] working on ways to reduce overhead there." Orbital uses SPIR-V for hardware-accelerated virtualization - it is a low-level shader language used in the Vulkan graphics API. The program is driving graphical output by fully emulating the AMD GPU via the Vulkan backend and recompiling GCN bytecode to SPIR-V.
External links[edit]
- Official Discord channel for Orbital
- Twitter (Lead programmer AlexAltea)
