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Heartbeat
Both the SeaBIOS/GRUB forks have been removed in favor of using decrypted 80010002 images. During the past year massive progress has been done in both the emulator and hypervisor, although we are not ready yet to share details, we can provide a sneak peek in what's about to come for PS4 hackers/modders in terms of introspection and debugging capabilities. More news to follow soon!
Performance Improvements
Brief update: Bootloader now fetches decrypted kernels via IO, not AHCI. This fixes USB storage devices, including the internal HDD (there's a very long story behind this issue). There has been significant performance improvements resulting in smooth framerates. Texture loading issues are solved, which fixes some artifacts. We have added support for PUPMGR functions, though decryption is still pending pending, hence the error in the end. Several SAMU high-level emulation issues have been fixed. Finally, we added the possibility of reinstall...
DualShock Support
After last update, we have implemented the Aeolia XHCI device (USB 3.0)to get past the "Connect DualShock" message by connecting an actualgamepad to the PS4 VM via host passthrough. There were many issues in our way there and we have fixed those with the invaluable help of @jarves. As a future goal, we also want to implement a virtual USB device forthe DualShock 4 (as opposed to using an actual physical device).
Access to the Hard Drive
Brief update: After improving certain functions in the "AuthMgr" secure module of SAMU, we have fixed the permissions for the Safe Mode executable. This allows the virtual PS4 hard drive to be accessed and fixes the error (CE-34333-6) from the last update. As you can see, the next thing missing is adding support for Dualshock 4 gamepads. Stay tuned!
Graphical Output
After last update, we have reimplemented large parts of the PS4 GPU graphics pipeline using Vulkan and recompiling AMD GCN bytecode intoSPIR-V. This finally allows us to "see" the Safe Modemenu, booted from a PS4 5.xx kernel. At the moment, we receive an CE-343XX error which indicates a PS4 HDD failure. This issue is to be expected since we have booted the PS4 kernel without a valid HDD image. In the future, Safe Mode menu will have an important role when booting Orbital for the first time. The procedure to make the emulator work will b...
FreeBSD/Orbis Kernel Introspection
During the past month several real-time VM introspection tools have been added to Orbital. These tools allow us to analyze the state of the PS4 OS within the virtual machine, and can help considerably at tracking bugs down.These features include: GPU Debugger (DCE), Process List, Thread List, Executing Processes List, Device Statistics (PCI). Big thanks to @velocity and @jfhs for working in several of these tools.Additionally, big improvements have been done in Liverpool's DCE and GFX engines, which will showcased in an upcoming progress re...
Orbital UI
We now offer a ImGui-based to allow rapid prototyping of tools that could be useful to developers. Over the last couple of months work has focused mainly in two areas: improving the Intel HAXM hypervisor that powers Orbital and fixing issues on Aeolia/Liverpool devices that have prevented PS4 userland processes from booting.
