RPCS3 has been in development for more than five years, and its growth has been impressive. Compatibility and speed details are slowly being left behind, giving way to solid advances in graphical quality. The latest build of the PlayStation 3 emulator includes a special high-resolution rendering mode, and it is so powerful that it could reach 10K—provided the right hardware exists within a few years.
Personally, I am convinced that the PC is a superior gaming platform, but I must admit that certain console exclusives are very interesting. One of the most cited examples is Red Dead Redemption. This game is seven years old, and Rockstar explained on several occasions that there will never be a PC-compatible port. Some data shared by ex-employees suggest that Red Dead works by accident on X360 and PS3, the result of rushed development with no structure. The only way for the game to reach PCs would be to start almost from scratch... but we can take a shortcut, which is emulation. That is where our example ends, because the RPCS3 emulator still has issues with Red Dead; however, if you are interested in trying other PlayStation 3 games, you should download the latest build.
What does it bring new? The first thing on the list is support for high-resolution rendering. If we recall, the native resolution on the PlayStation 3 is 720p, although some games upscale to 1080p. That is the path the emulator follows. The recommendation is to keep the base parameter at 720p and modify the scaling percentage until reaching the desired resolution. If speed issues are severe, the user can cut the value in half and render 720p at 640 by 360, sacrificing quality. In the other direction, the slider reaches 10K, an option that basically thinks about the future of the emulator, because currently there is no hardware that can move that many pixels, beyond certain attempts.
The alternative is to take RPCS3 and play in 4K and 1440p modes, forcing anisotropic filtering at 16x. As the official video shows, the graphical differences are significant and help revitalize games that already have six or seven years on their shoulders. Hardware requirements? All, with emphasis on graphics cards compatible with Vulkan.
