Demon's Souls reaches 40-50 FPS on private PS5 emulator with accurate graphics — KyTyPS5 surges from unplayable 1-2 FPS in just three weeks, new milestone comes only three weeks after the game barely booted

Few projects in the software world have experienced such rapid evolution as PlayStation 5 emulation. A few hours ago, a video popped up of Demon's Souls Remake running at 40-50 FPS, seemingly with accurate graphics. Coincidentally or not, only scant months after Sony ditched physical releases of games — an announcement that landed as well as the Hindenburg — progress on KyTyPS5, SharpEmu, and AnyPS5 has gone into overdrive.

The video above is short and only shows a few sections of the game, but it's an impressive watch. Even acknowledging that the hardware specs displayed comprise an RTX 5090 and a Core i9-14900K, having a game working this well, at least graphically, only a month after "barely works" was a landmark is nothing short of staggering.

To wit, KyTyPS5 was running Demon's Souls Remake with 1-2 FPS on actual gameplay three weeks ago, and struggling to reach 30 FPS a fortnight past. The same emulator has been shown partially running GTA V before at 40-60 FPS, but that's an older title that presumably isn't as demanding asDemon's Souls.

The fact that the PlayStation 5's architecture is so similar to a standard PC apart from unified memory is a big reason why progress has been so speedy. As it stands, the major roadblocks aren't emulating a CPU or a GPU, but rather writing compatibility layers for the console's operating system and drivers, including but not limited to converting native graphics shaders to Vulkan's SPIR-V language.

Given the demo video's lack of stuttering, it's a reasonable assumption that the captured video was done after an initial run to avoid shader recompilation hitches. This particular aspect of emulation has always been a constant thorn in developers' side, as it's exceedingly difficult to predict which shaders a game will need before they're actually used.

The current best approach is to asynchronously compile and collect shaders from gamers' playthroughs and build a community database for preloading. This concept was popularized by RPCS3 around 2018, with a small team and limited to no budget.

Although Nvidia and AMD drivers have cached shaders in limited fashion for a long while, RPCS3's effort appeared seven years before Nvidia and Microsoft, with their gigantic piles of money, bothered to try and fix this issue properly with their Auto Shader Compilation and Advanced Shader Delivery, respectively.

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Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.

• • Reply Demon's Souls is not an obscure game, what's being emulated here is the remake for PS5:PEnns said:Where do you find such obscure games and why should 99% of the garners who never heard of them care??

    And since when is 40 FPS the holy grail on any platform?
    I think 30 FPS is the minimum target you want to hit to be considered playable (e.g. 720p30 on the Steam Deck), 40-50 FPS is relevant (48 FPS is usually the minimum VRR, and it's double the cinematic 24 FPS frame rate, see Peter Jackson and The Hobbit). And then 60 FPS is the actual holy grail.Demon's Souls introduced many of the core elements that would define the Soulslike genre and it has since been cited as one of the greatest games of all time. Its success led to the spiritual successor seriesDark Souls. FromSoftware's relationship with Sony would lead to the release of* Bloodborneand Déraciné*, while a remake of the same name was released in 2020 for the PlayStation 5.

  • Reply Thanks for elaborating! 👍usertests said:Demon's Souls is not an obscure game, what's being emulated here is the remake for PS5:

    I think 30 FPS is the minimum target you want to hit to be considered playable (e.g. 720p30 on the Steam Deck), 40-50 FPS is relevant (48 FPS is usually the minimum VRR, and it's double the cinematic 24 FPS frame rate, see Peter Jackson and The Hobbit). And then 60 FPS is the actual holy grail.