PS3 Emulator RPCS3 shows major progress with new fixes and features

Team RPCS3 confirms major improvements for their PlayStation 3 emulator

The RPCS3 team has confirmed that they have made significant progress with their PlayStation 3 emulator. Over the past few months, several new features have come to RPCS3, including easier game booting with “Plug and Play“, and support for playing games with ISO images (which are playable using compatible blu ray drives).

One recent highlight is an update to how “RSX morton swizzle handling on wide texel formats” is handled. This has resulted in graphical fixes in a huge list of games. This includes Resistance: Fall of Man, Resistance 2, Half-Life 2, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and many more games.

Note that RPSC3’s updates are never game-specific. Yes, some improvements fix specific emulation issues in certain titles, but this is due to overall emulation accuracy improvements, not game-specific hacks. So while visual fixes have been reported across many games, RPCS3’s list of confirmed visual fixes is limited by the team’s testing capacity and the games they are willing to test.

RSX morton swizzle handling on wide texel formats was fixed.

This fixes graphical issues in several games such as:
– Resistance 1 and 2
– Half-Life 2
– MLB 07 and 08
– MX vs. ATV: Untamed
– NFS: Hot Pursuit
– Sonic & All-Stars Transformed Racing
– The BIGS 1
…and many others! pic.twitter.com/WUl4aMQonY

— RPCS3 (@rpcs3) June 8, 2026

Below, we have a video from the RPCS3 team that details the improvements made to RPCS3 over the past two months. Note that there are graphical improvements to many PS3 exclusives like Resistance 2, Ratchet and Clank: Into the Nexus, and Uncharted. As noted before, the RPCS3 team expects more games to have improved than that their team was able to find.

As of now, the RPCS3 Emulator classifies 73.93% of games as “playable”. Compared to the start of this year, this is major progress. After all, RPCS3 only passed 70% playability in January.

Last month, the RPCS3 team were able to announce a major “breakthrough” in SPU emulation. This change alone delivered a 5-7% performance gain in Twisted Metal, an SPU-heavy game. This change boosts the performance of all PlayStation 3 games on RPCS3. After all, the PlayStation 3’s SPUs are the console’s defining feature.

Congratulations to the RPCS3 team for their recent progress. Your efforts to preserve the PlayStation 3’s extensive game library are appreciated.

You can join the discussion on RPSC3’s latest improvements on the OC3D Forums.