ARMSX3 1.5.2

ARMSX3 1.5.2

XMB

• The XMB starts up and reaches its menu again.

• Animated game icons keep playing smoothly, however fast you scroll through your games. Each decoded video frame now carries the data of the frame it came from, which the icon player relies on, one less crash while using XMB.

• Animated icons decode faster, with FFmpeg 8.1.1 and its ARM NEON code (more below).

• On Vulkan, the XMB keeps running when you switch apps, pull down the notification shade, or turn the screen off and back on, XMB no longer crashes.

• On OpenGL with Adreno's own driver, the XMB takes a lot less of the render thread: textures go to the GPU through a persistent upload buffer instead of a fresh copy for every upload. OpenGL games upload textures the same way.

GL before:

GL after:

Games

• Far Cry 3 loads into the world reliably on ARM. The SPU recompiler now prepares every function of each module it compiles, including programs it compiles a second time. done by @Whatcookie
• South Park: The Stick of Truth on OpenGL and any game with the same issues keeps the whole scene on screen with Adreno's own driver. Previously the game would not render properly on GL and was not playable.

• Castlevania: Harmony of Despair: after upgrading from the trial version to the full version of the game, the first load after a save compiles all of its DLC, which takes a while, so a banner now shows you the compilation progress through the 61 modules. Once trials are unlocked, it also shows as the full game in the library (and by extension on Discord RPC).

Video and audio

• Movies and cutscenes decode faster. ARMSX3 now builds FFmpeg 8.1.1 instead of 5.1, using the latest version RPCS3 ships, with the same components and its ARM NEON code.
• The app is about 5 MB smaller, since FFmpeg now carries only what PS3 games use.

App

• Triangle opens the highlighted game's quick menu in the game library: play, load state, settings, categories, clearing its caches and adding it to the home screen, all from the controller. Square still opens the game's settings.

• Clear SPU Cache and Clear PPU Cache in a game's own settings clear just that game, and every cache clear, including the one in a game's long-press menu, asks before deleting anything.

• The in-game menu reopens where you left it, on the same tab and option.

• The library screensaver starts after 5 minutes by default, instead of 10. A delay you already picked stays as it is.

• Frame dumps work on OpenGL ("Dump this frame" in the in-game menu).

From upstream RPCS3

• @kd-11: shader compilation runs at a lower priority, so it takes less time from the game while it works. Building PPU caches no longer loads a shader cache it doesn't need.
• @digant73: each decoded video frame carries the data of the frame it came from, which keeps the XMB's animated icons smooth.
• @Megamouse: the Vulkan memory allocator is updated to 3.5.0, and the overlay font code is reworked.
• @RipleyTom: online player lookups (sceNpLookupNpIdAsync) report their result.
• @AniLeo: RPCS3's FFmpeg 8.1.1 update, whose setup ARMSX3's FFmpeg build now follows.

Happy Halloween!