PSVita: udcd_uvc 1.4 released with the ability to turn off the PSVita’s Screen and a look at VitaNuova’s Bounties!
In every homebrew community, there are numerous developers that give their own great contributions to the platform. However, some of these manage to do things that are seemingly impossible and xerpi’s one of these with his udcd_uvc plugin that he’s made even better by adding a very useful feature! We’ll also be looking at Rinnegatamante’s Vita Nuova which is a community for users/developers to work together on creating/funding bounties.
Release: UDCD_UVC Plugin updated to version 1.4
Udcd_uvc is a kernel plugin, by xerpi, that lets you stream your PSVita’s screen to a computer through a wired connection. In other words, this means that the plugin gives the PSVita a feature similar to the Nintendo Switch’s Docked Mode which is a major selling point of the console as you can start playing games on the go and continue them on a big screen at home.
When it comes to performance, it’s pretty good as it can sustain a very playable framerate almost all the time although it may struggle with keeping up a 60 FPS stream so you’ll have to live with the occasional framedrop but it shouldn’t affect playability at all.
Now, this plugin has been updated to version 1.4 and this brings along a highly requested feature. The full list of changes includes:
- The plugin now supports turning the screen off when the it is enabled and a USB cable is plugged into the console
- This allows you to save some battery life while also making the experience a tad better if you’re using the PSVita as the controller
- There are 3 separate versions now namely:
- udcd_uvc.skprx – Doesn’t turn the screen off
- udcd_uvc_oled_off.skprx – Turns the screen off on OLED (Phat) models
- udcd_uvc_lcd_off.skprx – Turns the screen off on LCD (Slim) models
To grab this updated version of udcd_uvc and put your Vita’s screen to sleep when streaming, check out this link. You can also follow this tutorial to get streaming to your PC in a few minutes if you haven’t done it before!
News: Rinnegatamante launches Vita Nuova making it easier for bounties to materialise
Without a doubt, Rinnegatamante is one of the most active PSVita scene members, so much so that he even wrote his thesis about porting Quake III to the console!
2 days ago, he came up with yet another contribution to the scene and that’s the creation of Vita Nuova, a Vita community that focuses on bridging the gap between developers and end-users while also focusing on promoting bounties for the platform.
As of right now, Vita Nuova consists of a slightly updated VitaDB, a Discord server where users/developers can discuss things related to Vita development and a bounty tracker with a few bounties that Rinnegatamante himself started. The bounty tracker includes bounties for:
- GPU acceleration in RetroArch for the Vita which has raised a staggering $1172
- A Reicast port for the Vita which has raised $50 but is most likely just a pipedream.
- A port of the GemRB engine which would allow you to play Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment on the Vita. This has raised a modest $30 at the moment
- A VCMI port for the Vita that lets you play Heroes of Might and Magic III. This too has raised $30
- A VitaGL-based port of Vita2D which would let all homebrew making use of Vita2D to also use Dear ImGUI and other VitaGL benefits. This raised $40
If you wish to start another bounty and add it to the bounty tracker, you can follow the steps found on the bounty tracker itself which more or less instruct you to create a bounty on BountySource and create an issue on the Vita Nuova bounties repo.
Conclusion
For more PSVita-related stuff, make sure to check out this article written on HENkaku 3rd anniversary which speaks about a Deltarune port and some cool stuff from Yifan Lu and xerpi. If you want something different, you may be interested in RPCS3’s recent progress with NieR Replicant and Gestalt which can now break the 30 FPS limit thanks to a patch by Whatcookie!
I wouldn’t call standard on hard “good results”.
Many games from android (like gof2, titan quest, etc) must have for vita.. but for now it`s too just dream..
Dreamcast emulation could work if ported well. The GPU’s certainly powerful enough. The CPU/translation side’s tricky, though. IMO they should really find a way to utilize both the PSP & Vita core simultaneously through homebrew, it’d be wonderful for emulation.