News: FERROX 4.85 CFW with Cobra 8.20 released for the PlayStation 3 and RetroArch 1.8.1 is out with accelerometer/gyroscope support on PSVita & Switch, further improvements to mobile UI and more!
Up till 8 days ago, there were no major CFWs for PlayStation 3 consoles on FW 4.85 and as a result, many opted to install a FW 4.84-based CFW by toggling the QA flag. However, that changed as first we got Rebug 4.85.1 LITE and now, we have FERROX 4.85 which is another well-known CFW. Other than that, we’ll also be looking at the release of RetroArch 1.8.1 which comes with some welcome improvements.
PS3 Release: FERROX 4.85 CFW released for CFW-compatible PS3 consoles
As the PlayStation 3 is over a decade old, CFW releases are usually taking longer when Sony decides to push out a new firmware update due to less people working on them.
However, some dedicated developers still remain and CFWs still keep being updated and last week, we had Rebug 4.85.1 LITE from Rebug Team. Now, another CFW has descended upon us and that’s FERROX 4.85 thanks to work by developer @Alexander which took a while to be release due to the developer being pretty busy lately.
Together with the usual features of FERROX CFWs, FERROX 4.85 brings along:
- An updated version of Cobra, now sporting version 8.20
- 4.85 keys for games signed with them
- The ability to install it from HFW 4.85.1 after running the NOR/NAND flasher
- Other features which can be seen by following the link below. Obviously, you need a CFW-compatible PS3 [minver of 3.56 or lower] to install FERROX.
To download the PUP file for FERROX 4.85, check out this link (direct MEGA link as the release thread hides links if you don’t have account). The MD5 of the PUP is ‘ab1bd8c18b8b27af1a06fc2034b4463f’. An English translation of the FERROX 4.85’s release thread (which is in Italian) can be found here on PSX-Place.
Emulation News: RetroArch 1.8.1 released with accelerometer/gyroscope support on PSVita/Switch and improvements to mobile UI among other things
Until a short while ago, RetroArch releases happened every few months but with RetroArch 1.7.9, the team behind it committed to releasing more frequent updates in order to better respond to user feedback. Without a doubt, they committed to what they promised as RetroArch 1.8.0 was released a mere 3 weeks after the previous version and RetroArch 1.8.1 reduced that to only 8 days!
If you’re unaware of what RetroArch is, it’s a front-end for managing multiple emulators and game engines (like PrBoom for DOOM) which it calls cores.
Other than simply letting you access all your retro games from one place, it also comes with many features of its own including a feature promising better latency than the console itself provides, a highly customisable user interface and support for a whole slew of platforms which has made it the application of choice for anyone interested in emulating retro consoles.
Now, RetroArch 1.8.1 has been released and this brings along:
- The MaterialUI menu driver, which is mostly intended for use with Android and iOS devices, now supports thumbnails for nicer-looking game lists and comes with more themes including Cutie & Virtual Boy
- Automatic thumbnail downloading in playlists is now enabled by default on iOS and Android
- It can disabled by going to ‘Main Menu -> Online Updater -> On-Demand Thumbnail Downloads’
- The PSVita and Switch ports of RetroArch gained accelerometer and gyroscope support with the Switch port also gaining illuminance sensor support
- The XMB menu driver gained a new theme called Sunbeam
- Updated French, Polish and Spanish translations
- Other bug fixes and minor features to different parts of the emulator which can be viewed in the link below
Other than the release of version 1.8.1, there are other interesting developments going on in relation to RetroArch such the DOOM 3 core, a blog post on which will be up shortly. Furthermore, the RetroArch team will be publishing some significant announcements regarding emulation so that’s definitely something to look forward to in the future!
To grab RetroArch 1.8.1, check out this link and select the download for the platform of your choice. To read more about it, follow this link instead.
Conclusion
Other than RetroArch 1.8.1 and FERROX 4.85, some noteworthy Nintendo 3DS homebrew was also released over the weekend which includes custom-install (an application to install CIAs to a 3DS’ SD Card from a PC so no more long waiting times) and TwiLight Menu++ 11.0.0.
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