As opposed to Nintendo’s consoles, modern Sony consoles are generally tougher to emulate and as a result, get usable emulators much later in their lifetime. In the past 2 years, efforts to emulate the PS4 have been ramping up and currently, there are two main emulators namely Orbital (no playable games) and Spine (a few 2D games are playable) but now, Force67 has started working on PS4Delta which unlike these two is a compatibility layer and not an emulator!

What is PS4Delta? What’s the difference between an emulator and a compatibility layer?

Like WINE, PS4Delta is a compatibility layer so it runs games through high-level emulation since the PS4 shares the same architecture as modern PCs!

According to information from its GitHub page and Discord channel, work on PS4Delta started sometime this August and is currently in very early stages meaning that it won’t let you play or even boot any PS4 games just yet. Contrary to other emulation solutions, PS4Delta is not an emulator in the traditional sense but a compatibility layer similar to WINE in which HLE (High Level Emulation) is achieved rather than LLE (Low Level Emulation) meaning that it doesn’t work by imitating the behaviour of PS4 hardware devices through virtualisation.

However, it works by translating PS4 system calls into native calls for Windows which is possible because the PS4 uses x86-64 architecture which is the same one used by the vast majority of modern PCs. On a different note, it’s important to mention that PS4Delta is completely open-source and written in C++ so anybody with knowledge in emulation can contribute to its development. (GitHub link below)

How much progress has been done? When can I expect to be able to play games?

In the near future, PS4Delta might start booting some PS4 titles which is pretty exciting although graphical output shouldn’t be expected at this point

As previously mentioned, the emulator is still in early stages but from some comments on Discord and GitHub commits, the following progress appears to have been done:

• ELF files (executables) can run and it’s been able to enter the main loop of Journey (a commercial PS4 game)
• Some work on implementing I/O (file access) has been done
• PS4Delta is able to decrypt all imports and to resolve stubs which means that the next step is implementing the PS4’s functions

When it comes to running games, you shouldn’t expect to be able to run commercial games any time soon but Forcez said on Discord that after he implements functions for the stubs he’s been able to identify, the first games will be able to boot. Furthermore, Joeakuaku who is a member in the Discord channel that seems pretty involved said that “we’re very close to game booting” which is pretty encouraging.

Conclusion

Assuming that the current development momentum keeps on going and Force67 gets some help from other developers especially in graphics emulation, PS4Delta might become something that you should definitely keep your eye on!

Update: Developer ‘Inori’ who was working on GPCS4 (yet another PS4 emulator) has agreed to collaborate with Force67 on the development of PS4Delta!

PS4Delta’s Discord Invite (discussion about what’s going on): https://discordapp.com/invite/yVbPkmc

PS4Delta’s GitHub (source code): https://github.com/Force67/ps4delta