Around a month ago, the PSVita received its first native Grand Theft Auto game thanks to work by Rinnegatamante and TheFlow who ported Grand Theft Auto III to the console. Now, this port has just received a major update which promises performance boosts of up to 40%!

What is re3-vita?

Thanks to Rinnegatamante’s and TheFlow’s efforts, you can play Grand Theft Auto III natively on your Vita or PSTV with excellent performance!

As the introduction suggests, re3-vita is a port of the open-source re3 engine for the PlayStation Vita which allows one to play Grand Theft Auto III natively. With Rinnegatamante & TheFlow being behind the port, it was received quite positively within the PSVita community as it finally granted the console a 3D GTA game that ran pretty well compared to the PSP’s GTA games which ran into evident performance issues especially when using TheFlow’s Native Resolution Patch.

Other than granting a GTA III port to the Vita, re3-vita may also pave the way for the creation of a GTA Vice City port on the console as the folks behind the re3 engine are working on extending its compatibility to this game as well due to its engine being somewhat similar to that of GTA III. In this regard, Rinnegatamante has also done some preliminary work in getting the work-in-progress ‘re3-miami’ branch (reVC) up and running on the PSVita with good results which will undoubtedly expedite the porting process when work on implementing GTA VC’s engine in re3 is complete.

What does re3-vita 1.1 bring along?

Released yesterday, re3-vita 1.1 is quite a significant release as it packs in:

• Performance improvements of around 40% thanks to the implementation of backface culling support
• The Pause menu now opens much quicker as pre-compression for textures not located within gta3.img has been implemented
  

  With re3-vita 1.1, performance is better than ever in a pretty significant manner 😉

• A “Free Cam” option has been added together with vibration support on the PlayStation TV
  • The “PostFX” option has been renamed to “Colour Filter”
• When starting a new game or loading a save, a loading screen with splash screen support has been implemented
• Improperly coloured textures have been fixed and very small textures are no longer corrupted
• In-game pop-ups now display PlayStation button icons rather than plain text
• The codebase has been updated to the latest version of the re3 engine and VitaGL together

Rinnegatamante advises those who are already running version 1.0 to update the data files with those that come with version 1.1 while also deleting the “txd.img” and “txd.dir” files before installing the new VPK. It is also recommended to turn the Frame Limiter off as frame rates higher than 30 are common now and these may break game physics.

Conclusion

You may read more about re3-vita 1.1 by following the link below to the port’s PSX-Place Thread. The VPK & data files may be downloaded off VitaDB and Rinnegatmanate/TheFlow can be donated to on Patreon.

re3-vita 1.1 change log: https://vitadb.rinnegatamante.it/#/info/589

re3-vita download link on VitaDB: https://www.psx-place.com/threads/re3-vita-a-full-reverse-engineered-reimplementation-of-gta-iii.31588/#post-266836

Rinnegatamante’s Patreon (monetary donations): https://www.patreon.com/Rinnegatamante

TheFlow’s Patreon (monetary donations): https://www.patreon.com/TheOfficialFloW