Without a doubt, two of the most active hacking scenes are the PlayStation Vita & Switch scenes and today, we’re going to look at stuff that will have notable implications in the future. In this article, we’ll be looking at the cuevavirus’ version of vitaQuake that renders @ 1080p on the PSTV together with checking out Atmosphere’s recently published Roadmap.
Cuevavirus releases vitaQuake 4.11 – the first PSVita homebrew running at 1080p!
A few days ago, Team CBPS member Cuevavirus (or Marburg) released vitaQuake 4.11 which from the outside simply looks like a modified version of the latest version of vitaQuake but in reality, it brings along a first in the PlayStation Vita & PSTV homebrew scene.
As the PSVita’s screen resolution is 960×544, the PlayStation TV renders stuff at that resolution as well but cuevavirus has managed to get vitaQuake running @ resolutions up to 1080p!
This is because vitaQuake 4.11 is able to render at either 1280×720 (720p), 1440×1080 or 1920×1080 (1080p) on the PlayStation TV which is much higher than the PlayStation Vita’s 960×544 resolution which is what it’s based on.
According to the forum post for vitaQuake 4.11 (linked below), the game is able to run at 60FPS by overclocking the PlayStation TV presumably to 494MHz which is the highest frequency that it can currently run at thanks to plugins like LOLIcon and Electry’s PSVshell. However, other than allowing to run Quake I at 720/1080p on your PSTV, this development has also created new possibilities when it comes to PlayStation TV homebrew development since we may see more homebrew games gaining the ability to run at resolutions higher than 960×544 thus differentiating the PSTV from the regular PSVita.
Furthermore, cuevavirus’ work on rendering at resolutions higher than 960×544 and getting them to actually be outputted may also lead to some non-demanding commercial games potentially being rendered at 720p or even 1080p thus giving the PSTV an edge over a PlayStation Vita with the udcd_uvc plugin. If it does indeed become possible to render some games at resolutions above 544p, perhaps udcd_uvc could be updated to support streaming the Vita’s screen at higher resolutions like 720p but then bandwidth over USB may become an issue.
For more information and a download link, check out vitaQuake 4.11’s release post on Team CBPS’ forums.
Atmosphere’s roadmap for 2020 & 2021 revealed with various goals set
On Monday, the roadmap for Atmosphère which is of the most popular CFWs for the Nintendo Switch received a significant update which clearly defines what the Atmosphère Team are and will be up to for quite some time. With Atmosphère gaining plenty more users soon thanks to Team Xecuter’s upcoming hacking solutions for non-hackable Switch consoles including the Switch Lite, the team behind it are currently envisaging the following features:
- The addition of System Updater API
- This will provide an interface which homebrew can use to safely install system upgrades or downgrades thus providing an easy way to transition between firmware versions
- It’s estimated that this will come in May 2020 and it’s currently under active development by SciresM
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The team behind Atmosphere was always hard at work implementing new features and under-the-hood improvements and now, they’ve published a document detailing what you should expect next!
- A re-implementation of the Settings System Module
- This will simplify Atmosphère’s boot process while also allowing for more flexibility over different types of system settings
- It’s currently going under research by Adubbz and initial development has already started. A Mid-2020 ETA has been provided
- Mesosphère which is a re-implementation of Horizon OS’ kernel thus providing an open-source reference for Nintendo’s low-level code
- It’s currently under semi-active development by SciresM with a completion target of mid-to-late 2020
- A re-write of Exosphère so that it gets with the times as there are numerous constraints which are no longer applicable from when the component was created in early 2018
- This is planned to be released sometime in 2020 or 2021
- Stuff that will be seen in the more distant future which includes:
- A re-implemntation of the tma sysmodule which handles communication between the Switch and a PC – this will allow for homebrew to exchange data with a computer
- A re-implementation of the Switch’s debug monitor (dmnt.gen2)
- A re-implementation of the filesystem services module which will include fixes for bugs in Nintendo’s implementation including corruption when using exFAT and inconsistencies when encoding with UTF-8 and Shift-JIS
- The ability to virtualise the Switch’s OS through Thermosphère thus allowing one to debug the Switch’s kernel.
You may read the roadmap in all its glory by following this link. It’s important to state that the release estimates given may vary greatly and obviously, asking for ETAs is futile!
Conclusion
In other news, RetroPie 4.6 was released with beta support for the Raspberry Pi 4 together with RetroArch 1.8.5 and EmulationStation 2.9.1. On the 3DS front, Universal Updater 2.4.0 was released with faster CIA installation and extraction together with some other changes.
The post PSVita & Switch News: A look at cuevavirus’ feat in getting vitaQuake running @ 1080p on the PSTV & its implications on some commercial titles + Checking out Atmosphere’s Beefed Up Roadmap appeared first on Wololo.net.