Release 2.02 covers live-20 through live-22, built on top of 2.01 (vk-285-161).
Download
PS5SX2-vk-285-162.zip: the app (eboot and files). The installer installs it for you.
SHA-256:6030dba6eca71c7d8ef2f1e4c0055ae0f665b3d61e7a33fc26262140be1c0de0ps5sx2-aio.elf: the all-in-one (helper, installer and disc-auto launcher). Same file as 2.01; still the only payload you need. Run it from your payload manager.
SHA-256:b52c7a70c266826974314417bc059063b6e8ab0b8cc9537471f65f0e4915560d
New features
đē CRT, Scanlines, VHS and VHS Soft display filters
Four new display filters, requested by players and tuned against reference shots from real hardware. Choose them in the settings sheet, on the companion web page, or cycle through them with L3+R3. At 1080p the 480-line Scanlines filter looks softer, because each PS2 line covers 2.25 screen pixels.
đŋ Disc copy progress on the shelf
While a PS2 disc is being copied, the shelf shows it as an entry with a spinning disc, a progress arc and the percentage ("Copying NN%"). It can't be started until the copy is done. Disc auto-play from the XMB works as before: it copies the disc if needed, or starts the existing copy straight away.
đšī¸ Touchpad left / right on a click
Touchpad left and right (Controls â Touchpad) now trigger when you click that half of the pad, not when a finger rests on it. When the clicked side has its own input, only that input is pressed. A side with nothing assigned keeps the plain touchpad click. The touch zones used by the save / load / fast-forward / disc combos are unchanged.
âī¸ God of War II recommended settings
God of War II (SCUS-97481) has a Recommended preset: 6x resolution, Widescreen 16:9, its GameDB fixes and PS2 texture filtering. Texture filtering 1 is now labelled "Bilinear (forced)". Live apply now says that frame generation takes effect at the next launch.
Fixes
⥠Faster startup
Two things made the black screen between opening PS5SX2 and the shelf long on 2.01:
- Elevation tried the Lapy daemon four times for 10 seconds each, so consoles using etaHEN, OnionHEN or the Helper waited about 40 seconds. PS5SX2 now tries whichever method worked last time first, with short probes for the others, and does nothing if it already runs as root.
- Every disc image's serial was read again on every start, which took over 100 seconds on a 2,300-game NFS library. Serials are now cached by path, size and date for every image format.
boot.log now shows [boot] t+N ms timings for each startup phase, and [elevate] lines for elevation.
đĨī¸ Black screen when a game starts
On one console, every game start stopped at Opening CDVD... because the USB drive holding the games stopped answering. Since 2.01, the guitar/pad scan sent a USB request to every unknown device, including the game drive, on each start and about every 30 seconds after. It no longer does that outside guitar and pad games. If the game image's first read still takes longer than 5 seconds, PS5SX2 now logs it and shows a notification to unplug and replug the drive. The watchdog also logs which startup step was stuck, and for how long.
đ¸ DualSense freeze in Guitar Hero
On some consoles the guitar/pad scan read the internal Bluetooth module, which carries the DualSense's input, and that froze the controller. It could also pick up a USB audio device as a "PS3 pad". The scan now goes by the device class: it leaves Bluetooth, audio, hub, storage and Sony devices alone, and only reads the gamepad's own input endpoint.
đĄ Covers for very large NFS libraries
- Cover textures are kept only for games near the current selection.
- Boxes no longer disappear in libraries with more than 1,020 games.
- Downloads use PS5SX2's own HTTPS client, so they keep working after the jailbreak, and pause if GitHub rate-limits them.
- A 2,600-game library now uses about 250 MB instead of more than 3 GB.
đĻ Castlevania: Curse of Darkness menu freeze
MTVU is now off for this game (all regions), like Lament of Innocence. Its menu ran out of VU time with MTVU on.
đ¤ī¸ God of War intro sky
2.01's mip-level fix for Ratchet & Clank ran on every draw and could overwrite good texture data. It now runs only when the game uploads textures. This should bring back the sky that was missing in God of War's intro. Please report if you still see it, and whether the Ratchet & Clank ring artefact after cutscenes stays fixed.
đ Overlay VU load
"VU 100" showed for an idle VU thread (for example NBA Street). The overlay's VU load now counts only time spent working.
Credits
The disc drive support in this release (an experimental flag, off by default) builds on Heyde Moura's contribution in PR #34.
PS5SX2 is made in my free time. If it brought your PS2 games back to life, please consider supporting it on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/sword95
Thanks to everyone who tested, sent logs and reference photos.