PS5_MihawkOS-v8.0.0-alpha-8

MihawkOS is a passion project, not a piracy project.

It exists so you can play the games you own on the console you own.

• Piracy is not condoned.
• No games, saves, keys, firmware or exploits are included, and they never will be.
• Use only games and programs you have the right to run: your own copies, bought or installed by you.
• Requests for, or links to, games, keys, firmware or exploits are not welcome in this project's issues or discussions.

A glass control panel over every game. Your controller in more games. Steadier frames, and far fewer freezes.

The eighth alpha of MihawkOS, the homebrew title that runs Windows games on a PS5 from a desktop of their own,
Mihawk OS. It is still experimental. From 7.1, MihawkOS offers this update by itself. The first start after updating
takes longer, once: every Windows setup refreshes its Windows files a single time.

The control overlay

Press L3 + R3 during a game. A frosted-glass panel opens over it, the game still running behind, with five buttons:

• Exit ends the game and brings you back to MihawkOS.
• Statistics shows a small box in the top-left corner: frame rate, frame time, GPU load, and the console's page
  tables in both pools, so you can see when a game is near the console's limits. It costs the game about 0.2 ms per frame.
• Keyboard opens MihawkOS's own on-screen keyboard.
• Mouse turns the mouse off and on while you play.
• Controller changes which controller the game sees, Xbox 360, Xbox One or DualSense, while it runs. The panel
  says what to expect from each one.

The panel keeps a 120 Hz game smooth while it is open: 119.8 to 119.9 frames per second, measured on the console.

Your controller in more games

• Games that never saw the controller now do. Until 7.1, only games that use XInput found your controller. Games that
  read it through DirectInput, raw input, winmm or SDL, and the engines built on them, now find it too.
  Ys Origin, which never saw the controller before, now responds to it in the Xbox 360 and Xbox One layouts.
• The controller is ready 25 to 70 ms after a game starts.
• In DualSense mode, some older games number the buttons the way Windows does (Cross is button 2). That is expected:
  pick an Xbox layout in the overlay for those games.

Typing in real time

• The on-screen keyboard types into the game as you go, one key at a time, instead of all at once at the end.
• Backspace deletes in the game.
• No stray "q" appears when the keyboard opens (thanks to the tester who reported it).

Online games connect again

• Games and launchers that go online through Windows' WinHTTP could not connect: every request was refused before
  it left the console. They now connect, inside MihawkOS and outside it, checked on the console against a test server.

Steadier frames

• Games wait for the TV, as on a PC. A game with VSync on now holds 119.8 fps at 120 Hz and 59.9 fps at 60 Hz,
  without the extra frame limiter that caused the camera and input lag some players reported (Fable, for example).
• Games running below your TV's resolution reach the screen 3.3 times faster.

Fewer freezes and crashes

• Unity games no longer freeze themselves. A game that paused one of its own threads at the wrong moment could stop
  forever. Our test program pauses and resumes a game's threads 300 times in a row: it now passes every time, inside
  MihawkOS and outside it (10 of 10 runs on the console).
• No more freeze when a game's crash reporter starts.
• Games inside MihawkOS no longer damage MihawkOS's own memory, a rare cause of crashes and odd behaviour.
• Games inside MihawkOS no longer collide with the graphics driver's memory. A game, or a browser built into it,
  could be handed memory the graphics driver also used, and crash later.
• Games keep their own thread priorities, so audio and input threads react on time, never above MihawkOS itself.
• Games started from a launcher or a Steam shortcut, also on another drive, keep their library setting and run
  inside MihawkOS like the rest of your library.
• No more black screen in games that ask for more memory than any PS5 has, such as Spelunky 2 from Steam.
  MihawkOS now places such a request elsewhere by itself, with no setting per game.
• Direct3D 12 games get twice the graphics upload memory inside MihawkOS (2 GiB instead of 1), so games that ran
  out of it at start stop failing there. Checked on the console: a game inside MihawkOS reached 1,984 MiB.
• Games that time their frames with the GPU's clock now get real readings (they all read 0 before).
• Games learn which processor core each of their threads runs on; until now every thread was told core 0.
• A freeze leaves a record. If a game stops drawing for about 20 seconds, MihawkOS writes a snapshot of what it was
  doing into the log, so a freeze report shows where it stuck.
• Crash logs say where a game crashed: the file, the place in it, the address it touched and the thread, also for
  games that catch their own crashes. Please send your log with every crash report.

Visual C++ already installed

• Every Windows setup now says Visual C++ 2010, 2012 and 2013 are installed, next to 2015–2022, which were already
  recorded. Launchers and installers that check before starting a game stop asking.
• A game's own Visual C++ installer still works: it finishes quietly (tested on the console: install 9.7 s, exit 0).

Steam on consoles with little room

• Steam needs about 2,000 of the console's 8,192 system page tables. On firmware 10.xx to 11.xx there is often less
  room. If fewer than 2,800 are free, MihawkOS now stops Steam as it starts and shows what to do, instead of letting it
  fail halfway.
• Steam itself works as in 7.1.

Played on the console

This release's build was tested on a standard PS5 (firmware 13.60), with every file on the console checked against
the build.

• The full test battery of 137 cases on a freshly restarted console, on the final build: 135 passed, and the 2 DNS cases passed with one check each skipped by a test-network setting (run a8final-base-2026-11-03-gate).
• The thread-pause test, 10 runs (5 inside MihawkOS, 5 outside): all passed, about 17–18 s each.
• 7.1 updating itself to Alpha 8 over an existing 7.1 setup: passed: 7.1 found Alpha 8, downloaded it, checked its signature and switched; the next start installed the new Windows runtime in 31 s, and the first game afterwards ran Alpha 8's Windows files, in the runtime and in the existing setup, checked file by file.
• The control overlay: its buttons, the statistics box (checked against the console's own frame counter) and
  120 Hz with the panel open.
• Controller: 13 of 13 checks in every layout.

Known limits

• Not fixed yet on the controller: camera drift, the Create button, the touchpad as a mouse, the Steam Input cursor,
  and input lag. They are planned for a later update.
• Steam's browser still runs beside MihawkOS, not inside it. Moving it inside (lighter on the console), and letting
  a game take the room Steam used when it starts, come in 8.1.
• Restart the PS5 now and then. Pipe memory runs out after very many program starts; MihawkOS says Restart the
  PS5 when that happens.
• The per-boot setup is yours: your payloads after every cold boot. Never use rest mode with payloads loaded.
• Not supported: DRM such as Denuvo, and anti-cheat such as Easy Anti-Cheat or BattlEye.

Everything else from 7.1 still applies.

Installing or updating

From 7.1: open MihawkOS from the home screen. It finds Alpha 8, downloads it, checks its signature and installs it
when you restart it. The first game you start afterwards takes longer, once.

From Alpha 7: replace the PPSA99170 folder in /data/homebrew/ with the new one and open MihawkOS: it installs
the new runtime by itself.

New install, or from Alpha 6: follow Alpha 7's steps
with this release's zip. Back up your saves first when updating.

Your setup, your games in C:\Games, Steam and your settings are kept.

No games, saves, keys or firmware are supplied. Use only games and programs you have the right to run.

Source, licences and credits

Changes since v7.1.0-alpha-7. Release source: the
complete corresponding source is the repository at that tag. The overlay's drawing over the game and the frame pacing
live in PS5_Vulkan (ace98a9), pinned by commit. MihawkOS is free software
under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later; each component keeps its own licence, listed with its pin in
NOTICE.md.

Thank you to the testers who sent their logs, screenshots and videos: they found the games that never saw the
controller, the crashes in Forza Horizon and NFS Heat, the lag in Fable and Steam running out of room on older firmware.
Thanks also to Skeuoss for Bubble City, and to the Wine, Proton, DXVK, VKD3D-Proton and Mesa
developers.

MihawkOS is an independent hobby project, not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Sony Interactive
Entertainment, Microsoft, Valve, AMD or any game publisher. PlayStation, PS5 and DualSense are trademarks of Sony
Interactive Entertainment Inc.; Windows and Xbox are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation; Steam and Proton are trademarks
of Valve Corporation; Radeon is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. You are responsible for having the right to
the programs you run, and for whether modifying your console is lawful where you live (LEGAL.md).

Ready to get started? Available releases · Installation guide · Source and credits