Important note going forward: updates will likely come much slower and less often from here on. Nearly all of the work now is performance work, and performance work takes longer: each change has to be tested extensively in game, and many give only a small gain. Rather than putting out a build for every half fps from a single fix, they'll come as bundles essentially. Crash/Bug fixes still go out when they're ready.
Thank you all so much for the overwhelming support on this project. I started this as a fun idea that I expected to go nowhere with. It definitely has not been easy and there is much, much more work to be done but we've come a long way in a very short time. It would not be where it is now without everyone's help testing and providing their own fixes and suggestions. More coming soon™.💜
No shaders compile again after this update: your shader cache from the last build is kept.
What's new
A crash in races fixed. The game rewrites its texture list while it streams textures in. The emulator could read an entry the game was halfway through rewriting, and it stopped. Now that entry gets a placeholder texture for a moment and is read again later. This was rare and depended on timing, so it could happen on earlier builds too.
Intel Arc, GTX 10xx and RX 5000 cards get past start-up (#20). These cards don't have fragment shader barycentrics, and the emulator used to stop without them. This fix comes from upstream KytyPS5 (thanks Matthew Hurley and nmzik). Whether the game runs on these cards isn't known yet, so please report how far it gets.
Speed work behind the scenes. The emulator's GPU thread now waits less when the game reads data back from the graphics card, plus a few smaller cuts. In test races the frame rate stayed about the same: the GPU thread handles every draw the game sends, and that is the limit now.
⚠️ Pop-in on new tracks is expected
The first time you drive a track, or a part of one, its shaders compile while you drive. Scenery, car details and reflections appear a moment late instead of the game freezing. They're cached afterwards, so the second time on that track everything is there from the start.
Known problems
- Scapes: the controls stop working after Olivier offers the drift photography tutorial (#19). The tutorial waits for the game's online servers, which the emulator has no stand-in for, so the Menu Book "Take a Photo of Your Car in Scapes" can't be finished yet. Closing the emulator is the only way out of it.
- AMD RX 9070 XT: races crash while they load, inside the AMD driver's shader compiler (#12). Workaround: start the emulator with
KYTY_SKIP_SHADER_HASHES=daced64c72398e80(the steps are in #12). That shader does some of the game's calculations, so something in races may be a little off. - Intel Arc, GTX 10xx and RX 5000 cards: the emulator now gets past start-up (see What's new), but the game itself is untested on them (#20).
- NVIDIA: the driver's shader compiler can crash while compiling new pipelines (#18). Being looked into; the crash report names the pipeline.
- Some distant trees (about 150 m away and further) look brighter and flatter than up close, because they get no shadow from far away. Being looked into.
- Livery editor: leaving it shows error CE-210717 (the game uploads the livery to its online service, which the emulator has no stand-in for). Some parts of a saved livery's picture can have the wrong colour.
- Tokyo: at twilight and night, the picture can turn green at some tunnel exits and under some overpasses. It depends on the camera angle, so the same replay can be green one time and not the next.
- Tokyo at night: some shadows on tunnel ceilings and walls move with the camera.
- Ray tracing mode: the frame rate is low, about 10 to 20 fps in the garage. Reflections can still flicker a little and look a bit jagged, most of all right after switching between the cockpit and outside views.
- In-game videos can play out of sync with their sound (#4). Being looked into.
- A graphics driver crash, seen after many license test retries (#3), is not fixed yet.
Frame rate
About the same as the last build. On an RTX 5090 in performance mode: about 21 to 23 fps in a race at Tokyo against 11 AI cars (1% low 19, peak 27); in a time trial on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, mid 40s to 50s. With 32 GB of RAM, close other programs before playing: in a race the emulator uses about 20 to 25 GB.
Settings and help
Recommended launcher and in-game settings are in docs/GT7.md. In-game, use performance mode to play. The launcher starts with the recommended settings.
Found a bug? Open an issue with the Bug report form and attach your zipped _kyty.txt log.
Full Changelog: KytyPS5-2026-10-25-f008506...KytyPS5-2026-10-26-55a02de