Help:Frequently Asked Questions

This is a page meant to address common questions and issues faced by users.

Running VSH/XMB in RPCS3

Since July 2021, it has been possible to run VSH/XMB on the official master builds of the emulator, bearing in mind some quirks and limitations. The initial set-up is as follows:

Configuration

Make the following modifications to the Global configuration. Options that deviate from RPCS3's default settings and provide the best experience with this title are listed below.

CPU configuration

Setting	Option	Notes
PPU decoder	Interpreter (static)	Can be used for a smoother experience during initial setup.

GPU configuration

Setting	Option	Notes
Default resolution	1920x1080	Can be used if you prefer a Full HD presentation.
Write color buffers	On	Fixes missing background wave effect when using Force CPU Blit emulation

Debug configuration

This tab is hidden by default. For instructions on how to enable the Debug tab in the settings window, click here.

Setting	Option	Notes
Force CPU blit emulation	On	Fixes broken audio

Initial Setup

Time to rebuild the XRegistry database

The initial setup consists of two phases. The first phase is as follows:

1. Select File > Boot VSH/XMB to get started. VSH will have to rebuild its XRegistry database. You may notice that the image output is low resolution, and has a 4:3 aspect ratio. This is completely normal and the expected behavior.
2. Afterwards, you will be greeted by the intro logo.
3. You'll be presented with the language selection menu. Select your desired language and Press X.
4. Next, you will be met with a message, saying that an HDMI display was detected. Choose Yes.
5. Following this, you'll be asked to select your Timezone and the current time. You can just spam X to get through these, especially the current time selection part (it will autofill, if you hit X a couple times).
6. Once done, Press Right. If you've done everything correctly (the summary page looks correct), Press X to finish the setup.

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  Select your desired language

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  HDMI detection prompt

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  Select your Timezone and current time

7. Before letting you in to the main menu, VSH will ask you if you want to set up a network connection. It is recommended that you do not.
8. Confirm the new user profile creation and... Welcome to the PS3!
9. This concludes the initial setup of the VSH / XMB.

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  Cancel setting up networking

• 

  Welcome to the PS3!

To correctly turn off VSH,

1. Navigate to Users > Turn Off System option (VSH will throw a database corruption prompt on the next boot if you do not shut it down this way).
2. After selecting the option, the screen will turn black. You can then proceed to manually exit VSH at this point.

Notes:

1. It is recommended to boot VSH up back again after this, to ensure everything worked correctly, and to collect some extra PPU module cache. To build all ppu caches click File -> All Titles -> Create PPU Cache. This can help VSH run smoother.
2. Make sure to revert the PPU Decoder option to Recompiler (LLVM) after you're done, in case you've set it to Interpreter (fast) for the duration of the setup process.

Limitations

At its current stage, VSH has several quirks and limitations:

• there's no multi-process support yet, meaning you can not use XMB as a frontend to boot into games or other applications
• due to encryption related reasons, it will display several instances of Corrupted Data erroneously in place of Game Data
• restarting and shutting down doesn't work automatically yet (hence why you have to do that manually as explained above or delete the rpcs3/dev_hdd0/tmp/turnoff file between boots)

Troubleshooting

In case you somehow manage to brick it, you can try removing the dev_flash2 and dev_flash3 folders from the RPCS3 directory. This will put you back at square one (you'll need to do the initial setup all over again).

Enabling Debug tab

To enable RPCS3's debug tab in the settings window,

1. Navigate to:

   RPCS3\GuiConfigs on Windows

   ~/.config/rpcs3/GuiConfigs on Linux

   ~/Library/Application Support/rpcs3/GuiConfigs on MacOS

2. Open CurrentSettings.ini with a text editor
3. Change showDebugTab=false to showDebugTab=true

Modifying settings through config.yml

In most cases, users should use the Settings tab available in the GUI to modify configurations present in RPCS3. However, the GUI interface does not expose all settings available. This is done to prevent users from accidentally modifying sensitive settings. In the event users need to modify one of these settings, the following guide will demonstrate how:

First, a custom configurations for the particular game must be created. This is done to ensure that changes made only affect one game and not every game present in the emulator:

1. Launch RPCS3
2. Right-click on the game and press Create Custom Configuration
3. When the Settings Menu opens, hit Save and close the emulator

This will create a custom configuration for this game

The next step is navigate to the location where the custom (per-game) configuration is saved:

1. Right click on the game in the gamelist and click on Open custom config folder (or)
   Navigate to RPCS3\config\custom_configs\ on Windows or ~/.config/rpcs3/custom_configs/ on Linux
2. Locate the file config_GAMEID.yml where GAMEID is the Title ID of your particular game
3. Open the file using any text editor
4. Scroll through the list of settings available to find the one you wish to modify (don't forget to hit save after you've changed the necessary option)

List of CLI commands

If you want to use RPCS3 through CLI, you can type --help to view the full list of commands available.

Vulkan renderer unable to be selected

In some cases, the Vulkan renderer does not appear as an option. There are some solutions to try to resolve this:

1. Confirm that your GPU does support Vulkan, as it will not appear if the GPU does not support it.
   1. AMD GPUs older than the HD 7000 series (Southern Islands/GCN 1st gen) do not support Vulkan.
   2. NVIDIA GPUs older than the Geforce 600 (Kepler) series also do not support Vulkan.
2. Update your GPU's drivers. If your specific setup contains an NVIDIA GPU and an AMD GPU (such as a laptop with dedicated graphics) then make sure to update the drivers for both GPUs and keep them updated.
3. Download the vkDiag tool written by 13xforever and run it on your PC. If it asks you to remove broken entries or disable incompatible Vulkan layers (or both in some cases), tell it to do so.
4. If the above does not resolve the issue, then it may be required to use the Display Driver Uninstaller tool to completely remove your GPU's drivers from your PC to do a clean reinstall of them. If you choose to do this option, please download the latest version of your GPU's drivers in a .exe format (such as with GeForce Experience or the AMD Radeon Software), disconnect from the internet and boot into Safe Mode when running the DDU tool and reinstalling GPU drivers. Once the drivers have been reinstalled, you can reboot back into regular Windows and reconnect to the internet.