Virtual-On Masterpiece for Linux and Windows

Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Masterpiece 1995~2001 (PS4, CUSA16156) running natively on Linux and Windows.

The original PS4 game code runs directly on the PC and the graphics are translated to Vulkan. It is not an emulator: there is no CPU emulation, and the PS4 system libraries are replaced by a small native runtime.

Lineage: bbport (Bloodborne on Linux, deadinside28) → its Windows port (SuperMedo) → uncharted_pc (Uncharted collection, SuperMedo) → this port. The renderer is shadPS4's video core. The git history carries all three. Naming throughout reflects that lineage: bbport's names (BB_* settings, bbport_* files) are kept so fixes can move between the projects, and some file names, comments, tools and parts of the in-game overlay still carry Bloodborne or Uncharted names.

No game files are included. You need your own decrypted dump of the game (the folder with eboot.bin, pjv3.elf, sce_module, sce_sys and the game data). Plain decrypted ELF dumps work as they are; no fake-SELF signing step is needed. This project is not affiliated with SEGA or Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Status

Work in progress.

• Cyber Troopers Virtual-On (omg), Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram (ot) and Virtual-On Force (force): boot, menus and matches play and render correctly.
• The collection menu (eboot.bin, BB_EXE=menu): boots through the logos and title video to the menu and starts each game, with its sound through NGS2.
• Audio: the games, the collection menu and its videos play their sound (PipeWire on Linux).
• Online play is not available: network and RUDP calls report offline.

Requirements

• Linux, x86-64, with a recent glibc (the builds so far use 2.43), or Windows 10 (1903 or later) or Windows 11, 64-bit.
• A GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and a current driver. Developed on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080.
• About 8 GB of free memory (on Windows, RAM + page file).

Building

bash build.sh

builds out/bb-probe and out/gpu/libbbgpu.so (needs clang, cmake, ninja, pkg-config with Vulkan and SDL3, FFmpeg, protobuf, OpenSSL, zlib and miniupnpc). With DLSS_SDK_ROOT set to a checkout of the NVIDIA DLSS SDK, it also builds the optional DLSS bridge.

On Windows the same build.sh runs in the MSYS2 CLANG64 shell and builds out/bb-probe.exe; packaging/windows/package.sh then makes dist/virtualon-windows.zip with Virtual-On.exe. The packages to install and the differences from Linux are in packaging/windows/README.md. packaging/windows/build-windows.bat does the whole build from a kit folder (MSYS2 and Python installers, BuildEnv, Game), found beside the repository or through VO_KIT; repackage.bat reruns only the packaging.

Running

Release builds are on the Releases page: Virtual-On-x86_64.AppImage for Linux (make it executable and start it) and virtualon-windows.zip for Windows (extract it and start Virtual-On.exe; README.txt inside explains the rest).

From the source tree, the launcher (needs python3 with tkinter and Pillow):

python3 launcher/virtualon_launcher.py

Set the game folder on the Game page, pick the collection menu or one of the games, and press Play. Add to Steam adds each of the four as a non-Steam shortcut (leave Proton off), and Desktop shortcut puts the launcher in the applications menu. packaging/appimage-linux.sh packs the launcher and the port into dist/Virtual-On-x86_64.AppImage.

Without the launcher:

BB_GAME_DIR=/path/to/CUSA16156 BB_EXE=menu python3 run.py

BB_EXE picks what starts: menu (the collection menu), omg (Virtual-On), ot (Oratorio Tangram) or force (Force). Saves and caches go to user/ unless BB_USER_DIR says otherwise.

Changes from the ports it is built on

• Decrypted ELF dumps load directly (scripts/prepare.py).
• The runtime covers the newer SDK of Virtual-On's libc.prx (POSIX imports from libkernel, thread-exit hooks, heap trace info) and the libraries the game uses offline: USB, RUDP, dialogs, screenshots, more save data calls (src/runtime_extra.c and others).
• Prepared vertex inputs are checked against the game's current vertex tables before use; Virtual-On rewrites those tables between the preparation and the draw.
• A DMA copy of a memory range onto itself no longer reloads the textures in that range. Force issues one over each mech's shadow mask right after drawing it, and the reload replaced the mask with stale memory: square shadows. shadPS4 has the same bug.
• A draw that samples one of its own render targets gets a barrier between the write and the read (BB_FEEDBACK_BARRIER=0 turns it off).
• Kernel event flags (src/runtime_evf.c) and NGS2, the menu's audio library (gpu/shim/ngs2, from AnyPS5), for the collection menu.
• Video playback: the clock runs on real time until the game asks for audio, and audio the game never takes is dropped once expired (the SEGA logo froze otherwise). Two threads joining the same player thread at the end of a video no longer hang it (the title video).
• A guest mutex is handed to a thread that has waited over 100 ms for it: Linux let the menu's audio thread take its mutex back every cycle, so the main thread could wait up to a minute at boot. Shorter waits are left alone (BB_MUTEX_HANDOFF=0 turns the hand-over off).
• Thread dumps (pkill -ALRM bb-probe) also list guest code addresses found on each stack.
• The upscaler's jitter also applies to passes drawn on a second scene-sized depth buffer.
• A launcher of its own (launcher/virtualon_launcher.py, based on the Uncharted port's) with original artwork: painted posters, or your own pictures in launcher/art (menu.jpg, omg.jpg, ot.jpg, force.jpg).
• tools/toggle_bisect.py finds which renderer optimization breaks a game's picture while it runs (with BB_TOGGLE_FILE).

Credits

Built on the Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection PC port by SuperMedo, which is built on bbport, the native Linux port of Bloodborne by deadinside28, and SuperMedo's Windows port of it, with the shadPS4 renderer. Video decoding (Videodec2) and the DLSS bridge come from IFreemz/shadPS4-Bloodborne-DLSS-FSR.

Also used: FSR-Vulkan and the AMD FidelityFX SDK (FSR), FSR 4 assets from FireBurn/Q2RTX, the NVIDIA DLSS SDK (NVIDIA's DLSS libraries under NVIDIA's license), the NGS2 implementation of AnyPS5 (GPL-2.0), LibAtrac9, SDL3, FFmpeg, Dear ImGui, sirit, magic_enum, xbyak, Vulkan Memory Allocator, LLVM, PyInstaller, Pillow and the Cinzel font (SIL Open Font License).

NVIDIA, GeForce RTX and DLSS are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. No official art is included.

License

GNU GPL v2 or later (LICENSE). Third-party components keep their own licenses.