Sony PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows, Linux and macOS
Warning
This emulator is under development, most games WILL run at very low/unplayable framerates.
Navigate over to Iris > Open... and choose a disc image or ELF executable, drag-and-drop is also supported
Usage: iris [OPTION]... <path-to-disc-image>
-b, --bios Specify a PlayStation 2 BIOS dump file
--rom1 Specify a DVD player dump file
--rom2 Specify a ROM2 dump file
-d, --boot Specify a direct kernel boot path
-i, --disc Specify a path to a disc image file
-x, --executable Specify a path to an ELF executable to be
loaded on system startup
--slot1 Specify a path to a memory card file to
be inserted on slot 1
--slot2 Specify a path to a memory card file to
be inserted on slot 2
-h, --help Display this help and exit
-v, --version Output version information and exit
- Support for ISO, BIN/CUE, CHD and CSO/ZSO disc image formats
- Hardware-accelerated Vulkan GS renderer with support for up to 16x SSAA
- Feature-packed debugger
- Easy to use graphical interface
- Game controller support with input remapping
- Support for post-processing shaders
Warning
Building requires CMake and the Vulkan SDK on all supported platforms
Building on Linux requires installing SDL3 dependencies and FUSE if you wish to generate AppImages.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt-get install build-essential git make \
pkg-config cmake ninja-build gnome-desktop-testing libasound2-dev libpulse-dev \
libaudio-dev libjack-dev libsndio-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev \
libxrandr-dev libxcursor-dev libxfixes-dev libxi-dev libxss-dev libxtst-dev \
libxkbcommon-dev libdrm-dev libgbm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev \
libegl1-mesa-dev libdbus-1-dev libibus-1.0-dev libudev-dev libfuse2t64
Then clone the repository and run CMake:
git clone https://github.com/allkern/iris --recursive
cd iris
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j8
Optionally run cmake --install build to generate an AppImage.
We currently only support GCC as a compiler on Windows, this is because MSVC doesn't have an inline assembler, which we need to embed resources into the executable. This might eventually be fixed though!
git clone https://github.com/allkern/iris --recursive
cd iris
cmake -S . -B build -G "MinGW Makefiles"
cmake --build build -j8
git clone https://github.com/allkern/iris --recursive
cd iris
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j8
Optionally run sudo cmake --install build to generate a macOS App Bundle
Iris can boot/run a fairly large number of commercial games, playability may be all over the place though, some games run fairly smoothly, while others can't break the 1 digit FPS mark, this is due to the lack of EE/VU JITs which will be addressed soon.
The PlayStation 2 can have up to three processors running simultaneously at ~300 MHz, plus the IOP running at 33 MHz, not counting all the different peripherals/chips doing their own work, such as the GS rendering massive amounts of graphics, the IPU decoding MPEG-2 video, the SPU2 rendering up to 48 ADPCM audio channels at 48 KHz, and more. You can see how emulating this system can become a pretty complex task once you factor in all the processing that's done per-frame.
In order to alleviate the struggles of emulating the PS2, we have a number of optimization techniques at our disposal, some of which have already been implemented:
- Scheduling (done)
- Software fastmem (done)
- EE interpreter caching (done)
- Hardware-accelerated GS rendering (done)
- EE JIT/Dynarec (coming up)
- VU JIT/Dynarec (soon)
- Hardware fastmem (eventually)
- etc.
Integrating Parallel-GS was a big milestone for Iris, now we need to work on JITing the EE. Once that's done, I'd expect the emulator to start running a lot more games at playable speeds.
Iris aims to emulate not only the retail PlayStation 2, but also other systems based on the PS2, such as the PSX DESR (Japanese PS2/DVR hybrid) and all or most of the PS2-based arcade systems, work towards this goal is ongoing, in fact, Iris was the first PS2 emulator to boot the PSX DESR BIOS/bootrom.
In order to emulate these systems, a pile of extra hardware needs to be implemented, such as the onboard flash memory on the PSX DESR, and the NAND storage on all of the Namco boards. This is not trivial and the lack of documentation makes it a pretty daunting task, but we're working on it.
It's worth to mention that PSX DESR support has been merged to the main branch, which means you (our beloved user) should be able to dump the BIOS out of your PSX DESR machine and run it on Iris. It won't boot past some error screens after running the boot animation but I'd say it's still pretty cool.
In addition to emulating other systems based on the PS2, Iris also aims to support all the features/capabilities of the retail system, this includes the often overlooked DVD player, PSBBN, Linux, and eventually all of the available external USB/SIO peripherals and input/output devices.
I would like to thank the emudev Discord server, Ziemas, Nelson (ncarrillo), cakehonolulu, PSI-rockin, noumi and the PCSX2 team for their kind support.
This project makes use of the following third-party libraries:
- ImGui
- ImPlot
- SDL3
- SDL_GameControllerDB
- incbin
- Parallel-GS
- libchdr
- libdeflate
- lz4
- toml++
- Portable File Dialogs
- stb_image
Credit goes out to the developers of these libraries, Iris wouldn't have been possible without your outstanding work.
This console is significantly more complex compared to the PS1, here's a rough list of components:
🟡 EE (R5900) CPU
- 🟡 FPU
- 🟡 MMI (SIMD)
- 🟡 TLB
- 🟡 DMAC
- 🟢 INTC
- 🟡 Timers
- 🟢 GIF
- 🟡 GS
- 🟡 VU0
= 🟡 Macro mode
= 🟡 Micro mode
= 🟡 VIF0
- 🟡 VU1 (always micro mode)
= 🟡 VIF1
- 🟡 IPU
🟢 IOP (R3000) CPU
- 🟡 DMAC
- 🟢 INTC
- 🟡 Timers
- 🟢 CDVD
- 🟢 SIO2 (controllers and Memory Cards)
- 🟢 SPU2
- 🟡 DEV9
- 🟡 USB/FireWire?
- 🔴 Ethernet
- 🔴 PS1 backcompat (PS1 hardware)
🟢 SIF
