What is Vita3K and where can I get it?

Vita3K is an open-source experimental Sony PlayStation Vita emulator for Windows, Linux and Mac OS written in C++. It is currently capable of booting and playing commercial games see Compatibility List. The source code for Vita3K is hosted here on GitHub. You may grab the latest compiled revisions on the Website or from the GitHub releases page.

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What are the system requirements I need to run it?

The requirements for running Vita3K are still not fully known and may change a lot during its current development stage. The absolute minimum requirements for running the program are:

• CPU: A 64-bit x86_64 or ARM CPU.
  • ARM Mac's are supported.
  • aarch64 is supported if building from source, but a custom ffmpeg may be needed.
• GPU: An OpenGL 4.4 and/or Vulkan 1.0 capable GPU
  • Mali GPU's seem to commonly have bugs on Android 10 due to poor driver support. If you are able to, consider upgrading.
• OS: Windows 7/8/10, Linux, MacOS 12, BSD (?) (Must be a 64-bit OS)
  • Android builds theoretically support Android 7 and up. In practice, Android 10-13 seem to do the best.

Windows only software requirements:

• Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2015;
• DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer. (not needed anymore?)

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Does Vita3K support commercial games?

Yes. Development on the emulator is admittedly not the fastest, but is steady. We currently boast over 50% of tested games being marked as playable. Not every title is supported though, so don't expect a flawless experience. Most (but not all) exclusives are ingame or fully playable.

More games will be supported in time. It all depends on the amount of developers working on this project, their skills, and free time, etc. Ignore any estimates and guesses you find out there.

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Can I play multiplayer games online with real consoles or other Vita3K users?

Playing commercial games online with real PlayStation Vita systems would require the user to connect to PlayStation Network which isn't very feasible due to obvious technical and legal limitations.

That said, networking is partly implemented and you can play some homebrew multiplayer games like vitaQuake just fine.

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I'd like to create a patch, contribute, or possibly become a developer. Where do I start?

That's awesome, contributions are welcome! Check the Coding Style Guidelines, and Developer Information.

Most dev discussion happens on Discord, so be sure to hit us up on our Discord Server in the #development channel.

Find something you want to implement or improve (such as broken games, bugs, missing features, Roadmap goals, etc.), work on it, test your changes and send a Pull Request.

Also you can contribute by participating in testing. Please visit the compatibility repository and submit your test results.

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There is some issue/feedback/comment that I want to report.

Good, you can do it through the GitHub Issue Tracker Please follow this guidelines before sending anything:

• Check if your system matches all the system minimum requirements;
• Check if the issue is meaningful for the team (e.g. "Persona 4 Golden doesn't work" is obvious and therefore useless);
• Search older issues/forum threads to see if your issue was already submitted;
• Use understandable English. It doesn't need to be perfect, but clear enough to understand your message;
• While reporting issues, don't forget to include details about your system (OS, CPU, GPU, etc.), as well as the Vita3K.log file;
• Please do not post individual game issues. Please post them in the compatibility repository. There are currently so many games with problems that it is difficult to accept them all.

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How do i use portable mode?

• Portable mode is a configuration where EVERY file of the emulator is in the same place (or very close to) as the emulator executable itself
• To use it you must:
  1. Create a folder named portable next to the executable/.app/AppImage
  2. Open the emulator and close it to generate the folders inside portable
  3. Once the folders are generated, place your config.yml inside portable, overwriting it
  4. Move your vitafs to the fs folder inside portable, you should have something like this: portable/fs/ux0
  5. Move your patches/configs also inside portable these folders are self explanatory so no need to go over each one

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Where can I find the emulator's installed files?

This is usually called "the emulator's filesystem", "Emulated Storage Path", or in config.yml as pref-path. The recommended method to locate these is by using the in-app button (Open in top left on PC), but this serves to document other paths too. Assuming you did not change the pref-path and are NOT using a portable install, you should be able to safely delete your Vita3K build/folder without losing your data. The default paths are as follows.

Windows:

• config.yml: In the same folder as Vita3K.exe. If you don't have file extensions turned on, it will appear as config.
• Filesystem: %APPDATA%\Vita3K\. This expands to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Vita3K\.
• Patches & Textures: In the same folder as Vita3K.exe in folders named patch and textures.
• Cache & Logs: Also in the same folder as Vita3K.exe. They're just folders named cache and logs.

Linux: Vita3K follows the XDG Base Directory Specification for its files. Changing XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME, and related will change these paths; these are just the defaults.

• config.yml: $HOME/.config/Vita3K/
• Filesystem: $HOME/.local/share/Vita3K/Vita3K/
• Patches & textures: $HOME/.local/share/Vita3K/ in folders patch and textures.
• Cache & Logs: $HOME/.cache/Vita3K/ Where $HOME is your user home directory (i.e. /home/username).

MacOS: All MacOS files that are not the Vita3K app itself are stored in Vita3K's Application Support Directory

• config.yml: $HOME/"Application Support"/Vita3K/Vita3K/
• Filesystem: $HOME/"Application Support"/Vita3K/Vita3K/fs/
• Patches, Textures, Cache, Logs: $HOME/"Application Support"/Vita3K/Vita3K/

Android:

• config.yml: Storage/Emulated/0/Android/Data/org.vita3k.emulator/
• Filesystem: Storage/Emulated/0/Android/Data/org.vita3k.emulator/files/fs/