bigmak94andClaude Opus 5.5
368f8be8e7
Around the octopus of world 2 the glow of the lava had squares in it, lit and dark, that came and went as he moved (seen on the PC in the headset, and on the monitor at the console's size). The game draws the rings that glow into a quarter-size buffer which it clears first and then has bound twice for the ring draws: as target 0 with a write mask of red, green and blue and blending on, and as target 1 with a write mask of alpha and blending off. The console's GPU writes both to the same memory. In Vulkan the image was two attachments of one render pass, which leaves undefined what it holds afterwards: read back right after the ring draws it had the rings in some blocks of 4x8 texels and the cleared value in others, and was whole right before them. (Making the GPU finish all its work before and after the image was filled changed nothing, which is what ruled out the order of the work as the cause.) Rasterizer::Draw now asks which of a draw's targets share a surface and makes the draw once for every one of them, with the others left out of the pipeline as if nothing were bound there. The shaders are the same. A draw that writes depth with a test that fails on equal depth, or uses the stencil, would not come out the same twice: it is drawn as before, with a line in the log. Tried on the PC at the console's size through the challenge that has the same octopus: the buffer read back after the ring draws had 34 to 73 hard edges on its grid of four texels before and none after, over three passes each, and ten pictures of the fight have the glow whole. Not yet seen in the headset. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
AstroQuest
ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission (PS4 / PlayStation VR) in virtual reality on Meta Quest 3, played from your own copy of the game through a PS4 emulator. Ways to play:
- On the headset alone: an app for the Quest 3 runs the emulator on the headset itself. No PC is needed once it is installed. Please note: while the standalone Meta Quest 3 build is fully functional and playable, the headset’s mobile GPU is pushed to its limits. As a result, native standalone visuals run at lower resolutions and visual fidelity compared to the original PS4 hardware or the PC VR mode.
- On a Windows PC, shown in the Quest through Virtual Desktop: the PC runs the game at the console's 60 frames a second and at up to six times its resolution.
- On a Windows PC with a Valve Index through SteamVR: the same PC build uses SteamVR's OpenXR runtime and a DualSense connected to the PC. Headset playback has been reported working; see the Index setup, including controller positional-tracking limits. Other PC headsets go the same way, through SteamVR or an OpenXR runtime of their own: a Bigscreen Beyond and a Pimax Dream Air have been reported working.
The emulator is shadPS4 (its ARM64 build, zenithblue-oss/shadps4-arm64, on the headset), to which this project adds what the game needs from a PlayStation VR: the headset, its tracking and reprojection, the camera's view of the controller (taken from the Quest's hand tracking), the 3D sound engine, the microphone, and fixes for the game's timing and resolution under emulation.
No game files are included or distributed. You need your own copy of ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission, dumped from your own PlayStation 4.
| PlayStation 4 + PS VR | Quest 3 on its own | PC + Virtual Desktop | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frames a second | 60 | 30 in levels, 45 in lighter scenes | 60 (more if you ask for it) |
| Picture per eye | 960x1080 to 1440x1536 | 816x870 to 1440x1536 | 1440x1536 up to 3600x3840 |
| Edges | multisampled | smoothed by a filter | multisampled |
Status
Work in progress, built and tested by one person on one Quest 3 and one PC. World 1 & 2has been played through on the Quest 3 on its own; the PC path has been played over Virtual Desktop and fixed since. Expect rough edges, and please report what you find.
What you need
- A Meta Quest 3, or a Valve Index connected to a Windows PC running SteamVR. (The Quest 3S has the same chip and should work, but nobody has tried.)
- Something to play with. A PS5 DualSense controller is best: it stands in for the PS4 controller the game expects with everything that one has (buttons, sticks, touchpad, motion sensors, rumble and light bar; a DualShock 4 should do the same, untested). Without one, the Quest's own Touch controllers play the game, on the headset alone as on the PC. Other gamepads play too (Xbox, 8BitDo and the like): what they lack of a PS4 controller, the touchpad and the motion sensors, is made up for, see "Playing" below.
- ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission, European release CUSA12392, version 1.00 or 1.04 (the game
as on its disc, or with its last update), dumped from your own console and game: either as
the game's folder (the one with
eboot.bin,sce_sys,sce_modulein it, about 13 GB) or as the.pkgpackage made from the dump, which the PC launcher unpacks by itself. (A package downloaded from the PlayStation Store is encrypted and cannot be used; a package that is only the game's update is not the game: unpacked into a folder namedCUSA12392-UPDATEnext to the game'sCUSA12392, it is played over it.) Other regions and the versions in between are untested, and the fixes for the game's timing and resolution only apply to these two. - To install on the headset: a computer with adb (or SideQuest) and the headset in developer mode (set in the Meta Horizon app on your phone; on Windows, adb may also need Meta's ADB driver, described on the same page).
- To play on the PC: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), a graphics card with Vulkan 1.3, 16 GB of memory or more (the emulator asks Windows for about 14 GB), the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) (the launcher says so if it is missing), and Virtual Desktop (the app on the Quest, the Streamer on the PC).
Installing: Quest 3 on its own
Download AstroQuest-<version>-Quest3.apk from the
latest release, then:
-
Install the app. Connect the headset to the computer with a USB cable, allow USB debugging in the headset, and run
adb install -r AstroQuest-0.19-Quest3.apk(or drag the APK onto SideQuest).
-
Copy the game to the headset, the folder named
CUSA12392(this takes a few minutes):adb push CUSA12392 /data/local/tmp/astro/games/The app also finds it in
/sdcard/Android/data/com.astrobotquest.vrhost/files/games/CUSA12392, but that folder is deleted with the app if it is ever uninstalled.If your game is a
.pkgfile, unpack it on a PC first: the headset needs the game's folder. Two ways:- The easy one, on Windows: download
AstroQuest-<version>-PC-VR-Windows.zipfrom the same release, unzip it, put your.pkgin itsgamesfolder and startPlay Astro Bot VR.bat. It offers to unpack the package (about a minute, 13 GB); you can close it after that.games\CUSA12392is then the folder to copy to the headset. You do not need Virtual Desktop or a VR-ready PC for this. - By hand, with the tool it uses: PkgTool
(
PkgTool-0.2.231.zip, free and open source; Windows, or thePkgTool.Corebuilds for Linux and macOS).PkgTool pkg_extract --passcode 00000000000000000000000000000000 game.pkg outputs the game inout/uroot: rename that folderCUSA12392. Then add the game's description, which the package keeps apart:PkgTool pkg_listentries game.pkgshows the number ofPARAM_SFO, andPkgTool pkg_extractentry game.pkg <number> CUSA12392/sce_sys/param.sfowrites it. Withoutparam.sfothe emulator does not recognise the game.
Either way, only a package made from a dump of the game can be unpacked; one downloaded from the PlayStation Store is encrypted.
- The easy one, on Windows: download
-
If you play with a gamepad, pair it with the headset: Settings > Bluetooth > Pair (on a DualSense, hold Create and the PS button until the light bar flashes). The Touch controllers need nothing.
-
Start "Astro VR Host" from the App Library, under Unknown Sources. The first start takes a few seconds longer (it unpacks the emulator) and asks for the microphone: the game listens to it for blowing at things, as it did with PlayStation VR's.
Playing:
- The app begins with a menu for the field of view: a stick to a side chooses, ✕ / A or a trigger starts the game.
- With a gamepad: put the Touch controllers aside and hold it. The headset tracks your hands around it, and that is where the controller is in the game. A gamepad without motion sensors, which is every one that is not a PlayStation's, is turned and tilted in the game by your hands, as far as the headset sees them.
- With the Touch controllers: the right one is the controller in the game, where it is and the way it points. Left stick to move; A is ✕, B is □, X is ○, Y is △; the left controller's menu button is OPTIONS. X and Y together blow, where the game wants you to blow into the microphone.
- The touchpad, on the Touch controllers and on a gamepad that has none, is on buttons
(a card in the headset says so when the game starts, and again whenever you press
OPTIONS):
- right trigger (R2): press it and hold: the water cannon, the machine gun
- right grip (R1): swipe forward: the hook, the throwing stars, the chests
- left trigger (L2): pull back, let go to shoot: the catapult at the end of every level (point the controller at the goal)
- the right stick is a finger on it, for anything else.
- With both at hand, the game is played with the one you used last: a button on the other changes over.
- To turn round without turning yourself (on a seat that does not turn): hold the left grip, or L1 on a gamepad, and flick the right stick to a side. Each flick turns the view 30 degrees that way; resetting the view faces you straight ahead again.
- The game speaks the headset's language, of those it has (28; English otherwise).
- The first screen asks to move the controller into a floating outline: hold it up in front of you where the outline is.
- On the world map, look at a planet and press ✕.
- Reset the view by holding OPTIONS for a second (or pressing the PS button; with the Touch controllers, hold the left menu button for a second or press both sticks in) whenever you sit differently and things are too close, too far or off to one side.
- Taking the headset off pauses the game.
- Settings (refresh rate, resolution, field of view, sharpening, microphone gain...) go in
/sdcard/Android/data/com.astrobotquest.vrhost/files/vrhost.txt; all of them are explained in README-QUEST-VR.md.
Your saves are kept in /sdcard/Android/data/com.astrobotquest.vrhost/files/data/shadPS4/home/1000/savedata.
Updating the app with adb install -r keeps them; uninstalling deletes them, so copy that
folder off the headset first (adb pull).
Installing: PC VR through Virtual Desktop
Download AstroQuest-<version>-PC-VR-Windows.zip from the
latest release, then:
- Unzip it into a folder with a short path, e.g.
C:\Games\AstroQuest. Some of the game's files have long names, and the emulator cannot open a file whose full path is longer than Windows' 260 characters: keep the path of the folder that holdsgamesunder about 110 characters. - Put your copy of the game in its
gamesfolder, anywhere in it: the game's folder (the one witheboot.binin it) or its.pkgfile. A package is unpacked the first time you start, which takes a minute or so and about 13 GB. You can also leave the game where it is: when the launcher finds none, a window asks where it is and remembers the answer. - Set up Virtual Desktop: install the Streamer on the PC and, in its Options, choose VDXR as the OpenXR runtime. In the headset, in Virtual Desktop's Streaming settings, set the frame rate to 120 (the game then runs at 60 frames a second, as on the console).
- Connect the DualSense to the PC, by USB cable or by Bluetooth paired with the PC, not with the headset: paired with the headset, it reaches the PC without motion sensors or touchpad. The Touch controllers play as well: with no gamepad on the PC, and with one whenever they were the ones used last.
- Connect to the PC with Virtual Desktop, then start
Play Astro Bot VR.baton the desktop you see in the headset. The first time, it offers to unpack the game if it is a package (or asks where the game is). Then a small window lets you choose each eye's resolution, the frame rate, the game's language (Windows' own unless you choose another) and the field of view; Play starts the game, and the headset switches to it after a few seconds.
For the controller to be placed by your hands, turn on hand tracking in the headset and let Virtual Desktop forward tracking data to the PC. The Touch controller layout, all settings and what to do when something does not work are in README-PC-VR.md.
Common questions
How do I get the game onto my computer? AstroQuest needs the game's files as they are on
a PlayStation 4. Copying them off ("dumping") takes a PS4 that can run homebrew and a dumper
application on it, with your own disc or your own purchase; what comes out is the game's
folder, or an unencrypted .pkg made from it, and both work here. How to prepare a console
for that is outside this project. A package downloaded from the PlayStation Store, even your
own, is encrypted, and nothing here can open it: the launcher says so when it is given one.
No game files come with AstroQuest and none are handed out.
Which headsets? On the headset alone: Quest 3 (the Quest 3S has the same chip and should work; nobody has reported it yet). A Quest 2 or Pro has not been tried and is slower. On a PC: any headset with an OpenXR runtime on Windows, which is every Quest through Virtual Desktop or Steam Link, and PC headsets through SteamVR (Index, PS VR2 with its PC adapter, Bigscreen Beyond, Pimax and others have been reported working).
Do I need a PlayStation controller? No. The headset's own controllers play, on the headset alone and on the PC, and so do other gamepads; see "Playing". A DualSense is still the closest to what the game was made for.
Without Virtual Desktop? On the PC, yes: with SteamVR as the OpenXR runtime
(README-PC-VR.md). Start SteamVR first, then
Play Astro Bot VR.bat.
The picture looks like it is "reprojected", whatever I set. The game draws one frame for every two refreshes of the headset, as it does on a PlayStation VR: 60 frames a second at 120 Hz, 45 at 90 Hz, 36 at 72 Hz, and your head's turning is filled in between. Set the headset to 120 Hz for the console's own 60. On a fast PC, "Frames a second, at most" in the launcher's window can be raised to the headset's rate.
The game is in English. From 0.19 on it takes the language of Windows or of the headset (one of the game's 28; English otherwise); the PC launcher's window has a list to choose another from.
The launcher keeps asking for the Visual C++ runtime although it is installed. Fixed in 0.19 (it looked in the wrong place when it was started from a 32-bit program), and its question now has a "start the game all the same".
Linux? There is no Linux build of the PC version. A player reports it running through Steam's Proton with WiVRn; their recipe is in README-PC-VR.md.
Building from source
Clone with the submodules:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/bigmak94/AstroQuest.git
Everything builds on Windows from Git Bash, without admin rights, with a portable toolchain
kept in tools/ (not in the repository): LLVM/clang 21 (tools/llvm), CMake 4.4
(tools/cmake), Ninja (tools/ninja) and the MSVC CRT and Windows SDK fetched with
xwin (tools/winsdk).
- PC build:
source tools/env-win.sh && cmake --build build/win-x64 --target shadps4, thenbash tools/make-pc-vr.shputs it inpc-vr/. - Quest app:
bash tools/build-arm64.shcross-compiles the emulator for the headset (Debian 13 arm64 sysroot made bytools/mk-sysroot.mjs, FEXCore built by the upstreamshadps4-arm64-main/runtime/scripts/build-fexcore-smoke-aarch64.sh), thenbash quest-host/build.shbuilds the APK. That needs the Android SDK (build-tools 36.1, platform 36), an NDK, a JDK, the Khronos OpenXR loader for Android 1.1.63 (the.aarunzipped intotools/openxr), and the Bachata S4 v0.2.4 release APK (bachatas4-0.2.4-release.apk, SHA-2564077b0d0b80e354c71eff1ce2c003f122449ac266eb27a6ac26744d3f9809a08) in the top folder, whose Linux runtime (glibc, its libraries and the Turnip Vulkan driver) the app carries. bash tools/make-release.sh <version>packs the release files intobuild/release/. It puts PkgTool 0.2.231, unzipped intotools/pkgtool, in the PC package: the launcher unpacks a game package with it.
How it all works, and the tools used to test it on the headset and with a simulated one, is described in README-QUEST-VR.md and README-PC-VR.md.
Support the project
If AstroQuest gave you a good time in VR and you want to help it go further, you can support its development here:
https://buy.stripe.com/6oU4gB5450PZ18h8aK1wY00
License
AstroQuest is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version (GPL-2.0-or-later), the license of shadPS4 it is built on.
The third-party components it uses or ships keep their own licenses: among them FEX (MIT),
Mesa's Turnip Vulkan driver (MIT), the GNU C Library (LGPL-2.1-or-later), PkgTool (LGPL-3.0), the Khronos OpenXR
SDK (Apache-2.0) and the libraries under shadps4-arm64-main/externals. See
THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for what the release files contain and where
the source of each part is.
ASTRO BOT, PlayStation and PlayStation VR are trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Team Asobi or Meta. It contains no game, firmware, keys or other copyrighted console files: use it only with software you own and have dumped yourself.
Thanks
- The shadPS4 team and contributors. None of this would exist without their PlayStation 4 emulator: everything here is built on top of their years of work. Thank you!
- zenithblue-oss/shadps4-arm64 and Bachata S4, for the ARM64 build of shadPS4, its FEX integration and the Linux runtime it runs in on Android.
- FEX-Emu, which runs the game's x86-64 code on the headset's ARM processor.
- Mesa and its Turnip driver for Adreno GPUs (the build used here comes from Vauzi-17/mesa-tu8).
- LibOrbisPkg, whose PkgTool unpacks game packages for the PC launcher.
- Everyone who reported what went wrong, and those who sent the fix along: ODevStudio for SteamVR and Valve Index support and the desktop's spectator views, Clodo76 for finding the game's 1.04 executable from inside, evertec82 for what stopped the game under SteamVR.
- The Khronos Group for OpenXR and Vulkan, vgmstream for documenting Sony's audio formats, and Virtual Desktop for the PC streaming path.