alexaltea/orbital

Orbital is an experimental emulator for the PlayStation 4 console. An emulator is software that allows a computer to run programs or games built for a completely different piece of hardware, in this case the PS4. Orbital takes a virtualization-based approach, meaning it uses low-level CPU features to replicate how the PS4 hardware operates rather than translating instructions one by one. The project is in early, research-oriented territory. The README is clear that it is not ready for regular users: there are no pre-built downloads, and getting it running requires compiling three separate components (a BIOS, a bootloader called GRUB, and a modified version of QEMU, which is an existing open-source virtualization tool). On top of that, you would need to extract encryption keys from your own physical PS4 console to feed into the emulator, a process that has no step-by-step guide yet. The hardware requirements reflect how demanding this kind of work is: a 64-bit processor with specific instruction set extensions and hardware virtualization support, 12 GB of RAM, and a graphics card capable of running Vulkan, a low-level graphics API. Development progress can be tracked through the GitHub issue tracker, where the author documents experiments with specific PS4 firmware versions (4.55 and 5.00 have both been tested for kernel booting). A roadmap page on the project wiki outlines future goals. The README is brief and the project appears to be primarily a research and reverse-engineering effort rather than a consumer product.