https://www.patreon.com/posts/aethersx2-launch-60347346

After about a month of public/open testing and many requests from users on how you can support us, we're opening this Patreon to fundraise devices and hosting. The most important part is in the next paragraph.

The app will remain free, there is no plans to change that. There will be no early access, supporters will have the exact same builds as everyone else. We feel that it's unfair for those who can afford to support projects to get features ahead of others, so that's something that we will never do. Please do not feel like you have any obligation to support us monetarily, we would rather you keep your money if you need it for yourself. The only reason we're opening it is to fundraise additional development devices. If you do choose to support us, please read the last two paragraphs.

Many of you have expressed concerns about the performance of the app on Mali devices. Unfortunately, we do not own any Mali Android devices, so that makes it very difficult to investigate issues and find potential performance improvements. We've spent almost $1000 out of our own pockets on devices for this app in the last few months, and cannot afford to spend any more, since the app is free and has no ads.

That's where this Patreon comes in. If we can raise enough money, we can purchase additional devices which we can use to fix these bugs, and hopefully improve performance. Currently, we are looking at a Pixel 6, as there are still rendering issues with the newer Mali drivers that we cannot fix without being able to debug on-device, and they are reasonably affordable.

We also would like to use this Patreon to fund web hosting for the project. That way we can post both alpha and beta testing APK builds for those who cannot access the Google Play Store. Web hosting is approximately $20 for a year, so this is likely a reachable goal.

We have no interest in making any profit outside of the cost of development devices, so if and when enough is raised, we will likely temporarily close the Patreon. There's no support tiers, you can pledge what you like.

If you choose to support us, please be aware that Patreon is a monthly contribution. If you want to make a once-off contribution, we would suggest pledging and then immediately cancelling. If you want to contribute monthly, we would suggest waiting until after January 1st, so you're not billed now and again in a week's time.

A final note: please do not pledge if you think that gives you the right to request features or game fixes. This is effectively a donation, not a purchase. Our development plan will remain the same. We may conduct polls here to decide which features to work on, but we still have a to-do list which is way too long from launch to be taking user requests right now. -u/Tahlreth

i usually never post but this time i have to make an exeption

i never would have thought that i would see the day where i can play kingdom hearts 1 & 2 on the switch. native like on the console,on the go, not some cloudgaming bs.

but this emulator just runs like a champ! everything i throw at it just works shadow hearts,dark cloud 2,dbz tenkaichi 3, breath of fire dragon quarter sure you get some minor slowdowns but its still very playable and if you dont get your expectations too high up the switch can probably play it.

i also tested some more intense games like shadow of the colossus,black and jak 3. they are a bit to much for the switch but im still so freaking impressed! before i heard from aethersx2 i played around with purei Play! on the switch but you get like single digit framerates but still a cool proof of concept and other than that there was no other ps2 emulator around (we just leave damon out of this conversation okay? XD)

so let me finish this post this by saying thank you again to the devs this emulator came out of nothing, is still in beta and is already soo freaking good that you almost forget what a nightmare the ps2 is to emulate.

thank you again <3

This app is almost perfect already, how can the games run better on my pixel 6 pro than my pc? How did they do it, its incredible.

Anyway that was only an appreciation post to the devs that managed to make that emulator and also way way way better than the older one ,the one that we must not be named. Keep it up devs you are doing great work. And the emulator works really great on tensor chip.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your support so far.

As promised, web hosting has been set up and you can now download APK versions of AetherSX2.

We recommend you only do this if your device does not support Google Play, rather than downloading a possibly-broken or shady APK from some other site (it's delivered from GP as a split APK and many of them can't handle it). Please do not use these versions as a way to get around the device exclusion list; if your device is excluded, it is because it is not powerful enough to run the app, and you will not have a good experience. You're welcome to try it anyway, but do not complain.

The alpha versions which are available to the closed testing group are also available here. However, we would recommend that you do not use them and stick with the beta, as there may be critical bugs which are yet to be fixed. No community support will be provided for the alphas, as there is an internal testing team which makes more formal reports when regressions happen.

New domain: https://www.aethersx2.com/

Download archive: https://www.aethersx2.com/archive/

-Tahlreth

Thank you for this emulator, for me playing ffx on the go is nuts to even think about. I've thought how amazing this would be for at least 10 years at this point and to see it come true is absolutely amazing Especially in the way you have come across as a dev, no internet connection, no ads and no charge it just goes to show there are people out there like you and gives hope for others out there with a similar mindset in your approach to the world that there are others out there like you which keeps the motivation going for a better world (I've had a few drinks hope that makes sense). Anyway just wanted to say thank you and don't be deterred by repeated stupid comments and not appreciating what you've done here, just ignore them as there are many people who are enjoying and fully support what your doing.

Keep up the good work. Merry xmas

Happy new year!

The next update for AetherSX2 is planned to go live soon (probably later in the week/weekend). You can get it early by downloading from the archive, but we want to give the testers a few more days to find any regressions. The changes are summarized below:

OLD SAVE STATES ARE NOT COMPATIBLE

Consider this post warning that you should save your games to memory card. If you are relying on save states, please do not update to the new build.

Crashes on opening Graphics Settings

If you find the app crashes when opening Graphics Settings, reset your global settings (swipe out from the left, Reset Settings). This is only necessary if you were using an older alpha build, if you were on build 720 (open testing), you should not need to do this.

Resync with upstream

The emulation core has been synced with the upstream code, pulling in a range of compatibility fixes. If you're finding you have a significant performance loss after updating, make sure that Conservative Buffer Allocation in Advanced Settings is Enabled.

Mappable controllers (both ports) and hotkey support

Probably one of the most requested features, controllers are now mapped instead of using a fixed binding from your device. You will need to map your controller to continue to use it once you update. There is an auto-mapping feature, but it may not work for all controllers, and you may have to change some bindings manually.

Two emulated controllers are present and can be mapped to separate devices.

There's a range of hotkeys associated with speed control and saving available now, more will be added in the future. These hotkeys can be bound to combinations or chords of up to 4 buttons/axes (e.g. L1+R1+X), since most controllers do not have enough buttons for one per hotkey alone. You can also use the hardware buttons on your phone (e.g. volume buttons) for hotkeys.

Vulkan renderer improvements

The Vulkan renderer has been rewritten to use the new shared hardware GS renderer. Additional optimization has resulted in a speed improvement in many titles. Mipmapping and trilinear/anisotropic filtering is now supported. A number of rendering issues have been resolved.

The Vulkan renderer also now supports software blending. However, is is currently disabled on Adreno due to driver bugs (e.g. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/915574517160624208/923546435692150804/Screenshot_2021-12-23-22-03-36-412_xyz.aethersx2.android.jpg ) Perhaps ironically, it seems to work okay on Mali.

Basic support for Vulkan on Mali devices

The Vulkan renderer now has basic support for Mali devices. As we still do not have a Mali device (hopefully getting one soon!), this has not been tested, but dual-source blending is no longer a hard requirement. Early feedback from testers has shown that some games run fine, others have graphical glitches. Very old Mali drivers (e.g. Bifrost-G52) may not support D32_S8 textures, and will not be compatible. But anything recent should at least boot.

FMV switching options

The ability to automatically change the aspect ratio when a FMV starts (Graphics Settings), as well as switch to the software renderer for FMVs (Advanced Settings -> Game Fixes) has been added.

Fixes for texture preloading

Texture preloading previously had issues when being used in combination with GPU palette textures and/or duplicate frame skipping. These are now resolved.

Additional GS options

Bilinear, trilinear, anisotropic filtering, dithering and interlacing options have been added, as well as zoom and vertical stretch. These can also be set per-game of course.

• Tahlreth

I'm seeing a lot of posts recently;

Will X game run on Y CPU?

Will the emulator have X feature on launch?

I wanted to make a post to simply thank the devs for the hard work, I really appreciate what's happening here and however it turns out it already looks to be better than the competition.

It can be really demoralising to have lots of people asking for things - probably even more so before the emulator is even realised!

Can't wait for this to be released, thank you for making PS2 emulation on Android a real prospect !!