<!-- SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later -->

Driveclub-PC

A personal hobby fork of the shadPS4 PS4 emulator, tuned to run Driveclub (CUSA00093, v1.28) on Windows. It is built on GR2fork by junminlee2004.

No game data, firmware or Sony code is included. You need your own dump of Driveclub (base game plus the 1.28 update) and the PS4 system modules from your own console.

Unofficial, and not affiliated with Sony Interactive Entertainment, Evolution Studios, the shadPS4 team or the GR2fork author. Names and trademarks belong to their owners.

Current release: 0.2.5. See release notes for changes, installation and known limitations.

Tested version

Only Driveclub CUSA00093 with update 1.28 has been tested. Other regions are accepted as experimental; local gameplay validation remains CUSA00093 v1.28 on NVIDIA.

How to use

1. Download the release zip and extract it into its own folder.
2. Get your dumps ready:
   • the base game folder (CUSA00093), and next to it the 1.28 update folder named <base folder>-patch or <base folder>-UPDATE;
   • the PS4 firmware modules (sys_modules) from your own console.
3. Run Driveclub-PC.exe. A settings window opens:

Setting	What to choose
Game folder	the base game folder (CUSA00093)
Firmware	your sys_modules folder. Import... copies it into user\sys_modules, so the original can move later
Frame rate	30 / 60 (default) / 60 + FG / 120 (experimental). FG generates intermediate frames for approximately 120 presentations/s; the FPS counter shows real game FPS
Display / Window size	borderless fullscreen or window; the window size only applies in windowed mode (fullscreen always covers the display). Includes the ultrawide sizes 2560x1080, 3440x1440 and 5120x1440
Render resolution	1080p (native) / 1440p / 2160p: the number of lines the game renders (the engine's own scaling; extra video memory is set up automatically). The width follows the aspect ratio of the display (fullscreen) or window, see Ultrawide below. 1440p costs about 10–15 % FPS; 2160p is very demanding
Upscaling / Sharpening	AMD FSR 1 or bilinear; RCAS sharpening off / normal / strong
Anisotropic filter	16x by default; Off keeps the game's own setting
Anti-aliasing	Off / FXAA (default) / SMAA 1x High
Prefer performance cores	on by default; keeps the busiest threads on P-cores of hybrid Intel CPUs
Compile shaders in the background	on by default: new shaders and pipelines are built off the main thread, so first-time content does not freeze the game (an object may appear a few frames late). Turn off if you see graphics errors
GPU readbacks	Precise (default). Relaxed is faster but causes shadow and vegetation glitches; Off makes the 3D world nearly black
Save-data root	choose a custom save location, open it, or restore the default; existing saves are never moved automatically
Classic PS4 frame pacing	fallback: only turn it on if game speed feels wrong
Show this window at start	if turned off, the game starts directly; hold Shift while launching to open the window again

4. Press Play. Before the game boots, the launcher checks the folder, the title ID, the update version and the firmware, and explains any problem it finds.

The 60 FPS mode supports the original v1.28 executable. The 120 FPS mode remains experimental, including game timing and achievable frame rate.

Ultrawide: on a display or window wider than 16:9 the game renders a native wide image: the scene itself is rendered at the wide size (e.g. 3440x1440 at 1440p, nothing is stretched) with a wider horizontal field of view (Hor+). The HUD stays in the centred 16:9 area and videos are pillarboxed. 2160p on an ultrawide display is reduced to 1440p (the game's memory budget). Displays narrower than 16:9 (e.g. 16:10) keep a 16:9 picture with black bars. Tested in scripted races and screenshots, not yet on a real ultrawide monitor.

60 FPS with an unmodified 1.28 executable: the game no longer runs too fast; the fix is applied in memory and leaves already-modified executables alone.

Data: settings, shader cache, logs and default saves are kept in the user folder next to the executable. A custom save-data root can be selected in the launcher. Keep that folder when you update to a new release. The log of the last run is user\log\shad_log.txt.

Controls: gamepad through SDL, the same as shadPS4/GR2fork.

What it changes

Compared with GR2fork, this fork adds a Driveclub launcher with settings, 30/60/60 + FG/120 FPS modes, FXAA/SMAA and anisotropic filtering, stability fixes, and CPU-side speedups of the emulated GPU command processor. Full list: driveclub-pc/CHANGES.md.

Performance

Test machine: ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (GU605CR), Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU, 32 GB RAM, Windows 11. Same race, same game settings.

	GR2fork (shadPS4)	Driveclub-PC
60 FPS target, average	~51 FPS	~59.6 FPS
60 FPS target, frame pacing	12–19 % of frames drop to 33 ms (30 FPS)	stable 60
120 FPS target (played by hand)	dips to ~35 FPS	75–90 FPS
120 FPS target, 2560x1440 render (v0.2, played by hand)	–	65–80 FPS
120 FPS target, ultrawide (v0.2.1, scripted races)	–	2560x1080: 84, 3440x1440: 70, 5120x1440: 67 FPS

The 60 FPS rows come from scripted test races; the 120 FPS row comes from races played by hand. Results vary by up to ~15 % with laptop temperature. At 120 FPS the limit is the emulator's CPU-side GPU command processing, not the graphics card (27–35 % busy).

Building (Windows)

Requires Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with clang-cl, CMake, Ninja and Git. Run from an "x64 Native Tools" developer prompt:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ondrejeder/Driveclub-pc-wrapper.git
cd Driveclub-pc-wrapper
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release `
  -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang-cl -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang-cl `
  -DCMAKE_INTERPROCEDURAL_OPTIMIZATION_RELEASE=ON
cmake --build build --parallel

The 0.2.5 release uses Release + ThinLTO with a fresh PGO profile. To reproduce the packaged build, use the corresponding source ZIP attached to the release; it includes the profile, dependency inventory and build script. The commands above build from source without the release PGO profile.

Credits

• shadPS4: the shadPS4 Emulator Project and contributors. Almost all of the code here is theirs.
• GR2fork by junminlee2004: the fork this project starts from (see README-GR2fork.md).
• Driveclub_Widescreen by rafidwayne (GPL-2.0-or-later): the aspect ratio, video-out width and FOV values the ultrawide support starts from.
• SMAA by Jorge Jimenez et al., MIT licence (driveclub-pc/SMAA-LICENSE.txt).
• AMD FidelityFX FSR 1, already part of shadPS4, and optional native Vulkan Optical Flow / Frame Interpolation adapted from the local Killzone port; provenance and license notices are in externals/fsr-vulkan.
• The libraries in externals/ (git submodules), each under its own licence.

Licence

GPL-2.0-or-later (LICENSE), the same as shadPS4 and GR2fork. Some files carry other compatible licences in their SPDX headers; the texts are in LICENSES/.