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.
Tested version
Only Driveclub CUSA00093 with update 1.28 has been tested. Other regions or versions may not work.
How to use
- Download the release zip and extract it into its own folder.
- Get your dumps ready:
- the base game folder (
CUSA00093), and next to it the 1.28 update folder named<base folder>-patchor<base folder>-UPDATE; - the PS4 firmware modules (
sys_modules) from your own console.
- the base game folder (
- 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 (recommended) / 120 (experimental, depends on scene and CPU temperature) |
| 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 |
| 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 |
- 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 game's own clock runs in real time: race times are correct at 120 FPS as well, and physics don't speed up.
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, saves, shader cache and logs are all kept in the user folder next to the
executable. 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, 30/60/120 FPS targets, 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
Release builds also use profile-guided optimisation, which adds about 10 %.
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.
- 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/.