orbital VS fpPS4

Closed source: spine, orbital, rpcs4

It looks like orbital is licensed under MIT? Is the source code only partially released or is it actually open source?

Because you don't just have to figure out the software (software that is already not just a stepping through the debugger away from comprehension), but the hardware too. Even in the ps4 case, there's a world to reinvent (here the lines between emulation and virtualization may effectively blur though, since only "secondary devices" wouldn't be run directly)

There is already a PS4 emulator: https://github.com/AlexAltea/orbital

Not ones that will play your game. Most PS4 emulators are currently in development only, like SPINE and Oribtal. It takes years to create these.

Actually, there are two actively maintained emulators with one showing a lot of promise. One of them, Orbital, is only able to boot into the PS4 firmware, but the Spine emulator is able to boot into a large number of indie games, some of them playable. This video from Modern Vintage Gamer can tell you more.

Do you mean Spine? I can see what looks like current Orbital source code on GitHub, and its Patreon page says it is open source.

I thought the emulation community was going in the direction of Orbital, which isn't really an emulator, it uses virtualization so there isn't much of a performance penalty. Still a way off being able to play games yet though.

PlayStation 4: fpPS4 is the best PS4 Emulator according to the emulation wiki (PS4 Emulation is very early in development so it's not recommended you use PS4 emulation): Download fpPS4

Yes, in fact the PS4 is beginning to see HLE with various emulators, most notably fpPS4 (free pascal PS4).

https://github.com/red-prig/fpPS4

There's a couple actually. Spine was the most impressive at the time of its last release, but it's been about a year since that release and whether it's still being developed is still unknown. fpPS4 and Obliteration seems to be the most promising right now.

PS4 emulation is in the works, but playing something like Ghosts of Tsushima is years away. fpPS4 and Obliteration are experimental emulators / compatibility layers, but they’ve only been in development for a few years and can just boot simple games. That being said, Ghost of Tsushima was one of many games listed in the GeForce NOW leak from Ighor July a few years ago; Since then, many of the games listed have indeed been announced for PC, so a PC port might be on its way.

There's a PS4 emulator being developed in Pascal. For real.

GitHub

There are two branches https://github.com/red-prig/fpPS4/tree/trunk

Open source: gpcs4, fpps4, kyty