Dolphin and nVidia's Shadowplay?

[MegamanXGold]

Hello!

This is my first post here, so first I'd like to say THANK YOU to all of the developers of Dolphin!

I registered because I was trying for 20 minutes to use ShadowPlay yesterday on Dolphin before I realized that, for some reason, it does not detect Dolphin's DX11 output. I tried dxTory instead, and while it works fairly well (all things considered), there is a huge impact on emulation speed.

I'm grateful that dxTory works at all with Dolphin, and grateful for the amazing emulation speed exactly as it is, but I am curious if there is a stable solution now? I ask because I noticed this thread is getting a little dusty. Is there anyone from the development team interested in finding a solution for ShadowPlay?

Thanks for reading.

[Borg8401]

After beating my face against the wall trying to get this to work, I finally have... sort of.

In order for this to work you need a version of Dolphin that still supports DX9; the trick here involves the Nvidia 3D setting (must be on).

I'm assuming Dolphin does full screen differently for 3D and this happens to play nice with ShadowPlay.

[MegamanXGold]

(01-12-2014, 06:53 PM)Borg8401 Wrote: ...
In order for this to work you need a version of Dolphin that still supports DX9; the trick here involves the Nvidia 3D setting (must be on).
I'm assuming Dolphin does full screen differently for 3D and this happens to play nice with ShadowPlay.

Ah cool, thank you, that shows at least that it's possible. For some reason, I had thought I noticed once that when going full-screen in Dolphin, the yellow info text at the top said something about OpenGL or OCL or something, had me double-checking I was in fact using DX11. It makes me wonder if, while going to full-screen, it's getting reported to some aspect of the system wrong?

I don't know enough about programming to really be assuming this can be the case, but when making the full-screen call, how does Dolphin handle that? Does DX11 take over, or is it handled by a different function or system call? Or would there a reason why a full-screen DX11 application in general might not be picked up by something looking for it?

[Borg8401]

(01-13-2014, 08:07 PM)MegamanXGold Wrote:

(01-12-2014, 06:53 PM)Borg8401 Wrote: ...
In order for this to work you need a version of Dolphin that still supports DX9; the trick here involves the Nvidia 3D setting (must be on).
I'm assuming Dolphin does full screen differently for 3D and this happens to play nice with ShadowPlay.

Ah cool, thank you, that shows at least that it's possible. For some reason, I had thought I noticed once that when going full-screen in Dolphin, the yellow info text at the top said something about OpenGL or OCL or something, had me double-checking I was in fact using DX11. It makes me wonder if, while going to full-screen, it's getting reported to some aspect of the system wrong?

I don't know enough about programming to really be assuming this can be the case, but when making the full-screen call, how does Dolphin handle that? Does DX11 take over, or is it handled by a different function or system call? Or would there a reason why a full-screen DX11 application in general might not be picked up by something looking for it?

I believe the issue is Dolphin doesn't go into a "true" full screen mode, more like the "full screen windowed" or "borderless window" options that you see in many games today. Without actually being in true full screen, ShadowPlay has no hopes of working with Dolphin. I don't know enough about coding to even attempt to fix this, but hopefully someone with the correct expertise can make use of this information.

[DJBarry004]

Dolphin -does- run in full screen mode. But it won´t show properly if you don´t have the correct settings.

[Borg8401]

(01-14-2014, 09:32 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: Dolphin -does- run in full screen mode. But it won´t show properly if you don´t have the correct settings.

Not entirely, you can test this by using multiple monitors, when in full screen you can freely use the secondary monitor without Dolphin's "full screen" window losing focus. This is an example of a full screen window, not true full screen.

[MegamanXGold]

(01-14-2014, 09:36 AM)Borg8401 Wrote: Not entirely, you can test this by using multiple monitors, when in full screen you can freely use the secondary monitor without Dolphin's "full screen" window losing focus. This is an example of a full screen window, not true full screen.

I have to agree with this. When any of my other games are open in full screen, the screen flickers and drops out of the game if I Alt+Tab, except for World of Warcraft and Dolphin - and I run WoW in full screen windowed mode.

I'm curious then if there's any potential in performance gain in Dolphin if it could run in full screen exclusive mode? Which would presumably enable ShadowPlay as a side-effect.

EDIT: To add to this, I went into WoW and the ShadowPlay icon only appeared in the corner if it was in full screen exclusive. Just seems to back this up more that Dolphin runs in full screen windowed mode. I assume that it was easier to get DX11 running in this mode versus exclusive, maybe because of extra work they would have to do with the emulation engine. Perhaps Full Screen exclusive mode will simply come in a future iteration of Dolphin as a matter of course, and not explicitly to support things like ShadowPlay.

I'd love to hear a developer's opinion on this.+

[Borg8401]

(01-14-2014, 12:51 PM)MegamanXGold Wrote:

(01-14-2014, 09:36 AM)Borg8401 Wrote: Not entirely, you can test this by using multiple monitors, when in full screen you can freely use the secondary monitor without Dolphin's "full screen" window losing focus. This is an example of a full screen window, not true full screen.

I have to agree with this. When any of my other games are open in full screen, the screen flickers and drops out of the game if I Alt+Tab, except for World of Warcraft and Dolphin - and I run WoW in full screen windowed mode.

I'm curious then if there's any potential in performance gain in Dolphin if it could run in full screen exclusive mode? Which would presumably enable ShadowPlay as a side-effect.

EDIT: To add to this, I went into WoW and the ShadowPlay icon only appeared in the corner if it was in full screen exclusive. Just seems to back this up more that Dolphin runs in full screen windowed mode. I assume that it was easier to get DX11 running in this mode versus exclusive, maybe because of extra work they would have to do with the emulation engine. Perhaps Full Screen exclusive mode will simply come in a future iteration of Dolphin as a matter of course, and not explicitly to support things like ShadowPlay.

I'd love to hear a developer's opinion on this.+

I firmly believe if we could get Dolphin to run in true full screen that ShadowPlay would work without any further mucking about.

[MegamanXGold]

I agree, it seems that really is the case. But I'm realizing at this point that if Full Screen exclusive mode tends to give better performance, then there's probably a technical reason why Dolphin doesn't already run that way. My guess is something DXGI-related on the DX11 frontend where it's easy to change the users' resolution, and size of the window, but switching to exclusive full screen means direct access to graphics buffers instead of depending on the built-in windows stuff. <-- Okay, that's me throwing around words and thoughts when I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I think I get the gist of why they haven't already done it. Anyways, remember, they only recently ditched DX9, so there's plenty of development to be had on the DX11 side of things.

All I really want is someone from the Dev team to give us a hint if it's part of their plans to develop the DX11 renderer to work in exclusive full screen? Regardless of our reasons for wanting it.

[mbc07]

DirectX 9 used exclusive fullscreen mode when you enabled 3D Vision mode, but it was hacky and hotkeys didn't work when using that mode. BTW, the devs already know that DX11 and OGL doesn't have exclusive fullscreen mode, refer to issue 6713...