Feature Request Thread

[masterotaku]

(10-30-2014, 02:15 AM)degasus Wrote: The downsampling is a bug in the OGL backend right now, should be fixed with https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/1418

Well, that bug seems very recent. I wasn't talking about that, anyway :p.

(10-30-2014, 02:15 AM)degasus Wrote: But I'd also like to see a nice downsampling filter. Do you want to create such a shader within our postprocessing framework?

Do you mean me? I definitely want to contribute, but for now my programming knowledge is pretty limited. PHP, Java and Javascript, basically. And I'm still learning. I understand some things in the code on Github (and post processing shaders look simpler than Dolphin itself), but I wouldn't know where to start yet.
But wait, do you think that a postprocessing shader can scale the higher internal resolution image to the monitor resolution with for example bilinear or bicubic filtering? Seems kinda complex for a postprocessing shader, I think.

Edit: oh, and I would like this to work also in the D3D backend, because I play a lot of the time with 3D Vision 2. So unless shaders can be ported to the D3D backend, it would only affect OGL.
Edit2: Nvidia Dynamic Super Resolution helps a lot with this, adding downsampling resolutions that also work with 3D Vision. However, it disables custom resolutions, and that's a pain in the ass, so I usually have it disabled.

[Lumbeeslayer]

Any Chance of implementing and merging the patch 5x and 6x internal resolution in all newer dolphin builds. Please, it would really benefit for people with 4K displays, and it would even make exiting 1080p monitors sharper.

[JMC47]

you can edit it via the INI. There will be work done to add settings to the GUI later on when a proper solution can be sought out.

[LeFreak]

I want to make a little request about TAS recording. When holding the 'frame advance' hotkey, it is not possible to make additional inputs. Therefor you have to release the 'frame advance' hotkey, push and hold the desired key and push the 'frame advance' hotkey again. In other emulators there can be made inputs while holding the frame advance button.

When having parts to record where frame perfection is not necessary, this consumes much time and I would appreciate if someone could implement this feature.

[kirbypuff]

kirbypuff's FR list (updated 05 Feb 2015)
===============================

* 'Nearest neighbor' scaling filter instead of bilinear for the native 1xIR setting (for improved accuracy)
* Lanczos and Catmull-Rom downsampling filters for higher IR settings (for improved image quality)
* UI option for setting custom IRs (>4x). Just adding 5x and 6x to the list is enough for now.
* Audio: High quality audio interpolation and resampling filters (Cubic, Hermite, Sinc)
* Audio: WASAPI audio output for Windows (Vista, 7, 8, 10)
* PostProc shaders for Direct3D
* Async shader compilation or a similar, but better solution for stutter-free real-time shader generation
* SSAA for Direct3D
* CPU->EFB Access toggle hotkey
* OSD: Display VPS and / or frametimes below the FPS in fullscreen mode (just VPS and FPS, not a full page of verbose statistics)
* OSD: Option to change the color of the FPS indicator to something other than light blue
* CLI: More command-line switches, useful for benchmarking and other things:
/n , --no_gui = Start Dolphin without the Wx/Qt UI (browser) and CLI wndow. Effective when used together with /e
/s, --snap_on_exit = auto-save a screenshot when exiting with the "Esc" key. Effective when used together with /b
* An .ini option to set IRs lower than 1x (0.5x, 0.375x, 0.25x, 0.125x,...) Combine this with nearest neighbor scaling for that "lo-fi / retro / pixel art" look. This feature is NOT intended for improving performance
* Show files such as the POVRay Benchmark in the list (UI window)
* Option to automatically 'ping' the 'motes (or press an unused button/axis) once every 4 minutes, so they don't get auto-disconnected after 5 minutes of inactivity. It's to suppress that annoying reconnect message. Useful for building up the shader cache, benchmarking, watching a very long intro/demo, etc.
* Ability to scroll the list with the D-PAD/A-Stick and select a title with a button

Improvements:
* Relax the minimum Wx UI window height limit down to 100 px (why is set to 300 px anyway?) so it can fit 1 to 3 titles without all that ugly white space
* Rename gfx_dx11.ini to gfx_direct3d.ini (since DX9 and DX11 [plugins] are not used anymore, it's just D3D)
* Don't spit error messages on startup if the default 'Clean' theme is not available (folder deleted) but another one ('Boomy', for example) is present. Check for that theme and use it instead (or even better - switch to a Qt UI instead of Wx)

[JMC47]

I just want to say this now, renaming JAP to JPN in Dolphin is really stupid because we use Nintendo's naming scheme for regions and such.

I do like some of the other suggestions, I'll go through the ones I feel are worth mentioning.

IRs lower than 1: Not worth it; there's little performance gain to get, and people wold likely mess things up.
DSP: I think we should just remove DSP interpreter from the UI altogether.
Remove OpenMP: I've been on this team for years. It's faster in NSMBWii; that's what continues to keep it alive.
Fast EFB Access: No no no no no no. It's a messy codepath and has tons of unintended consequences. No; and even if there was support, no one is getting it around neobrain. I understand the want for more speed, but that feature goes out of its way to compromise the integrity of game features.
Simulated L-Analog/R-analog: Sounds pretty reasonable.
SSAA for Direct 3D: http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=7746
Option to Ping Wiimotes: I think the smarter thing to do would be to make it so hitting a Wiimote button reconnects them rather than having to use Alt F5.
Hotkeys Mappable to Pad Buttons: I think there's some crazy input reason not to do this. You'd have to ask someone else.
CPU -> EFB Access toggle: I think this has been brought up before. I'm pretty sure if a patch showed up that it would be accepted.

[MayImilae]

Simulated L-analog and R-analog is a baaad idea. Players can already map digital and analog to different buttons, and it provides far more useful functionality. There is no situation where long-pressing a button to switch between analog and digital would be superior (and lots of situations where it would kill you).

[MayImilae]

Alright, I'll give it a try. I'll quote him so everyone knows what I'm talking about after his next edit. I'll only respond to ones where I don't completely agree with JMC. All of the ones I skip, I feel the same way about it as JMC, so uh, ditto?

kirbypuff Wrote:Water spraying in SMS *needs* full analog functionality, for example.

There is already a better solution: assign digital and analog to different buttons! Analog at full deployment does the spraying while running around, and digital is the rocket. Any kind of "press and hold" solution would be lethal, as you couldn't rocket when required and would just spray while falling to your death in dozens of locations. Separate binding is superior in every way for the shoulder buttons.

As for the dpads, most games don't give a flip, and any that do care (smash) need something quicker then a long press delay. For that, Dolphin has the modifier key.

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

Or you could, you know, go buy a gamepad and have a vastly superior experience. Even a super crappy cheap gamepad will be ten times better than a keyboard! A keyboard just can't match a joystick.

I can't imagine any scenario where a long press is better, or even as good, as existing techniques.

kirbypuff Wrote:Use a nearest neighbor scaling filter instead of bilinear for the native 1xIR setting (for improved accuracy) and add a Lanczos filter for higher IR settings (for improved image quality)

The GameCube and Wii are 3D consoles, and filtering has to be done on textures by the GPU itself. GPUs are specifically designed for bilinear and trilinear filtering so there is very little performance hit, but once you get into more elaborate methods that they are meant to handle, it gets messy very very fast.

As for fullscreen filtering, the number of true 2D games is pretty much all virtual console titles. It could be possible to implement Lanczos, HD2X etc as OpenGL shader to help with 2D games like that.

kirbypuff Wrote:* An .ini option to set IRs lower than 1x (0.5x, 0.375x, 0.25x, 0.125x,...) Combine this with nearest neighbor scaling for that "lo-fi / retro / pixel art" look. This feature is NOT intended for improving performance

OpenGL shaders! Come on, stop going straight to the hardest possible thing for stuff like this.

kirbypuff Wrote:* The numerator/denominator custom IR 'solution' that was implemented in the custom-efb-scale build. I'd like to see that merged into master

Custom IR has already been implemented in master, it just needs a GUI. So at this point most of the work is already done.

kirbypuff Wrote:* If the default 'Clean' theme is not available (folder deleted) but 'Boomy' is present, don't spit error messages on startup, but check for the 'Boomy' theme and use that one instead

Why the hell would you delete it? Ugh. Just select the other one, and it will stick for all your builds thanks to the global user config. More importantly, why the hell would you want to use Boomy?! As for the error itself, it's a WX bug, and WX will be replaced eventually. No one wants to dive into the mess of WX for a bug that minor. Especially when you shouldn't be deleting the default theme in the first place.

kirbypuff Wrote:* Remove the OpenMP texture decoder

Pretty much everyone agrees with that, but no one has bothered to make a PR for it.

kirbypuff Wrote:* PP shaders for Direct3D

More complicated than you might think, but it is planned.

kirbypuff Wrote:* SSAA for Direct3D

degasus figured it out a few weeks ago. It'll go into master as soon as he makes the PR! ...which could be a while cause laziness.

kirbypuff Wrote:* CPU->EFB Access toggle hotkey

There is no use case for that. Name even one game where you would want to switch EFB Access on and off during gameplay.

kirbypuff Wrote:Hotkeys Mappable to Pad Buttons: I think there's some crazy input reason not to do this. You'd have to ask someone else.

I've asked about this myself. The only answer I got was that it isn't tied into that system to select devices. *shrug* Wait for QT on this one.

kirbypuff Wrote:* Scroll the list with the D-PAD/A-Stick and select a title with a button

Yea yea PPSSPP. But they are able to do that thanks to QT. When Dolphin goes to QT, we might try for that kind of functionality. However our GUI is a lot more complex than theirs (in a good way, PPSSPP is a nesting nightmare) so I don't really think that would get a good result. No one wants to dumb down the GUI for that.

[kirbypuff]

(11-04-2014, 12:50 AM)MaJoR Wrote: filtering has to be done on textures by the GPU itself. GPUs are specifically designed for bilinear and trilinear filtering so there is very little performance hit...

...for fullscreen filtering of true 2D...it could be possible to implement Lanczos, HD2X etc as OpenGL shader

...for <1xIR - OpenGL shaders!

Not for advanced filtering or enhancing 2D gfx, but quite the opposite - to remove the bilinear resizing filter that's applied after rendering so the image is blocky (pixel-perfect). Almost all users say Dolphin at 1xIR does look way better than the real thing on an LCD display. This is because of the additional bilinear filtering that's applied. For accuracy, there should be an option to remove that filtering when running at 1xIR, so it would look exactly like the real thing (ugly).

And the ability to select IRs lower than 1xIR is for downgrading the graphics (3D or 2D) to extremely low-RES (160x120 or lower) for that 1970's/handheld look and feel (huge clean pixels)

(11-04-2014, 12:50 AM)MaJoR Wrote: Custom IR has already been implemented in master, it just needs a GUI. So at this point most of the work is already done.

The best way is to add 5x and 6x entries to the drop-down list as in Ishiiruka. That should satisfy 99% of users. Those with 5K or future 8K displays can always use "Auto (multiple of native IR)". 6xIR is mainly for improving image quality at 1080p without using additional AA and for 4K. Users who want even higher IRs for taking extremely hi-res screenshots can always use the .ini and pump it up to 100x if their GPU / VRAM can handle it

(11-04-2014, 12:50 AM)MaJoR Wrote: why the hell would you want to use Boomy?

'Boomy' was just an example.

(11-04-2014, 12:50 AM)MaJoR Wrote: There is no use case for that.

For demanding titles where CPU->EFB is a huge performance hit, but you can't disable it completely because it's needed in some areas for progressing further.

(11-04-2014, 12:50 AM)MaJoR Wrote: It's a nesting nightmare! I don't really think that would get a good result. No one wants to dumb down the GUI for that.

The current UI design is almost perfect. It just needs the ability to scroll through the list, select titles and exit with the pad/buttons. There's no need to dumb down or rewrite the UI to look similar to that horrible mobile phone-style UI

[RachelB]

Quote:If you think simulated analog is not a good idea, a simpler solution - a "half press" (50%) option with a modifier key should do the trick for those few cases where a single gentle analog press is required to progress further or complete a task (a full press [100%] or over-press [click] won't work)

Already possible, right click for more advanced options.