Something this game and RS3 really struggle with is distortion effects, like the heat waves on Tattooine Training, or the ripple effects when you fly close to the ground. There's similar effects all over Prisons of the Maw which is likely why it runs at 20 FPS on my machine most of the time... or it's just the game being slow when lots of models are on-screen. Lots of particle effects rendering also slows it down.
Edit: In fact, I'll give a complete list of issues the game gives me:
- CPU-related bottlenecking. In some levels that aren't very GPU-intensive, I can noticeably increase the framerate by destroying more enemies and structures, meaning the game is keeping track of all of them on the CPU. The fact that cutscenes in those same maps are usually a lot less laggier backs this up, as there's only the cutscene actors to keep track of.
- GPU-related bottlenecking. With the exception of space levels, the game generally has a hard time rendering anything with lots of geometry, lagging hard in the process.
- Any time the game has to load anything, whether it be a level, another menu, cockpit view, alerting the base in Imperial Academy Heist, etc, the game stutters and has a high chance of hanging. This does not get any better in single core mode, and this is with VBI Skip enabled.
- Distortion effects, such as the Tattooine Training heat ripple effect, the hover effect when you fly a fighter close to the ground, or the special effects produced by concussion missiles, lag the game HARD. Spam too many concussion missiles and the game slows down to 1 FPS for 10 seconds, it's nasty.
- Aspect ratio bars for cutscenes take up the whole display window due to the way they're programmed.
- Occasionally when starting a mission, one of the MIDI samples used for that level's music gets "stuck" playing the whole time, giving you the normal music but with one instrument playing the same way the entire time.
- Pausing and unpausing almost certainly guarantees a hang.
- Lots of particle effects being rendered, regardless of whether or not the current level is GPU-intensive, causes heavy lag.
- Most people still can't boot this game!
tl;dr - Dolphin is incredibly unoptimized for this series in particular, CPU and GPU optimization would have to improve tenfold, and then all the Dual Core issues for both games would have to be fixed.
Edit: In fact, I'll give a complete list of issues the game gives me:
- CPU-related bottlenecking. In some levels that aren't very GPU-intensive, I can noticeably increase the framerate by destroying more enemies and structures, meaning the game is keeping track of all of them on the CPU. The fact that cutscenes in those same maps are usually a lot less laggier backs this up, as there's only the cutscene actors to keep track of.
- GPU-related bottlenecking. With the exception of space levels, the game generally has a hard time rendering anything with lots of geometry, lagging hard in the process.
- Any time the game has to load anything, whether it be a level, another menu, cockpit view, alerting the base in Imperial Academy Heist, etc, the game stutters and has a high chance of hanging. This does not get any better in single core mode, and this is with VBI Skip enabled.
- Distortion effects, such as the Tattooine Training heat ripple effect, the hover effect when you fly a fighter close to the ground, or the special effects produced by concussion missiles, lag the game HARD. Spam too many concussion missiles and the game slows down to 1 FPS for 10 seconds, it's nasty.
- Aspect ratio bars for cutscenes take up the whole display window due to the way they're programmed.
- Occasionally when starting a mission, one of the MIDI samples used for that level's music gets "stuck" playing the whole time, giving you the normal music but with one instrument playing the same way the entire time.
- Pausing and unpausing almost certainly guarantees a hang.
- Lots of particle effects being rendered, regardless of whether or not the current level is GPU-intensive, causes heavy lag.
- Most people still can't boot this game!
tl;dr - Dolphin is incredibly unoptimized for this series in particular, CPU and GPU optimization would have to improve tenfold, and then all the Dual Core issues for both games would have to be fixed.