Development Thread Exclusive Fullscreen Mode and 3D Vision

[Armada]

We're very near to implementing Exclusive Fullscreen for the D3D backend. This fullscreen mode is used by many other 3D games and was part of the old "3D Vision" option in the DX9 backend. We plan to turn it on by default when we merge it, therefore we need more people to test the stability of it.

Exclusive Fullscreen gives the following advantages:

• A slight performance boost.
• Reduces judder, making on-screen motion a lot more smooth.
• Reduces input latency, making the emulator more responsive.
• Allows support for 3D Vision and G-Sync.
  

Build available at: https://dl.dolphin-emu.org/prs/pr-506-dolphin-latest-x64.7z

Note: Exclusive Fullscreen is currently not compatible with Render to Main Window or the OpenGL backend.

The only disadvantage of this mode is a slightly longer time is required to switch to fullscreen (less than a second). But because it provides so many advantages we plan to turn it on by default with an option on the advanced tab to switch back to the old "Borderless Fullscreen" mode.

If you're testing 3D Vision please note that Nvidia 3D Vision may not display any depth in the image, if this is the case for you then try out a different Internal Resolution like "Auto (Multiple of 640x528)". Please report back which Internal Resolution settings work for you and which ones do not. If you don't have a 3D monitor but you do have an Nvidia GPU, you can still test this feature by enabling the "Discover" profile in 3D Vision for red/cyan anaglyph mode.

Have fun testing, and be sure to post feedback if you find any problems.

The following are issues to look for during testing, these are previous issues that should already be fixed:

• Fullscreen constantly switching on/off.
• Render window resizing to cover the entire screen after exiting fullscreen.
• Secondary monitor staying black during fullscreen.
• All screens staying black when pressing Escape to end emulation.
• Nvidia 3D Vision not providing any depth. (See above)
  

[MayImilae]

Man that's smooooooooth.

[shinra358]

Works great!


Enhancements:

1. I know this is nvidia's fault, but is there anyway that you can make dolphin detect if 3Dvision (without a setting checkbox) is being used and a game is started and have it send ctrl+alt+insert immediately to turn off the green text? When a person does it, it is supposed to stay off. Here, it comes back on everytime after you close out a game and restart the same game. If you can find a way to permanently have the text off, that would be great too.

2. There is an opengl plugin in the nvidia forums that focuses on 3Dvision on opengl games. Can you make opengl be able to use 3Dvision too? This is because I would like to still be able to use shaders and d3d backend can't use them.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/757649/3d-vision/opengl3dvision-wrapper-v-1-02-public-release/

[delroth]

There is already an option to turn off OSD text: in Config > Interface.

[Armada]

(07-17-2014, 11:14 PM)delroth Wrote: There is already an option to turn off OSD text: in Config > Interface.

He's referring to the OSD text from Nvidia 3D Vision, which shows up every time we go into exclusive fullscreen.

(07-17-2014, 11:06 PM)shinra358 Wrote: 1. I know this is nvidia's fault, but is there anyway that you can make dolphin detect if 3Dvision (without a setting checkbox) is being used and a game is started and have it send ctrl+alt+insert immediately to turn off the green text? When a person does it, it is supposed to stay off. Here, it comes back on everytime after you close out a game and restart the same game. If you can find a way to permanently have the text off, that would be great too.

I think it has to do with the face that there is no profile associated with Dolphin. We can't do anything about it unfortunately, maybe it will help to add Dolphin to the Manage 3D Settings page?

(07-17-2014, 11:06 PM)shinra358 Wrote: 2. There is an opengl plugin in the nvidia forums that focuses on 3Dvision on opengl games. Can you make opengl be able to use 3Dvision too? This is because I would like to still be able to use shaders and d3d backend can't use them.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/757649/3d-vision/opengl3dvision-wrapper-v-1-02-public-release/

I had already found a few methods on how to achieve 3D Vision with OpenGL, I may work on that in the future if any of them are viable solutions. But I'd like to improve 3D Vision in the D3D backend first, I want to implement explicit support for it to make it more reliable.

[JMC47]

Has anyone else had significant ghosting on 3D Vision games, including Dolphin? I'm pretty sure it's my monitor in games like Mario Kart, because when I do the 3D Vision discover, I don't get any ghosting. Pretty annoying to be so close, and then have a hardware issue.

I get 3D Vision working only with Auto (Multiples of blah) option in full screen. That's fine enough if it means no hacks.

[Knuckles500]

This works great for me so far. Games that already run at 60fps appear a lot smoother and I feel less input lag even with Vsync enabled. Disabling Vsync in the DirectX backend actually disables vsync in Windows now, where before the Aero theme would apply it's own vsync over the window while the game is running. NVidia ShadowPlay works without having to record the entire desktop now. Using the H.264 chip on NVidia GPUs with Steam In-Home Streaming should work now, whereas before you could only stream Dolphin by using the CPU.

The only thing I have an issue with, which may/may not be something exclusive widescreen intended to fix anyway, are games that run at 30FPS. I still get microstuttering (dropped frames even though the framerate counter doesn't change, unrelated to the shader cache) with most of the 30FPS games I've played, Luigi's Mansion is the worst offender I can think of. Although it could be just a problem with my monitor/GPU. I've been testing this issue for quite some time now, and I haven't figured out the cause of it yet. I know Dolphin doesn't supply an option to enforce triple/double buffering and instead relies on the games themselves to supply their own. Maybe Luigi's Mansion is just one of the games that doesn't use either double/triple buffering? I'm curious if anyone else is noticing this or if it's just me. I'm using a Dell U2412m monitor, by the way.

I'm curious to hear from people with G-Sync monitors and how this build is working for them.

[shinra358]

@JMC - It's probably best to play it with the 3D meter at 15% and control toyification depth with convergeance instead. That would probably get rid of ghosting.

@knuckles - when using 3D vision, if the program isn't optimized enough, you're gonna want to turn down AA settings and/or don't use ebf > ram. I know for me that I have an i74930mx and a 780m and any AA setting will steal fps from me. Even the first. So the team would have to optimize AA more or just add shaders to d3d backend for they don't take that much fps. But in Luigi's mansion's case, even that won't work and a solution would be to get a highend desktop processor machine, talk to dolphin team about readding opencl, fixing openmp, or just turning down the resolution.

@armada - i'm pretty sure that i can figure out an autohotkey script to do this (send hotkey to turn messages off automatically) as long as it stays out of a profile so that it doesn't save (so the script wont reactivate it if it is already off). Unless you can tell dolphin to check for the existing profile and add it if it is not there to the nvidia driver. But even then you would still have to press it a first time (with each game). I really do hope the opengl version comes if nobody else has probs with this as I hope that this is good enough to be included in the master branch now

[JMC47]

shinra358: I honestly don't know much about 3D Vision, I tried googling some guides on reducing the ghosting, but found nothing I could do that worked.

[shinra358]

@armada - Edit: The only problem I'm having now other than those 2 things is that once your 3D settings are set and you turn off the game and restart, you will have to do the settings all over again (even with the modified nvapi.dll in the dolphin folder). If I remember correctly, the old 3dvision option that was in dolphin saved your settings without a profile right? Games in which options don't stick (pc games) problem with this issue can usually be solved by adding a modified nvapi.dll in with the exe of the program. That doesn't work here. I don't see any problems with things stated in the initial post now.

I really wish nvidia would have included a 'depth wall' so that when objects come closer to the screen then it would auto focus to keep things clear


@JMC - oh okay. well yeah, it's probably a good idea that when you press ctrl+F4 that you keep the depth at its normal setting. If you put it to max, things like doors in games would separate and not be onscreen. Holding ctrl+F6 to increase convergeance would be better to use. Sometimes you will have to hold it for a long time to be able to see the effect. Best way to configure would be to reach a point where things are right at or beyond screen level and adjust convergeance until it is clear and doesn't burn your eyes. Games like re3 work, but it would be better if you don't use 3D on those types of games because depth management is lost when changing scenes ingame. But high depth is usually the culprit for ghosting if not hardware problems.
Ctrl +:
F3 and F4 = decrease and increase depth level
F5 and F6 = decrease and increase convergeance level (no meter is shown)