Issues on Sony XPERIA Z

[iCEQB]

Hi,
I got a XPERIA Z on the latest FW (10.3.1.A.2.67) which is based on Android 4.2.2 and therefore should support OpenGL ES 3.0.
Now I have been lurking around the board for a bit yesterday and saw that there seem to be different driver versions for Adreno devices.
My first question is, how can I check the driver version ?
And can I update it in case a newer version gets pushed ? - I read the blog article yesterday about the different vendors and their implementation of OpenGL ES 3.0 and Qualcomm seems to be pretty bad at it, yet they updated / fixed the given errors (according to the answers from the support members).
Few days ago I gave Dolphin 4.0 rev. 242 (master) a shot. Then the first issues came up after selecting OpenGL ES 3.0 as the default renderer. Upon launching a game (tested "Luigi's Mansion") it froze my phone and shut it down/restarted it immediately.
I "narrowed" it down to the rendering option, since selecting the software renderer worked w/o issues ... despite being slow of course.

So I checked the "OpenGL ES 3 Guide" by Sonicadvance1 and saw the commands to echo out the 5 scripts/logs ? (dunno what exactly they are).
After running Dolphin again with OpenGL ES 3.0 as the default renderer I managed to not make it crash/shutdown/restart my phone anymore, which is good (I guess).
But nothing happens, it stays on a black screen and does nothing.
I looked around the board and saw a little trick from 2 guys who also got stuck on a black screen, but managed to work their way around by selecting the JITL recompiler, starting the game, save-stating it, and switching back to the JIT recompiler.
I did the same with the rendering option, I selected the software renderer to get to the "Nintendo" intro, did a save-state and switched back to the OpenGL ES 3.0 renderer.
After loading the savestate it froze my phone and Dolphin didn't react anymore (Android offered me to wait for it or force close it), I left it at that state and continued reading a few post when Dolphin shocked me in the middle of the night by continuing to emulate the game and screaming "NINTENDO !!! " at me.

I got to the main menu and I of course forgot to configure the button mappings, so I couldn't do anything and Android was reacting very slowly to my input so I had to force close it.
After restarting the phone, and configuring everything I never managed to get to that state again.

So my other questions are:

1) Why is it running so inconsistently ? - I know it's still WAY to early and all, but running the same thing twice should work, no?
2) In the "OpenGL ES 3 Guide" it says that the commands are not needed anymore. Is it still true ? Or is it related to something else? Because for me I only got somewhere WITH them, anything else restarts my phone.
3) What is the current state of things and can we expect a stable/fixed version soon ? - I read that a lot of things got broken with the recent code changes.
4) Is there a "magic" revision which should work / is good for testing purposes, which I can use as a reference to see how things work ?
5) And again the question from above: How to check my driver version and update it in case they are outdated / buggy ?

Phew, long post
But maybe it's a good opportunity to collect such crucial questions in one place, as there seem to be a lot of answers scattered all over the place.
Sorry for my bad english btw

Thank you,
iCEQB

[bzb95]

The Xperia play uses a Adreno 320 gpu, same as the nexux 7(2013) I am using. You pretty much answered you own question as to why opengl 3 doesn't work, that being Qualcomms drivers are less than a joy to work with. I plan on looking it to getting it to consistently run, albeit slowly, once my nexus 7 gets Android 4.4 with new Qualcomm drivers.

As far as I know there has never been a version that runs well on an Adreno 320, somebody please correct me if I am wrong.

[Aftershocker]

Install this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...info&hl=en amd go to the GLES2.X tab to see what drivers you are running.

The latest ones are V45 as in the attachment. Your stuck with whatever drivers your ROM comes with.

It might also help if you were running 4.3 so I suppose you could try flashing a custom ROM if you don't want to wait for an official update.

[cloud1250000]

The lastest one are v53, in the nexus 5

[Aftershocker]

The lastest one are v53, in the nexus 5

Right lets hope people start baking them into kernel/ roms as soon as the latest OS goes to AOSP.


Shouldn't be long before the Nexus 5 drops now :-)

[iCEQB]

Ok I got somewhere, I think.
So I downloaded "OpenGL-ES Info" and checked my ES 3.0 version under the "GLES2.X" Tab ... at least I tried to.
To my own surprise it said "Open GL ES 2.0 V@14.0"
Yet it didn't stop me from trying my luck a bit more with Dolphin, so I managed to narrow it down to what actually kills it for me.
It's the "Fastmem" feature, once that's active, nothing works, I stare at a black screen at that's it.
So I only enabled "Dual Core", "JIT ARM Recompiler", "OpenGL ES 3.0" and "Show FPS" and left everything else at the default setting.

Now I can run "Luigi's Manision" but it takes its time to launch, like 10-15 seconds to show the "Nintendo" screen.
But it behaves strange, it goes to portrait mode on its own, even tho I held the phone in the landscape position.
Enabling the software renderer "fixes" that, but yeah, speedwise that's no option.
And it doesn't show the framerate, even tho I enabled it, dunno if thats a bug or part of the strange behavior on my phone.

Another thing I noticed is, that I still need the 5 commands from the "Open GL ES 3.0 Guide" for anything to work.
Once they aren't enabled "Fastmem" saves me from a reboot, w/o it and w/o the commands in the guide my phone restarts once "OpenGL ES 3.0" is enabled as the default renderer.
If the 5 commands are active incl. "Fastmem" nothing happens -> Blackscreen.

So for me to make it work, I need to enable the 5 commands + "Dual Core" + "JIT ARM Recompiler" + "OpenGL ES 3.0".
I'm running revision 249 and get a lot of graphical bugs, like Luigis hat clipping all over the place.

I hope that somehow helps or sheds more light on my "problem".

Regards,
iCEQB

[Sonicadvance1]

The version string lies a bit. It says 2.0, but it supports 3.0. This is probably due to companies testing the drivers internally and realizing they are super buggy. So they change the version string to say 2.0 even though it supports 3.0. This is just a cosmetic thing.

Fastmem is known to not work on Qualcomm. This is due to a issue in the kernel, it may or may not work correctly on Tegra and Exynos.

The reason it is taking a long time to launch is due to us sending so many commands to the GPU that the Qualcomm's KGSL thinks the GPU has hung and actually restarts it. This is fixed in v43 drivers.

The rotating to to portrait mode is another bug in Qualcomm's drivers.

Showing framerate is disabled on Qualcomm because once again, buggy drivers.

If you aren't using the 5 root commands with the v14 driver, then you'll be /extremely/ lucky to have a device that doesn't lock up.

The graphical issues is actually once again a bug in the Qualcomm drivers. Their shader compiler crashes if we try to emulate what needs to be done correctly.

All of these issues aren't fixed, even in the latest available drivers, except the one I noted.

[iCEQB]

Now that's an answer after my fancy !

So it all comes down to the god damn driver version as it seems
Is the Adreno 320 in my device another factor of everything being so buggy (as bzb95 mentioned)?
Or do 320 and 330 chipsets only differ in their performences ?

And how come we can't update the drivers ourselfs? Are they uniquely built for each device ?

Regards,
iCEQB

[Sonicadvance1]

There are two parts, KGSL which resides in the kernel, and the driver that resides in userspace.
These two bits have to be the versions that work with one another else there will be big issues.
The kernel bits tend to be the harder part to update since custom roms tend to just use the kernel included with the device.

Snapdragon 800 is nice enough that since it is a new SoC, every company uses at least v43 or higher drivers with them.

To note is that I use the userland driver version number to relate to the kernel bits as well, since part of the issue lies in the kernel bits.

[cloud1250000]

yeah don't expect a custom rom with new adreno driver... unless the device isn't supported since a year or two, the devs won't take the time to look into this..