Mario Kart Wii Graphical Issue

[vernacular]

I'm encountering a graphical problem (on most but not all tracks) in Mario Kart Wii. When entering a track, a translucent black rectangle with a blur effect under it occupies the upper left quadrant of the screen. It appears underneath in-game text, but otherwise obscures 1/4th of the game. When I searched for this issue I saw forum posts from 2009 about this happening with Mario Kart Wii on an old Windows version of Dolphin. It was addressed with some specialized hack which is no longer available. I suspect this issue was fixed in later versions of Dolphin, yet here it is again.

I'm running Dolphin 5.0-8993 on a OnePlus 6 (A6000_22_181026) using Android Pie so it's set to the OpenGL renderer since Android 9 update broke Vulcan support in Dolphin. I've exhausted many settings toggles and still can't get rid of that translucent black rectangle.
Scaled EFB Copy on or off, same issue.
Disable Fog on or off, same issue.
Disable Copy Filter on or off, same issue.
Widescreen Hack on or off, same issue.
Arbitrary Mipmap Detection on or off, same issue.
Skip EFB Access from CPU on or off, same issue.
Ignore Format Changes alters the color of the black rectangle and added additional glitches inside it.
Store EFB Copies to Texture Only on or off, same issue.
Texture Cache Accuracy set to Low, Medium or High, same issue.
GPU Texture Decoding when turned on crashes the game.
Store XFB Copies to Texture Only on or off, same issue.
Immediately Present XFB on or off, same issue.
Fast Depth Calculation on or off, same issue.
Changing the resolution does not alter the space occupied by the translucent black rectangle.

Is there anything I can do to get rid of this annoying glitch?

[JMC47]

Ask your driver manufacturer to fix their drivers.

[Helios]

To expand on JMC47's post, this is an issue that's happening because your GPU drivers have a common bug.

[vernacular]

When I bought this phone I was considering getting the Exynos version of the Note 9 or the S9 (since I read that the Exynos version is rootable and the Adreno version is not). Then I read that the Snapdragon Chipset with the Adreno GPU performs better for Dolphin... something about better driver support?? Shouldn't believe everything I read on the internet. So since I can't root the Snapdragon version of the Note 9 I got the OnePlus 6 which has the Snapdragon 845 plus the Adreno 630 and can easily be rooted. The very first page of the root process for the OnePlus 6 on xdadevelopers instructs the user to update to the latest version of Android. For Dolphin, updating Android to 9 is a mistake since you then encounter more driver issues in Dolphin as Vulkan just flat out doesn't work.

So here I am with a phone that I got specifically because it was easy to root and supposedly better for Dolphin yet I'm still plagued by "driver issues". Reading around these forums I see people talking about other emulators using Vulkan on the latest Adreno drivers and they seem to still be working. Their argument seems to be "if this emulator works with Vulkan on these drivers then why can't Dolphin?" I'm sure you're delighted to hear that for the billionth time. Anyway, is there no way too work with the terrible drivers and fix these problems? Some means of enabling other hacks to work around game-specific problems?

On the subject of bad drivers, when I was rooting the OnePlus 6 the Windows drivers were such garbage that they would show a yellow problem icon in Device Manager practically every single time I tried to install and use them, but I managed to get them working long enough on one of my computers to detect the device with fastboot and flash TWRP. The Windows drivers later decided to stop functioning again. So if my only recourse requires using fastboot again on my PC I'm kinda screwed with such awful drivers. I think I would have to use fastboot again to go back to the previous Android version with the previous Adreno drivers, but I don't know since I'm a total novice with Android things as I don't mess with them very often, I just gain root access then never touch the bootloader again.

[stizzo]

Turn your OS in Oreo mode, then, play games.

PS: Emulating an old gpu, like that of a psp, is simple.

Emulate a new gpu (with all its hardware extensions), it is not. (and here are two: Flipper and Hollywood)

If in the drivers, some extensions are missing or not enabled by default (or the drivers are written with the feet), you will have problems.

Each manufacturer compiles its drivers, so each manufacturer must support.

In the OnePlus and Pie case, the house is not doing anything to help the project.

Vulkan APIs are still young and not yet mature (not stable).

[DJBarry004]

(11-12-2018, 01:19 AM)stizzo Wrote: Turn your OS in Oreo mode, then, play games.

PS: Emulating an old gpu, like that of a psp, is simple.

Emulate a new gpu (with all its hardware extensions), it is not. (and here are two: Flipper and Hollywood)

If in the drivers, some extensions are missing or not enabled by default (or the drivers are written with the feet), you will have problems.

Each manufacturer compiles its drivers, so each manufacturer must support.

In the OnePlus and Pie case, the house is not doing anything to help the project.

Vulkan APIs are still young and not yet mature (not stable).

The PSP´s GPU is actually newer (PSP was released in 2005), but a lot more weaker since it was meant to be used in a portable system powered by batteries.

The GC´s GPU, while older, it´s a lot more powerful because of the many, many features. Likewise for the Wii´s, which is actually a powered up GC GPU (except maybe for a couple of additional features).

[stizzo]

The gpu of the psp, is a derivative of the Graphics Synthesizer GPU of a PS2 (1999), with memories and computation polygons halved (8 millions against 16 millions)

Conceptually, the architecture is older than that of a GameCube hardware gpu.

This is what I know.

PS:

Gigaflops;

PSP - about 3

PS2 - about 6

GameCube - about 10