Twilight Princess Bloom Fix causing graphical bug

[Skroop]

Hey all! First time posting, hope this is the right spot for something like this.


I've been playing Twilight Princess a bunch recently and it's been really great. (With a legit GameCube controller too!) Dolphin has been absolutely amazing, so big thanks to the devs. I've just been having one issue where this weird little transparent, almost reflection-like line will show up over parts of models and distort them. Though it seems to stick to one spot while the models move through it, kind of like some invisible plane intersecting with the model. As far as I can tell it seems to be caused by the Bloom Fix gecko code, since turning that off fixes it. I've done some testing with various settings enabled/disabled but it always seems to be there if I have the bloom fix on. So, I'm just wondering if this is a known side effect of the Gecko Code that I just have to deal with, or maybe some setting I have wrong?

Here's a video I made showcasing the issue: (Take a close look at Uli's face)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUWP9TiW4Ok

And a picture closer up:


It doesn't happen all the time, fairly infrequently actually. It's just a bit annoying is all. I can confirm it happens in the aforementioned scene giving Uli the cradle, and it happens when opening the chests in the first room of Lakebed Temple. (As long as he's wearing the Zora Armor, at least.) It's happened at various other points in the game as well, (most commonly cutscenes) but I haven't tried replicating anywhere it other than the previously stated areas.

Now for my current settings and such:

Configuration--------------------------------------------------------------


General:

• Enable Dual Core (Speedup)-------------ON!
• Enable Cheats------------------------------ON!
• Speed Limit--------------------------------100%
  

Advanced:

• CPU Emulation Engine--------------JIT Recompiler
• Enable MMU--------------------------------OFF!
• Enable Emulated CPU Clock Override---OFF!
  

Graphics--------------------------------------------------------------------


General:

• Backend--------------------------------Direct3D 11
• Adapter------------------------Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
• Aspect Ratio----------------------------Force 16:9
• Vsync-----------------------------------------ON!
• Use Fullscreen-------------------------------ON!
• Shader Compilation---------Asynchronous (Ubershaders)
• Compile Shaders Before Starting---------ON!
  

Enhancements:

• Internal Resolution--------------------------6x (or 4x, depends on the display I'm using)
• Antialiasing-------------------------------2x SSAA
• Anisotropic Filtering------------------------16x
• Scaled EFB Copy----------------------------ON!
• Force Texture Filtering---------------------OFF!
• Disable Fog----------------------------------OFF!
• Disable Copy Filter--------------------------ON!
• Per-Pixel Lighting---------------------------OFF! (I had weird shadows in Lakebed temple with this on)
• Widescreen Hack----------------------------OFF!
• Force 24-Bit Color---------------------------ON!
• Arbitrary Mipmap Detection----------------ON
  

Hacks

• Skip EFB Access from CPU-----------------OFF!
• Store EFB Copies to Texture Only--------ON!
• Ignore Format Changes--------------------ON!
• Defer EFB Copies to RAM------------------OFF! (Greyed out)
• Texture Cache Accuracy-------------------Safe
• GPU Texture Decoding---------------------OFF!
• Immediately Present XFB------------------OFF!
• Skip Presenting Duplicate Frames--------OFF!
• Fast Depth Calculation----------------------ON!
• Vertex Rounding-----------------------------OFF!
• Disable Bounding Box-----------------------ON!
• Save Texture Cache to State---------------ON!
  

For settings not listed here, assume their Dolphin's default as of 5.0-11770

EDIT: Forgot to mention various patches and Gecko codes I'm using. I'm using the Hyrule field speed hack found under patches as well as the 4x Bloom Fix Gecko Code (Which is causing this issue.) Also tried the 8x code and set my internal resolution accordingly, made no difference. I also updated Dolphin versions from 11711 to 11770 and most settings are set to default now.

Any help would be appreciated, even if it's just a comment letting me know this is something that can't really be fixed.

[themaster123]

Have you tried this
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess_(Wii)#Bloom. It seem like the problem you were have in is the wiki for the game. I assumed wii as the screenshot and video where in widescreen.

[Skroop]

(03-17-2020, 08:20 AM)themaster123 Wrote: Have you tried this
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess_(Wii)#Bloom. It seem like the problem you were have in is the wiki for the game. I assumed wii as the screenshot and video where in widescreen.

Ah, sorry for the confusion. I'm using the widescreen gecko code. Forgot to mention that. Also if it matters I'm also using the Hyrule field speed hack under patches.

I will continue to troubleshoot and update if I find a solution.

[themaster123]

You could try this
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess_(GC)#Reduce_Bloom_Ghosting
also try it without the widescreen code it might be making it worse.

[Skroop]

(03-17-2020, 10:41 AM)themaster123 Wrote: You could try this
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess_(GC)#Reduce_Bloom_Ghosting
also try it without the widescreen code it might be making it worse.

That gecko code to reduce ghosting is the "bloom fix" I was originally talking about. Sorry if I wasn't clear before. Using either the code for x4 IR or x8 IR causes the bug to appear. And unfortunately disabling the widescreen code made no difference. (Though it did feel more nostalgic, I think I'll keep it that way! Haha) I also tried it without Anti-Aliasing and only 1x Anisotropic Filtering, but that didn't fix the issue.

I suppose I should ask if there's anyone else who uses this gecko code that could tell us if they experience the same issue? That way I could determine if it's just part of the gecko code bloom fix or if it's something on my end.

Thanks for the help, though!

[themaster123]

I mention this in my previous post but have you try seeing if disabling the widescreen code fix it as there might be conflict with those 2 codes. I do play twilight princess on gamecube though dolphin but I don't use widescreen code and never notice that level of bloom issue if I remember off hand.

[Skroop]

(03-17-2020, 07:10 PM)themaster123 Wrote: I mention this in my previous post but have you try seeing if disabling the widescreen code fix it as there might be conflict with those 2 codes. I do play twilight princess on gamecube though dolphin but I don't use widescreen code and never notice that level of bloom issue if I remember off hand.

Having the Widescreen code on or off makes no difference. Just to test I completely removed and reinstalled Dolphin, now using 5.0-11770. The bug still showed up as long as I had the bloom fix gecko code on. I tried with everything set to default, no codes, and internal resolution at 1x, the bug no longer appears obviously. Though I did notice some sort of depth of field effect gets disabled that shouldn't with the bloom fix gecko code on. Disabling the Gecko code while running at a higher internal resolution gives me the known bloom ghosting issue that you linked to before. If I turn off Scaled EFB copy and don't enable any Gecko codes the bloom displays correctly, but is all pixelated/low resolution.[/url]

I believe the author of the Gecko code is still working on correcting scaled EFB related bloom issues in various games: [url=https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-high-ir-bloom-fixes-xenoblade-twilight-princess-etc]https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-high-ir-bloom-fixes-xenoblade-twilight-princess-etc
so I think I'll contact them and see if they have any insight into what's going on. Who knows, maybe I'm just applying the code incorrectly.

[Skroop]

Alright, so it turns out the author of the Gecko code to fix the bloom issue also made a branch of Dolphin that allows the user to manually set the threshold for scaling EFB copies: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-conditional-efb-scaling-to-fix-bloom

This seems to work pretty well with Twilight Princess with the slider set to around 200/300 depending on whether or not you want the minimap to look clear. Hope this thread helps anyone else having this weird graphical issue. And hope this feature gets added to the official builds of Dolphin sometime!