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Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem
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Ubershaders: A Ridiculous Solution to an Impossible Problem
07-31-2017, 09:24 AM
#21
Luminoth Prime Offline
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You guys are heroes. Truly the kings and queens of emulator developers. If only every emulator could have as incredible developers as you all.

Metroid Prime Trilogy is the primary game I play Dolphin for, and the stuttering drives me nuts, at least for when the game starts. Every time I started the game, I had to do a ritual of getting all the shaders to generate kind of like in the .gifs in that article (although whenever it happened, the game would also flicker black constantly until I went to the main menu and returned to the game, making the process even more grueling). Afterwards, the game is generally fine, and I rarely had performance issues. It wasn't that big of a deal, and I definitely didn't begrudge anyone for the problem (that some people were so disgruntled over this is kind of sad), but it definitely made sitting down to play the games not nearly as simple of a task as playing any other game I own.

Downloaded the latest development build of Dolphin, tried it on Exclusive, but that had the game running below 60 fps half the time (on my Intel i7/16GB RAM/GTX 980 at 1080p with 8x MSAA and 16x AF, but I generally have solid 60 fps with Direct3D 12). However, no black flickering/stuttering! Exited the game, set it to Hyrbid, started the game, and it ran at 60 fps with no significant drops! It did stutter quite a bit though, which mad me think to disable the External Frame Buffer, since it might no longer be needed now that there's this new shader solution. Turned it off, no black bar, and much less stuttering! But for the ultimate test, I rebooted the computer, started it on Hybrid with a disabled XFB, and still no black bar! So it seems that the ubershader solution has negated the need for Virtual XFB with the Prime games, which is fantastic. I thought that the solution to the Prime games' issues wouldn't be solved for years, but that they've been solved within two years of solving the black bar is astounding.

Unfortunate that Direct3D 12 had to be axed just before this breakthrough, as D3D12 had the best performance in Prime (for me), so that plus this solution may have fixed the minor stutters that remained and have the game running perfectly. But apparently the death of D3D12 was what allowed the ubershader solution to be completed. Hopefully with more improvements and optimizations down the road, it'll become flawless.

Thanks for all the great work. You guys are making dreams come true for a lot of people.
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07-31-2017, 01:44 PM
#22
DarthVitrial Offline
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Exciting news! Out of curiosity, have any of the Dolphin devs tried to contact Nvidia about these issues?

Now just to wait for hybrid xfb. Big Grin
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07-31-2017, 10:08 PM
#23
DrHouse64 Offline
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(07-31-2017, 09:22 AM)andykara2003 Wrote: What's  Hybrid XFB?


In short, a better strategy than Virtual XFB that brings most of Real XFB features without being stuck to 1x native resolution. Right now, some games need Real XFB to render properly.
From France with love.
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07-31-2017, 10:23 PM
#24
Blarghinston
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This is amazing. Thank you for all of this great work. I am new here so apologies. My computer is a Titan X Pascal watercooled to 2067mhz, 64GB of DDR4 memory, and a 5820k at 4.6ghz with an NVME 950 Pro. Has this configuration been tested? Do you think it can hit 4K with ubershaders?
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08-01-2017, 12:50 AM (This post was last modified: 08-01-2017, 12:53 AM by Franpa.)
#25
Franpa Offline
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Does the GL_KHR_parallel_shader_compile extension and/or SPIR-V extension support for the just released OpenGL 4.6 specification provide any new benefits to the Ubershader system (or any of the new 4.6 features)? I imagine it's way too early to answer such a question so consider this an alert to the newly released specification (even though the relevent devs are likely already well aware of the release of OpenGL 4.6 spec).

https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-releases-opengl-4.6-with-spir-v-support
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08-01-2017, 01:04 AM
#26
wowfunhappy Offline
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In theory, why should exclusive mode EVER be preferable over hybrid mode? Even if you have the GPU power to spare, once a shader has been compiled and saved, why would you ever want/need to rely on the less efficient ubershader pipeline?

Is it all basically the result of graphics driver bugs?
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08-01-2017, 01:11 AM
#27
AnyOldName3 Online
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It could be argued that it's closer to how the real hardware is supposed to work, and therefore it's morally a better option. People like to use Higan/Bsnes to emulate games which higher level emulators are sufficient for.
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08-01-2017, 03:20 AM (This post was last modified: 08-01-2017, 03:21 AM by DrHouse64.)
#28
DrHouse64 Offline
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But, the new ubershader pipeline is not more accurate than compiled shaders, right? It's just another way to get it done faster but requires more GPU power?
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08-01-2017, 03:31 AM
#29
JonnyH Offline
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(08-01-2017, 03:20 AM)DrHouse64 Wrote: But, the new ubershader pipeline is not more accurate than compiled shaders, right? It's just another way to get it done faster but requires more GPU power?

Ideally, the output should be *exactly* the same for both ubershaders and specialized shaders.
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08-01-2017, 03:48 AM
#30
nada Offline
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Awesome, didn't actually believe in this anymore, happy it came through. Great work everyone!
This should definitely make some games more enjoyable!
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