Will Dolphin ever support DX12?

[ThatBenderGuy]

I'm not sure if the API for DX12 is out yet but I saw a video about it around June so I was wondering if Dolphin will ever utilize the plethora of features provided by DX12. It's supposedly improves frame-rate by up 2 times. Just curious if it's planned or is in the works or not

[Helios]

If one of the developers feels like making a backend for it.

AFAIK there's little developer interest in a D3D12 backend.

It doesn't matter what D3D12 does with framerates if our graphics API wasn't the bottleneck in the first place.

[AnyOldName3]

And even if the devs wanted to use a modern low-level API, they'd probably use Vulkan instead, as it's not restricted to Windows 10, but offers all the same features. They'd have to write it anyway if they wanted to have the advantages of DX12 on Linux, OSX and phones. The developers have already written an OpenGL backend which is better than the Direct3D one in most cases, even though OpenGL is supposedly harder to use than DirectX.

[mimimi]

(11-27-2015, 03:12 AM)helios747 Wrote: If one of the developers feels like making a backend for it.

AFAIK there's little developer interest in a D3D12 backend.

It doesn't matter what D3D12 does with framerates if our graphics API wasn't the bottleneck in the first place.

I'm not sure if the graphics api is really the bottleneck in many games. But i think many games are limited by the gpu thread, which would indicate that a better graphics api could help. But when a game is actually cpu thread or gpu limited, then yeah, a new graphics api probably wouldn't do much good.

[DarkeoX]

(11-27-2015, 04:50 PM)mimimi Wrote:

(11-27-2015, 03:12 AM)helios747 Wrote: If one of the developers feels like making a backend for it.

AFAIK there's little developer interest in a D3D12 backend.

It doesn't matter what D3D12 does with framerates if our graphics API wasn't the bottleneck in the first place.

I'm not sure if the graphics api is really the bottleneck in many games. But i think many games are limited by the gpu thread, which would indicate that a better graphics api could help. But when a game is actually cpu thread or gpu limited, then yeah, a new graphics api probably wouldn't do much good.

His words jinxed while he posted but that's what he meant I believe. The graphic APIs are not a bottleneck in Dolphin, and in most emus. Thus there's little need to push the likes of Vulkan and D3D12. The current APIs are plenty enough, well tested, well known and need more polish and bug fixing rather than a rewrite.

[AnyOldName3]

Except for the fact that these new APIs are closer to the metal than OpenGL or DirectX, so it might be possible for Qualcomm to actually write a Vulkan driver that works, in which case a Vulkan backend could help Dolphin quite a bit in the mobile space. This is mostly because of Qualcomm's incompetence rather than these new APIs, though.

[Depressed Osaka]

It would help people with low end CPUs, actually.

[Helios]

Not if their CPUs can't reach 100% emulation speed without graphics being the issue.