Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey Tino, in the future, will you support the Vulkan api within the ishiiruka Build? It'd be really cool for those who still use older versions of windows for whatever reason (and it should be easier to make given the existing work done with DX12).

This may or may not be helpful, but I wanted to share my experience playing around with Ishiiruka build 524 (e30a7a8). I'm being lazy and not trying earlier/stable builds others at the moment.
I apologize if any of this is a known issue, a "can't help it" issue or a "deal with it" issue.

Just in case, specs.
CPU: i5 2600k OC@~4.2GHz
RAM: 16GB
GPU: [single] Nvidia GTX 770, Gigabyte 4GB VRAM version
GPU Driver: 358.50
OS: Windows 8.1 x64

Game: Xenoblade Chronicles (SX4E01)

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http://i.imgur.com/TBa89zO.jpg
I was just testing OGL performance to give my pc a good reference to be relative to my DX11 performance gains and losses. I don't really remember what happened, but I was just about to close the game and go back to DX11 when I noticed the thing crashed... Kind of.
As you can see, both the emulator and window are "Not Responding", and the typical hungapp white overlay is present. Strangely enough, while you can't "see" it in a screenshot, I could continue playing the game just fine if I wanted to. This worked through loading screens as well.
Pretty strange but whatever. I couldn't reproduce this.


http://i.imgur.com/5LyJYrp.jpg
Look at that water, lol. I had a feeling tessellation was going to be iffy, but even at the lowest settings (top-to-bottom, sliders 1/2/4 are at far left, 3rd slider is one arrow key press right of far left. No values to say make it hard to describe). Given how extreme the water reacts (and changes shape relative to camera direction and angle differences), I don't expect to ever use this feature (water goes nuts before you can see any benefit to tessellation on anything else.

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All taken at the main menu, before and after the intro/sunset.
To reproduce (if needed): IshiirukaFX shader options >  SSGI=on, Illumination Only=true. No other options really matter. Illumination Only highlights the differences
http://i.imgur.com/45Jg6zY.png - Before, Trigger=SWAP
http://i.imgur.com/K5QLM4v.png - After, Trigger=SWAP

http://i.imgur.com/z7JRrU0.png - Before, Trigger=PROJECTION
http://i.imgur.com/mdMJalZ.jpg - After, Trigger=PROJECTION

http://i.imgur.com/ac3fYLj.png - Before, Trigger=EFB-COPY
http://i.imgur.com/mZVlfvu.png - After, Trigger=EFB-COPY

Well, what interesting results that is. This also happens in some of the zones the camera does a fly-by if you wait longer--noon > sunset > night > morning > fly-by random zone > noon > sunset > repeat...
I understand why each trigger can produce results different from another trigger, but why do they drastically change themselves only for the duration of the sunset?
Could someone explain what is going on here? I find it intriguing.

I wonder, could whatever is happening here be related to the big performance hit for the duration of this intro/sunset?
It happens regardless of settings/hacks. Now that I think about it, this reminds me of some SNES games that were developed with intentionally broken code left unfixed because some of the glitches just happened to make an interesting effect.

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Here are some in-game "Illumination Only" and "Ambient Only" comparisons on each trigger.

http://i.imgur.com/zNIDZoL.png - Ambient, Trigger=SWAP
http://i.imgur.com/90hz79q.png - Illumination, Trigger=SWAP

http://i.imgur.com/aIcXYCk.png - Ambient, Trigger=PROJECTION
http://i.imgur.com/6zUEUJt.png - Illumination, Trigger=PROJECTION

http://i.imgur.com/dBbqhyx.png - Ambient, Trigger=EFB-COPY
http://i.imgur.com/JMoHxOE.png - Illumination, Trigger=EFB-COPY

I have no clue how Ambient/Illumination shaders are intended to behave in each trigger, but the only one that looks strange (read: very different) is last one (Illumination Only with EFB-COPY).
To me it's like the area of effect/coverage/radius/whatever of Illumination shaders is bugged, but only with EFB-COPY as the trigger.
I'm assuming the coordinates/base point of the calculations are intended to be relative to the camera position, but it's like that location is no longer at the camera and instead hundreds of feet behind the camera (like being on the rim of a circle instead of the center as expected).
Either way, the end result has just this one shader reaching maximum effect extremely close to camera instead of gradually increasing and reaching max effect way back in the mountains like it does in Swap/Projection triggers.
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And I know it's well known, and mentioned in the trigger descriptions, but I like to beat a dead horse a few times: Some effects that shouldn't be are visible in SOME, not all, UI/HUD/Menus (Ex: SSAO is visible in the Load/Save Game menu, but not visible in the Party menu.

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Everyone likes to have their cakes (shaders) and to eats it too (UI/HUD/Menus ignored by shaders), but I know we can't have alls the types of cakeses--Baker needs more tools to try more recipies to make more people happy havings a cakes and eating it (development progression always limited to hardware restrictions).



Also, I'm in agreement with masterotaku. SSAA is the same as MSAA in Ishiiruka.
I didn't think to take screenshots specifically of this, but the ones above are all at 4xSSAA.
I did notice a shift of the screen/viewport. This happens when switching between 2x and 4x of either MSAA/SSAA. When going TO 4x the screen/viewport shifts up and left a few pixels.
Using either 8x option during the some of the fly-by zones that behave like the intro/sunset above when using the PROJECTION trigger can produce funky white light bleeding from the bottom and right sides of the screen.
I remember years ago when antialiasing was finally becoming practical for real-time gaming that stuff like this happened (trying to sample points outside the screen that don't exist)

Sorry for the long post, I'm terrible at just getting to the point (OCD, Pedantic, did I mention OCD?)

(01-16-2016, 09:30 PM)JLink100 Wrote: [ -> ]I have tested your latest version Tino (524) and for me it works very nice! Directx 11 and OpenGL works as usual. Directx 12 for me has a great improvement but if the emulator loses full speed (and with that, FPS) for whatever reason, the screen starts to flicker in a weird way. I had no other problem with your Dolphin version, so besides that, it works tremendously great (thanks Tino, by the way XD).


I have found this: ( https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-howto-using-gameini-settings-per-game?highlight=gameini+settings+per+game ) maybe it could help you but I didn't try it yet.

Thank you, that's very helpful. I've kind of given up on Tino answering my first question though.

Dude, he said he isn't at home this week. Give him a - literal - break!

(01-18-2016, 11:58 AM)Kamikaze_Ice Wrote: [ -> ]http://i.imgur.com/TBa89zO.jpg
I was just testing OGL performance to give my pc a good reference to be relative to my DX11 performance gains and losses. I don't really remember what happened, but I was just about to close the game and go back to DX11 when I noticed the thing crashed... Kind of.
As you can see, both the emulator and window are "Not Responding", and the typical hungapp white overlay is present. Strangely enough, while you can't "see" it in a screenshot, I could continue playing the game just fine if I wanted to. This worked through loading screens as well.
Pretty strange but whatever. I couldn't reproduce this.

Known issue, I've encountered in master (haven't used Dolphin in months/years).

@JoostinOnline: I think i was clear about the first question, dds is faster, and if you enable caching is even faster.
second question: you have per game settings using the game ini if you open game properties and then select to open the configuration file you can add as many specific configurations to the game as you want.

(01-18-2016, 10:26 AM)Isaboll1 Wrote: [ -> ]Hey Tino, in the future, will you support the Vulkan api within the ishiiruka Build? It'd be really cool for those who still use older versions of windows for whatever reason (and it should be easier to make given the existing work done with DX12).

I think that if someone ever implements this, it will end up being in the official builds at some point, so Ishiiruka will get it as well (if not before master). But it probably won't happen anytime soon, since DX12 is not complete.

Hey Tino, in my material map program I jacked up the glossyness of my textures and the game doesn't reflect the changes that I saw in the program. Is this a game related thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzvEUcTEoQI
I noticed that some games seem to get more glossy than others. Fragile Dreams for instance is the most glossy game I have seen.

@rlaugh0095: can you send me some examples so i can see in game to debug what the problem is?

@jimbo1qaz: Yeah I totally forgot bug trackers existed when I wrote all of that. I've seen some reports in there, including the one you mentioned, as all being known issues and are already accepted to be looked at. Another being an AA issue, but it might be separate from the one masterotaku and myself have with SSAA producing the same results as MSAA (no temporal AA).

@rlaugh0095: I totally read your video title as "Proof of Concept: Skyrim Sword!"
After realizing my stupidity after trying to think of Zelda related Fus-ro-dah jokes, I became interested from an artistic perspective. I'll watch out for more of your results, I like seeing people take something and go the other direction with it like this (especially with this game).

Another Question, this time about IshiirukaFX.
There are tabs for SSAO and SSGI.
SSAO tab has an option for SSGI, but you can only adjust SSAO.
SSGI tab has no option for SSAO, but you can only adjust SSGI. This makes sense.
If you enable SSAO via SSAO tab but NOT SSGI, but then enable SSGI via the SSGI tab does nothing (including the Ambient/Illumination Only buttons).
The SSAO tab settings override SSGI tab settings. If SSGI is of in SSAO tab, then SSGI stays off regardless of SSGI tab settings.

Also, I notice each tab focuses on that effect. What I mean is the effect in the tab name will always look better than the other. The way things are illuminated via SSGI tab looks better, IMO, and the Occlusion is cleaner via SSAO tab. Occlusion via SSGI tab is "noisy" (I can make the SSAO2 shader look like this).

Are they intentionally exclusive like this?
Could both tabs potentially be combined so we can control both at the same time instead of one or the other?
Is this a job for the Shader-busters? I mean I suspect you've already got a handful just doing replies to our questions, supporting and developing "improvements" like async. caching, texture crap with a different library than Main, and living your own life outside this community.