Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

The software renderer usually ends up being more accurate than hardware if:

1. Nobody's willing to do the work to make the hardware renderer accurate (since that can be hard, especially if it's a weird architecture!)
or
2. It's /such/ a weird graphics architecture that fully accurate rendering isn't even close to feasible in hardware, for whatever reason.

So it can depend a lot on which emulator it is, and what it's trying to emulate. Dolphin is also a case where the software renderer tends to be lower priority, since it's unusably slow -- some fixes actually reach the hardware renderer well before someone fixes it in software. This is pretty much just an artifact of developer priorities and preferences, so it can totally differ in a different project.

So... to get the best fidelity, I should leave all the setting as default?

It seems that if you use default settings and the game actually uses anti-aliasing, Dolphin won't. You have to force Dolphin to use it to get an equivalent picture to the real console.

What kind of AA and at what quality does the console use, though? Can Dolphin apply the same type across both backends?

The console uses supersampling (it could technically be called FSAA but in practice that name doesn't really fit because using the full screen requires multiple renders) with a customizable 12-point sampling pattern. Whether Dolphin can match it exactly (it's certainly possible with the right shader) or not is largely irrelevant; any AA algorithm will be a closer match for the original rather than a screen full of jagged edges.

Okey so, like everything on emulators, relevance of software renderer depends on the hardware we want to emulate, hardware renderer possibilities to emulate it, and developers' way of thinking, thanks Fiora.

(04-30-2015, 09:10 AM)ThanksDo Wrote: [ -> ]So... to get the best fidelity, I should leave all the setting as default?

Not exactly. I think you have to uncheck "Scaled EFB copy", since it's a enhancement that is not available on the real hardware.

And I was thinking, does "enable Real XFB" help to get the best image fidelity? Or it's similar to 1xIR (I think this is the good answer but not sure)?

Another thing I was thinking : if I'm right (correct me if I'm wrong), Dolphin always render in progressive mode, even if it's a PAL 50Hz 576i only iso. But on the real hardware (especially GameCube), it's pretty common that the image displays in interlaced mode. As far as I know, Dolphin can't do that.

Scaled EFB copy doesn't do anything if you're on 1 IR.

Real XFB can fix a few glitchy transitions, effects, and videos in some games, but it costs speed (and cuts you to 1x IR automatically). It is definitely "more accurate", albeit in doing so, prevents most enhancements.