Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

awesome work @hcmeta 160%-ish increases jst from software nothing to be scoffed at

Thanks for the continued bug reports/feedback, a new version (v0.93) has been uploaded on the first post that should address all the issues here.. specific reponses below. Shader caches need to be rewarmed on this version, as the logic was refactored a bit.

(01-01-2016, 01:38 AM)dephined Wrote: [ -> ]As you can see from the attachment, it's not fixed (in fact the problem got worse)

P.S. seems very strange to me that the new version (0.92) is stated as 4.0-8402, while older 0.91 is stated as newer (4.0-8408)...

Thanks - I think I tracked this down, can you confirm it is (really) fixed in v0.93? The version numbering change was due to integrating some upstream changes.

(01-01-2016, 07:27 AM)Hexidecimal Wrote: [ -> ]So I've been messing with these builds on and off since I saw the performance increase and they seem to work really well. The gain in Mario Galaxy is especially nice.

I did notice however (and this has perhaps been mentioned previously and is a known issues) that if I have "Load Custom Textures" enabled for Super Mario Galaxy 1 or 2, the emulator crashes on load. It does however work on Zelda Wind Waker without a problem. Perhaps it's specific to only Wii titles?

I had a question about how this implementation of DX12 works as well. With DX12 you can "pool" the memory on dual GPU setups to act as one large amount. I currently have a single GTX 970, but am adding a 2nd this week and was curious if the DX12 implementation here would allow dolphin to use the total VRAM of 8GB as opposed to mirrored 4GB like in a traditional SLI setup. Not that SLI is traditionally supported in Dolphin anyways.

Thanks for your work on this version of Dolphin, it's exciting to see how it progresses.

On the newest version, I cleaned up some things that might have been causing these crashes, and can't repro it locally now. Can you see if the Load Custom Textures crashes still happen on v0.93, and if the crashes are fixed by deleting your shader cache?

You can theoretically put textures on a separate discrete GPU and read them over PCI-e, some hardware supports that, or put less important textures in system memory, but it's a trade-off - in both cases memory accesses will obviously be slower. Are there cases where you'd want that much memory?

(01-01-2016, 10:20 AM)helios747 Wrote: [ -> ]Xenoblade works well. Shader compilation seems to take much longer than D3D11. That might just be a random occurrence though since AFAIK it uses the same compiler?

Thanks - there was a bug in v0.92 in the shader cache, so it would stutter much more frequently than DX11, that's been fixed now. The HLSL -> DXBC is the same, but the final compilation done by the driver works a bit differently. The shaders are compiled in conjunction with the rest of the pipeline state, so that should reduce stutters/'hidden' driver compiles. Let me know if you don't see a difference with v0.93 after the caches have been warmed again.

(01-01-2016, 11:04 PM)Wabe Wrote: [ -> ]Run into a couple of problems with 0.92 today:

BOOM BLOX bash party (Wii)
Runs under DX11 but just renders a black screen on DX12 - seems to be running but not visible judging by sound.
EDIT: FIXED BLACK SCREEN PROBLEM BY MANUALLY DELETING SHADER CACHE.

Starfox Adventures (GC) Torches in caves shine through walls.

... and a happy new year everyone

Yeah, the shader cache was a little buggy in v0.92, this is fixed. Can you see if the torch corruption issue still repros in v0.93 if you don't mind?

(01-02-2016, 08:06 AM)fla56 Wrote: [ -> ]awesome work @hcmeta 160%-ish increases jst from software nothing to be scoffed at

Thanks! :-)

(01-02-2016, 08:05 AM)fla56 Wrote: [ -> ]

(12-19-2015, 03:06 AM)neobrain Wrote: [ -> ]Hi!

It's been a while since I was last active in the forums, but well.. I feel my 2c might be appropriate here, given that I introduced the D3D11 backend originally. There have been some positive words about this change already, so I won't get into repeating those and instead move on to real talk immediately Do note that this is my personal opinion though, and the more active members of the Dolphin development team may have different understandings of code quality than I do.

tl;dr: I don't think it makes a lot of sense to introduce a D3D12 backend to Dolphin, currently. Here's a quote of mine from today's IRC explaining why:

Long story short: I'm not expecting hdcmeta to fix all of this mess, but at the same time that doesn't mean it's sensible to merge his work into Dolphin just because it has already been written. Introducing an OS specific (and even OS version specific!) backend introduces a huge maintenance overhead, which may slow down overall progress to the point where there is no net gain to be obtained. Time spent porting changes to the various backends may be better invested into general code infrastructure work.

In the end, we have to ask ourselves: Is there any actual long-term advantage to gain from introducing /yet/ another backend?

sorry, totally accept your opinion is expert but surely there's a dilemma here: if DX11/OGL could have been well-threaded/threaded-easily surely it would have been done already?

also, Win10 uptake is huge, it's not like say developing for DX11/Vista, plus i'm not just flattering you guys, me (and a whole bunch of folk i wager) would have upgraded to Win10 just for a DX12 dolphin

I know that opengl has some sort of fallback for older gpus. Could this be possible in D3D? Don't really know how this stuff works.

looks like DX12 not using exclusive mode -getting Windows notifications/pop-ups in-game?

In Starfox Adventures, torches are still shining through walls in .93 I'm afraid.

Mind, it does seem a particularly glitchy game even with vanilla Dolphin.

(01-03-2016, 12:18 AM)fla56 Wrote: [ -> ]looks like DX12 not using exclusive mode -getting Windows notifications/pop-ups in-game?

Yeah, it uses full-screen windowed. On DX12 (with flip-model swap chains) this is equivalent to FS-ex mode performance wise.. let me know if you see any issues here.

(01-03-2016, 01:43 AM)Wabe Wrote: [ -> ]In Starfox Adventures, torches are still shining through walls in .93 I'm afraid.

Mind, it does seem a particularly glitchy game even with vanilla Dolphin.

Thanks for checking, I think this has now been fixed in v0.94 on the first post, can you try that out?

(01-02-2016, 11:36 PM)Craftyawesome Wrote: [ -> ]I know that opengl has some sort of fallback for older gpus. Could this be possible in D3D? Don't really know how this stuff works.

there comes a limit when it's not possible but at least some of the multicore benefits would extend back a generation or two

esp if nVidia gets it's finger out on the driver front

Could someone tell me what "Phong Lighting" does to image quality? I've searched, but can't find anything on it.. Which game is a good example of the benefits?

Thanks

And as always: thanks Tino for this amazing version of Dolphin. I absolutely love it!

(01-03-2016, 05:46 PM)xystus Wrote: [ -> ]Could someone tell me what "Phong Lighting" does to image quality? I've searched, but can't find anything on it.. Which game is a good example of the benefits?

Thanks

And as always: thanks Tino for this amazing version of Dolphin. I absolutely love it!

I think you might have hit the wrong thread there xystus!

Torch lights are working again in .94 \o/

Thanks hdcmeta.