New Vulkan LLE graphics plugin for libretro Mupen64Plus

[iwasaperson]

http://www.libretro.com/index.php/first ... -parallei/

https://github.com/libretro/mupen64plus-libretro

So the Libretro team managed to implement angrylion's RDP in Vulkan. Apparently it runs full speed and solves all speed issues trying to run the plugin in software.

[MarathonMan]

Yes, [he who does not wish to be named] is an unimaginably talented developer.

One correction, though: are not implementing the full pixel-accurate rendering pipeline in Vulkan; rather, just one which renders triangles the same way the RDP did. It's basically does what Glide and all these graphics plugins have wanted to do, but never could because of large differences in how a traditional OpenGL fixed-state pipeline worked compared to the weird intricacies of the RDP.

mupen64plus, and pretty much the rest of the community, still has a problem with RSP emulation (it's too slow!). So when it gets released, it's very probable that a lot of games will be bottlenecked by the RSP interpreter. Supposedly they are working on a recompiler. I think when this is all said and done, most of the graphics-related issues with HLE emulation will be gone.

[Matti]

Would like to test it but the Linux Intel Vulkan Drivers for Haswell are not functional. Even the vkcube Demo only renders a gray window... and RetroArch just crashes. Maybe Kernel 4.7 is needed.

[MarathonMan]

Would like to test it but the Linux Intel Vulkan Drivers for Haswell are not functional. Even the vkcube Demo only renders a gray window... and RetroArch just crashes. Maybe Kernel 4.7 is needed.

Thanks, nice to know. I thought I had heard that they were ready for use...

[Snowstorm64]

Would like to test it but the Linux Intel Vulkan Drivers for Haswell are not functional. Even the vkcube Demo only renders a gray window... and RetroArch just crashes. Maybe Kernel 4.7 is needed.

Thanks, nice to know. I thought I had heard that they were ready for use...

The Vulkan driver is ready only for Intel Gen8+ (thus Broadwell and newer), but they're still working on the Haswell support.

This paraLLEI sounds very promising, I wonder if it'll support shaders and high definition graphic (polygons, textures, etc.)...Anyways, I'm really excited!

[Matti]

OK, tried to test it in Windows 10 with a GTX 770 and recent drivers... RetroArch crashes.

Maybe it is not finished or there are other problems. Thats why I like Software-Only Emulators. Less problems with drivers...

[MarathonMan]

OK, tried to test it in Windows 10 with a GTX 770 and recent drivers... RetroArch crashes.

Maybe it is not finished or there are other problems. Thats why I like Software-Only Emulators. Less problems with drivers...

It's not finished yet... the clickbait blog entry by squarepusher is just to hype it.

[iwasaperson]

OK, tried to test it in Windows 10 with a GTX 770 and recent drivers... RetroArch crashes.

Maybe it is not finished or there are other problems. Thats why I like Software-Only Emulators. Less problems with drivers...

Same. Tried compiling it with Cygwin because it wouldn't compile with MinGW. If only AMD didn't restrict Vulkan to AMDGPU on Linux. I'll either wait until Mesa 12 is in the Debian repos or just compile it myself and test it on my 6600K (hopefully it will work without GuC blobs).

EDIT: Compiling right now. This will take a while...

EDIT2: Just crashes. Using a 6600K, but don't have any nonfree firmwares installed. The Vulkan Samples all work, though, so I know Vulkan is working fine. Even tried running RetroArch as root in weston and straight from TTY with the same results.

[Matti]

Hmm, maybe it is not commited to github but they can run it:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Libretro/videos

There are a couple of paraLLEl Videos. Looks pretty good.

edit:

They released it. Sadly RetroArch refuses to start in Win10/GTX770 when I select the Vulkan-Backend.

http://www.libretro.com/index.php/ninte ... a-release/

[Matti]

OK, with reinstalling and downgrading the NVidia driver to 368.69, praLLEl works now. But with an i5 3.2 Ghz and a GTX 770 even Super Mario 64 drops down to 40fps. But the rendering seems to be complete.

[AIO]

OK, with reinstalling and downgrading the NVidia driver to 368.69, praLLEl works now. But with an i5 3.2 Ghz and a GTX 770 even Super Mario 64 drops down to 40fps. But the rendering seems to be complete.

Wow that's actually surprising. I wonder why it would drop down to 40 fps..

Yes, [he who does not wish to be named] is an unimaginably talented developer.

They call him Tiny Tiger .

[Matti]

I recorded a test with multiple games and now the performance was not this bad anymore... maybe shadercache or something... But still drops down sometimes and has heavy glitches in some games. When they say Pre-Alpha it is pre-alpha

https://youtu.be/kH7xqmXC7ZI

I noticed that the texture mapping in Turok at the end of the video seems wrong...

[fla56]

and check this out tho, true multithreaded Angrylion, 60FPS on my 5 year old rig:

https://github.com/ata4/angrylion-rdp-plus

[Snowstorm64]

Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know until now about this fork and, unlike the original, it's compatible with mupen64plus and Linux. That's awesome!