GREAT READ:Making developers more productive — the Dolphin development infrastructure

[Blyss Sarania]

1. I want you to

2. Oops, I was thinking of this the other way around. It's Dolphin that doesn't support hot-plugging once emulation of the game has started. Sorry haha. I guess because of the way you said it in the article (forgetting to turn on/plug in controller before starting PCSX2 as opposed to before starting a game in PCSX2) threw me off and got me thinking it was Dolphin that in-game hot-plugging support.

3. Well it doesn't have to be things that set us apart (although that's a great idea, to concentrate on those), it could just be things we do really well or things you think people don't know about. Like compressed image support, support for arbitrary resolutions when upscaling and Async audio for when you can't keep 60FPS. I don't know, I'm grasping at straws here lol. Maybe venture into explaining things like the concept behind how and why EE Cyclerate and VU Cycle Stealing work as speedhacks?

1. Well if enough people do, and Bosit okays it, I'd be happy to.

2. Lol no problem.

3. Yeah the compressed image thing is noteworthy for sure. Arbitrary resolutions? Don't most modern console emulators? Async audio is another good one though. It's useful for more than just that. Say you are playing an RPG and need to grind some levels, so you turn off the framelimiter. With async audio you can still listen to the music and sounds at normal speed instead of superfast. Lastly, I can explain the EE hack, but not the VU hack.

[Akio]

Arbitrary resolutions? Don't most modern console emulators?

Dolphin doesn't support custom resolutions. Do you know other emulators that have this feature?

What "features" would we write about that set us apart?

FXAA and custom shaders support are nice features. Super-fast software mode that supports multithreading is incredible. MTVU is great as well even though it's just a hack.

[dogen]

Lastly, I can explain the EE hack, but not the VU hack.

I think it relaxes the timing for the vector units, giving your cpu more time to emulate them.

So if emulating the vector units is holding everything up this lets your cpu go ahead emulating the EE instead of just waiting.

At least that's what it seems like according to what cottonvibes said here.

[Blyss Sarania]

Dolphin doesn't support custom resolutions. Do you know other emulators that have this feature?


FXAA and custom shaders support are nice features. Super-fast software mode that supports multithreading is incredible. MTVU is great as well even though it's just a hack.

ePSXe and PCSX-R support arbitrary resolutions, as does nullDC.

And yeah the shaders are a good feature to highlight I think.

[karasuhebi]

Dolphin doesn't support custom resolutions. Do you know other emulators that have this feature?

It kinda does, it's just not implemented into the GUI yet. All you gotta do is open the .ini file for the graphics renderer of choice (e.g. gfx_dx11.ini) or the .ini for a specific game and edit EFBScale to a higher number. Numbers 0-7 are corresponding to each one of the drop-down options [Auto (Windows Size), Auto (Multiple of 640x528), 1x Native, 1.5x Native, 2x Native, etc.] so all you do is put in a number higher than 7. Here's some examples:
EFBScale=8 -> 5x Native (3200x2640)
EFBScale=9 -> 6x Native (3840x3168)
EFBScale=10 -> 7x Native (4480x3696)

Here's a link:
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/10/31/...ober-2014/

FXAA and custom shaders support are nice features. Super-fast software mode that supports multithreading is incredible. MTVU is great as well even though it's just a hack.

I don't think FXAA is that great, most people kind of agree that it makes things blurry. Custom shader support is a great feature though, thanks for bringing that one up. Same thing with multi-threaded software mode.

[Blyss Sarania]

When he says arbitrary resolutions he means like directly setting them.

Like how I could set 1123x636 in PCSX2 if I wanted. Not just Yx settings.

[neobrain]

Dolphin's code does have support for this, but it's only exposed in a limited way (i.e. adjusting the internal resolution according to the window size OR using a half-integer-multiple of the native resolution). I'm not sure what the point of anything else is, really: By allowing any sort of resolution to be chosen, all you do is break lots of games, and for those which don't outright break you just blur the hell out of the output image (that, and users wouldn't really understand the difference between render resolution and output resolution).

In any case, "Dolphin doesn't support custom resolutions" is a completely misleading statement. If you're after being able to chose your internal resolution in a way which ruins all image quality, then please say that instead of claiming full lack of support on Dolphin's side.

[ssakash]

Sometimes, custom resolution also fixes some graphical bugs in the game. Though, it also breaks some games.

[neobrain]

If non-native resolutions fix bugs in the game, then you should fix the emulator instead

[ssakash]

Yeah, native resolutions don't cause most issues but, you can't rule out the fact that, custom resolutions may fix some graphical glitches in the game when, you have no points to back it up. Who knows ? Lets consider game 'X' has an lining issue in native resolution. It may be fixed in any specific custom resolution.