01-08-2022, 11:40 PM
When I saw that a Vulkan renderer was added, I knew I had to try Sly 2 and 3 with it, as they were unplayable on my PC with both Direct3D11 and even more so with OpenGL. To my absolute surprise, it runs butter smooth at full speed even when upscaled 4x like 1.6.0 does, and keeps the shadows of 1.7.0! There are a few problems I found with the emulator while testing, probably because of newer features:
- FXAA is grayed out and can't be used with Vulkan. This is a big one for me but I'm guessing it's going to be added eventually as both Direct3D11 and OpenGL have it available.
- Sly 2 and 3 have a weird flickering effect when using Vulkan, it gets worse as you increase Blending Unit, and it does have to do with shadows as setting Skipdraw to 1 disables the weird effect along with all the shadows:
https://imgur.com/a/e8AVm1A
- Both Sly 2 and 3 now need GPU Pallette Conversion when using Direct3D11 or else lots of the ground is missing and most objects become black and fragmented. This isn't the case with Vulkan or OpenGL and it wasn't the case with any renderer in previous 1.7.0 builds:
https://imgur.com/a/yXMAQvs
- Like I said, Sly 2 and 3 now have perfect performance. However, at seemingly random camera angles, GPU usage will shoot up very high and the game will run anywhere from 50%-30% gamespeed. There's not more being rendered, in fact I can use mods to view the entire map at once - something that lags the game hard when using OpenGL - and it still runs at full speed, but some random camera angles decide to make the game become a slideshow. In the video below, you'll see two characters on-screen near the beginning and I don't drop any frames, but when two characters are on-screen later on in the video, this issue starts. Additionally, you can see two lag spikes at the beginning of the video when the camera is pointed at the ground. Less is rendered there yet it lags more. Hopefully these random camera-performance anomalies can be fixed. You can also see more of the flickering issue in this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkvWGRJ6AbI
Note that I can come back to this location after the cutscene finishes and looking at that same camera angle will cause the same amount of lag, even without any characters there.
- The game doesn't get paused when changing graphics settings anymore. Is this intentional?
- Vulkan causes weird issues with the Gsdx menu. If I use Vulkan and stock settings then boot Sly 2, I get weird rainbow effects. However, if I use Direct3D11 with stock settings, boot the game, then switch the renderer to Vulkan, I no longer get rainbow effects until I close the emulator and reboot the game. Changing to Vulkan also resizes the window and moves it to the corner of my screen for some reason, switching to Direct3D and OpenGL doesn't do this.
- As of the latest few 1.7.0 builds, performance and graphics can be wildly different depending on hardware. For example, a friend of mine plays Sly 2 on 1.7.0 with Direct3D11. The game runs flawlessly for him, no frame drops, and shadows are still active. If I use his exact settings on my computer which has a different CPU/GPU, I get god-awful performance, no shadows, and weird graphical glitches. It's different to the point of him thinking I'm just lying or something, but apparently something in the latest few 1.7.0 builds reacts differently with an NVIDIA GTX 960 compared to an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super.
- FXAA is grayed out and can't be used with Vulkan. This is a big one for me but I'm guessing it's going to be added eventually as both Direct3D11 and OpenGL have it available.
- Sly 2 and 3 have a weird flickering effect when using Vulkan, it gets worse as you increase Blending Unit, and it does have to do with shadows as setting Skipdraw to 1 disables the weird effect along with all the shadows:
https://imgur.com/a/e8AVm1A
- Both Sly 2 and 3 now need GPU Pallette Conversion when using Direct3D11 or else lots of the ground is missing and most objects become black and fragmented. This isn't the case with Vulkan or OpenGL and it wasn't the case with any renderer in previous 1.7.0 builds:
https://imgur.com/a/yXMAQvs
- Like I said, Sly 2 and 3 now have perfect performance. However, at seemingly random camera angles, GPU usage will shoot up very high and the game will run anywhere from 50%-30% gamespeed. There's not more being rendered, in fact I can use mods to view the entire map at once - something that lags the game hard when using OpenGL - and it still runs at full speed, but some random camera angles decide to make the game become a slideshow. In the video below, you'll see two characters on-screen near the beginning and I don't drop any frames, but when two characters are on-screen later on in the video, this issue starts. Additionally, you can see two lag spikes at the beginning of the video when the camera is pointed at the ground. Less is rendered there yet it lags more. Hopefully these random camera-performance anomalies can be fixed. You can also see more of the flickering issue in this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkvWGRJ6AbI
Note that I can come back to this location after the cutscene finishes and looking at that same camera angle will cause the same amount of lag, even without any characters there.
- The game doesn't get paused when changing graphics settings anymore. Is this intentional?
- Vulkan causes weird issues with the Gsdx menu. If I use Vulkan and stock settings then boot Sly 2, I get weird rainbow effects. However, if I use Direct3D11 with stock settings, boot the game, then switch the renderer to Vulkan, I no longer get rainbow effects until I close the emulator and reboot the game. Changing to Vulkan also resizes the window and moves it to the corner of my screen for some reason, switching to Direct3D and OpenGL doesn't do this.
- As of the latest few 1.7.0 builds, performance and graphics can be wildly different depending on hardware. For example, a friend of mine plays Sly 2 on 1.7.0 with Direct3D11. The game runs flawlessly for him, no frame drops, and shadows are still active. If I use his exact settings on my computer which has a different CPU/GPU, I get god-awful performance, no shadows, and weird graphical glitches. It's different to the point of him thinking I'm just lying or something, but apparently something in the latest few 1.7.0 builds reacts differently with an NVIDIA GTX 960 compared to an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super.