Some problems with the latest dev build

[goody_fyre11]

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.

[refraction]

Please make sure you update your Nvidia drivers to the latest, some of the slightly older ones have problems with vulkan.

As for FXAA, none of the post shaders have been implemented in Vulkan as of yet, and I'm not sure if and when they will be.

yes the not pausing is intentional, if you need to pause you can press escape.

[goody_fyre11]

I always keep my drivers up to latest. Also another problem is that pressing the Close button on the game window doesn't close it anymore, I have to Task Manager force quit now. I've also been going through and testing all the games in my library - all of them have weird lag spikes not present in D3D11/OpenGL and strange graphical issues. I'm assuming Vulkan was just added and is in early development?

[goody_fyre11]

I've done some more testing and every game in my library has the same graphical issues as Sly 2 and 3 have - weird black flickering wherever there's transparency or shadows, and text is often flashing. I've never seen so many games have the same graphical glitches.

[Khi]

For your problem with closing the window:

Check again if the option „Hide window when paused“ is activated in the emulator settings under GS Window.


For your problem with Vulkan renderer:

Do not use higher resolution than 6x Native (7x Native and above is still causing graphical issues at the moment) or disable „Wild Arms Hack“.
Try to mess around with all the settings.

[goody_fyre11]

Oh I never use higher than 4x. Hide Window when Paused is deactivated, but it was in earlier builds and I could still close it. You misunderstand, I can't close the emulator normally anymore.

[goody_fyre11]

I've done even more testing, this build is just really buggy in general, everything about it. Some of my games won't boot anymore, someone I'm talking to on Discord can't even map controls properly, switching renderers resets your settings and forces the game into a small window in the bottom-right hand corner of your screen, games that used to work fine now have mild to severe graphical issues, I can't even close the emulator after opening it - something weird happened as of the last few 1.7.0 builds and it's not just me who's experiencing it.

[Khi]

Everything works wonderfully for me. I tested 64 games today with Vulkan and did not really change anything except the renderer and did not find any graphical drawbacks. In my case, i have only been able to determine the two things mentioned above (the one with the resolution and the Wild Arms Hack hack). And i think for two of these 64 games i had to activate „GPU Palette Conversion“ additionally to fix very small graphical problems. And i can close the emulator with any setting at any time without any problems directly (every PCSX2 version).
I can not test your affected games unfortunately, as they are not in my possession. As i said, try to mess around with each setting or make a fresh PCSX2 installation. Unless your games do not like Vulkan - i do not know. I am sure someone has a better answer than me. Good luck again with testing, mate!

[Jvnc_0503]

Please make sure you update your Nvidia drivers to the latest, some of the slightly older ones have problems with vulkan.

As for FXAA, none of the post shaders have been implemented in Vulkan as of yet, and I'm not sure if and when they will be.

yes the not pausing is intentional, if you need to pause you can press escape.

If you get to implement  the post-shaders, it would be nice that you also update FXAA to the latest version and add AMD CAS (like Xenia did recently)

thanks a lot for all the effort and improvements you make