Vulkan Support?

[Abz145]

Are you guys planning on adding a Vulkan Backend to the emulator?

[TkSilver]

DraStic does not use the GPU.... well not like some emulators do. The GPU only draws the screen and shaders it does not actually process the graphics. So unless Exo makes a GPU based renderer adding Vulkan support would be pointless.

[Exophase]

Right now the role of the GPU in DraStic is just to composite the emulated DS screens (uploaded as textures) and other display elements, with optional GLSL shaders applied. So there isn't really much to be saved in terms of reducing draw call or state verification overhead. It might reduce the overhead of uploading the display textures. But on devices with reasonably recent SoC this overhead is pretty low, and it's going to be more or less only recent SoCs that will ever support Vulkan.

If we ever leveraged the GPU more for actual rendering Vulkan could have some benefit. But I would most likely target something broader like OpenGL ES 3.0 first, because I wouldn't want to exclusively design for something that doesn't yet have a lot of support. So the question only really becomes relevant if an OpenGL ES renderer every comes to fruition.

[Fefo]

How's Vulkan shaping up on mobile platforms? Dolphin devs talked at large of how bare is the OpenGL implementation on it.

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/26 ... fameshame/

[ericbazinga]

How's Vulkan shaping up on mobile platforms? Dolphin devs talked at large of how bare is the OpenGL implementation on it.

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/26 ... fameshame/

That looks like fun. I bet the Dolphin team totally isn't pulling their hair out with this one.


On the bright side though the Nvidia SHIELD TV (as well as other Nvidia products) might get some slight or even sizeable speedups. Which is good since I'm saving up for a SHIELD TV (primarily for use as a Plex server) and I want to play Wii games on it at 60fps with no slowdowns.
Well I think. Tbh i don't really understand how Vulkan works