Libretro Status Updates

Libretro Team

So, what have we been up to?

Dolphin and Ishiiruka cores

The Dolphin libretro bounty has led to this rebasing of the Dolphin libretro core. It is now up-to-date with the latest sourcecode, and it now supports OpenGL, Direct3D11 and Vulkan! It is even available for RetroArch on Android right now, provided you use the AArch64 version (since Dolphin itself requires a 64bit CPU on Android anyway).

In addition to this, I have also taken a look at porting Ishiiruka (a Dolphin fork) to Libretro. This one is not as far along yet as the mainline Dolphin core, but we are already making steady progress with the OpenGL renderer!

RetroArch 1.7.4 – WIMP updates

There will continue to be improvements to the WIMP UI in RetroArch 1.7.4. One of the big new features will be a fancy grid view. Previously, the WIMP UI only had a list view.

Beetle PSX HW

Some important bugs have been fixed. Finally, mask bit emulation has been (hackishly) implemented by flyinghead for the OpenGL renderer, so Silent Hill’s fog finally displays properly. iCatButler has made PGXP much more robust over the past few weeks, which has led to many rendering bugs being fixed when PGXP is enabled.

Reicast

You can read about all of our improvements to the Reicast core in this separate blog post here.

Beam racing bounty – up to $1132!

The beam racing bounty has fetched $1132 so far!

RetroArch is already at the tip of the spear when it comes to latency mitigation strategies with features like runahead, configurable max swapchains, frame delay, custom video context drivers, etc. Beam racing is a new lagless VSYNC technique has been developed that is already implemented in some emulators like WinUAE. The aim of this bounty is to finally implement it in RetroArch as well, and the users/devs that want it have put their money where their mouth is for this particular feature!

BeetleDC Libretro – Updates 26-7-2018

Libretro Team

BeetleDC Libretro and BeetleDC OIT Libretro have recently been updated.

Here is a listing of all the changes/fixes/improvements:

  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Eldorado Gate – Broken opening FMV fixed (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Demolition Racer now works (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Redline Racer – Graphics bugs fixed (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Fixed rendering issues with Tokyo Xtreme Racer games (link)
  • (Dreamcast/Compatibility) Conflict Zone – Modern War Strategy now works
  • (NAOMI/Compatibility) Metal Slug 6 now works without graphics bugs

BeetleDC OIT – Increased compatibility with AMD/Intel GPU drivers

AMD GPU owners on Windows/Linux and Intel HD users on Linux/Mesa should probably be able to use the Reicast OIT core now, as several GLSL compliance bugs have been fixed by now.

Note that BeetleDC OIT can still be very buggy for Intel HD users on Windows, and slow to boot. The renderer really lends itself better to discrete GPUs from AMD/NVidia.

Render to texture upscaling!

Previously, games which rendered to texture (such as Dead or Alive 2 or Crazy Taxi) would always output at 1 x native resolution. Now, you can set the upscaling factor. Games which render the screen to a texture should look much better as a result, provided your GPU is up to the task.

An example – here is a comparison of the Crazy Taxi pause screen – left is 1x native resolution, right is 4x upscaled –

xBRZ Texture upscaling

This new setting allows you to upscale all the textures in a game up to 6 x their original resolution using the xBRZ texture filtering algorithm! See it in action with Shenmue in this video below –