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Progress Continues
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Google Summer of Code: Difference between revisions
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The current GPU accelerated backends in Dolphin have a huge disadvantage compared to software renderers: API restrictions. Lots of GC/Wii hardware features (zcomploc, destination alpha, zfreeze, compressed Z) can only be emulated with huge work and some dirty tricks or cannot be emulated at all because the functionality is not exposed by PC GPU APIs like Direct3D and OpenGL. With a software renderer on the other hand, you get all of these "hard to emulate" features for free but end up sacrificing performance if not done with speed in mind. | The current GPU accelerated backends in Dolphin have a huge disadvantage compared to software renderers: API restrictions. Lots of GC/Wii hardware features (zcomploc, destination alpha, zfreeze, compressed Z) can only be emulated with huge work and some dirty tricks or cannot be emulated at all because the functionality is not exposed by PC GPU APIs like Direct3D and OpenGL. With a software renderer on the other hand, you get all of these "hard to emulate" features for free but end up sacrificing performance if not done with speed in mind. | ||
The disadvantage of our existing software renderer is that its performance is anything but optimal. Most games barely run any slower than | The disadvantage of our existing software renderer is that its performance is anything but optimal. Most games barely run any slower than 1FPS. That's because the code was written with compatibility in mind, sacrificing performance over accuracy whenever it was necessary. However, [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mesa_91llvm_fx8350 benchmarks] show that it very much is possible for software renderers to run games at acceptable frame rates (pay attention to the display resolution of these benchmarks - 1920x1080 is huge compared to the Wii's rendering resolution of 640x528!). | ||
So the idea of this project is to enhance (or replace) the currently quite well-functioning software renderer with "fast" code paths. How exactly these "fast" code paths are implemented is free to the student. Some approaches include, but aren't limited to: | So the idea of this project is to enhance (or replace) the currently quite well-functioning software renderer with "fast" code paths. How exactly these "fast" code paths are implemented is free to the student. Some approaches include, but aren't limited to: | ||