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GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin drops D3D12 in favour of Vulkan

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The awesome GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin has officially dropped support for the D3D12 API in favour of going all-in with Vulkan.

In their progress report posted yesterday they detailed their reasoning. It mainly boils down to the fact that their Vulkan renderer was performing just as good as DirectX 12:
QuoteGoing forward, we're going to continue to optimize the existing graphics backends. In our testing, the Vulkan backend was as fast as, or nearly as fast as the D3D12 backend in every benchmark. While different drivers and graphics cards will not all perform identically, we're confident that moving forward the Vulkan backend will be able to handle the burden of users seeking the benefits of the newer graphics APIs.


This makes me happy to read, since it's another win for Vulkan, which is going to be pretty damn important for the future of Linux gaming as a whole.

I don't really use emulators myself, but I consider them really important since eventually old systems just vanish. I personally see no problem using them, especially if you own the games and the system already. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Emulation, Vulkan
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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19 comments
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slaapliedje Jun 4, 2017
Sweet, this should mean the VR branch should gain support for SteamVR+Linux as well.

Metroid in VR was pretty cool, that's the only one I've tested though.
Leopard Jun 4, 2017
That can count as a win but a real winning will be the Sony PlayStation using Vulkan
elmapul Jun 5, 2017
Quoting: chimpyThe D3D12 backend showed the most benefit for Intel iGPU users that could support D3D12, but not Vulkan. This was a lot of users. Intel iGPUs dominate our top GPUs used stat in analytics.

a lot of people have iGPU but a lot of people also have an GPU or dont have windows 10
natis1 Jun 5, 2017
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They deprecated D3D9 in 2013. Now they are killing D3D12.

I have a feeling as their Vulcan pipeline improves D3D11 will go next. Especially since OpenGL seems to outperform it in benchmarks I have seen.
johndoe86x Jun 5, 2017
Somewhat related, in the same announcement they also mentioned the switch from WxWidgets to Qt! (Also, I learned it's pronounced "cute" instead of "que-tee" )


Last edited by johndoe86x on 6 June 2017 at 2:11 pm UTC
slaapliedje Jun 6, 2017
Quoting: johndoe86xSomewhat related, in the same announcement they also mentioned the switch from WxWidgets to Qt! (Also, I learned it's pronounced "cute" instead of "que-tee")

I actually learned it was 'Cute' when following all of the nonsense around Nokia, the N900 -> N9 -> Windows Phone -> End of Nokia as we know it, debacle. For those that weren't paying attention to that, the old Nokia Internet Tablets were all GTK based, but then they bought Trolltech, started making everything on Symbian / MeeGo based on Qt, and then it all went up in smoke... so sad, they had such potential, but jerks were too weak to pull it off, gave up and sold off to MS, which then failed miserably trying to push Windows Phone, which also doesn't support Vulkan :P

It's kind of cool that they switched away from WxWidgets to something more modern, but Qt still seems out of place in a Gnome environment. The opposite usually isn't true though (GTK2/3 in a KDE environment.)

Still, looking forward to a Dolphin-VR port for Linux.
elmapul Jun 6, 2017
Quoting: johndoe86xSomewhat related, in the same announcement they also mentioned the switch from WxWidgets to Qt! (Also, I learned it's pronounced "cute" instead of "que-tee")

migrating to KDE in 3...2...1!
johndoe86x Jun 6, 2017
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: johndoe86xSomewhat related, in the same announcement they also mentioned the switch from WxWidgets to Qt! (Also, I learned it's pronounced "cute" instead of "que-tee")

migrating to KDE in 3...2...1!

All the cool kids are doing it.
slaapliedje Jun 20, 2017
The funny thing about using Qt applications in a Gnome environment... they don't react well to HiDPI. So if I do some monitor switching on my laptop, suddenly the Qt application's fonts go mega-huge. I've also noticed that when using restart/power off, they will die instantly, and then you have to tell the system to restart/power off again because the dialog doesn't open. Steam does this as well, though I don't think it's a Qt or GTK based application, not entirely sure what widget it uses, I think it's kind of it's own thing...
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