Libretro Cores Quick Look - Flycast Dreamcast emulator - Vulkan renderer! (Windows/Linux/Android)

See here the Dreamcast emulator core Flycast running several games on #RetroArch using the brand new Vulkan renderer. This Vulkan support is available right now for Windows, Linux, and Android.

Yes, per-pixel alpha transparency also works on Android, but it's heavily memory bandwidth-limited. It has been tested on a Mali G76 (Samsung Galaxy S10) - and it runs acceptably at 640x480 or 800x600 resolution. Your mileage may vary depending on the GPU power inside your Android phone.

Some clear advantages of the Vulkan renderer is that frame pacing is much better than the OpenGL renderer, and performance is far higher when it comes to texture uploads and/or framebuffer manipulation. For example - when you KO an opponent in Dead Or Alive 2 against an explosive wall - the framerate would often tumble a bit on GL, but no such issues with Vulkan. Similar improvements can be noticed in Virtua Tennis 2 - when certain framebuffer effects happen after a replay, performance is much more steady with Vulkan thanks to the high degree of parallelism.

With Vulkan, we have heard reports that virtually all sound crackles and stutters are gone. That's because with vulkan you choose the sync points where you wait. In GL the driver has to guess and sometimes it fails. These effects are using render to texture, and with OpenGL this creates sync issues.

[thecr]

Flyinghead is amazing. Every time he adds something new, I'm just blown away. Tried this on virtual tennis, a game I could not run at 60fps and now it runs like a champ!

[ArcadeCabNBud]

I don't understand what I'm being shown but I trust its good lol keep up the good work

[AmbientMess]

0:38 - Sounds just like the Tekken 4 announcer :)

[linuxify]

The tennis ball in the Virtua Tennis games are black, green and sometimes blue.

[RetroGamingX]

Great! but now I need a software recorder with Vulkan support similar to FRAPS (in terms of quality / .avi for direct stream > virtualdub), any suggestion? saludos!

[darkand]

vampire chronicles for matching service (Darkstalkers) for dreamcast in flycast the image off screen.

[Gamerhenky]

Can you bring that older reicast cores back for Android? Really hated current flycast core cuz how bad emulating Atomiswave/Naomi games on low-end devices and it runs really slow with audio cracking making it unplayable.

[rgbxcrt]

And for crtswitchres 15khz analog output?

[diabo]

Flycast wont work for me on the last retroarch version ..

[MortalKombatPhenom]

Hi, can someone help me pls, when i set the vulkan render for flycast core and run a game, i can hear the sound but nothing shows up, however retroarch its on the taskbar like running in the background. When i switch to opengl again, everything goes back to normal, my specs: R9 380, ryzen 5 1600, 16 gb ram, drivers updated

[gustav]

amazing! the only problem i have with vulkan is that messes up the snow effect in the menu for some reason, not a big problem though.

[MrRedfield]

GREAT NEWS! ESPECIALLY FOR AMD GPU USER LIKE ME

[akashshah]

Wooho that's great work ! But is there any update on play! Ps2 emulator?

[deniswilliam]

friend
you could upload to me your flycast vmu to see if this is because every time i enter the game kof xi and kof neither wave can and batle colliseum only works if i delete the saves of those 3 games outside it freezes the screen and do not go and it is not just me who have this problem there are many if u could even do an all there would help a lot i can't find how to format the vmu a1 b1 c1 d1 in Retroarch so i don't know how to solve this obg and have a good day. I await help from everyone to solve this problem in retro flycasy 1.8.4 but this is in all versions.

[agustinvega]

Can someone tell me what the first game being shown is?

[anjomau]

Depois dessa última atualização, o Flycast não reconhece mais minhas roms. Corrijam esse bug. Ele estava perfeito. Tá uma merda

[fabio]

update core plz for playable roms atomiswave converted for naomi.

[MrClockwrk]

this person really isnt going to tell us how to use vulcan like he supposedly did.... downvoted.