DirectX 12 in PPSSPP?

[srdjan1995]

Hi all. Can any of the devs tell me is there any intent of implementing DX 12 in PPSSPP? Would that improve something in emulator, perhaps performance in games like God of War? Thanks in advance.

[Henrik]

Next supported 3D API will be Vulkan, which should have similar benefits to DX12 (better performance indeed). No point in porting to two next-gen APIs, and Vulkan will be supported by both Android and Windows. But it's not even out yet.

[VIRGIN KLM]

I wanted to make a question regarding Vulkan/DX12 for quite some time now. Are there really PSP games that make so many drawcalls? I thought PSP did a small amount of them, in the realm of some thousands in worst case scenario. My point is I try to understand what games specificaly would benefit from it (like a top 5) and what is their specific weakness that the new API would help with. Mobile devices sound at first like they would benefit from it alot but at a second thought, the GPU department is almost never (if ever) the bottleneck factor and since we talk about a minimal amount of drawcalls that -I guess- pretty like any current device/API has no issue with 'em anyway. Now on the lower CPU overheard department I'm not exactly sure how that works in the case of an emulator that the original hardware is not made to work like a typical PC/mobile device so I'm not exactly sure if it -can- take advantage of the extra room it is given, and if it does, how much of an impact it's going to have. Now I may be missing alot of stuff here and I'd be glad to be educated and corrected if it's possible, because the concept of console emulators and new-gen APIs just frustrates me.

[Henrik]

Yes there are. Drawcalls are incredibly cheap to make on the PSP and some games like GTA sometimes reach 2000 drawcalls per frame. We try to combine them as much as possible, but it can still reach 1500 real drawcalls per frame, which not many OpenGL ES drivers can keep up with (although not really problem on desktop). Also, submitting dynamic geometry is very expensive on unextended OpenGL ES.

On nearly all mobile devices now, GPU emulation really is the bottleneck. Our CPU emulation is fast enough to not be a problem in most games on most devices.

So I actually expect Vulkan to help a lot in heavy games like GTA and God of War.

But we will see.

[srdjan1995]

(11-16-2015 01:47 PM)Henrik Wrote:  Next supported 3D API will be Vulkan, which should have similar benefits to DX12 (better performance indeed). No point in porting to two next-gen APIs, and Vulkan will be supported by both Android and Windows. But it's not even out yet.

Tnx for you answer Henrik. Yeah, i forgot about Vulkan. Is there any info on what version of Android OS will Vulkan work?

I think it will work on my desktop GPU (HD 7750). I intend to go for R9 series as soon as possible.

[Henrik]

It has not been made official when Vulkan will come to Android, but word is that Google is making a serious effort to push it, so we can probably expect support in the next major OS version after Marshmallow, and possibly even before on some devices.

[GuilhermeGS2]

The only benefit of adding Vulkan to PPSSPP is the multi-plataform support, because PPSSPP can run fine in any PC with a dedicated videocard and at least a Core 2 Duo with OpenGL.

[Henrik]

No, read my responses again. It's performance, mainly on mobile.

[GuilhermeGS2]

(11-19-2015 06:42 PM)Henrik Wrote:  No, read my responses again. It's performance, mainly on mobile.

I understand, but I said it won't be much useful for PC, as the DirectX 12 wouldn't too, because OpenGL and current Direct3D can run everything fine.