Dolphin Emulator

We've got a lot of exciting news and features packed into this Progress Report. On top of the normal emulator development, Dolphin's infrastructure has seen a massive overhaul. While most of the work has gone into optimizing our backend and hardware to meet new demands, users may notice some upgrades to user facing features like the Dolphin Wiki and FifoCI.

Some focus on the infrastructure doesn't mean there was a slowdown in progress for the actual emulator, though! A bevy of new contributors to the project mixed with the efforts of stalwarts has brought together some massive new features no one will want to miss. Headlining this Progress Report is a massive new performance hack called VBI Skip. If you're on a weak device that can't consistently play a game full-speed, VBI Skip is a powerful tool that can help make the game more playable and keep audio crisp and clear. If you're looking for higher performance overall, a ton of Vulkan optimizations and general emulator optimizations have given Dolphin a pretty large performance increase. A new option called Cull Vertices on the CPU can also greatly improve the framerate in many games.

If you're instead looking to enjoy some unique games, the Skylanders games can now be played without needing a physical Portal of Power connected. You can even use your own figurine data to continue where you left off with powerful Skylanders!

We have a lot to get through... but first.

It's that time again - we have to warn users of a rather annoying problem that can decimate Dolphin's performance, particularly in mobile devices. The culprit this time is NVIDIA based Optimus laptops - users have been reporting that the discrete NVIDIA graphics card has been giving them a fraction of the performance of Intel's onboard graphics!

We're unsure of what is wrong and haven't been able to determine exactly when it started happening. However, if you find that Dolphin is suddenly running slower than before, you can work-around the issue! Simply add Dolphin to the 3D Settings in the Nvidia Control Panel and set our Power Management setting to "Prefer Maximum Performance." That has been the only way to consistently fix performance.

We also have one more announcement to make. For Android users who want the latest development builds on their phone without wanting to wait, we now have an Open Testing Program on the Play Store app.

Selecting this option will keep your Dolphin up to date with the latest development builds. This means you'll have access to the latest optimizations and features immediately, without having to wait for the next beta update. However, as with our development builds on desktop, there is always the risk of bugs and/or regressions slipping in and going unnoticed for a bit. If you want to live on the bleeding edge, Dolphin's Open Testing Program is here.

Now with all of that out of the way, let's finally get on with December and January's Notable Changes.

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Over the past four years, the Community Dolphin Discord Server, which was unaffiliated with the project itself, has become a fantastic community that has been providing support and a hub for Dolphin users. While it started out small, the server now boasts over 10,000 users and several of Dolphin's developers interact and help users directly on the server. The immediate nature of Discord is beneficial in that it allows for quick bug reports and support for various issues. Many users in the Discord community are experts in specific facets, like tricky controller mappings, motion controls, netplay, and more.

It has become an important pillar of the Dolphin community and Dolphin development, as a new generation of developers have originated from the Discord server. Recognizing its importance, many of the veteran developers have started monitoring the server as well, providing support and getting feedback for new fixes and experimental changes. It also allows developers and support staff to walk unsure users through making better bug reports on the issue tracker.

So we as a project have discussed among ourselves and with the Community Dolphin Discord members, and have come to a conclusion. The unofficial Dolphin Discord is already a core pillar of our community. It's about time we embraced it. We are pleased to announce that the Dolphin Discord is now the Official Dolphin Discord Server!

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As we hit the holiday season, our Progress Report might be considered a bit late. A two month report became a three month report as we realized just how much work we had to catch up on. While the usual summer burst of activity didn't come, it seems instead everyone poured their time in throughout the autumn months! There's so many features, performance improvements, quality of life updates, and more that had to be considered.

We're going to have to skip out on some of the smaller updates this time around because there are so many big hitters. For instance, if you hate shader stuttering, Dolphin's Ubershaders have gotten a new tool that helps smooth out issues on Vulkan, D3D12, and Metal thanks to Dynamic Vertex Loaders that help reduce/remove pipeline compiles during gameplay.

If you're on a weaker device that stays away from Ubershaders... maybe after these optimizations you might finally be able to make the leap. Raw performance in Dolphin is up across the board thanks to many optimizations to the GPU emulation thread (which is emulated on CPU). Because this optimization affects the very core of Dolphin, pretty much every game should be faster, with a few select games seeing improvements of roughly 50%!

If you're looking to play with friends, we have some good news on that front as well. Dolphin's "experimental" Wii Remote Netplay support has finally received some much needed attention that may help it break free of that experimental moniker in the coming months.

And, for our Android users, a lot of the performance improvements also affect tablets and phones, but we also have a special treat only for you. The Android GUI has also seen a huge overhaul that should make it easier to use and easier on the eyes. And for those having problems with particular games using features Dolphin can't reasonably emulate, we have a few presents from an old friend to patch them up.

We could go on and on, but you know what time it is. Please enjoy these Notable Changes!

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