The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

 
The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version, deciding the focus their efforts on their new Vulkan backend. 
 
While the developers have admitted that DirectX 12 has offered a huge performance boost over older APIs, there has been a lot of “growing pains” and driver issues throughout development. At the time of writing the DirectX 12 backend is maintained, but the Vulkan backend is what is receiving active maintenance from the emulator’s developers userbase. 

  
Below is a section of Dolphin’s latest progress report, which comments on this recent change. The developers state that Vulkan performs similarly to DirectX 12 in most situations and that they are confident that their focus on Vulkan will pay off in the future. 

 


There was a lot of growing pains, a lot of driver issues, and a lot of unhappy users, but it set the tone for what would become the direction of Dolphin heading up to the version 5.0 release. One of Dolphin 5.0’s headline features was a brand new D3D12 backend, but as of 5.0-3774, we have decided to remove it. What we learned from the D3D9 backend helped us make that decision. Like D3D9, D3D12 had some core flaws we let slide under promises that it would continue to be maintained and fixed up. When that didn’t happen, it was decided we did not want another deprecated backend hanging around, blocking features and enhancements that require work within each backend.

Let’s not make any mistakes, the D3D12 backend was a tremendous gain for Dolphin, and what we were able to learn helped us know what to do when designing the Vulkan backend. Unlike the D3D12 backend, the Vulkan backend is actively maintained and does not have the design flaws that made D3D12 harder to work with. Removing D3D12 support also makes it easier for people to tinker with and compile Dolphin on Windows, along with the added bonus of reduced compile times.

Going 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.

 

The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

You can join the discussion on Dolphin abandoning their DirectX 12 backend on the OC3D Forums. 

  

The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

 
The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version, deciding the focus their efforts on their new Vulkan backend. 
 
While the developers have admitted that DirectX 12 has offered a huge performance boost over older APIs, there has been a lot of “growing pains” and driver issues throughout development. At the time of writing the DirectX 12 backend is maintained, but the Vulkan backend is what is receiving active maintenance from the emulator’s developers userbase. 

  
Below is a section of Dolphin’s latest progress report, which comments on this recent change. The developers state that Vulkan performs similarly to DirectX 12 in most situations and that they are confident that their focus on Vulkan will pay off in the future. 

 


There was a lot of growing pains, a lot of driver issues, and a lot of unhappy users, but it set the tone for what would become the direction of Dolphin heading up to the version 5.0 release. One of Dolphin 5.0’s headline features was a brand new D3D12 backend, but as of 5.0-3774, we have decided to remove it. What we learned from the D3D9 backend helped us make that decision. Like D3D9, D3D12 had some core flaws we let slide under promises that it would continue to be maintained and fixed up. When that didn’t happen, it was decided we did not want another deprecated backend hanging around, blocking features and enhancements that require work within each backend.

Let’s not make any mistakes, the D3D12 backend was a tremendous gain for Dolphin, and what we were able to learn helped us know what to do when designing the Vulkan backend. Unlike the D3D12 backend, the Vulkan backend is actively maintained and does not have the design flaws that made D3D12 harder to work with. Removing D3D12 support also makes it easier for people to tinker with and compile Dolphin on Windows, along with the added bonus of reduced compile times.

Going 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.

 

The Dolphin has dropped support for DirectX 12 in its latest version

You can join the discussion on Dolphin abandoning their DirectX 12 backend on the OC3D Forums. 

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