This pr is a sequel to the one merged some days ago (#3839); which aims to improve stability, graphical accuracy and better Vulkan implementation and coherency among all platforms, contains the next changes:
-> Removal of VK_EXT_unified_image_layouts: The removal of this ext was for cleaning purposes since the only part of this extension implemented was the activator; meanwhile a proper structure of use for this extension was not implemented, currently it's not viable to keep following an idea of a proper implementation due to complexity of this feature and the state of buffer cache and texture cache, which it's task that we must do near in the future, when this happens a better oportunity will arise to properly set layouts along a proper implementation of VK_EXT_descriptors_indexing, practically this feature was dead code.
-> Adjustment of VK_EXT_custom_border_color: The implementation of this feature was handled poorly and worsened during the first tries of making ExtendedDynamicState stable, by gating it's use to the slider of EDS (dyna_state) if the counter was at least in 1, even tho this entered in a bug with the RemoveUnsuitableExtension, when is not a requirement for enabling in Vulkan's documentation and was my mistake, some time later in ExtendedDynamicState refactor (#3074) I tried to make the implementation more robust in comparison the Yuzu's implementation which had bans on vendor drivers, the new handling was requesting if extension was available and what kind of support feature it had, enabling what it was available and wiring an adequate path for said available feature; which leads us to today's change, after reading carefully how certain paths weren't triggered or caused mostly issues on how extension should work I did the next changes:
- I removed the forced disabling with ExtendedDynamicState setting
- Resolved the bug with RemoveUnsuitableExtension + dyna_state
- Removed comments of explanation + log_debug warning
- Set extension to be disabled if customBorderColorWithoutFormat is not available
- Helps to solidify the removal of bans in vendor drivers
This changes fixes the VUID 04015 for the handling with undefined format and made the usage of the extension more near to what Vulkan specification expects, yet there is still cases where we can't emulate properly samplers and some translucid black boxes will still appear, yet, now alleviated by allowing extension choose the proper custom available in Vulkan or degrade into a fallaback of solid colors.
-> Adjustment of VK_EXT/KHR_robustness2: This feature was introduced in ExtendedDynamicState refactor (#3074), as safety measure for descriptors during the Write of buffers, providing robustness with an upgraded access to image, buffers and proper discard of null data in descriptors, however, despite the configuration the logs during debug sessions never stopped to bring the next VUID-VkWriteDescriptorSet-descriptorType-00324 and VUID-VkWriteDescriptorSet-descriptorType-00325, being the first one, the most constant issue plaguing logs; the approach was not only ensuring device can access between each of the version of this feature, whether is an EXT or KHR (drivers can report one of them or both, yet, if we call the one of them and it's not the version supported, driver would not load the feature, there's a priority to the KHR version) with a simplified configuration of the extension to use only nullDescritor to deflect properly buffers and other trash data outside of descriptors bound; ensuring to wire the path when it's and not available and also with BindVertexBuffers2EXT when it's or not available; fixing both VUID's. This changes helps to save some CPU resources and memory on binding routes.
- Fixes VUID-VkWriteDescriptorSet-descriptorType-00324
- Fixes VUID-VkWriteDescriptorSet-descriptorType-00325
- Fixes VUID-vkCmdBindVertexBuffers-pBuffers-00621 (alongisde a latter adjustment for pStrides)
-> Adjustment VK_EXT_image_robustness: As other features, this was implemented during the ExtendedDynamicState refactor (#3074), currently this change it's just to ensure more drivers are accessing this feature by changing the modality from extension to an explicit feature, some other redundant code was cleaned within this change.
-> Restored gating flush operation on removed gpu accuracy: An issue report from an user called CaptFaraday in https://github.com/eden-emulator/Issue-Reports/issues/425, posted a behavior appearing after the rework of gpu accuracy levels (#3129), which broke the rendering in Paper Mario - The-Thousand-Year Door where some graphical issues such as black flash and missing rendering from many animations through the game thanks to the removal of the flush inside FlushAndInvalidateRegion gated with IsGPULevelExtreme and suggested a possible fix with resting the missing gating and flush; which I did and properly restoring the complete behavior of this functionality + wiring to the new IsGPULevelHigh for a better semantic correctness, the change was tested and didn't affected Yoshi's Crafted World graphical problems and main reason behind the deletion of this function, fixed in fcfcee7247.
- Solves https://github.com/eden-emulator/Issue-Reports/issues/266
- Solves https://github.com/eden-emulator/Issue-Reports/issues/425
- Fixes Paper Mario - The-Thousand-Year Door
- Keeps Yoshi's Crafted World issue still fixed
-> Adjustment VK_EXT_conditional_rendering: Yuzu inherited us in their Vulkan backend multiple flaws which got worsened with the time as game and drivers changed, aside that, with the time studying this source code and especially the Vulkan-side of Eden, I started to learn and recognize some extensions that required a wide and robust modification to ensure the logic of the extension works as intended; currently ConditionalRendering had a lot of minimal modification:
- Reordering the functions from "_NotifySegment_" to avoid a masive ram leak coming from query_cache (@weakboson) (#131)
- Removing a function "_NotifySegment_" from rasterizer to ensure Metroid Prime 4 stopped crashing due to serious ram leaks in query_cache (@Maufeat) (#3142)
And other intents to make ConditionalRendering fully working, such as happened in ExtendedDynamicState refactor (#3074) but only patched an horrible situation with how the extension was truly working, after spending more than 3 months studying how this and other sub-sequential and essential extensions touched in this PR worked in Vulkan, I dived once again to make it work properly; one of the first changes was to fix an invalid reference lookup of queries, which fixed the removal of "NotifySegment" inside rasterizer and start to adjusting other parts of the implementation of ConditionalRendering minimally and switching with heavy tests to ensure not a single game gets broken among the changes; yet the initial benefits from fixing the indirection in the lookups to query cache, was to reduce the amount of time of GPU was spending in the constant state of queries, which proved to reduce flickering in Pokémon ZA among others, with also an small increase of performance but more noticeable stability, starting to reduce stutering bit by bit.
This advances allowed me to fix one of the the functions of IsGPULevelHigh, where existed a bypass to accelerate conditional rendering without the proper checks if the extension was truly supported, freeing QCOM from the flag of a fixated presync workaround; which also improved the usage of QCOM driver for 8 Elite devices and Unreal Engine 4 - 5 games, such as Dragon Ball Z - Sparking Zero; but that's not the only benefit from the current tries to make ConditionalRendering implementation more robust and accurate to specifications, but also started to show key points of where VK_EXT_transform_feedback was also failing to work properly.
-> Adjustment VK_EXT_transform_feedback: Like many other features in this PR, this one was also adjusted minimally in ExtendedDynamicState refactor (#3074), with the ConditionalRendering refactor going on, the solutions for the usage of this extensions started by ensuring each key function is properly gated by a getter which would only be enabled if the extension was already being loaded in the virtual device, if wasn't the case I was making sure to wire the fallback correctly, which wasn't in place and didn't had a robust handling since ever, this way games started to not only improve graphical accuracy, like some games such as Zelda - Echoes Of Wisdom where the lightning and dark border moves/ reacts dynamically.
Besides that, this change brought the possibility to finally get rid of the indirection of the buffers synchronization which often take a non-synchornization path to ensure a faster reply but with higher possibilities to cause graphical issues in among several games; aside that, also helped to ensure "_query_cache.CounterEnable(VideoCommon::QueryType::StreamingByteCount, false)_;" function is properly allocated and reset in a different place than where this was placed.
- Maintain Metroid Prime 4 fixes even after returning the lines that caused the game to be unplayable, whether was an instant crash
or crash after some minutes of gameplay, fixes that were introduced in other work (#3142).
Within the first step in the refactor of this extension, this work was reviewed by @wildcard which made me notice of an issue of handling inside buffers, there existed a mismatch on the tracking of feedback buffers and since we're treating them as buffer_slot, counterstream was still tracking and consuming stream_buffers and not where data was really passing through; derivating the counter selection of counterBufferCount by stream indexes and not by slot, which could cause cases of _Stream =! slot_, a solution proposed for me was to add stream mapper function where the stream slot were located + updating UpdateBuffers() to calculate buffer counts per slot and not stream, allowing to fully map the map funtion of stream mapper; along other changes on the WriteBuffers + ProduceBufferCounter to avoid any misaligment.
-> Other minimal adjustments: Alongside these important adjustment, others were also made to ensure logical coherency to this recent changes, such as ensuring FullSynchronization of buffers path, since GPU has mostly a syncing issue with certain type of textures and vertex calculations, the original behavior of jumping into a non-synchronize path of buffers let GPU ran without proper awareness of the textures being loaded, ensuring more performance if all the textures reached properly inside GPU, but with no safety provided for buffers, even we added a cases were dummies and mostly buffer trash data gets discarded by nullDescriptors, this won't ensure graphical artifacts or a bad calculation on the range of lightning/ gfx could appear. I dare to think this was thought to be implemented due to the original heavy costs on Yuzu's time, this along the removal of QCOM's drivers from Query's Presync funtions.
A small adjustment to the mutable functions inside the CreateImageView structure to add the extended usage:
"Because Switch's GPU creates incompatible views (sRGB and UNORM) on the same image. A sRGB image can't be used as storage but it is in a UNORM view. Which is exactly the use case of these flags." - @weakboson
During all of this changes inside queries, we started to get in some devices "Device Loss" warning from Vulkan along 2 specific warnings:
- [ 102.384895] Render.Vulkan <Critical> video_core/vulkan_common/vulkan_debug_callback.cpp:69:DebugUtilCallback: vkDeviceWaitIdle(): THREADING ERROR : object of type VkQueue is simultaneously used in current thread 517024609280 and thread 517864567808
- [ 114.003530] Render.Vulkan <Critical> video_core/vulkan_common/vulkan_debug_callback.cpp:69:DebugUtilCallback: vkCmdBeginQuery(): VkQueryPool 0x15e400000015e4 and query 172: query not reset. After query pool creation, each query must be reset (with vkCmdResetQueryPool or vkResetQueryPool) before it is used. Queries must also be reset between uses.
Since before all of this adjustments, original GPU thread often take it's time to stop and look for a moment to synchronize with CPU (non-TimelineSemaphore), the whole flow data was improved that we were producing more data stale than we could really take due to the lack of a Reset to avoid pools being filled with old data, in order to get rid of this, another try to implement ResetQueryPool's appeared which was intented to be implemented some months ago and got removed in #3270, this time aligning the vkDeviceWaitIdle + ResetQueryPool was proved to be effective than first implementation and didn't caused major issues, now GPU can Vulkan can reset staling data, which can catalogued as old once they were used and displayed in frame, keeping a more fluid exchance and discard of data.
- Fixes VUID-vkCmdBeginQuery-None-00807
- Fixes multithreading error with vkDeviceWaitIdle and data allocation
We have some other changes to the coherency of ExtendedDynamicState2 and the feature of restart primitives, which now patches topologies once are processed if they pass through ExtendedDynamicState2 enabled and get reset before every draw to prevent another topology VUID; also I ensured refresh, reset, clamp and overall improve the math inside the Viewport/ Scissor feature operations inside DynamicState and later upgrades.
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UPDATE (23/04/2026): After passing a heavy testing phase, an issue was encountered with AMD drivers on Windows which based on the commit: c07dfa6fb4, Super Mario Odissey started to show vertex glitches on the the waterfall + water fog being rendered incorrectly, if VertexInputDynamicState was disabled caused black screen on ExtendedDynamicState (1 - 3) and hard crash if ExtendedDynamicState it was disabled; this situation was caused to the vertex input dynamic tied to ExtendedDynamicState1, AMD driver didn't allowed fast access to BindVertexBuffers2EXT without binding strides first, which caused a syncing problem between the binded vertex and the missing buffer in the same chain, this got fixed by removing the conditions for vertex input dynamic.
Aside that; another pair of issues were addressed in the meantime of refining this PR, one of them was to solve the failing BGR565 formats to swizzle into RGBA5 which allows to swap between red and blue; solving the inverse situation of blue icons on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for older QCOM drivers and SoC's, such as Snapdragon 855 - 870; which will also help some Exynos processors to render properly. This solution was converted into a toggle/hack because it's use it's very conditional on older hardware; newer SoC's such as 8 Elite won't longer require this handling to convert properly BGR565 texture even if the support for the format is not available.
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Here an small preview of what this pr has been fixed so far, but our testing range may be more limited than what this can actually do:
- Allow to display new effect on games
1. Jump Force: New particle on stages and main menu.
2. The Legend Of Zelda - Echoes of Wisdom: darkness post processing effect on screen filter such as game intro and smokes on houses (8 Elite).
3. Reduce texture flickering on games such as EoW, Monster Hunter Rise.
4. Improved performance stability on various games with Android.
5. Improved Xenoblade games rendering with QCOM stock drivers by improve viewpoint handling (8 Elite).
6. Fixes vertex explosion on Xenoblade 3 with AMD GPU with extended dynamic state enabled.
7. Fixed Mario Kart 8 Deluxe rendering with VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state enabled.
8. Fixes certain angle of Pokemon Legend Z-A would look mono color with vertex input dynamic state.
9. Fixed graphical issue with VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state on mobile drivers.
10. Fixed vertex explosion with Turnip (8 Elite) on The Legend Of Zelda- Breath Of The Wild during loading screen.
11. Fixed issue of vertex on Pokémon Legends ZA with VK_EXT_vertex_input_dynamic_state enabled.
12. Improved rendering and stability of Inmortal Fenyx Rising, including QCOM drivers being able to reach into gameplay.
13. Fixes Paper Mario - The-Thousand-Year Door missing rendering on animations through the whole game.
14. Fixed Mario Kart 8 Deluxe blue tint icon on Snapdragon 855 - 870 (by enabling Emulated BGR565 hack toggle).
15. Fixed Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm issue rendering on characters like Naruto being blue on older QCOM SoC's and Exynos (by enabling Emulated BGR565 hack toggle)
16. Fixed Dangaronpa Killing Harmony v3 issue rendering on characters with blue tint on older QCOM SoC's.
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_**Special Thanks - Credits**_
-> @Gidoly for being able to keep track of the intensive testing phase this pr required and the will to keep helping in development, you're a good friend and very useful.
-> @CaptFaraday for the suggestion of the fix for Paper Mario.
-> @wildcard for the review during the refactor of VK_EXT_transform_feedback, without this comment I would probably ran into many untrackable issues.
-> @weakboson for the suggestion into the solution for sRGB's and UNORM's in the incompatible views.
Co-authored-by: lizzie <lizzie@eden-emu.dev>
Reviewed-on: https://git.eden-emu.dev/eden-emu/eden/pulls/3853
Reviewed-by: crueter <crueter@eden-emu.dev>
Eden is a free and opensource (FOSS) Switch 1 emulator, derived from Yuzu and Sudachi - started by developer Camille LaVey.
It's written in C++ with portability in mind, with builds for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, FreeBSD and more.
The emulator is capable of running most commercial games at full speed, provided you meet the necessary hardware requirements.
A list of supported games will be available in future. Please be patient.
Check out our website for the latest news on exciting features, monthly progress reports, and more!
Development
Most of the development happens on our Git server. It is also where our central repository is hosted. For development discussions, please join us on Discord or Stoat.
You can also follow us on X (Twitter) for updates and announcements.
If you would like to contribute, we are open to new developers and pull requests. Please ensure that your work is of a high standard and properly documented. You can also contact any of the developers on Discord or Stoat to learn more about the current state of the emulator.
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