Emulator

Does it work in D3D9 only period? Or did it work in the other backends at some point?

I dunno 'bout you, but I'm seeing plenty of coronas: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xtaspwwdc9auro1/G3FE69-01.png?dl=0

Coronas also render with OpenGL backend in Dolphin 3.5 Currently testing later revisions.

After some testing, I've isolated where the regression occured.

Somewhere between 3.5-1774 and 3.5-1778. The builds between those two can't be downloaded for whatever reason, but I saw that there was an issue introduced in 1778 that broke Mario Sunshine that was later fixed. So maybe this is just another regression that slipped through the cracks.

http://i.imgur.com/i0YhJZ3.png - 1774
http://i.imgur.com/sih7A4S.png - 1778

However, none of the builds are really rendering the coronas correctly. On a real GC, they've got a much bigger, bloomier look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rt7LEM-hLw

Dolphin 3.5-1778 = e60e50a198ae

https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/commit/e60e50a198ae

Correction - the builds where the coronas don't render through walls have dull coronas. When the coronas are rendering through walls, they have the correct "bloomy" GC look. I'm not sure when that behavior was changed. I'll keep testing.

Oh, yea, and I goofed up. I should have said I tested with 1779. not 1778. Regardless, if @skidau is right, then 1778 is indeed the problem.

As it stands, fixing this regression is going to cause the weird-looking coronas to come back. So I'm not sure it should be fixed until the coronas are fixed because incorrectly rendering coronas are more conspicuous than no coronas.

In the Game Settings ini file, perfqueries can be enabled and disabled by adding this line into G3FE69.ini

[Video]
PerfQueriesEnable = true

or

[Video]
PerfQueriesEnable = false

Adding PerfQueriesEnable = true to G3FE69.ini has restored the coronas. But there's a catch. The coronas are extremely senstive to AA.

No AA - http://i.imgur.com/iB25uXq.png (This looks bad.)
2x AA - http://i.imgur.com/dbrG77E.png (This looks okay. Not accurate to real GC IMO, though.)
4x AA - http://i.imgur.com/NU9Ld4H.png (Noticable wobbling)
8x AA looks the same as 4x, but without wobbling.

Thanks for testing, Ambient. Sorry, but we do not accept bugs where graphical glitches result from enhancements like AA.

kosta, would you please add PerfQueriesEnable to the TimeSplitters: Future Perfect game ini's?

The reason I bought up AA is because for some reason Dolphin is not rendering the coronas properly without AA. They're too small and too transparent. Turning on 2x AA sort of improves them. I'm thinking that information about this should be added to the Future Perfect page of the wiki. Some users may prefer to disable PerfQueries in order to avoid the coronas acting up.

Unfortunately, PerfQueriesEnable = true seems to carry a rather significant performance hit in TS: FP. Depending on the scene, we're talking 10-20VPS.

Ok, with my next pr.

Btw skidau, seems that the guy is right, the coronas appear properly only if 4x antialiasing is enabled, so in this case anti aliasing doesn't break something but it seems to actually fix it.

Fixed by PR3893 - https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/3893

Fixed by 5.0-691