Emulator Issues #9820
closed
Metroid Prime Trilogy Black Flickering w/ Virtual XFB
0%
Description
Game Name?
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Game ID? (right click the game in the game list, properties, info tab)
R3ME01
MD5 Hash? (right click the game in the game list, properties, info tab, MD5 Hash: Compute)
823df1c3c425f1383529f368f6479359
What's the problem? Describe what went wrong.
When Virtual XFB is used with any of the games in Metroid Prime Trilogy, the game will always load with some black flickering effect, probably caused by shader generation (and accompanied by a brief framerate drop). Metroid Prime 1 and 2 generally have this issue immediately upon loading a save, but Metroid Prime 3 seems to not have this issue as much. Fixing the issue is simple: if you quit to the main menu or close Dolphin and reload the game, upon loading the save again, the flickering will no longer occur.
However, certain parts of the game will cause this issue on their own. I've found that these occurrences almost always lead to the flickering: a charge beam shot, switching to Morph Ball, using a Morph Ball Bomb, and going underwater. Again, if this occurs, simply exiting to the main menu or restarting Dolphin will make it go away indefinitely, so it's best to, upon loading a save, repeat these actions as available and then reload the game/restart Dolphin, as I demonstrate in the video.
Even then, there are some events that can still cause the flickering to occur later into gameplay. In Metroid Prime 1, there was something in a far area of Phendrana Drifts that caused the flickering to occur (don't know what exactly caused it). In Metroid Prime 2, which seems to suffer from this problem the most, traversing between light and dark worlds, entering certain rooms, and some other unknown sources can cause flickering. In Metroid Prime 3, I found that using the gondola transport on Elysium caused flickering to occur.
What steps will reproduce the problem?
Setting Dolphin to use Virtual XFB will cause this to occur, at least on my hardware.
Which versions of Dolphin did you test on? Does using an older version of Dolphin solve your issue? If yes, which versions of Dolphin used to work?
This has been an issue for me ever since earlier this year when I started to use Virtual XFB. I generally download the latest developer build before I start using Dolphin at any given time, so it's been a persistent issue across all versions.
What are your PC specifications? (CPU, GPU, Operating System, more)
Intel i7-4820K, EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Classified, Windows 10
Is there any other relevant information? (e.g. logs, screenshots,
configuration files)
Video of issue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dst90S02J6Q
Updated by JMC4789 about 8 years ago
- Status changed from New to Won't fix
We determined that dual-core allows the game enter a broken state. It's a problem with dual-core, not Virtual XFB.
On that note, we've already got an issue on "dualcore breaks everything" and I think we've even got more issues on Virtual XFB + Metroid Prime 3, even though someone investigated this and determined the problem was dualcore.
Don't expect this to get fixed though; we're more likely to see the emulator get fast enough for Single Core to work than to see dualcore become stable enough to play Metroid Prime 3. Unless a developer reads this and really wants to spite me.
Updated by ArchangelRobo about 8 years ago
JMC4789 wrote:
We determined that dual-core allows the game enter a broken state. It's a problem with dual-core, not Virtual XFB.
On that note, we've already got an issue on "dualcore breaks everything" and I think we've even got more issues on Virtual XFB + Metroid Prime 3, even though someone investigated this and determined the problem was dualcore.
Don't expect this to get fixed though; we're more likely to see the emulator get fast enough for Single Core to work than to see dualcore become stable enough to play Metroid Prime 3. Unless a developer reads this and really wants to spite me.
Well when I try the game with XFB disabled and with Dual Core, I don't get the flickering (it's substituted with the black bar at the bottom of the screen), so it appears to be a combination of the two
But that's unfortunate. This issue is really the only major problem I have playing Metroid Prime. Thankfully it's something I can get to go away, and it's definitely preferable to the black bar, but if it weren't there, I'd have a mostly flawless experience. I eagerly await the day when these games will be able to run hassle-free. Keep up the good work!