In case you missed it, the team behind one of the best and fastest growing emulators for the Nintendo Switch has made a public release of a build that can utilise the Vulkan API. While this version was initially the privilege of only patreon backers, it has finally been made available to everyone.
The integration of a Vulkan back-end renderer is a big deal for two primary reasons. Firstly, the GPU in the actual Nintendo Switch is based on Nvidia architecture. Thus, gamers who wanted to play their Nintendo Switch games on an AMD GPU’s (and Intel’s embedded GPU’s) had to make do with very poor performance until now.
Secondly, from its conception, the Vulkan API has always been built to offer a more powerful alternative to OpenGL. Vulkan has the potential to be more efficient with multiple computing cores, and offers game designers a more direct interface with your GPU. Now this is something which could be extremely useful when trying to emulate complex 3D games.
As such, the team at Yuzu have been working hard for some time to implement this nifty API into their emulator. The results now speak for themselves as several Nintendo Switch games already exhibit fewer graphical bugs when running on this API. Also, their frame rates see minor improvements on Nvidia GPU’s and major improvements non-Nvidia GPU’s.
Nevertheless, the emulator and its Vulcan iteration are still in an developmental stage, and I would advise tempering your expectations when trying out the latest Yuzu build. There is still a lot of work ahead for the Yuzu team, but at least they are famous for updating builds at blistering speeds! Do consider supporting them if you can.
You can download all the latest versions of Yuzu here.
Enjoy!
Pieter hails all the way from the tip of southern Africa and suffers from serious PC technophilia. Therapists say it is incurable. Now he has to remind himself constantly that gaming doesn’t count as a religion even if DRM is the devil. Thankfully, writing reviews sometimes helps with the worst symptoms.
I wonder why there’s no working Vita emulator out there?
That would be Epic man, good point.
Well i hope that PPSSPP creator guy will take new challange by making Vita emulator once he finalize his psp emulator,since majority of PSP games already in playable state
Why he didn’t even do a good job with that emulator it’s pretty rubbish.
Rubbish ??? PPSSPP is the cleanest emulator I have ever see, easy to navigate GUI and great compatibility
NEEDS MOUSE SUPPORT FOR SHOOTERS
Its just a nitpicking if you asked something like that, did PSP have 2nd analog stick ?? even if it have mouse support , I dont think there is no way to map that input to a proper button due to the lack of 2nd analog stick in PSP.
peace walker and the 2 syphon filter games use the colored buttons on the right for aiming.
Thats my point, its nitpicking if there is only three games (maybe more, but I guess not that much) that kind of emulate right analog input with face button. Its also hit my other point, how can it be mapped properly into analog mouse input if it was primarily digital input.
” if there is only three games (maybe more, ”
ask yourself a simple question, how many shooters does psp have?
There is 41 Shooters (thats already SHMUP included, and I believe not all have that face button right analog stick emulation), at least based on games database list .
What is your point ?? its only 6.7 % compared to 606 games released on north America (let alone compared with 1307 games released worldwide according to wikipedia).
Proggramers of PPSSPP working hard for free and you just complaining by nitpicking something that dont even need to be there because how small of the games that actually ‘maybe’ not have muchof benefit from it (because they already made with no Right analog stick by design)
ps2 and gamecube emulators have mouse support. So whats your point?
They have right analog stick , so mouse support didnt have problems to mapped to that right analog stick . whats your question again ?? Im waiting… (it is surely fun , never thought of it)
btch why does psp emulator not have mouse button mapping? Makes no sense not even plugins.
There is 41 Shooters (thats already SHMUP included, and I believe not all have that face button right analog stick emulation), at least based on games database list (https://www.gamesdatabase.org/list.aspx?DM=0&category=shooter&system=sony_psp&sort=Category).
What is your point ?? its only 6.7 % compared to 606 games released on north America (let alone compared with 1307 games released worldwide according to wikipedia).
Proggramers of PPSSPP working hard for free and you just complaining by nitpicking something that dont even need to be there because how small of the games that actually ‘maybe’ not have muchof benefit from it (because they already made with no Right analog stick by design)
Well it must have been patched a lot since I last played then or you are just full of it.
Just full of it ?? What version did you play back then ?? Its free, no restriction at all to download if you wish to try it again. PPSSPP android version even run most games perfectly on my modest android device (2016 Redmi Note 3 Pro), let alone the PC version that I tested myself even on Core 2 Duo Laptop from 2010 run every games perfectly (at least the one I already tested) with twice the resolution (well no need for full HD or 4K when that laptop screen only 768p)
Because it was junk and most of it’s best games can be found elsewhere.
Also really liking the GUI improvements to quickly switch between APIs, async and docked/undocked plus it now being possible to change analogue stick deadzone settings without messing with ini files.
Zelda Link’s Awakening runs much better for me with this new update even though it crashed after half an hour or so.
Here’s a small but useful collection of vital mods for some of the more popular Switch games: github(dot)com/yuzu-emu/yuzu/wiki/Switch-Mods
Great another emulator we will get endless useless update articles about.
Amazing performance update
This is insane, Nintendo must be pulling out their hair