Complex Multi-Pass Shaders (Royale etc.) on Nvidia Shield

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Hi all,

Yet to pick up an Nvidia Shield as was wondering how well the higher level multipass shaders run? As aware they need a decent GPU on a PC and have them running well on my desktop but would be good to slim down and go with something smaller like a Shield. Cheers.

1 Like
#2

It’s great. Most things work, up to and including royale, though it’s borderline. It works just fine at 4x and 1080p, but if you push it up to 5x integer (i.e., by making the image larger than the screen), you might start dropping frames.

#3

I have 7 different passes with bloom, geo and such. I assume it may be a bit underpowered for that?

#4

Dunno. I guess if you post your preset, I can try it out on mine.

#5

Cheers. I tend to use CRT-Royale-Fake-Bloom preset on my gaming PC. It includes 7 passes : https://github.com/libretro/common-shaders/blob/master/crt/crt-royale-fake-bloom-intel.cgp

Or something close to that. I also use overlays, but that doesn’t tend to impact on performance too much of course.

#6

Cg shaders don’t work on it at all, but the GLSL version of that shader should work fine. It’s faster than the regular crt-royale, which works fine.

#7

Sorry, yes I just linked to see the passes. Is the Royale you’re running the standard 12 pass one, as the PC build?

#8

Yes, but I mis-typed earlier. The GLSL version of royale doesn’t work on there but the slang (i.e., vulkan) version does (it was going to be waaaaay too much work to clean the syntax up enough for GLES compliance).

#9

Ah okay that would make sense, many thanks. Is there a list of slang shaders? Or are they the same as the others? Thanks again

#10

Same as the others, give or take. You can see them at https://github.com/libretro/slang-shaders

#11

Thanks very much, seems fairly straightforward. On a completely different note is it possible to run the Chinese Wii HD remaster - Mario Galaxy etc?

#12

Not that I know of…

#13

So…got it all setup and all shaders work, except…any of the Royale ones :confused: I’m on Retroarch 1.75 all updated. Any idea what’s going wrong?

#14

Are you using the vulkan/slang driver/version? That one works, GLSL does not.

#15

They are the only ones in the preset folder. How do I double check? Even weirder the Kazumo-Royale in the ‘presets’ one was working fine, now for some odd reason it will not load :confused:

#16

You need to have vulkan selected as your video driver in settings > driver, then use the slang shaders.

Cores that require GL (like Reicast and mupen64plus/ParaLLEl) won’t work with Vulkan, just FYI. The way I get around that is to have the normal RetroArch from the ATV Play store for 32-bit/OGL to use with cores that need GL and/or 32-bit dynarecs and then I sideload the aarch64 version (you can download it from buildbot.libretro.com) and use it with Vulkan for software-rendered cores and slang shaders.

#17

Thanks, so when I change to Vulkan all the presets disappear. I assumed (incorrectly) they came package in the Retroarch download?

#18

You probably have to download them through the online updater. ‘update slang shaders’

#19

Yes, I’m a moron - just seen that :smiley: Can you recommend a decent file explorer I can edit .cfgs manually for RA?

#20

I used to use and recommend ES File Explorer, but it’s become quite messy and ad-infested these days. You might try Google’s official “Files” program: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.files&hl=en_US

You could also use the one from Lineage OS / Cyanogenmod, but you’d have to download and sideload it.