Core Settings Default to OpenGL

RetroArch Android devices
#1

Hello everyone,

I understand that this may be an issue with my device, but I’ve searched and searched the internet for a solution to my problem and I’ve came up empty handed. For reference, I’m running RA on a Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 with a SD 660 chipset along with the 64-bit Google Play version of RA.

For some strange reason, I cannot get the video driver settings to stick. Even if I have the driver settings set to “Vulkan”, the cores that I use will default to OpenGL the moment I start up a game. This happens on multiple cores (PPSSPP and the new Mupen64Plus-Next v2.1 [Flycast crashes immediately with Vulkan enabled on certain games, but I think that’s a different issue that belongs in another thread]), so it isn’t limited to one particular core. When I close out of the core, the settings revert back to Vulkan. My device supports Vulkan (and RA detects the compatibility under system information), so I’m left scratching my head as to what the problem might be.

As for what I’ve tried, I’ve done the usual uninstall/reinstall along with using the core override option, but neither of them fixed the issue I’m having. Has anyone else ran into this problem, and if so, what was the solution?

#2

Try going to settings > core > allow cores to change the video driver OFF. This is an advanced setting, so you will need to go to settings > user interface > show advanced settings ON before it will be visible.

#3

Thank you very much for the reply!

I’ve done what you suggested and it worked. However, when I have Vulkan enabled, Mupen64Plus-Next v2.1 gives a “failed to load content” error, Flycast crashes upon opening, and PPSSPP doesn’t have video. Do you think it was defaulting to OpenGL due to this? My phone does support Vulkan and I’ve seen people run programs using this driver, but why RetroArch is being so finicky with it, I’m not sure.

I would stick with OpenGL, but my main reason for wanting to switch to Vulkan is for N64 emulation through Mupen64Plus-Next’s newest update. The new update took a big performance hit on my device and the framerate has dropped noticeably after I updated the core. From what I’m hearing, switching to Vulkan will help performance in general, but that’s my main reason for trying to keep up with the times.

Do you have any more suggestions on what I should do?

#4

If you disallow the cores from changing the video driver, you’ll need to make sure they’re set up for whichever driver you’ve selected.

#5

I don’t think Mupen supports Vulkan? The whole point of the “allow cores to switch driver” setting is to automatically switch to a driver the core supports. If Mupen only supports OpenGL, then that naturally means you can’t use Vulkan to run it.

In the past, that meant you had to change the driver in RA, then restart RA, then run the core. This was annoying to do all the time, and thus the “allow cores to switch driver” option was implemented in RA.

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#6

That’s totally normal behavior considering those cores don’t support vulkan, so retroarch switch to a compatible video driver. If you set “settings > core > allow cores to change the video driver”, they’ll just stop working instead.

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