The time has finally come. After weeks of waiting, the Cemu development team has made good on their promise to release a build of their Nintendo Wii U emulator, featuring the long-awaited Vulkan renderer. The build, which was private, and Patreon-only, is now available to the public, and can be downloaded on the official site. This is a major milestone for the emulator, as Vulkan allows for much better performance for users with AMD hardware, and has been a highly-requested addition.

# Cemu detailed changelog for 1.16.0c
# Patreon release date: 2019-12-13
# Public release date: 2019-12-20

# New in 1.16.0c (public release):

general: Fixed memory searcher tool not being enabled in the menu after launching a game

gfxPack: rules.txt can now specify a filter to selectively apply the whole graphic pack only for a specific vendor (vendorFilter=<amd/intel/mesa/nvidia>) or renderer (rendererFilter=<opengl/vulkan>)

OpenGL/Vulkan: Fixed channel order for R5G5B5A1 textures (fixes colors of Luigi sprites in Super Mario 3D World)

Vulkan: Fixed a bug that could cause polygon explosions under rare circumstances

# New in 1.16.0b:

Vulkan: Fixed transform feedback on Nvidia GPUs

# New in 1.16.0:

general: Added Vulkan renderer

general: Updated shader cache
- The file name now uses the game's titleId instead of the internal RPX hash
- Added zlib compression to reduce cache file size
- Cross compatible and shared between OpenGL/Vulkan
- Remains backwards compatible with pre-1.16.0 caches
- Vulkan has an additional vendor-specific cache for Vulkan pipelines. The cache is stored at shaderCache/driver/vk/
Be aware that an incomplete pipeline cache introduces stuttering despite already having a full shader cache

gfxPack: Introduced graphic packs version 4
Adds shader replacement support for Vulkan
Any pack that has not been updated for version 4 will show up with the indicator "may not be compatible with Vulkan"
Existing version 3 packs *may* still work with Vulkan, enable them at your own risk

general: Gamelist now loads icons asynchronously
general: Added a migration assistent that will detect if DLC is installed at the legacy locations (used by Cemu 1.15.10 and earlier) and ask to move it to the correct folder
general: The graphic pack window will automatically filter for the currently running game
general: Fixed a bug where crashlogs would be omitted from log.txt because Cemu closed before the asynchronous log writer finished
general: Fixed 'dump WUD filesystem' option not dumping any files

Source

 

[Deleted member 506316]

I can finally play Wii U games on my Intel HD 4000 using the Ubuntu Mesa drivers!
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

 

[Mythical]

Nice! Great for AMD people

 

[RedoLane]

After many eons, after many kingdoms fell down and many countries were formed, the power of nature(actually lightning) struck the earth with a gift.
A gift called...VULKAN SUPPORT!

 

[TamarindoJuice]

How to switch from ogl to vulkan? I couldn't find any setting regarding this on the emulator menus.

EDIT - My mistake, it downloaded but for some reason did not update to the new build, sorry. I got it now.

 

[spotanjo3]

I can finally play Wii U games on my Intel HD 4000 using the Ubuntu Mesa drivers!
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

Seriously ? You can do that ?!?! I thought it is for geforce since Intel HD is a crappy video card for Wii U emulator.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

What's Vulkan?

 

[spotanjo3]

What's Vulkan?

Can you google it ?

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Can you google it ?

I could, but I prefer someone who can answer my questions if i can't get them from a more generic sounding response like nintendo saying "Enhanced system stability"

 

[Essasetic]

I could, but I prefer someone who can answer my questions if i can't get them from a more generic sounding response like nintendo saying "Enhanced system stability"

If OpenGL worked properly for AMD GPUs.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

If OpenGL worked properly for AMD GPUs.

So do people with Nvidia GPU not need to use Vulkan? Or is it just a OpenGL Replacement?

 

[Essasetic]

So do people with Nvidia GPU not need to use Vulkan? Or is it just a OpenGL Replacement?

Currently, Vulkan performs worse on Nvidia GPUs than it does with OpenGL. But it also has benefits like faster shader compilation. But if you just want the best performance on an Nvidia GPU with already compiled shaders then stick to OpenGL.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Currently, Vulkan performs worse on Nvidia GPUs than it does with OpenGL. But it also has benefits like faster shader compilation. But if you just want the best performance on an Nvidia GPU with already compiled shaders then stick to OpenGL.

Interesting. So basically no one with Nvidia GPU should be using this. Does this also apply to android with Nvidia tegra gpu as well?

 

[Essasetic]

Interesting. So basically no one with Nvidia GPU should be using this. Does this also apply to android with Nvidia tegra gpu as well?

I don't think anybody has tested that yet. It's odd because (with good optimisation) Vulkan usually outperforms OpenGL (see RPCS3).

 

[jDSX]

Interesting. So basically no one with Nvidia GPU should be using this. Does this also apply to android with Nvidia tegra gpu as well?

No, anyone with a NVIDIA gpu can it's just not as well as with a amd gpu with valkan

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

No, anyone with a NVIDIA gpu can it's just not as well as with a amd gpu with valkan

Yeah I saw, the other person said it was for AMD, so I'm guessing it's not designed for Nvidia just yet. Basically it will soon outshine openGL I guess what is being said.

 

[spotanjo3]

Maybe NVIDIA team will work on it with Vulkan soon or something like that, I guess.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

So do people with Nvidia GPU not need to use Vulkan? Or is it just a OpenGL Replacement?

Vulkan is a backend that allows devs to squeeze more performance out of video cards. Look at Doom 2016 OGL vs. Vulkan videos to see the difference in performance!

 

[SnakeOil992]

Finally, the babies will stop whining. And I'm not referring to AMD users in general, just people who ask for too much too early.

 

[supermist]

I'll be curious to see how well botw runs on my r9 290 now. Currently only get about 16 fps.