Homebrew Question Update on Hardware Video Decoder ?

[Vaskie]

I am fairly new to the Switch scene so take it easy on me.

I have been reading on emulation on the Switch as well as Moonlight (Play PC games on other devices), and the reason that performance is not where it needs to be seems to be lack of hardware video decoder. Is it something that is being actively worked on, is it gonna be just a question of time or are people giving up on it ?

 

[OkazakiTheOtaku]

I am fairly new to the Switch scene so take it easy on me.

I have been reading on emulation on the Switch as well as Moonlight (Play PC games on other devices), and the reason that performance is not where it needs to be seems to be lack of hardware video decoder. Is it something that is being actively worked on, is it gonna be just a question of time or are people giving up on it ?

There is a fork of LibNX with hardware rendering, but it doesn't look like it's ready for prime-time yet.

 

[Vaskie]

What is preventing hardware rendering from being a thing though ?

Is it just a question of time, or it's a lot more complicated than that.

I am fairly interested for Moonlight as it would make PC games playable on the Switch, as well as higher quality emulation.

 

[OkazakiTheOtaku]

What is preventing hardware rendering from being a thing though ?

Is it just a question of time, or it's a lot more complicated than that.

I am fairly interested for Moonlight as it would make PC games playable on the Switch, as well as higher quality emulation.

Drivers need to be worked out. Lots of the Switch is well-known parts, which is why we have hardware rendering on Linux. But the OS is less documented.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Does libNX 3D acceleration have much to do with video decoding?

Also last post I saw by someone porting moonlight, actually complained about the homebrew network drivers having some errors that prevented handshaking with Nvidia.

 

[OkazakiTheOtaku]

Does libNX 3D acceleration have much to do with video decoding?

Also last post I saw by someone porting moonlight, actually complained about the homebrew network drivers having some errors that prevented handshaking with Nvidia.

My bad. I got the two confused. I apologize.

 

[DaniPoo]

I think you mean support for hardware accelerated graphics?
This is what is needed for certain performance boost in many hombrew apps.

I mean it's probably possible to create a CPU based video decoder that handles playback of various videos formats and this is something I believe is in the works.
A hardware video decoder sounds even more promising for playing videos but that would require harware accelerated graphics (I believe) which we don't currently have.

 

[Rahkeesh]

OP kind of confused them.

Moonlight is a program for streaming recorded renders from an Nvidia card to a device and sending inputs back from that device to the PC. Basically letting other devices emulate an Nvidia shield and letting you play your PC games via something like a smartphone or Vita on Wifi. Hardware video decoding could help with that, although I don't know if it would be required. As I said, seems to be some network issue to deal with first.

OP also mentioned emulators, which need 3D acceleration to run systems like PSP, N64, etc, because the available retroarch cores are OpenGL ones. (Of course if Moonlight was working, you could probably run PC emus that way.)

Accessing these functions could be closely related for all I know, but they are different functions.

 

[Vorde]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and sound like an idiot. Do we need custom drivers to be written as to not use the officially leaked SDK, or are we needing someone to write a graphics layer API like what happened with PS Vita?

 

[Willgheminass]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and sound like an idiot. Do we need custom drivers to be written as to not use the officially leaked SDK, or are we needing someone to write a graphics layer API like what happened with PS Vita?

We want someone to write graphics drivers for the switch so we evade piracy from using the one from the official SDK

 

[kofman13]

sorry to hijack. I am waiting for my SX PRO to come in the mail and will be starting to use homebrew i was mainly interested in one day being able to emulate popular consoles on the switch including Gameboy, GBA, SNES, PSX, so it seems n64 and PSX don't work because of the issue talked about here. But what about the 2d ones? are any emulators currently playable and performing well on switch homebrew?

 

[Vorde]

sorry to hijack. I am waiting for my SX PRO to come in the mail and will be starting to use homebrew i was mainly interested in one day being able to emulate popular consoles on the switch including Gameboy, GBA, SNES, PSX, so it seems n64 and PSX don't work because of the issue talked about here. But what about the 2d ones? are any emulators currently playable and performing well on switch homebrew?

It seems like things all the way from arcade games and games GBA and under would work aside from 3D titles

 

[DaniPoo]

It seems like things all the way from arcade games and games GBA and under would work aside from 3D titles

Playstation games works rather well even without hardware acceleration for graphics. Im playing the Final Fantasy 7,8 and 9 at pretty much full speed on RetroNX.
But that's where it ends. N64 and beyond will most likely not be playable at a decent speed without GPU support.

 

[kofman13]

Playstation games works rather well even without hardware acceleration for graphics. Im playing the Final Fantasy 7,8 and 9 at pretty much full speed on RetroNX.
But that's where it ends. N64 and beyond will most likely not be playable at a decent speed without GPU support.

Do you think its possible some day though? i know these things sometimes take years to reach really good performance

 

[Bellebite2000]

Do you think its possible some day though? i know these things sometimes take years to reach really good performance

Some people also believe that Jesus will come back. We can all just hope and pray.

 

[DaniPoo]

Do you think its possible some day though? i know these things sometimes take years to reach really good performance

When (and if) we get HW acceleration and someone takes advantage of this I have no doubt that n64 emulation at full speed will possible.
Heck maybe even Gamecube (given that it runs quite well on the nvidie shield), but it all boils down to human effort.

 

[JimmyCall]

At worse someone might need to disassemble the Hulu app or monitor its conversation with the video chip to find out some modes and settings. Nvidia most likely already has some documentation on the abilities and codes.

 

[kofman13]

When (and if) we get HW acceleration and someone takes advantage of this I have no doubt that n64 emulation at full speed will possible.
Heck maybe even Gamecube (given that it runs quite well on the nvidie shield), but it all boils down to human effort.

i feel like the switch is sooooo popular someone will eventually do it (one day)