Citra, the popular Nintendo 3DS emulator has been updated with support for the Vulkan graphics API.

The introduction of Vulkan support for Citra not only modernises the popular emulator that was previously built around the ageing OpenGL standard but can even boost performance for some users, especially those on Android devices. It also means that Apple Silicon devices are now supported.

As of now, feature parity and emulator compatiblity is not on par with the previous OpenGL releases due to the ongoing implementation of Vulkan but work is underway and the devs are encouraging users to report any issues they encounter.

Vulkan support can be found in the latest nightly Citra release.

Failed to fetch tweet 1702812371650335163​

Source

 

[RedoLane]

I got a HUGE performance boost on my Galaxy Tab S7 FE after switching to Vulkan.
Most of the games I have there can be properly upscaled above 1080p without a notable frame drop(it still stutters a little).

 

[SaulFabre]

Damn, emulators on PC are getting better and better everytime.

Sad that i dont have a graphics card which support Vulkan...

 

[linuxares]

Damn, emulators on PC are getting better and better everytime.

Sad that i dont have a graphics card which support Vulkan...

You sure? Because Vulkan been around a while so a lot of GPUs support it

 

[Xzi]

Yay better Steam Deck performance. Though if I'm being real, 3DS is probably my least-emulated system even though I transferred over a number of ROMs.

 

[SaulFabre]

You sure? Because Vulkan been around a while so a lot of GPUs support it

My PC is a laptop and it's from year 2014, which i guess Vulkan didnt ever exist in that year...

 

[linuxares]

My PC is a laptop and it's from year 2014, which i guess Vulkan didnt ever exist in that year...

Sadly no, 2016 was the first release.

 

[Coto]

Beautiful.

Post automatically merged: Sep 16, 2023

Well, as you yourself said, OpenGL is not ideal for contemporary emulators; its premises are ancient. Vulkan is an objectively better solution for our purposes, although OpenGL remains perfectly viable and great for legacy support.

It's not like OpenGL is ancient, that's false as far as OpenGL specs goes. You don't have anything 3D standard before OpenGL.
More like OpenGL is the standard for 3D graphics while Vulkan skips everything OpenGL stood for at the beginnings and takes the DirectX approach instead. (intermediate language tasks can scale to GPU or different co processors like shader units)

You can't simply "deprecate" OpenGL because that'd kill anything before Vulkan as far as hardware goes.

And I repeat myself, one thing is the OpenGL specs, and the other is the OpenGL drivers, the fault is not the specs, but the wrappers around it. Vulkan support is driver based, regardless if hardware supports it.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Never tried Citra; is there a good 3DS game dumper I can use? I've wondered if I should dump my 3DS games and play them elsewhere, now that the platform is no longer officially supported.

 

[RichardTheKing]

Never tried Citra; is there a good 3DS game dumper I can use? I've wondered if I should dump my 3DS games and play them elsewhere, now that the platform is no longer officially supported.

Installing CFW on your 3DS is fairly easy - GodMode9, last I checked - and using it to dump games is quite simple too.
You just need room on your (micro)SD card to store the dumped game, of course.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

My PC is a laptop and it's from year 2014, which i guess Vulkan didnt ever exist in that year...

What GPU? In theory, Vulkan can run on anything compatible with OpenGL 4+ so long as drivers are avaialble. Any AMD or NVIDIA GPU (AMDs APUs included) from 2012 and up supports Vulkan just fine on all OS's with whatever latest drivers you can install, and Intel officially supports Vulkan on all iGPUs from Skylake+ on all OS's as well (which I suppose is irrelevant for you )

If it's an Intel iGPU, technically there's very basic support for Vulkan on Ivy Bridge->Broadwell based iGPUs in Linux with HASVK.

But chances are OpenGL would perform better and be less buggy for you if you are on Intel in this instance, so unless you have an AMD APU/ a dedicated NVIDIA GPU I suppose you won't see much benefit




As for the news, I'm glad to see native Apple SoC support, on my M1 MacBook Air Citra had weird crashing/graphical issues, I'd love to see if this improves stability as it matures.

 

[DragonMals]

I don't really know the true differences between the graphics like Vulkan, OpenGl, DirectX and stuff, but afaik, Vulkan is one that is compatible with a lot of low end devices. It's great to see it strive onto 3ds emulation!

 

[phillyrider807]

Huge W for the emulation scene.

 

[Menelkir]

It also means that Apple Silicone devices are now supported.

Yeah but... Apple doesn't support vulkan natively, only via MoltenVK and it only supports up to 1.2 and with a very average performance.

 

[jomaper]

Any way I can check numbers for a few devices? Mainly Snapdragon 8 G2 and Steam Deck

 

[console]

Awesome!


I had Samsung - Galaxy Tab A8 10.5" 128 GB and that Citra work perfect with Vulkan support. Solid 60 FPS!

Also my Dragon Touch Max10 Plus 32 GB get about 43 - 53 FPS, not so bad!

I used my PlayStation 4 controller and working perfect with my both tablets to play any 3DS games.

Don't download Citra emulator from Google Play store will give us and people lousy like bad due to slower speed about 4 - 8 FPS look like laggy & choppy during play any games!

Download Citra MMJ emulator from github website is much better.

Citra MMJ emulator for Android is one best emulator with full speed!

https://github.com/weihuoya/citra/releases/


Antutu: package name: com.antutu.ABenchMark
This is tricking the os thinks it's running a benchmark app, and will boost performance on some device.

Give us a big boost speed and much better than regular Citra emulator on Google Play store!

Cheers

 

[jomaper]

Awesome!


I had Samsung - Galaxy Tab A8 10.5" 128 GB and that Citra work perfect with Vulkan support. Solid 60 FPS!

Also my Dragon Touch Max10 Plus 32 GB get about 43 - 53 FPS, not so bad!

I used my PlayStation 4 controller and working perfect with my both tablets to play any 3DS games.

Don't download Citra emulator from Google Play store will give us and people lousy like bad due to slower speed about 4 - 8 FPS look like laggy & choppy during play any games!

Download Citra MMJ emulator from github website is much better.

Citra MMJ emulator for Android is one best emulator with full speed!

https://github.com/weihuoya/citra/releases/


Antutu: package name: com.antutu.ABenchMark
This is tricking the os thinks it's running a benchmark app, and will boost performance on some device.

Give us a big boost speed and much better than regular Citra emulator on Google Play store!

Cheers

I'm confused, how did you get a performance boost if the github you linked doesn't have the last update?

 

[console]

I'm confused, how did you get a performance boost if the github you linked doesn't have the last update?

That's one what I did find this on Startpage search engine and help my Android tablets to get big performance boost. I find out that someone talk about Citra emulator on reddit forum and give out info to everyone that help most Android phone and tablets to get performance boost.



That's what github update every new versions few days to weeks.
They are no virus in Android apps there. 100% clean. Work perfect for us.

 

[master801]

Apple Silicone devices

"Apple Silicone devices" lol

Do you mean Apple Silicon devices?

 

[shaunj66]

"Apple Silicone devices" lol

Do you mean Apple Silicon devices?

Haha! I'm redecorating the bathroom at the moment so I guess I have silicone on the brain!

 

[master801]

Haha! I'm redecorating the bathroom at the moment so I guess I have silicone on the brain!

Can you bring me one of them Apple devices while you're messing with silicone?