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.

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[Marc_LFD]

Mario 3D Land is one of the best 3D Mario games ever made so if this is yet another way people can enjoy it, great.

I've completed the game multiple times on a Doorstopper 2DS and a 3DS XL. I love it.

 

[Jayro]

I wonder how it'll perform in my Pixel 6a now, it wasnt great last time i checked.

I use an old 2020 Chinese build just for playing the 3DS port of Super Mario 64, and it runs without any issues. It's by far my favorite way to play Super Mario 64 on Android. And I'm rocking a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, with a SnapDragon 888 SoC.

 

[hamohamo]

Yes! Now I can play 3DS games portably on my phone!

You could do that for like 2 years, tho. Not a demanding emulator really.

 

[blashy101]

I'm hoping this might help improve performance on future builds of the Citra core for Switch! It already does pretty well with OpenGL, so fingers crossed! Great news!

 

[SaulFabre]

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.

I have an integrated graphics card, my laptop has Intel HD Graphics 5500 (and i have Intel Core i7, 5th gen i think?)

EDIT: Oh, and darn i don't use Linux. I use latest Windows 10.

 

[chrisrlink]

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.

does emudeck pull the latest release on install?

 

[Xzi]

does emudeck pull the latest release on install?

Dunno, it's been a while since I went and updated everything in desktop mode. Will check soon.

 

[MurraySkull]

Will there ever be a fix for the character select cursor in Super Smash Bros. 3DS?

 

[Paralel]

I wonder if this will increase performance on my AMD laptop. I struggles to run Citra as a whole currently (despite that Pokémon doesn’t have great performance according to their docs) it’s a slideshow

It should. AMD is known for its lacking of support in its drivers for OpenGL on its modern silicon. You should see a substantial performance jump.

 

[jesus96]

Good news,i love real hardware but yezzz I'm not going to pay 300$ for a second hand 3ds,glad emulation is a thing

 

[linuxares]

Good news,i love real hardware but yezzz I'm not going to pay 300$ for a second hand 3ds,glad emulation is a thing

I didn't believe you at first but what the actual hell... a 3ds isn't worth that much

 

[a_username_that_is_cool]

panda3ds users:

 

[Payne]

Good stuff

 

[Tigran]

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.

My biggest problem with 3Ds Emulation on Steam deck is while using Emudeck.. there is no good Switch screen key. *that I have found at least*

 

[Xzi]

My biggest problem with 3Ds Emulation on Steam deck is while using Emudeck.. there is no good Switch screen key. *that I have found at least*

You can change the binding yourself if you open up Citra in desktop mode. I set it to one of the rear buttons.

 

[Tigran]

You can change the binding yourself if you open up Citra in desktop mode. I set it to one of the rear buttons.

Thanks.. Everything I saw was people saying you could set Screen Switch to controller bindings they were keyboard only.. Which last time I tried *granted it was a while ago* effed up the Emudeck control scheme.

But I think I need to just wipe my Steamdeck and pretty much start again anyways.

 

[cokeman118]

Awesome update, finally can play ocarina of time on my pixel 6 without the graphical glitches, and get full frame rate. Considered getting different phone other than google just for better emulation compatibility. Thanks devs!

 

[SMNFXCN]

i wonder how the performance boost is like on some older flagship phones, since it took a while for vulkan to arrive. like i have a spare phone with a snapdragon 845 and it can handle some games, but i wonder if it'll breathe new life into it.
i don't use that as i have a steam deck, but it's still nice to see performance boosts across all devices in general. citra has felt stagnant for a while but it's great to see more improvements coming to it

 

[Jayinem]

Is it just not very good yet or? I was playing Zelda Link Between Worlds just fine on OpenGL but it doesn't work on Vulkan.