Newsletter #20 - May 2021 (Vulkan driver update) (Patreon)

With the recent release of Android 11 we've reached a milestone, with one of two big issues finally being addressed: We've caught up with Google, and our XD+ is now running the latest software out there!

But we aren't done yet... now that Android 11 is off the to-do list (sort of), it's back to debugging why the Vulkan driver has been acting up.

Today, we got a whole lot closer to fixing it!

After slipping a custom Vulkan driver wrapper into the ROM, I managed to isolate and fix a double-free driver issue in the PowerVR Rogue 1.9 driver which now allows me to pass the 3DMark Slingshot Vulkan driver benchmark on our XD+!

But sadly, there are more bugs in the driver that still need fixing, so we aren't all the way there yet... hopefully, when I next update you guys about my progress we will already be running RetroArch using its Vulkan backend...

A small sidenote here: The same approach could be used to diagnose and (potentially) fix up OpenGLES related driver issues, but that's something for a future update.

Either way... Wish me luck!

And as always, I will keep you guys posted!

- Black-Seraph