Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR Dolphin release 2509 turns off Dual Core mode by default on desktop, fixing common crashes.
The update also adds compatibility for three tricky Disney Wii games thanks to clever hacks.
Bluetooth passthrough, which enables Wii Remote support, has been patched to work with more modern Bluetooth adapters.
Dolphin has long been one of the most impressive emulators around, but despite more than 20 years of development, there’s still more work to be done. In the latest release 2509, some of that work actually had to be undone to finally fix crashes that have plagued the emulator for years.
Dual Core mode was first implemented over a decade ago, and it was key to emulating GameCube and Wii games at playable framerates. At the time, processors simply weren’t fast enough to keep up with the demands of the emulator, so by taking a note from the original hardware and utilizing additional cores, performance jumped significantly.
However, it also created a lot of instability. On the original hardware, the different processors worked exactly the same on every machine, so developers could easily keep them in sync. In Dolphin’s Dual Core mode, which emulates the different processors using different cores in your multi-core processor, the timings were completely different on every machine, which often led to crashes.
The team has tried to fix this over the years by adding more synchronization points, but the results were never perfect. And now, after all these years, the team has decided it’s no longer worth the trouble.
This update disables Dual Core mode by default on desktop, which should fix most crashes.
Starting with this release, Dual Core mode will be disabled by default on the desktop release. For anyone playing on modern hardware, games will still easily run at or beyond full speed, so you won’t notice a difference. Apart from fewer crashes on a few games, of course.
... continue reading