Add Vulkan Support to RetroPie for Pi 4?

bluestang

Based on the 5.10 kernel thread in the Raspberry Pi forums, it appears that MESA updates through apt will only consist of bug fixes for the RPis. New features, i.e. Vulkan, are likely to appear with new version releases of Debian.

As best I can tell, Bullseye should be slated for a summer release but there is still no official date.

This news comes as a surprise.

busywait

@bluestang Hmm. I guess that goes for the 64-bit distro too.

Odd that they would choose to wait so long for Mesa to come via the upstream Debian, given the money they spent having the Vulkan API implemented.

Would a future RetroPie release ship with a local version of Mesa?

Manjaro just brought Mesa 20.3.3 into their stable release branch, along side Kernel 5.10.9. For fun I configured it to boot with full KMS, but then RetroArch (1.9.0) refused to start:
The path /dev/dri/ cannot be opened is not available

bluestang

@busywait
I am not familiar with Manjaro. RetroArch does work with the KMS driver. It’s been working on my end for several months without any real big issues.

The Pi4 Vulkan driver started to appear in the MESA 20.3.X releases and I can see it in the Debian Bullseye Packages.

2Play

@bluestang Hi my friend.
I ve been working the last month on Vulkan on Pi4
I think we should have a recap basis latest .
I ll share my latest too

SierraFOOL

Hallo, can i activate Vulkan for all cores in Retoarch/Retropie? Or should i activate it per core? In which Config File can i Test ist?

mitu

@sierrafool There's no switch to activate Vulkan in RetroPie as it is. Vulkan is not included in the RetroArch build and support for it is not present in Raspberry Pi OS. You'll need to manually compile MESA with Vulkan support and the same for RetroArch.

SierraFOOL

@mitu thanks, i Inderstand. Inhaber Compiler Mesa with Vulkan via pikiss. How can i Compile Retroarch with Vulkan Support? Can i See, how the Retropie Script Compile this and add a Vulkan Parameter?

mitu

@sierrafool You can see the RetroPie install script for RetroArch here, this includes the compilation switches used by RetroPie.

sergioad

How the development is going? I am hyped by the idea of Redream + Vulkan

dankcushions

@sergioad as mitu said

Vulkan is not included in the RetroArch build and support for it is not present in Raspberry Pi OS.

we need to wait for the next version of raspberry pi OS, based on debian bullseye, which should include mesa with vulkan support. once that is there, retropie could update the script modules to include support for retroarch/appropriate emulators.

I am hyped by the idea of Redream + Vulkan

does redream support vulkan? i don't believe it does.

sergioad

@dankcushions thanks for the reply

sergioad

@dankcushions AFAIK it does

dankcushions

@sergioad it does not. confirmed by the dev on their discord many times, and the official website: https://redream.io/help

flycast supports vulkan, although apparently pi4 has issues: https://github.com/libretro/flycast/issues/983

sergioad

@dankcushions ok, thanks

bluestang

RPiOS "Bullseye" now has the 20.3.5 version of MESA and the Broadcom Vulkan driver is part of the mesa-vulkan-drivers pkg if installed through apt...

In upstream MESA, the rpi4 Vulkan driver is now 1.1 conformant but still lacks a few extensions and driver code improvements that 3D emulators would benefit from.

Nonetheless, it is an option available to the user to install through apt. Perhaps it might be time to make it an option in RetroPie?

mitu

@bluestang said in Add Vulkan Support to RetroPie for Pi 4?:

Perhaps it might be time to make it an option in RetroPie?

Does it work without xorg ? From my limited testing, it's not working with RetroArch in the current configuration (KMSDSM without xorg).

bluestang

@mitu said in Add Vulkan Support to RetroPie for Pi 4?:

@bluestang said in Add Vulkan Support to RetroPie for Pi 4?:

Perhaps it might be time to make it an option in RetroPie?

Does it work without xorg ? From my limited testing, it's not working with RetroArch in the current configuration (KMSDSM without xorg).

It should work in the KMS API, the extension VK_KHR_display allows it to do so.

What is your current configuration?

mitu

@bluestang Just a default RPI OS 11 install, with mesa-drivers-vulkan installed.

bluestang

@mitu said in Add Vulkan Support to RetroPie for Pi 4?:

@bluestang Just a default RPI OS 11 install, with mesa-drivers-vulkan installed.

Are you able to get vkcube running in KMS?

mitu

@bluestang No, it's not running. RetroArch seems to work from the desktop, but not without.