"gl" or "glcore" - Is there a preference?

TPR

"gl" or "glcore" - What is the difference between these two video drivers and is there a preference between them?

I have switched back and forth and I don't notice a difference, but I also can't see everything going on under the hoodl

barbudreadmon

@TPR "gl" is an outdated driver written for older versions of OpenGL(ES), it's mainly there for backward compatibility.

Some 3D cores require specific video drivers, and will switch to that driver at runtime, so the default driver you choose shouldn't be an issue (except if you disabled the infamous setting in retroarch that allows that behavior). Using the more modern "glcore" or "vulkan" as default driver is the recommendation as long as they are available on your device.

It might also be important to mention they use different shader formats (glsl for "gl", slang for "glcore" and "vulkan").

TPR

@barbudreadmon said in "gl" or "glcore" - Is there a preference?:

@TPR "gl" is an outdated driver written for older versions of OpenGL(ES), it's mainly there for backward compatibility.
the default driver you choose shouldn't be an issue (except if you disabled the infamous setting in retroarch that allows that behavior).

This is all good information! Thank you! Can you elaborate on that sentence above, though?

mitu

Older devices (GL2/OpenGLES2) cannot use glcore, since it needs at least GL3/OpenGL3 to work.

Can you elaborate on that sentence above, though?

Some cores need a specific OpenGL and/or Vulkan version to work and if the front-end driver (i.e. RetroArch's) does not support that version, the core won't work.
For instance, Flycast can be compiled for Vulkan and when started will request a Vulkan context from RetroArch. But if RetroArch doesn't support Vulkan, the core cannot start and the emulation stops.