Vagrant Story Framebuffer Effects Freezing

[Markproveau]

when trying to play Vagrant story through Retroarch using the hardware Beetle PSX core all the frame buffer effects don't work, they flicker, and freeze, streak all over the screen, etc in both Vulkan and OpenGL rendering modes. have been trying to solve for 5 hours now, they only work properly on the software renderer, and then I get stuttering. Also when playing the game at 2x native the framebuffer effects revert to 1x res in software mode. Can't tell if they do that also in Vulkan or OpenGL

Is there any way to just straight up disable them ATM? Or a way to get them to render properly?

[simias]

The effects reverting to 1x is generally a symptom of the game reading back the framebuffer data in main RAM, doing some processing with the CPU and then re-uploading them to the GPU. There's no simple way to work around this.

It should be working with the GL renderer though as long as the software renderer is still enabled in the background. That being said Vagrant Story is known for having pretty advanced graphics for the PSX, I wouldn't be surprised if it did weird things that aren't supported correctly by the hardware code.

What effects cause problems exactly? How can we reproduce the problem easily?

[Syst3mSh0ck]

Unsure if this helps but PGXP on PCSXR does not exhibit the same issue using Pete's OGL2 + Tweak 2.2.1 as the GPU plugin. Might be worth comparing the GTE patches in Tweak 2.2.1 to how PGXP has been implemented in Beetle.

[Markproveau]

It actually happens in Metal Gear Solid as well, which uses a ton of frame buffer effects. The easiest way to reproduce it in Metal Gear is by entering the water or watching the entire opening cutscene. For Vagrant Story, there are several instances that use the frame buffer effects in the opening custscene, mainly the scene where he closes the portcullis, (which is what the above screenshot shows).

Using Beetle PSX (Software plugin) there aren't any issues with these spots, however as I stated before, the effects render in the PSX native resolution even if the rest of the game is rendering at a higher resolution.

Using Beetle PSX HW, no matter what renderer I use, and no matter if "Software Framebuffer Effects" is toggled or not, the Framebuffer effects do not render properly, to the point that the games are unplayable.

[mikelars2]

Similar issues on Vagrant Story on HW 0.9.44.1 2a8378d -- however, the background problems only happen during cutscenes, so the game is playable.

[Papermanzero]

Should be fixed with one of the latest builds.

[Nine-H]

it's 2019 and it was not fixed on the latest builds.