Dolphin Progress Report, Release 2512, comes with substantial updates that focus on lowering frame latency. This improves performance in troublesome games and finally brings RetroAchievements support to Android users. This release also changes how the emulator handles frame pacing and input timing.
Latency has always been a massive headache in emulation, often stacking up due to slow window managers and display technology. While Dolphin already had a powerful tool called Immediately Present XFB, which grabs frame copies early, it sometimes caused visual glitches or choppy frame pacing.
To solve this, the team introduced two new throttling modes. The first is Rush Frame Presentation, which adjusts how the emulator waits. It focuses on pushing the rendered image to the display the moment the software registers a user action.
The second feature is Smooth Frame Presentation, which addresses the frame pacing issues sometimes caused by aggressive latency reduction features. This lets Dolphin delay presentation by a tiny amount, usually one or two milliseconds, to keep a much more consistent frame output.
The developers collaborated with technical experts from the Slippi and hardware adapter communities to verify these results. Using custom sensors, they measured the total time from an input press to the light appearing on the screen. Their tests confirmed that Dolphin, especially when using the new Rush feature, compares very favorably to real GameCube hardware running on a CRT monitor.
In ideal scenarios, combining Rush Frame Presentation with Immediately Present XFB can result in a 10ms reduction in latency, making the experience much snappier. These powerful new options are currently disabled by default in the advanced settings, meaning you have to go digging to turn them on.
Android users finally have RetroAchievements support. Mobile users can now earn trophies directly through the integrated achievement system. While this initial version doesn’t quite match the desktop experience yet, you can log in and start unlocking achievements in supported GameCube games right now. You might need to keep the RetroAchievements website open in the background for certain lists while the in-app UI gets finished up.
Connectivity also received a major boost with the introduction of the Broadband Adapter Inter-Process Communication, or BBA-IPC. The Broadband Adapter lets GameCube games connect to a network, but running multiple instances of Dolphin on a single PC used to mean complex networking tricks.
Now, BBA-IPC lets separate Dolphin instances communicate directly by sharing memory, effectively simulating its own private network. This is a great feature for testing, but I think its real value is for streamers who want to use services like Parsec to play BBA titles over the internet without dealing with strict latency requirements.
The developers also spent significant time fixing games that were doing “naughty things” on the hardware. Some games, like Hulk (2003) and Bully: Scholarship Edition, run uncapped, meaning their physics engines could run hundreds of steps per second. These overheated devices caused stability issues, sometimes even softlocking the game.
The team implemented patches that simply limit these games to the proper VBI frequency. Somewhat ironically, by slowing down these uncapped games, they now run much better and more efficiently in Dolphin.
Two long-requested features have also arrived. Dolphin is a complicated emulator with layers of settings, and users often have to manually delete configuration files to reset everything. Thankfully, a “Reset All Settings” button has been added to both the desktop and Android advanced menus. We also finally have emulated support for the Logitech Microphone, which means you can now use any standard PC microphone to play those Wii singing games. Android users will have to wait for a new graphical interface before they get this feature, however.
A legacy bug in how data was read caused the emulator to report incorrect information about virtual storage. This meant virtual cards larger than 10.7 GiB would fall apart, but now, Dolphin properly supports virtual SD cards up to the full 32GB size.
Source: Dolphin Emulator
