Hardware Shader Not Working on Macbook Pro (Pokémon Ultra Sun & Moon)

#1

Issue: Hardware Shader Not Working on Mac

Hi all,

I was ultimately unable to find a way to fix this issue after trying to with much effort & time. I decided to come here because maybe you guys could help me with it. I’m having no problems at all with Citra, the game doesn’t ever crash. The problem is the FPS. I’ve been playing Pokémon Ultra Sun for the past few days along with my sibling. The game is playable, but it would be a better experience if I could enhance the FPS. My sibling uses Citra Nightly on a Windows Surface computer. The FPS I normally run is about 18 FPS - 23 FPS. The FPS in his computer barely fluctuates (constant 30 FPS) despite having specs that are inferior to those on my Macbook Pro. His processor is far weaker than mine. His processor is 1.6 GHz, while mine is 2.3 GHz. I have the double amount of RAM he has (I have 8 GB while he has 4 GB). When I compared my settings with his, I saw that he had this Hardware Shader enabled, while mine wasn’t. When I attempted to turn on the Hardware Shader along with the accurate Geometry Shader, the game would execute with a gray screen. Pictures will be posted below along with the computer specs. I’d like to know if there is a way of making the Hardware Shader work on my Mac in order to improve FPS.

I should mention that the Hardware Renderer does indeed work, the only thing that doesn’t work is the Hardware Shader.

I also compared my sibling’s GPU along with mine, and it seems that mine is superior in all aspects according to this website:
https://technical.city/en/video/Iris-Plus-Graphics-640-vs-HD-Graphics-615

94.3% faster (about 2 times) in synthetic tests
200% faster (about 3 times) in games
More pipelines (48 vs 24)

These are my sibling’s PC specs:
Operating System: Windows 10
CPU: Intel ® Core™ m3-7Y30 CPU @ 1.00GHz 1.61 GHz.
Installed RAM: 4 GB.
GPU: Intel® HD Graphics 615

MY COMPUTER’S SPECS:
System Information

  • Operating System: macOS High Sierra
  • CPU: 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5
  • GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 MB
  • Citra Version (found in title bar): Citra Nightly #802
  • Game: Pokémon Ultra Sun & Moon
  • Screenshot of Issue (include the full Citra window including titlebar):

36%20PM
Screen Shot 2018-07-17 at 3.44.36 PM.png992×400 41.6 KB

51%20PM
Screen Shot 2018-07-17 at 3.47.51 PM.png2878×1612 146 KB

Diagnostic Log
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citra_log.txt (63.8 KB)

In order to save a copy of the log, follow this guide:
https://community.citra-emu.org/t/how-to-upload-the-log-file/296

#5

Try boot camp, because until the devs (may do a) fix for Hardware Shaders, there is nothing to change on citra to improve performance.

#6

I’d like to avoid having to change my Operating System as I like having macOS. I’d still like to hear from a moderator. Thanks for your insight and suggestion though. @bio3c

#7

I did not find anything wrong in your log file. Please wait for a moderator to assist.

#8

FYI a change was pushed to Canary to make Hardware Shader disabled by default. The developers are aware of the issues with MacOS and Hardware Shader. The thing is OpenGL is horrible on MacOS due to poor drivers and Apple has even deprecated it.

#9

Hello and thank you for your response. Although I’m disappointed that the developer team hasn’t yet discovered a way to deal with this issue on MacOS, I’m still hopeful. How long do you think that the developer team might take to devise a way to end this problem?

#10

No one can give ETAs on these things. Most of the developers don’t even MacOS. With Apple deprecating OpenGL, someone will probably add support for Vulkan in the future. There is also MoltenVK which is specific to MacOS since Apple instead pushed for its own proprietary Metal API instead. Keep in mind Vulkan brings with it a lot more complexities compared to OpenGL.