Dolphin VR Troubleshooting Guide and Solutions
The purpose of this guide is to help you solve any issues or problems you may have using Dolphin VR. Below is a list of known issues that have occurred with various users and the solutions to correct them.
-Wii-mote won't connect to Dolphin VR or Computer won't recognize it
-Correcting Sound Stutter/lag Issues (CPU Clock Override) and other settings:
-Other settings that can slow down games:
-Graphics look all messed up discolored:
-Black border in both sides, obstructing view, moving, shaking as you turn your head:
-Game Freezes:
-Settings that can make games NOT WORK!!:
-OpenGL MSAA Error Message and How to Fix:
-Games won't start, black screen, or takes a few times to boot up:
-In-game graphics appear upside down, rotating or on strange angles (Solution):
-Codes not working (Possible Solution):
-Custom Textures won't load:
-Can I have two versions of Dolphin on the same computer?:
-Wii-mote won't connect to Dolphin VR or Computer won't recognize it:
What you have to do is go to device manager on your computer and right click or go into the properties of Bluetooth and completely uninstall Bluetooth. Then restart your computer. When you are back at your desktop Bluetooth should be reinstalled. Then, your Wii Remote should connect.
Correcting Sound Stutter/lag Issues (CPU Clock Override) and other settings:
(Preferred Method)
Within Dolphin VR, and found in Config/Advanced you will find the option called CPU Clock Override. Normally, this option might tax your CPU but this is not the case because Dolphin is actually altering the speed of the emulated CPU - not your actual CPU. So, this option is safe to use. Move the slider up in small increments until you notice the sound stutter and framerate improve. For example: I tested this with Mario Galaxy 2 and it improved the framerate. Might cause some minor glitches though.
Other options that can improve framerate and speed include:
Config/General and turning on Enable Dual Core (speedup)
Config/General and turning on Enable Idle skipping (speedup)
Going to VR options, and at the bottom and turn on Timewarp auto ( Note: If the game stutters turn this off)
Going to any one game in your game list and right clicking/properties and having all core options turned off except Enable Dual Core, Synchronize GPU thread, Speed up Disc Transfer Rate, and DSP HLE emulation (fast)
More info on Core Settings and what they do:
Every game is different so turning these on and off can improve a games performance and speed. More info here:
Other settings that can slow down games:
(Load Custom Textures and Prefetch Custom textures):
If you have Load Custom Textures or Prefetch Custom Textures turned on found in Graphics/Advanced, and your game is slow, turn it off. And you can also improve speed if you turn off some off the Action Replay Culling codes for any one game.
(Loading a save state):
loading directly from a save state can slow down certain games, especially if you are using custom textures. I noticed that every time I normally turned the camera, the game was micro stuttering /loading whatever came into view. This was after loading directly from a save state. I closed completely out of Dolphin VR, reopened, reloaded the game and loaded my 'actual game file' and the framerate improved dramatically! Other users have also stated that this can be corrected by going to Graphics/Hacks and closing out the tab and returning to the game.
Graphics look all messed up discolored
If you load a game and the graphics look wrong, off or discolored, go into Graphics and select Hacks. Just doing this will fix most graphic abnormalities that can arise. You might also have to fool around with the settings here like in EFB Copies. Do this while the game is running until things look correct.
Black border in both sides, obstructing view, moving, shaking as you turn your head
Upon startup, if you see a shaking, wobbling black border in both eyes just restart the game until it goes away and everything is stable. But make sure you actually completely close out of Dolphin VR and start it back up. Not sure why this happens.
Game Freezes
Turn off all codes. Some AR or Gecko codes can cause the game to freeze. Also, in Config/General un check Enable Dual Core (Speed up). This can cause certain games to freeze as well. Example: Sonic Adventure 2 freezes at the racing level with Tails and Rouge with this on. So turn it off if any other games freeze.
WARNING!!
Settings that can make games NOT WORK!!:
Fake completion Setting:
In config, under Enable Dual Core Speedup, I had "Fake completion" selected. By selecting this almost all of my games stopped working!! I Changed it back to auto. I'm telling you guys be careful and remember what you're playing around with. One wrong selection and you can &*%k up everything!! I guess if anything can be derived from this it's that: not all games will work with Enable Dual Core Speedup/fake completion selected. So, be warned!
OpenGL MSAA Error Message and How to Fix
When using OpenGL graphics backend if you ever get this message:
"MSAA on default framebuffer isn't supported. Please avoid forcing Dolphin to use MSAA by the driver.4 samples on default framebuffer found."
This means you are forcing Antialiasing and for some reason Dolphin doesn't like that. You will get that error message and when you start a game if it's possible, you will get all kinds of graphical defects in your game. So you need to go into your graphics card control panel (Mine is Nvidia) and turn these settings off:
Image Sharpening, Ambient Occlusion, Anisotropic Filtering, Antialiasing-FXAA, Antialiasing Gamma Correction, Antialiasing-Mode, Antialiasing-Setting, Antialiasing-Transparency and Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA). Turning these off should fix the problem.
Games won't start, black screen, or takes a few times to boot up:
-turn off all VR settings and AR codes.
-You get the message: "Please connect classic controller". Solution: plug in a normal controller.
-Download a new ISO. Game could be corrupt or wrong region.
-ISO format might be Nkit format and won't work in Dolphin VR. If so, the game needs to be in WBFS format or .iso format. If the game is a Wii game, for some strange reason Nikit format displays the game as a Gamecube game. Also, WBFS will be a larger file size.
In-game graphics appear upside down, rotating or on strange angles (Solution)
If you notice while playing a game, parts of a level are upside down at strange angles, or rotating just go into VR settings and uncheck Roll, Pitch and Yaw. This happened to me on two occasions in: Kirby Return to Dreamland and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Codes not working (Possible Solution):
What I suggest is: remove all previous versions of Dolphin from your computer then clean install Dolphin VR again. That should correct the problem of the codes not working.
From user Yarib:
"Fixed it by uninstalling dolphin, backing up my controller profiles and memory card, then deleting the dolphin emulator folder from my documents, and then reinstalled and re-enabled cheats for the culling. My guess is that some files or old settings were messing with it from previous dolphin installations. It now works amazingly well. Thank you for your hard work!"
Custom Textures won't load
(8) Texture packs wont load help : Dolphin_VR (reddit.com)
Can I have two versions of Dolphin on the same computer?:
If you have two versions of Dolphin VR on your computer you will have conflicts between the config files.
You have to make a text file or notebook file called portable.txt and place that in the official Dolphin emulator folder. This will stop the sharing between both emulators and keep all of your config changes and files from the official Dolphin emulator, separate from Dolphin VR.
Posted Mar 2, 2022, 8:57 PM UTC · edited