Settings...what settings?

This page will guide you through all the settings avaliable in Flycast, explaining the most possible out of each one in what it does and what can they can be used for. It will go through each tab on the Settings menu of flycast.

General

• Language: Sets the language to be used on the Dreamcast BIOS.
• Broadcast: Sets the video broadcast setting for non-VGA modes. Visually, it doesn't cause any effects.
• Region: Set console region to Japan, USA, Europe or Other. If playing an NAOMI/AW game, the Other setting can default to Korea or something else.
• Cable: The video connection type to be emulated, either VGA, RGB Component, or TV Composite. Visually, it doesn't cause any effects. It is recommended, though, to use TV Composite for compatibility reasons.
• Content Location: Shows the folders added to be checked looking for ROMs. Can also add more with the 'Add' button.
• Home Directory: Folder where flycast saves the VMU files, and where it searches for the data folder with the BIOS files. By default, its set to the flycast emulator folder.
• Hide Legacy Naomi Roms: Hides .bin, .dat and .lst files from the game list. This refers to certain NAOMI games that are in .dat/.bin (decrypted) + .lst format, which used to be necessary for NullDC NAOMI. While Flycast also supports these, it is considered to be superseded by support for standard MAME ROMs.
• **Autotomatic State (Load/Save)*: Automatically creates a save state of the currently running game after exiting. This automatic state will get loaded when you open the game again if the Auto Load option is enabled.

Video

These are your graphics settings. Tweaking these can be helpful from improving performance.

Transparent Sorting

• Per Triangle: Default option, highest balance between accuracy and speed. There might be some few texture/sorting glitches depending of the game but it is the fastest option without any clear consequences.
• Per Strip: The fastest option avaliable, though it can definitely cause some graphical/sorting issues depending of the game (for example, decals in Daytona USA).
• Per Pixel: The slowest but most accurate option avaliable, ensuring that there are no possible sorting errors. However, it might appear as broken depending of your GPU.

Rendering Options

• Automatic Frame Skipping: Options are Disabled, Normal and Maximum. Normal skips frames if both CPU and GPU are having slowdown, while Maximum skips frames if the GPU is having slowdown.
• Shadows: Enable modifier volumes; usually used for shadows.
• Fog: Enable or disable fog effects.
• VSync: Synchronizes the frame rate of the game with the screen refresh rate. Might add a tiny amount of input delay and performance drops in low-end machines, but gets rid of tearing on-screen (artifacts with fast scrolling graphics) and is recommended when playing online.
• Widescreen: Enables rendering geometry outside of the 4:3 borders. Results vary depending of the game, causing minor side effects in some, noticeable graphical glitches in others, and outright not working in certain others.
• Widescreen Game Cheats: Uses game-specific anamorphic widescreen cheat codes and automatically stretches the screen. While avaliability depends of the game, it can work without less glitches than the Widescreen hack if compatible (or in cases where the widescreen hack doesn't work with the game like Daytona USA, is the only way to have widescreen).
• • Super Widescreen: Enabled the widescreen hack to render at full width on the screen if the screen/window aspect radio is greater than 16:9.
• Graphics API: You can select between the OpenGL renderer, the DirectX renderer and the Vulkan renderer. If your GPU doesn't have Vulkan support and DirectX renderer (which seems to be set as default) doesn't work or appears broken, you shold pick the OpenGL renderer.
• Internal Resolution: Set the internal rendering resolution. Can select from Half resolution, Native resolution, and up to x5 resolution (in x1.5 increases).
• Frame Skipping: Skips X number of frames to speed up games in slow platforms. This has a side effect though, since using a value of 1 on 60fps games makes them run at 30fps, with 2 the speed limits to 15-20fps and so on.