High-accuracy dual-screen 3D, texture filtering, and other features coming to DS emulation

Mario Kart DS running under MelonDS' in-progress update. (Image Source: Arisotura, MelonDS Developer)

melonDS, the leading Nintendo DS emulator, has updates in the pipeline promising to massively improve 2D and 3D performance and clarity at higher resolutions. This is particularly good news for DS-like devices capable of DS emulation.

Christopher Harper, Published 11/18/2025

Gaming Software

Arisotura, the chief developer of renowned high-accuracy Nintendo DS emulator melonDS, took to Reddit recently to describe some features in development for the DS emulator—including properly-functioning high-res dual-screen 3D graphics, and later down the line, full support for texture filtering in 3D and "2D layer/sprite filtering, hi-res rotation/scale" and anti-aliasing.

While it's true that Nintendo DS and 3DS emulators have long offered support for increasing internal rendering resolutions, dual-screen 3D with Nintendo DS emulation has long been a problem. As Arisotura describes, dual-screen 3D has long been a known issue in melonDS, resulting in each screen flickering between high-resolution and low-resolution graphics or, in the worst case, simply not working at all.

The reason this happens is down to limitations of the original Nintendo DS hardware and its VRAM, specifically its "display capture" feature which is used for various effects (like dual-screen 3D) and also verifying the console is still functioning. This means that captured frames still need to be at the original native resolution of 256x192, and fit within emulated VRAM, which is what causes the flickering and crashes. For an accuracy-first emulator like melonDS, finding a workaround for this is particularly problematic, since it's not a feature than can simply be disabled.

melonDS 1.0 beta screenshot (Image Source: Arisotura - melonDS developer)

Arisotura's current solution is to make a copy of the 2D renderer for OpenGL and offload more compositing work to the GPU, allowing high-resolution output to be accomplished while stil correctly syncing to emulated VRAM. As the developer describes, "There's a lot of cleanup and refining to do (and some missing features)", but in the long run, this should allow the entire 2D renderer to be moved to the GPU.

Once that's accomplished, the full suite of features described above should become available for melonDS users. This will allow for cleaner high-resolution Nintendo DS emulation than ever before, and prove particularly favorable for the increasing market of DS-inspired handheld gaming PCs and consoles like the AYN Thor, Ayaneo Pocket DS, and Anbernic RG DS.