This...4:3 or don't do it!!!
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Upscalers, CRTs, PVMs & RGB: Retro gaming done right!
- Thread starter IrishNinja
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NormalFish
Banned
ah that resolution is a bit of a bummer, I was thinking it was 720 or 1080. That puts it in an awkward point for games. Bit too big for PS2/XBOX/NGC/DC. Bit too small for their successors.
Yeh, I just thought, it's already been pointed out, and I don't want to be that guy
/girl
Much more satisfying to complain here with some like-minded folk too hehe.
NormalFish
Banned
so while we're circlejerking, imma go ahead and complain about people who act like PSX/Saturn-like graphics aren't pixely.
That's all.
Thanks for listening to me.
That's all.
Thanks for listening to me.
LucidMomentum
Member
Just chiming in to confirm - Wii consoles don't lag on a Sony PVM when in component mode, right?
That's a thing? Please tell me more lol.
They shouldn't, but the wireless controls on VC might not be as fast as wired controls of original consoles.
LucidMomentum
Member
These are just for Smash Bros. via the GameCube ports.
Just got my component cables in - time to test it for myself with 240p suite
No lag. Keep in mind your monitor only supports up to 480i component, not the 480p max of most Wii games. Should still look great and a big improvement over composite.
I know... I threw up a little at the stretched grossness of it all.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Where are you people finding these things? 😕
lostinblue
Banned
No. But check for brightness. A PVM in good health should be very usable with half the maximum brightness in a room with artificial lightning (hurt the eyes, even)
CRT wear means its gets dimmer and dimmer, we call half life the moment the brightness reaches half of the original factory one so go by that; any CRT whose brightness has to be pumped to the max has reached a half life status.
CRT wear means its gets dimmer and dimmer, we call half life the moment the brightness reaches half of the original factory one so go by that; any CRT whose brightness has to be pumped to the max has reached a half life status.
lostinblue
Banned
Samsung CRT's didn't have a lot of TV lines (actual resolution) going on from what I reckon/saw before.
I would avoid that set but you can always try and calculate the amount of TV lines, just get close and try counting the pixel width on it (Samsung sahow masks usually have 2 lose pixels on the side, vertically halfway on both sides, that makes it easier to measure the width), then multiply it for for the horitontal lenght of the device and see how many lines fit. If it's less than 600 times though, it's shit.
And I've seen 32" Widescreen Samsung TV's with 450 TV lines. Preposterous.
NormalFish
Banned
there's just this weird dichotomy where in 2D games are pixely, but 5th gen 3D games aren't. I just find it strange that people want PSX 3D games to not have aliasing or something despite them being very pixel-y and designed with those pixels in mind. It's not something I see all the time but every time I see it I don't know what to say.
lostinblue
Banned
There's several reasons why. First of all, you actually can't uprender PSone graphics all that well because the 3D coordinates are rebated to a preset 2D environment with limited results.
That means along with no perspective correction going on, vertices will always snap to point to a 320x224 (or less) mask. Which is why characters being rendered in 1280x960 (3 times the resolution) often breathe like they're having a epileptic attack. Smooth animation is impossible that way. This "mask" is code/software oriented, not an hardware thing going on (PSone wasn't OpenGL enabled or nothing of the sort, it was designed to do 3D in cheap ways) so hacking it out on an emulator is impossible without severe hacking being done on every game, hence, considered impossible to fix.
And the lack of perspective correction/affine filtering looks worse the more you up-render it.
Texture smoothing also tends to look bad, it's too low res and there's a reason why N64 texturing actually aged worse than the lack of it. It's too low res to filter and because PSone and Saturn would look even lower res if they just stretched them all over a wall they actually repeat them a lot (both to look better and to dodge the lack of texture correction making stuff look way, way worse, this makes a lot of game look grittier/more detailed, again... providing you keep it unfiltered and at the original res.
There's simply not much enhancement you can do while emulating a Psone game that won't send someone like me into a "I can't play this shit" frenzy so you might as well just emulate the look and feel of the original.
Saturn and N64 being a little different in that regard as they used a better coordinate rounding system (more costly).
Unknown to me, there's a small production company like 20 minutes away that I've passed thousands of times without noticing. They listed them for sale earlier this week and are closed on weekends so I'll find out if they're still there come Monday.
Me and a few friends have been trying to get our hands on a PVM for a while and we just got very lucky.
Alright. They were apparently used for CCTV so they probably have a lot of time logged on them. Hopefully at least 2 or 3 are in good standing.
speedlolita
Member
Sorry but what is the point you're getting to here exactly? I'm fond of those pixel-y visuals myself, screw aliasing.
Do you put ridiculous stupid filters on your 2D games? Why do the same with the authentic visuals of the 3D visuals of earlier generations?
NormalFish
Banned
aliasing = stairs. I prefer the pixel look. I think you misinterpreted what I said
Who honestly does that?=O
LucidMomentum
Member
It's so good though.
Played a few matches and no issues. Got it dialed in with the 240p test suite (it auto calibrated chroma and phase to the test patterns!) and it looks super good.
Glad I won the second auction - I want a second one so my car is full to the brim when I travel for tournaments
You misread his post. The two of you agree on the same thing.
I think you meant "fuck anti-aliasing?" Aliasing is what the PS1 and Saturn games already have that AA/blur filters remove in emulators.
I don't see pixel graphics as equivalent to aliased 3D graphics. Aliasing on 3D assets to me is more of a flaw or short coming of hardware. A lot of PSX, Saturn and N64 games were also released on PC where AA and higher resolution is a thing. This is a trend that continues to this day where console game will lack real AA and high resolution and yet it remains an option on PC. I wouldn't say that Fallout 4 is meant to look like how it does on consoles with TAA as opposed to a super PC that can run it at 16x SSAA and 4K res.
As for 2D assets like textures and simple HUD overlays inside a 3D game, those are more comparable to pixel graphics and I generally prefer not applying filters on them.
Ah, great points there actually.
NormalFish
Banned
Sure, there are certainly 3D games that don't seem to be designed around the 240p display's quirks. Virtua Fighter or Spyro, for instance, transition well to most any resolution. I don't think this is the case the majority of the time, however. Frequently the chunky pixels you get from OG hardware running a lot of 3D games offer an odd sort of clarity that I think is comparable to 2D sprites. I'd say most games fall in to this latter category for me, but examples would include everything from G Darius to FFIX.
I beg to differ. Higher resolutions often yield added detail and clarity in many games. Individual 3D objects are more distinct from one another without aliasing. That makes distant objects easier to target. Which is great for a ton of shooter type games. Even texture details are often lost in lower resolution, but come to light at higher res.
Take this post for example.
Where pixel art is clearest at its native resolution, 3D games have many details obscured.
Vagrant Story? Not bad, but I don't think it looks too good either.
High native res and good AA on old 3D games still isn't enough when they weren't meant for super clear digital HD televisions, and sometimes makes them look worse. Even PC CRTs with pretty high resolutions didn't present the games as sterile as HD emulator screenshot examples. What was meant to look good for CRT are now flaws exposed with perfect clarity amidst barren environments. I think those old 3D games need an analog signal over CRT (or comparable CRT filters) as much as 2D pixel games.
To be fair, I think this primarily applies to 3D games from the PS2/GC era and earlier. By the time you get to PS3, 360 and even Wii games, the 3D assets are held back by weak hardware that can't do 1080p/60fps and benefit from powerful emulation.
High native res and good AA on old 3D games still isn't enough when they weren't meant for super clear digital HD televisions, and sometimes makes them look worse. Even PC CRTs with pretty high resolutions didn't present the games as sterile as HD emulator screenshot examples. What was meant to look good for CRT are now flaws exposed with perfect clarity amidst barren environments. I think those old 3D games need an analog signal over CRT (or comparable CRT filters) as much as 2D pixel games.
To be fair, I think this primarily applies to 3D games from the PS2/GC era and earlier. By the time you get to PS3, 360 and even Wii games, the 3D assets are held back by weak hardware that can't do 1080p/60fps and benefit from powerful emulation.
I think it can be said in fairness that this is your opinion on the overal aesthetics. However it's evident that higher resolutions can reveal more details -- even by your admission. You don't like it. That's fine. I do like. Other people do as well.
There's nothing wrong with preferring one way or the other. I just wanted to bring some understanding on the matter. Emulation doesn't necessarily mean that someone is trying blur away at details unscrupulously. In many cases it's quite the opposite.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Someone's gonna have to give me a rundown on how connections work with a PVM because I'm not seeing anything standard on the back of that thing outside of maybe RCA for audio out.
They use BNC connectors. You can get little adapters that change it to take RCA. It's not that bad really.
It's alright if someone prefers one or the other. It's all personal preference and I don't mean to suggest to anyone how a game must be played. I did enjoy Pikmin on Dolphin at the time.
However I do think original hardware with a good connection reveals a lot of detail, perhaps all the intended detail by the developer. Beyond that you get diminishing returns and a mixed bag of results (some glkde and bad). In many of the examples I have seen over the years, the details is so clear that you can see how poor they look in HD and no longer mesh with together consistently, in a manner not expected by the artists.
This is why the RE4 HD Project happened. The default textures don't stand up to HD clarity, the game looks bad on hardware beyond Gamecube and CRT. And that was one of the best looking games of that generation! Lesser and older 3D games have more severe results when bumped up to HD. I plan to revisit Pikmin on original hardware on the nice CRTs I've acquired since.
However I do think original hardware with a good connection reveals a lot of detail, perhaps all the intended detail by the developer. Beyond that you get diminishing returns and a mixed bag of results (some glkde and bad). In many of the examples I have seen over the years, the details is so clear that you can see how poor they look in HD and no longer mesh with together consistently, in a manner not expected by the artists.
This is why the RE4 HD Project happened. The default textures don't stand up to HD clarity, the game looks bad on hardware beyond Gamecube and CRT. And that was one of the best looking games of that generation! Lesser and older 3D games have more severe results when bumped up to HD. I plan to revisit Pikmin on original hardware on the nice CRTs I've acquired since.
Huggers
Member
Saw someone on Twitter last night bigging up the brilliance of RGB. Fair enough, it is the only way to go. Then noticed they had it plugged directly into an LCD TV. D'oh! Didn't bother with the discussion but it's crazy you'd go tho the lengths to sort RGB cables only to plug them into a flatscreen without a decent upscaler or indeed just using a CRT.
Shin Johnpv
Member
Yeah this is it for me. The Framemeister can upscale these systems, cleaner and faster than any tv out there can. That's why I bought one. I don't even turn scanlines on on mine. I'm not really that big of a fan of scanlines personally.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
If your LCD TV handles 240p sanely it actually looks really good. I had 240p over HDMI going for a while and it looked legitimately great. I can imagine if you have a TV that handles 240p component properly it would look great as well.
Where can one get this? And it's possible to have both HDMI added to a console that has already been RGB-modded? I have an RGB N64 and a spare N64. Would prefer having an all-in-one console.
Huggers
Member
Yeah he had screen shots and honestly, it looked rough. That screen did not handle 240p well at all
Check out this post:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=190902221&postcount=12001
It's all very simple.
I am still doing this, and it looks amazing imo. Of couse getting a Framemeister soon though, so looking forward to be absolutely floored by that.
The thing is, in this thread we are accustomed to greatness. We know what RGB is supposed to look like on a CRT and we are used to seeing it. But the average American gamer has only ever used their ≤32bits consoles with Composite at best and, in that regard, going from Composite on a CRT to RGB on a shitty LCD is still a massive step up visually. Of course, the difference between RGB on a shitty LCD and RGB on a CRT is equally big, but you can't expect them to know that. They see the step up on their shitty LCD, they think they are looking at greatness. Except they aren't.
Does anyone have a good article about the lack of Scart in the USA?
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Is it not possible to use composite signals on a PVM?
speedlolita
Member
Of course it is.
Line A and Line B are composite in that picture within the link.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Sweet. It was a bit hard to tell.
here but it's sold out atm.
you can have both on the same console. you tell them that before starting the process so they know about that and do the appropiate changes.
To add: Had mine done by him and its great. Highly recommended.
NormalFish
Banned
God I hope these things drop in price so I can get one just for this.
Interesting situation. I expect the HDFury here to be pretty good at this: https://www.hdfury.com/shop/gamer/hdfury-gamer-2-component/
Your luck with cheapo amazon boxes may vary. (Might be worth trying a cheapo amazon box to save money of course, that HDFury aint cheap.)
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