Pixel Perfect - 1080p vs. 480p

[cba.gy]

Well +T+, i looked at those composite pictures you linked.

Im afraid i have to disagree with you, composite looked the worst and the most washed out of the 2 samples, in my eyes.

I also looked at the waterfall in the Sonic pic and have to disagree again, you forgot to mention the horrible rainbow type interference in the waterfall in the composite picture.

I guess what im saying is, it doesn't really matter does it, whatever floats your boat.

We are all different and want something different as far as our old games go.

I personally think scanlines are an awful distraction and let's be honest, damned ugly and unnecessary nowadays.

I prefere upscsaling my roms to to a 720p screen and having nice crisp graphics.

Those old school sprites look like they've just been made, bright and vibrant. The filters on these emu's are brilliant.

As far as "pixel perfect" goes ( i still say it doesn't exist) i scale my roms to suit my HDTV (minus overscan) perfectly.

I have never suffered this horizontal line flickering / bleeding etc that everyone seems to suffer with.

All i can say is that your not setting your screen sizes exactly right, perhaps you've wandered so far down a path full of different ideas that it's now hard for you to see what's really a simple thing to do.

 

At the end of the day it doesn't matter, there is no right or wrong. Set your screens how you wish to view the roms.

[PhilExile]

Well +T+, i looked at those composite pictures you linked.

Im afraid i have to disagree with you, composite looked the worst and the most washed out of the 2 samples, in my eyes.

I also looked at the waterfall in the Sonic pic and have to disagree again, you forgot to mention the horrible rainbow type interference in the waterfall in the composite picture.

I guess what im saying is, it doesn't really matter does it, whatever floats your boat.

 

Exactly.

 

We are all different and want something different as far as our old games go.

I personally think scanlines are an awful distraction and let's be honest, damned ugly and unnecessary nowadays.

 

Gasp!

 

I prefere upscsaling my roms to to a 720p screen and having nice crisp graphics.

Those old school sprites look like they've just been made, bright and vibrant. The filters on these emu's are brilliant.

 

Ya, this does look pretty good actually, but it should always be scaled proportionally, otherwise, things look goofy - like the SONIC 2 two-player portions:

 

 

 

As far as "pixel perfect" goes ( i still say it doesn't exist) i scale my roms to suit my HDTV (minus overscan) perfectly.

 

It exists on the Xbox, you just need to work to get it. SD = Extron Emotia, HD = 10x11 pixel mode + stretch function + SLG3000. This creates an image that is consistent with what the real hardware output.

 

I have never suffered this horizontal line flickering / bleeding etc that everyone seems to suffer with.

 

Right, if you use the filters, this hides the distortion. I actually think the filters are pretty good for the most part - except for those ones that smooth out the pixels in weird ways. Shudder:

 

 

 

All i can say is that your not setting your screen sizes exactly right, perhaps you've wandered so far down a path full of different ideas that it's now hard for you to see what's really a simple thing to do.

 

At the end of the day it doesn't matter, there is no right or wrong. Set your screens how you wish to view the roms.

 

Righto!

[Cospefogo]

I have never suffered this horizontal line flickering / bleeding etc that everyone seems to suffer with.

 

Right, if you use the filters, this hides the distortion. I actually think the filters are pretty good for the most part - except for those ones that smooth out the pixels in weird ways. Shudder:

 

 

 

Yes yes.

I second that.

If you never saw distortions it is solely because you use the filters!

=)

 

C.

[+ T +]

I'm not saying composite is the way to get the best looking image. I just think it's interesting how developers intended for their games to be viewed through a composite connection and actually used these visual tricks to take advantage of the poor quality video and produce effects that would otherwise be impossible. It's just a testament to the inventiveness and resourcefulness of 90's games programmers.

[PhilExile]

Hey T,

 

And here are those arcade photos I promised - months later.

 

The game shown is X-MEN. The monitor is in pretty bad shape (well used) and the picture is pretty blurry. I noticed the montiors that hold up the best are the candy cabs from Japan. They are very sharp and have very black, distinct scanlines, unlike the X-MEN monitor shown here. My PVM has a very similar tube to the candy cabs.

 

You'll see below that there is space around the edge of the monitor and the image doesn't stretch edge-to-edge. It is displayed approximately at what the 'perfect pixel' size would be, which is a 302 pixel width for this game I believe. This accounts for the space around the edges. I can't check for sure since Maws is down.

 

Cheers!

 

XMEN - Overview

 

 

 

X-MEN - Closeup #1

 

 

 

X-MEN - Closeup #2

 

 

The thing is, when talking about CRT TVs, it's completely redundant to refer to horizontal resolution. These displays don't have a horizontal resolution since the display is not made up of pixels, it's made up of horizontal lines. Each line is approximately one pixel tall so the number of lines used vertically does conform to the native vertical resolution of the hardware (except every other line is blank hence the scanlines). However the native horizontal resolution of the hardware is irrelevant since, however many pixels there are, they will always be stretched to the full length of the line. So in order to replicate this with an emulator we need to set the vertical size to a multiple of the native vertical resolution of the system (hence giving the correct number of 'lines') and then we just need to decide how long our lines are going to be, since this is determined by the display and is different for every TV; there is no 'perfect' value.

 

I know from working with these games on a PVM, that unless you set the horizontal size 'perfectly' there will be a distortion. For instance, when I tried to set a game like SALAMANDER to stretch to fill the screen through the emulator and go beyond 512 pixels - you will see these 'waves' that your ship will fly through. Its almost like a wrinkle in the screen. I'm not denying that in the arcade this game is stretched edge-to-edge most of the time. However, I think this is similar to the NES/SNES were there was something in the hardware that acted like an upscaler in some ways. It wasn't something that was specific to the CRT technology - as far as I know.

 

The best thing (and I don't know if this is possible) would be to build a second pass scale into an emulator. For instance:

 

1. You set your perfect pixel screen size or just set it to double the pixel size of the arcade rom - 256x224 becomes 512x448

2. Set your TV's resolution to 4:3 in the preferences

3. When you launch the game, the emulator scales the image to 640x448 to fit your screen*

 

*I believe this is what BSNES does.

 

And in case you're wondering about rotated arcade games. The above still applies since it's just a regular monitor turned on its side, so the vertical lines now appear to the player to run horizontally across the screen. The 'height' of the lines is still determined by the display and will still always be the same size.

 

Yes, I know. I play a lot of MS. PAC-MAN, T. I actually have a PVM set on its side for vertical games only.

 

The SUPER MARIO WORLD is a great example. Again, I'm not arguing with what you are saying. Its just the way these emulators are built, if you don't find the 'perfect pixel' width - there is distortion introduced. There must be a way to stretch the image horizontally, after its been set, to fill the screen.

 

Talk soon

 

PS - I still plan on doing 'research' at the bar/arcade. Don't try to stop me, T!

Edited January 6, 2012 by PhilExile

[+ T +]

That's interesting stuff. I'd like to see more games shown on old monitors. However this particular one doesn't seem right. The monitor here appears to have no scanlines, it's more like a PC monitor than an original CRT TV style one. That would explain why the horizontal image is not filling the screen correctly; what you're looking at is the equivalent of a 604x448 display on a 640x480 screen. The kind of original arcade monitor I was referring to (one with a traditional display made up of scanlines) would not display the image in the way pictured.

 

EDIT: To illustrate my point, have a look at this video which claims to show a genuine original X-men cabinet being played.

 

 

As you can see the image fills the horizontal width of the screen and does not have the large black borders that your picture shows. In fact it only has small borders at the top and bottom which is perfectly consistent with a vertical size of 224 being displayed on a 480 line screen with alternating scanlines. Admittedly the scanlines on this display don't appear to be very visible but there are other videos of X-men cabinets which all show roughly the same thing.

Edited January 6, 2012 by + T +

[PhilExile]

Hey T,

 

I think this machine was cobbled together with a bunch of different parts. I was trying to make the point that the hardware does send a certain picture size to the monitor to display. This is what I'm trying to always lock onto with the Xbox emulators. There is some give and take with it of course. I think sometimes they used whatever parts were available too - especially in the 80s.

 

The thing about the scanlines is interesting though. Basically, some monitors show them more than others. The candy cabs (and my Sony PVM) have really strong scanlines. The X-MEN monitor in my picts you can barely see them, the same with most MS PAC-MAN cabs. Here is a brief explanation from my friend Tobias who runs that scanline site: " There are different pixel masks inside the tubes. You can't "emulate" this with a device like the SLG. You can create digital filters which works fine on ultra-high resolution displays - Retina and such..."

 

I'll take some more pictures of different games then next time I'm there and post them.

 

Talk soon

[+ T +]

You're quite right. The hardware does send its native display size to the monitor, but it's what the monitor does with it that determines what we see on the screen. Currently there is no other solution for replicating this 'stretching' on the Xbox other than scaling the screen to emulate the effect. I can see why it would be desirable to have the Xbox output the original dimensions and then somehow stretch the pixels to fill the screen the way a CRT monitor would; but why some people want to output the original dimensions and then leave it at that will always be entirely beyond me.

[PhilExile]

Hey T,

 

Irronically, if you are using a modern HDTV you can achieve the same screen proportions by setting the 'pixel perfect' size, using 10x11 mode, 480p, and finally stretching the screen to 16:9 mode rather than 4:3. The only time you run into issues is with SDTVs.

[wizball1973]

/Ignore

Edited July 19, 2012 by wizball1973

[wizball1973]

Apologies for the necro-bump, but how did you get audio from the iScan HD+ if it was plugged into the SLG3000 via VGA? Also, did you find that this scaler introduced much lag?