Non HD RPGs... in HD.

[Panda_Samurai]

Hmm.. Let me know how that works out. I remember when I tried using that Xploder HD thing for the ps2. It was complete junk, shrunk the image a ton. Not even the amount that made sense, given the aspect ratio switch. And even AFTER that, within that tiny image, things looked worse. I suppose it was more for that 576i (p?) PAL thing.

[Cless]

It's just an external hardware scaler that plugs into a VGA port (so should eliminate or drastically reduce display lag, if it's an issue). The xploder thing was some kind of wonky software thing that tried to force games into running other resolutions to mixed results (IIRC).

I'll be pretty happy with it if it can at least scale things anywhere close to as nicely as PSP RemoteJoy does under Windows XP.

[pedrocasilva]

I mean, it's a decent 50 inch sony. Not a fantastic TV in 2009, but, it's not a bad one either. And on that 50 inch screen, ARF really doesn't look good. What are you playing it on? Anyway it seemed like there was some confusion about this in your post pedro... I have purchased all of the games I've posted screens for.

I'm sorry to say, but compared to the top of the line brands... Sony TV's are not that good (not to say they're bad, but they use entry point panels), Sony closed their tv panel factories due to being incapable of competing and most of their screens are actually Samsung, who is know to cut corners for mass production (a year ago all of them were samsung, but since it was inadmissible for their top of the line TV's, with light leakage and all... they switched those to Toshiba panels). Of course, Samsung and most of the brands competing in that "mass market" (including sony) knowing their market cut corners on the most basic features the buyers don't even know are there (but increase the production cost) such as the deinterlacing chips and post processing abilities, since post processing to the degree a Panasonic does means very expensive chips who ara capable of doing bicubic/bilinear filtering @ 60 frames per second with no noticieable lag, chips that are expensive and that the regular consumer doesn't even know are there. Most of the "gaming modes" these entry point/mid point TV segment sport also actually reduce image quality and post processing in order to get fluidity, because the chips can't actually keep up with it.

Because their upscaling chips are not too hot people saw such a big difference when using the old PS3 BC upscale on their HDTV's. If they had a top of the line Panasonic or Sharp then it wouldn't be much of an improvement, the only difference would be the fact that it was being done on the console... or on the HDTV.


I started playing ARF on my Panasonic 42" Plasma; it had aliasing, but it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, of course inches and resolution (mine is a 1080p tv) have a little to do with it, and the post processing quality has a lot to do with it... but nevertheless, I have Wii games who look horribly aliased on it; this one is no... Mario Galaxy, but I didn't find it ugly either.

I also took a lot of direct feed (framebuffer grabs) from it, and compared to the official screenshots... the game looked much nicer on them, which leaded me to think imageepoch didn't know hoe to take proper pics, sadly.

You can look at them here:

http://forum.tales-cless.org/general/arc-rise-fantasia-(marvelousimage-epooch)/80/

Those are actually pixel per pixel accurate (well, resized since the feed was anamorphic)

[Panda_Samurai]

Hmm, yeah I saw those pics, and they do look good, but stretched to whatever screen size you have, I don't think you can really argue that there's some degree of visible pixellation.

And yeah, I'm aware Sony TVs aren't very good, but that was some enlightening stuff about the deinterlacing chips and whatnot.
How did you get your hands on that?

[pedrocasilva]

Hmm, yeah I saw those pics, and they do look good, but stretched to whatever screen size you have, I don't think you can really argue that there's some degree of visible pixellation.

And yeah, I'm aware Sony TVs aren't very good, but that was some enlightening stuff about the deinterlacing chips and whatnot.
How did you get your hands on that?

On the info itself?

A little of everything, I guess, reviews, forums and articles, side by side comparisons, seeing top range TV's outputting SD signal and noticing how different that was from the standard Samsung, that was even posted on the web because of how bad it looked, checking the brands that are used by developers to showcase SD games on showfloors, even from seeing them at the store (here they mostly use SD TV signal on them, so you can have an idea of how they behave with SD media) and when I decided I was to get a new TV, SD media mattered to me a lot, since I have a lot of older consoles plugged in, so I researched a bunch of TV's and their results/feedback, as well as what kind of upscaling chips they used. To make things better, a lot of people had the same doubts and wanted to buy a TV so we actually put into practice some of that, that being that "we" should have a clear understanding of what to expect before purchasing the TV, with people taking consoles to the store and try them side by side, for instance. I was actually probably the last of that group to get the TV (because I didn't have the money available) but it was very informative nonetheless.

[Panda_Samurai]

Ah, I see.
Because from what online reviews have shown me, it seems like sony's higher end models are regarded as highly as panasonic's..? One thing I couldn't find very consistently was how SD media playback quality was.

Anyway, I guess I'll take your word of that and perhaps do some info gathering of my own within the next few months.

[pedrocasilva]

Ah, I see.
Because from what online reviews have shown me, it seems like sony's higher end models are regarded as highly as panasonic's..? One thing I couldn't find very consistently was how SD media playback quality was.

Anyway, I guess I'll take your word of that and perhaps do some info gathering of my own within the next few months.

I've never been in contact with the current top line of Sony TV's ever since they switched their panels to Toshiba ones, so I can't really say.

Their scalers were decidedly worse than Panasonic's, as were the panels, but their plan always was to kick in with Cell CPU tech for decoding and post-processing, so that would put the post processing quality on-par with them. I don't know wether they already did it, scrapped it altogether or improved their post processing chips.

Online tests are very rudimentar when it comes to game and SD criteria though... sadly. They're meant for the movie enthusiast and not the game enthusiast,  but a game isn't a DVD, where the source is already filtered and blended in, and jaggies can really hurt. A great example for that is how some "game modes" offered by TV's actually lower the image quality in order for the game to be more fluid than the panel/post processing would originally allow, such doesn't apply to movies.

[Panda_Samurai]

Wild Arms 5

http://img228.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=26367_Wildarms501_122_236lo.jpg#

[Panda_Samurai]

Here's Tales of Graces. I apologize for having to use windowed mode, fullscreen screen shots didn't work.
Out of battle, character models do not look great, but the environments are fantastic.

There's also some inexplicable aliasing (16xCSAA is on, as is 16x anisotropic) in the close up shot, but the blur looks great, if I do say so.

The last two shots are a comparison of Wild Arms 5. I encountered a somewhat similar situation with the character models being slightly blurred. On PCSX2, it was as easy as just making the internal resolution 3840x2160 instead, and everything looks incredibly sharp now.  

Unfortunately, Dolphin doesn't let you do such a thing; it seems the maximum internal resolution you can use is the same as your monitor (maybe it caps out at 1920x1080, but I feel like I've seen 2560x1600)

Edit:Wow, I forgot a link *facepalm*

http://img240.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=43847_tog2_122_104lo.png

Edit 2: I'm really off today, seems I posted the same wild arms picture twice. Anyway, here are two that I think come pretty close to perfect. Especially the details on Dean.
http://img109.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=49038_Wild_arms_5_2_122_255lo.png

[Datschge]

There's also some inexplicable aliasing (16xCSAA is on, as is 16x anisotropic) in the close up shot, but the blur looks great, if I do say so.

The aliasing seen there is due to the dept of field masking (which separates blurred parts from not so blurred parts of the screen) not matching up with the actual models. May well be the case that the masks themselves are calculated by software and still in the low native resolution (and just scaled up here, causing the aliasing).

[Panda_Samurai]

Ah, I see. I've only seen this in dolphin with tales games (dotnw, tos). In fact they all look the same, in a lot of ways, like the image getting excessively soft looking with the overhead view out of battle. Do you think the depth of field issue is something to do with dolphin and the game engine just not liking each other?

[Datschge]

Well, I can only guess. If my guess is right and the depth of field masks are calculated in software instead hardware then there is nothing Dolphin can do about improving them (Dolphin emulates hardware). The only solution then would be hacking the game (the software) to force it to create the masks at higher resolutions.

[Panda_Samurai]

Looking at it again, Datschge, I'm skeptical a depth of field masking issue relating to the resolution would cause the little graphical glitch with his hair.
Also throughout other scenes it's definitely looking like it's just his face/hair. Even his sleeves in that picture look antialiased.

Wouldn't that be odd placing of the mask?