Sharp graphics

[Gil_Hamilton]

Odd, since the Wii is incapable of outputting an HD image.

You do know that some HD TV's have built-in upscaling right?

All non-CRT TVs do. It's a mandatory feature for a discrete-pixel display.
Most of them suck at it.

edit: sorry, didnt read your whole post component av provides better picture then svideo though.

Component's quailty difference over s-video is nowhere NEAR the jump from RF to composite or composite to s-vid, though.

I'd suspect that Wii-side scaling artifacts will more than offset the difference between component and s-video.

*grabs soldering iron, begins work in SNES RGB cables*

It might be personal preference over which type of filter you like, but arguing that a blocky image isn't the true image that we are all supposed to be looking at is incredibly stupid. Seeing each pixel is the purest representation of what the graphic artist intended us to see.

And let's dodge idiotic TV scan artifacts and display everything with square pixels while we're at it! Clearly they intended circles to be ovals and rectangles to be squares!

Saying that the graphic artists intended their work to be viewed in raw pixels is fucking stupid. Any graphic artist that believed that should've been fired, because he had no business working on a commercial game.

You can ramble all you want about the purity of raw pixels, and artist intent.
And I'll point to checkerboard transparencies and dithered shading effects that were pretty clearly meant to be hidden by composite blurring.


Hell, I can point to games on other platforms that rely on crosstalk in the RF SIGNAL to generate transparencies. In some cases, they use it to generate COLOR.
A "purer" and "more accurate" image gives you a set of vertical lines, lacking the effects they were intended to generate. Is this artist intent? I think not.
So I can cite known instances of the final display's limitations being PART of artist intent. Can you cite a verifiable example of raw pixels being artist intent?



Unless you ARE a game artist, or have verifiable proof, you're in no position to state what the artist's intent was.
Even if you ARE, you only get to state it for the games you worked on.

As for recommending the NTSC filter, like most filters, that is nothing but a novelty and it looks nothing like a game running on an actual television (which I don't want anyway because display technology has surpassed that crude garbage we had to put up with).

Actually, the NTSC filter is far more than a novelty, as it provides for the emulation of several effects that the software on many systems assumed would happen in the display(see above), ensuring more accurate graphics emulation than direct pixel-blitting(or even aspect-corrected pixel blitting).
That's the primary reason it was originally created, if I recall.




WOW! YOU LOSE!

[blargg]

It might be personal preference over which type of filter you like, but arguing that a blocky image isn't the true image that we are all supposed to be looking at is incredibly stupid. Seeing each pixel is the purest representation of what the graphic artist intended us to see.

If you zoom in on an image using nearest-neighbor (big pixels), it will not look as it looked to your eyes before, because your eyes do not see in pixels either. It's an odd fiction that pixels are rectangular, or that a rectangle is the best distribution of energy for pixels in an image. Must-read: A pixel is not a square, by Alvy Ray Smith (PDF link).

As for recommending the NTSC filter, like most filters, that is nothing but a novelty

Emulating a TV is a novelty? Then emulating a SNES is also a novelty. The point of both is to recreate the experience of playing SNES games.

Like I said before, there's nothing wrong with wanting big crisp rectangular pixels (or even square, if you like things squished). Even if what you like is not what the designers intended, it's enough that you like them to seek a way to display it like that. I, for one, do not consider a SNES connected to a 1990s TV to be crude garbage. If I had more room, I'd keep my SNES connected to a 19 inch composite video Trinitron TV I have.

[mudlord]

How do magazines such as Retro Gamer display their images on the cover? They show crystal clear images showing each pixel as they are supposed to look.

.....using a video capture card perhaps?

[blargg]

How do magazines such as Retro Gamer display their images on the cover? They show crystal clear images showing each pixel as they are supposed to look.

.....using a video capture card perhaps? :roll:

If you read A pixel is not square above, you'll understand that even a video capture card captures samples, not rectangular pixels. It's only when the image is expanded using nearest-neighbor that you get pixels. It's kind of like the fairy-tale version of atoms being little proton/neutron spheres with electron spheres orbiting around them, which you could see if you had a good enough microscope. It's a fictional way to think about them, just as square/rectangular pixels are a way to think about an image.

[Johan_H]

Seeing each pixel is the purest representation of what the graphic artist intended us to see.

You can't know that unless you asked them really.
The thing is, my fellow sharp pixelated graphics fetishist, that the SNES graphics were created for a 4:3 image (this we can at least know is what the artists intended), so it has to be stretched vertically on a regular PC monitor (unless you want the image to be squished horizontally). This isn't really possible to do without some interpolation. ZSNES can do a pretty sharp stretch to 4:3 as I expressed my satisfaction with in my previous post, just be happy with that.

[byuu]

Seeing each pixel is the purest representation of what the graphic artist intended us to see.

Really? So you honestly believe the developer intended you to see the left-most version of the below picture?



His face is so ovular so as to not even look human anymore.

[FitzRoy]

Really? So you honestly believe the developer intended you to see the left-most version of the below picture?



His face is so ovular so as to not even look human anymore.

That's a good example for how most games were, but there were also a lot of games that did not compensate. Some games even feature both. In Space Megaforce, for example, the planet in the intro becomes circular when correction is applied, but in the game itself, circular spacecraft in level one lose their circularity on anything above native. This is what happens when you try to cut corners (Nintendo) and choose a resolution that isn't even close to the aspect ratio of the actual display. How would you like to be an artist and be told "keep in mind when you're drawing everything to make it narrower than normal, because it's all going to stretch on the real screen."

[Esturk]

So is the ZSNES GUI supposed to be blurry too?

[I.S.T.]

If you have the filtered gui option turned on and a blurring filter, yes. It's turned on by default, FYI. to turn it off, go into Misc, then Gui Opts(Short for options). You'll see Filtered Gui is check marked. you can turn it off from there.

[Esturk]

Filtered GUI is unchecked and it's still filtered, as are games. I tried it in Vista , and nothing is filtered. I have a feeling it's something to do with my nvidia card again.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Yeah. nVidia's applied a blur to anything scaled by the video card for a LONG time.

In theory it's not a bad idea, but in practice they overdo it massively.

[Esturk]

I used to be able to avoid the problem by using a 3dfx Voodoo card. ZSNES is the only emulator I use that forcefully blurs my games.

[I.S.T.]

I'm on vista with an nVidia card(8500 GT. Version 175.12 drivers) with no zsnes blurring... so I dunno what is wrong.

[odditude]

For the love of god, people, read the rest of the thread. It's already been clearly established multiple times that the DirectDraw bilinear filtering experienced in Windows XP (and overly so by NVIDIA users) is NOT witnessed in Vista.

Where are those franpa-alert smilies? Half of this thread deserves "Failure to Read."

[Esturk]

So blur is disabled in Vista for DirectDraw apps. Can it be disabled in XP somehow? Disabling DirectDraw itself DOESN'T work. ZSNES will not run for me if DDraw is disabled.

[I.S.T.]

For the love of god, people, read the rest of the thread. It's already been clearly established multiple times that the DirectDraw bilinear filtering experienced in Windows XP (and overly so by NVIDIA users) is NOT witnessed in Vista.

Where are those franpa-alert smilies? Half of this thread deserves "Failure to Read."

I missed one word in Esturk's post, so what?

[adventure_of_link]

Where are those franpa-alert smilies?

http://linksadventure.no-ip.biz/pictures/franpa-alert/

Half of this thread deserves "Failure to Read."

This one's on the house:

[blackmyst]

Seeing each pixel is the purest representation of what the graphic artist intended us to see.

Really? So you honestly believe the developer intended you to see the left-most version of the below picture?



His face is so ovular so as to not even look human anymore.

Not to mention the images on the right just look better regardless of height to width ratio. I can't believe anyone would prefer the leftmost image just because it's "sharper".

And the rightmost image looks the best, because the distortion gives it a more unified color palette. In the middle image for example, see those stray orange pixels along his chin line and ear and eyebrow, that look out of place? In the rightmost image, they just meld into the lines themselves, to make a more unified and simply better looking image. Just more evidence that low res graphics of a TV console are, surprise, supposed to look best on a TV.

[franpa]

Seeing each pixel is the purest representation of what the graphic artist intended us to see.

Really? So you honestly believe the developer intended you to see the left-most version of the below picture?



His face is so ovular so as to not even look human anymore.

Not to mention the images on the right just look better regardless of height to width ratio.

The middle one looks best to me, the right one has weird coloured eyes o_O

[byuu]

The NTSC filter is interesting. I really like it on some games, and dislike it on others.

Then there's HQ2x ... looks amazing in Zelda 3, looks terrible on DKC with more complex graphics.

But that's why we have them all. Linear, NTSC, HQ2x ... switch them up as needed, everyone's happy :)

[Johan_H]

Not to mention the images on the right just look better regardless of height to width ratio. I can't believe anyone would prefer the leftmost image just because it's "sharper".

I like sharp pixels a lot. It makes my eyes happy for some reason, simple as that, but I won't sacrifice correct aspect ratio because of it. And again, ZSNES kind of lets me have both so <3

[blackmyst]

Then there's HQ2x ... looks amazing in Zelda 3,

I personally wouldn't call horribly twisted, disfigured images that completely destroy what the pixel artists created "amazing", but hey, that's just me. At least they look uhh... high res? ):

[byuu]

Oh come now, you can't honestly say this looks "horribly twisted, disfigured ... that completely destroy(s) what the pixel artists created"

Linear:
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/3375/zelda1bk9.png

HQ2x:
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/3977/zelda2cd7.png

Look at the smoothness of the rocks, the bushes, the house, the increased readability of the font, of Link, of the enemy, of the hearts at the top ... it's a major improvement.

The rupees have actual edges instead of jaggies everywhere. Same for the bombs. The arrows are helped but not perfect. The bow and arrow are much improved. The magic bar has round edges, the dash in 1/2 looks like an actual dash. I could go on ...

[adventure_of_link]

The NTSC filter is interesting. I really like it on some games, and dislike it on others.

Then there's HQ2x ... looks amazing in Zelda 3, looks terrible on DKC with more complex graphics.

But that's why we have them all. Linear, NTSC, HQ2x ... switch them up as needed, everyone's happy

byuu, what you said gives me an idea for a new ZSNES, and possibly BSNES request:

How about a per-game configurable filter option (possibly put in a ini file orsmth)? Like for example, set the config file to use the hq2x filter in zelda, the NTSC filter in final fantasy, etc. This way, you won't have to keep reseting the filter all the time.

[odditude]

The NTSC filter is interesting. I really like it on some games, and dislike it on others.

Then there's HQ2x ... looks amazing in Zelda 3, looks terrible on DKC with more complex graphics.

But that's why we have them all. Linear, NTSC, HQ2x ... switch them up as needed, everyone's happy

byuu, what you said gives me an idea for a new ZSNES, and possibly BSNES request:

How about a per-game configurable filter option (possibly put in a ini file orsmth)? Like for example, set the config file to use the hq2x filter in zelda, the NTSC filter in final fantasy, etc. This way, you won't have to keep reseting the filter all the time.

seconded