I Got Gpsp (gba) Running With Sound!

[cowai]

How's the scaling on the psp version, anyway?
Does it keep the aspect ratio?

 

[krosfyah]

How's the scaling on the psp version, anyway?
Does it keep the aspect ratio?

Yes, there's scaled 3:2 plus 16:9 (which doesn't look as bad as it sounds) as well as the unscaled mode.

 

[Shadowsithe]

I've played the PSP, the fullscreen looks really good. The higher the original res, the less noticeable generally. Hence NES is ugly as the devil's face, scaled.

 

[iignotus]

I've played the PSP, the fullscreen looks really good. The higher the original res, the less noticeable generally. Hence NES is ugly as the devil's face, scaled.

NES's resolution is almost double of the GBA... :unsure:

 

[Exophase]

I've played the PSP, the fullscreen looks really good. The higher the original res, the less noticeable generally. Hence NES is ugly as the devil's face, scaled.

NES's resolution is almost double of the GBA... :unsure:

It's actually almost exactly 1.5x (for NTSC NESs, and SNESs), and most of that is in the height rather than the width. Also, TV screens cut off a good amount of the visible resolution, at least the ones back when NES was popular did.

 

[Blah]

Nes only looks bad due to lack of colors.

 

[iignotus]

I've played the PSP, the fullscreen looks really good. The higher the original res, the less noticeable generally. Hence NES is ugly as the devil's face, scaled.

NES's resolution is almost double of the GBA... :unsure:

It's actually almost exactly 1.5x (for NTSC NESs, and SNESs), and most of that is in the height rather than the width. Also, TV screens cut off a good amount of the visible resolution, at least the ones back when NES was popular did.

It's actually exactly 1.6x, and it's still a wider image than it is tall. 256x240; though some games only utilised a 256x224 palette because of the aforementioned TV cutoff. However, the hardware's output is still 61440 pixels per screen drawn, and 61440/(240*160) is 1.6 on the nose

My point, countering shadowsithe's, is still valid.

 

[Exophase]

I've played the PSP, the fullscreen looks really good. The higher the original res, the less noticeable generally. Hence NES is ugly as the devil's face, scaled.

NES's resolution is almost double of the GBA... :unsure:

It's actually almost exactly 1.5x (for NTSC NESs, and SNESs), and most of that is in the height rather than the width. Also, TV screens cut off a good amount of the visible resolution, at least the ones back when NES was popular did.

It's actually exactly 1.6x, and it's still a wider image than it is tall. 256x240; though some games only utilised a 256x224 palette because of the aforementioned TV cutoff. However, the hardware's output is still 61440 pixels per screen drawn, and 61440/(240*160) is 1.6 on the nose

My point, countering shadowsithe's, is still valid.

NTSC NES/SNES/other platforms is 256x224, that's why I mentioned that. Most people play NTSC NES games (Japanese and American). The TV actually cuts out from there. (256 * 224) / (240 * 160) is a little under 1.5.

When I said most of that is in height, I meant that the GBA width is close to the NES width, most of the pixels are lost vertically.

EDIT: Yes, your point is still 100% valid :B

 

[DaveC]

And the fractional scaling looks like total dog shit because you can't truly do 1.5 X as there is no way to light 1/2 of a pixel. That is why i still use 1:1 which is more practical on the GP2X than the PSP because of pixel size.

 

[zodttd]

Imagine:
150 pixel height resolution screen.
100 pixel height console.
1.5X = 150 / 100
No splitting up a pixel needed.

Even if there was, it's usually dealt with in other ways such as through blending or as simple as removing or doubling a scanline.

EDIT: Misread what was being said so the above doesn't really apply.

 

[cowai]

Any news Zodttd?

 

[iignotus]

I've played the PSP, the fullscreen looks really good. The higher the original res, the less noticeable generally. Hence NES is ugly as the devil's face, scaled.

NES's resolution is almost double of the GBA... :unsure:

It's actually almost exactly 1.5x (for NTSC NESs, and SNESs), and most of that is in the height rather than the width. Also, TV screens cut off a good amount of the visible resolution, at least the ones back when NES was popular did.

It's actually exactly 1.6x, and it's still a wider image than it is tall. 256x240; though some games only utilised a 256x224 palette because of the aforementioned TV cutoff. However, the hardware's output is still 61440 pixels per screen drawn, and 61440/(240*160) is 1.6 on the nose

My point, countering shadowsithe's, is still valid.

NTSC NES/SNES/other platforms is 256x224, that's why I mentioned that. Most people play NTSC NES games (Japanese and American). The TV actually cuts out from there. (256 * 224) / (240 * 160) is a little under 1.5.

When I said most of that is in height, I meant that the GBA width is close to the NES width, most of the pixels are lost vertically.

EDIT: Yes, your point is still 100% valid :B

Ah that makes perfect sense, I got you now

 

[dontspam]

Imagine:
150 pixel height resolution screen.
100 pixel height console.
1.5X = 150 / 100
No splitting up a pixel needed.

Even if there was, it's usually dealt with in other ways such as through blending or as simple as removing or doubling a scanline.

EDIT: Misread what was being said so the above doesn't really apply.

Misread!!!

My God you mean you're human after all.

Just joking, great emulator BTW.

 

[Goity]

Imagine:
150 pixel height resolution screen.
100 pixel height console.
1.5X = 150 / 100
No splitting up a pixel needed.

Even if there was, it's usually dealt with in other ways such as through blending or as simple as removing or doubling a scanline.

EDIT: Misread what was being said so the above doesn't really apply.

Misread!!!

My God you mean you're human after all.

Just joking, great emulator BTW.

You're a harlot!

 

[DaveC]

Imagine:
150 pixel height resolution screen.
100 pixel height console.
1.5X = 150 / 100
No splitting up a pixel needed.

Even if there was, it's usually dealt with in other ways such as through blending or as simple as removing or doubling a scanline.

EDIT: Misread what was being said so the above doesn't really apply.

Well yeah since there is no way to light 1/2 of the fixed pixel you have to double some scanlines while leaving others at 1:1. The result is an un-even doubling of like every 5 scanlines (or whatever depending on resolution). This ends up looking like crap. It makes pixels look blocky and distorted. This is especially bad when scrolling as you get a rippling effect as the screen scrolls. Sometimes you can add a filter to blend as you say but there are 2 problems with that. First the overhead on the CPU is very high on the GP2X as there is no hardware to do that. Second it makes the screen look blurry, you loose the sharpness and detail as it averages pixels that were not meant to be averaged.

The only time scaling doesn't look that bad is when you can do it in even numbers like 2:1, 3:1...etc.

Any news Zodttd?

It is not nice to badger the developers. They do this in their free time. I am sure if there was news Zod would post it. Chill out.

 

[clone]

The only time scaling doesn't look that bad is when you can do it in even numbers like 2:1, 3:1...etc.

Even numbers? You meant "scaling only works right when the multiplier is an integer" or something like that, right? Because I don't have any problem with them nasty odd numbers, like scale factors of 1x and 3x.... Well 5x... Maybe that's pushing it.

I've always used 1:1.... I don't think there is a need to priorertise scaling, as it is an additional overhead, regardless of how it is achieved.

 

[Tobriand]

Actually, not much of one on the GP2x... we've got a chip dedicated to scaling, as long as you don't need it smooth, so it's virtually no overhead at all. But that doesn't get you away from the uneven pixel issue, though.

Well, not without first converting the image from RGB to the format movies use (can't remember atm), but that *does* need lots of CPU, I'm told. Which is a pity, but hey...

Anyway, me off to sleep - exam tomorow... err... today.

 

[Exophase]

Bicubic filtering looks pretty good. Here's a comparison:

http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/gpsp_cubic.png

Vs bilinear:

http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/gpsp_linear.png

(here's the original: http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/gpsp_shot.png, note the filesizes )

Of course, I don't know if we'll have CPU to spare for any any filtering at all, bicubic is totally out of the question. But for an optimized NES or Gameboy emulator it might be doable, especially since the screen is overall lower bitdepth and you can possibly use lookup tables.

Personally, I think the filtering is a double edged sword; on the one hand, the image does lose sharpness. On the other hand, the image becomes less aliased, making it look less blocky overall. I find that for small screens like PSP (or GP2X, I would think, though I haven't tried it yet) the blurriness of bilinear filtering is much less of a hindrance than on a big screen. At the same time, nearest neighbor filtering doesn't look quite as horrible as I thought it would (again, smaller screen, harder to pick out pixels).

I think it's a reasonable sacrifice to get a larger viewing area, although I won't deny that it takes a bit away from things. If it makes any difference, I've always prefered to play SNES emulators on PC filtered rather than scaled directly, just because it looks terribly blocky that way. The thing is, most TVs, especially the ones typically used back when these consoles were popular, are much more blurry than computer monitors (especially LCDs), so you could say the filtering gives back some of that. Naturally that doesn't apply for handhelds though.

 

[DaveC]

Bicubic filtering looks pretty good. Here's a comparison:

http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/gpsp_cubic.png

Vs bilinear:

http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/gpsp_linear.png

(here's the original: http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/gpsp_shot.png, note the filesizes )

Of course, I don't know if we'll have CPU to spare for any any filtering at all, bicubic is totally out of the question. But for an optimized NES or Gameboy emulator it might be doable, especially since the screen is overall lower bitdepth and you can possibly use lookup tables.

Personally, I think the filtering is a double edged sword; on the one hand, the image does lose sharpness. On the other hand, the image becomes less aliased, making it look less blocky overall. I find that for small screens like PSP (or GP2X, I would think, though I haven't tried it yet) the blurriness of bilinear filtering is much less of a hindrance than on a big screen. At the same time, nearest neighbor filtering doesn't look quite as horrible as I thought it would (again, smaller screen, harder to pick out pixels).

I think it's a reasonable sacrifice to get a larger viewing area, although I won't deny that it takes a bit away from things. If it makes any difference, I've always prefered to play SNES emulators on PC filtered rather than scaled directly, just because it looks terribly blocky that way. The thing is, most TVs, especially the ones typically used back when these consoles were popular, are much more blurry than computer monitors (especially LCDs), so you could say the filtering gives back some of that. Naturally that doesn't apply for handhelds though.

Well yeah that kind of filtering is out on the Gp2X due to CPU time. As you said though it could probably be done with GB/GBC/GG/SMS.

On the GP2X the images from SNES, NES, are large enough so that playing 1:1 is not too small. The vertical resolution on the GP2X is 240 not 272, and the GP2X screen is ever so slightly taller than a PSP screen so a 1:1 image is not as small as it would be on a PSP. So the point is what may have been unplayably small at 1:1 on a PSP is not too bad unscaled on a GP2X. Stuff like Megadrive and NeoGeo of course is pretty much full screen on the GP2X anyway.

I kind of feel the oposite with small screens. When small, sharpness is important and it doesn't look blocky at 1:1. When you filter, especially using the pixel averaging you lose fine detail blurring it into one mess of color. You don't have enough pixels to differentiate between sharp details that are next to each other. On a PC you are not scaling 1.5X you usually are scaling by 4:1, 5:1, etc. On the larger screen you kind of need the filtering as a big screen means big blocky pixels.

 

[Vimacs]

Maybe it would look better to use the 940 to perform a hq2x scaling and then scale that one down bilinear to fit the screen? hq2x has damn nice results.
http://www.hiend3d.com/hq2x.html
Or better hq3x, then you could just drop evry 2nd pixel to fit the screen.