Emulator Runs PS1 Games in 4K on the New Xboxes (inputmag.com) 13
Duckstation, an emulator that allows users to run Playstation games, was recently made available for installation onto the latest generation of Xbox consoles. From a report: It's time to jog those nostalgia muscles, as the emulator will not only be able to play your PS1 favorites but also scale those games up to native 4K resolution at 60fps. In addition to the 4K treatment, Duckstation will let gamers improve the overall look of the emulation experience in a couple of other ways.
Turning this on disables dithering, an effect that was built into the original Playstation hardware. Dithering in layman's terms was basically a function to improve depth of color by underpinning graphics with a series of lines or dots, which were then blurred by the system's video encoders. Turning this on helps improve graphic capabilities by smoothing out the blocky textures on 3D objects. The original low-poly graphics of the PS1 would often look cruder as they enlarged, so this function basically smoothes out those clunky compositions.
Turning this on disables dithering, an effect that was built into the original Playstation hardware. Dithering in layman's terms was basically a function to improve depth of color by underpinning graphics with a series of lines or dots, which were then blurred by the system's video encoders. Turning this on helps improve graphic capabilities by smoothing out the blocky textures on 3D objects. The original low-poly graphics of the PS1 would often look cruder as they enlarged, so this function basically smoothes out those clunky compositions.
Classic FFVII (Score:1)
Re: Classic FFVII (Score:2)
4K can you emulate phosphors? (Score:4, Insightful)
Over time as display technology improved, running older games (even old TV Shows) look much worse then they actually did back in the days.
The key issue is the old Console Games use to be played on Normal Non-HD TV's that had chunky Red Green and Blue Phosphors on the screen, that when the Games generated the pixels, they were kinda blurred together a bit, and the Pixels weren't nice Squares but were rather rounded out. Making the games you played back then, looked like cartoons or even real life, compared to when you render it today, they are blocky, sharp Polygons, and Dithering just makes a mess. Sure we got use to better graphics today, but it is also that the graphics of the day were designed to be seen on the technology of the time.
With 4k displays I think the resolution is high enough to no longer render pixels but render the phosphors to give us a more original looking display.
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed.
Here is an example [tumblr.com] of how CRT's provide a "free" blur.
A more in-depth article in this one: Designing 2D graphics in the Japanese industry [tumblr.com]
Re: (Score:2)
As long as they leave the text un-fixed.
I can live without the blurry muddy mess that text used to be.
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It's good practice for when you hit 43-47 and your eyes naturally go to shit.
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Emulating phosphor is less a function of resolution and more a function of refresh rate. And it would require something measuring in the KHz or MHz because each pixel is drawn in succession and begins to fade as soon as the electron gun moves to the next pixel.
For example, the game Duck Hunt on the NES would require this in order to detect whether the light gun was aimed at the correct pixels on the screen when the trigger is pulled.
"Emulator allows setting other resolutions" (Score:2)
Is not quite news exactly, given you could do it on epsxe and even PSEMupro
Perspective Texture Mapping even more important (Score:2)
I see no mention of Affine texture mapping vs Perspective-correct texture mapping in the article.
When I worked on a PS1 game one of the biggest problems the graphics engineers had was the PS1's affine texture mapping. This caused walls to "swim". The "hack" they used to minimize this was dynamically sub-divide geometry. This causes more over-head on the geometry process so it was a balancing act.
MVG has an example [youtu.be] @ 5:02 where he demonstrates the PS1's affine texture-mapping vs the emulator's option of
So, what's new here? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
4k 60fps (Score:2)
Problem with this is that many games on console are hardcapped at a specific framerate, meaning increasing the framerate will do absolutely nothing or speed up the entire thing. I'd rather have faster load speeds and less texture warp/distortion.