720x480 On A 320x240 Screen ?

[DaveC]

No it is not "opinion" it is fact.  You cannot access 1/2 pixels on an LCD.  Just like you can't have 1/2 bits of information in computer code.

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True, you cannot access half-pixels, but you CAN access one third of a pixel.
Subpixel Rendering (Wikipedia)
This is what Microsoft uses for the ClearType font smoothing.

And this may be totally irrelevant to this discussion.

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Yeah I know about that. It is just used to smooth edges of fonts. You really can't access 1/3 of a pixel like used in an emu. Even if you access the 1/3 which would be only R,G, or B the whole pixel is still used up. You can't choose the actual color of the sub pixel because you are limited to it's position in the triplet. Making it useless for emu purpose.

 

[OrR]

I can have half pixels. Of course I can. They are then blurred together. The picture is in no way distorted, only slightly blurred.

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No you can't have 1/2 pixels on a *fixed pixel* display like an LCD. It is impossible. You need to do a little research as you obviously have no idea how LCDs work to display an image.

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Hahaha, go Dave.

OrR, a LCD works by having each pixel change to a specific color. It can't have two pixels in one pixel because it's only one color.

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As if I did not know that... <_< You did not get what I was talking about. The Zodiac does it like this: Scale it up to the screen size but with calculation of half pixels, third pixels, tenth pixels. Then blurring things together so you arrive at whole pixels again. Do you now understand what I'm trying to say? Every pixel gets equally scaled up, not one gets displayed twice and the next one only once. They both are displayed 1.5 times and blurred together where they overlap. This creates a certain blurryness but no distortion.

<_<

children, children. c'mon play nice.

OrR - it's Dave's opinion. unless you can show him visual evidence to the contrary of his opinion he's not going to change it.

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I know Dave's opinion and I respect it. The only thing I want to make sure is that he understands about the difference of distortion and blurring. I know that he does not like both and I respect it but while Most people would aggree that pixel doubling is awful because of the distortion, the nice upscaling with a little blurring featured on the Zodiac only bugs some people.

 

[Jarska333]

That sounds vaguely like Hold And Modify on Amiga... HAM8, was it?

Trust Wiki to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_And_Modify

 

[DaveC]

That sounds vaguely like Hold And Modify on Amiga... HAM8, was it?

Trust Wiki to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_And_Modify

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No HAM was how colors were displayed, totaly different.

@ OrR yes some pixels ARE doubled and some not. Go look again. Look at sharp diagonal lines etc, you will see it.

 

[timeslip]

That sounds vaguely like Hold And Modify on Amiga... HAM8, was it?

Trust Wiki to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold_And_Modify

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That be right, HAM screen res`s allowed showing all of the amigas 4096 colours by basically changing the screen palette every 16 pixels but was damn slow if i remember rightly

 

[junker]

useing interlanced resulutions on a tft is a damn stupid idear.

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for the psone lcd vga mod thingy, they feed it a 480i signal so it can show the full vga picture from the pc. could something like this be used to show all of a 640x480 movie or something on a 320x240 tft?

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2004/07/07/psone_lcd/1.html

 

[OrR]

@ OrR yes some pixels ARE doubled and some not. Go look again. Look at sharp diagonal lines etc, you will see it.

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No. :blink:

Ok, here are some pictures:
Chrono Trigger original resolution:

Chrono Trigger pixel doubled crap:

Chrono Trigger on the Zodiac, scaled to fullscreen (simulated, not actual screenshots):

 

[DaveC]

@ OrR yes some pixels ARE doubled and some not.  Go look again.  Look at sharp diagonal lines etc, you will see it.

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No. :blink:

Ok, here are some pictures:
Chrono Trigger pixel doubled crap:

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The problem with your example is

"Chrono Trigger pixel doubled crap:"

It is not DOUBLED completely. It is stretched by 1.5 meaning only some pixels are doubled some are not. In order to be *doubled* the zodiac resolution would need to be double the SNES res at 500 x 440 as the SNES was 256 x 220, but it is not it is only 480x320. 480x320 is not evenly divisible by 256 x 220 so you get wacky uneven pixel scaling. The blurring just covers it up.

 

[OrR]

The bilinear scaled picture is calculated completely different from the some pixels doubled crap. It sounds as if you think the last images are just blurred versions of the middle ones. That is not the case. In the middle images 1.5 pixels are rounded up to two or down to one. In the last images it actually counts as 1.5. That means that there is no distortion, everything is in the right place. The only thing wrong is that it is not sharp and the aspect ratio isn't right but the later is optional.

 

[EvilDragon]

I don't like scaling it makes stuff look all distorted and with smoothing blurry. That is because you can't scale 1.5:1 without some pixels doubled while others are not. 1:1, 2:1 etc look ok but not fractional scaling.

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Exactly. On LCDs, you either need to exactly double (or triple, quadruple, etc.) the resolution or it will look ugly (unless you put some kind of smoothing filter on it).

BUT: The original thread was about the TV OUT!
And you can easily scale everything up to TV resolution. As CRTs are pretty blurry itself, it will look okay (unless you don't stretch the video in any direction).

aaand to keep this on topic... So the GP2X will output video in it's original/correct resolution? Can it enlarge too?

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Well, it NEEDS to enlarge the videos, as a TV has a fixed resolution, and whatever you play with it needs to be resized to that resolution, be it be larger or smaller.

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But I thought CRTs can adjust a bit for slightly different resolutions. For example the MD had some games at 320 x 220 and others at 256 x 220. The first one has more square pixels, while the second more rectangular. They both fill the TV screen so the MD must output a slightly different scan rate to get it to display both fullscreen.

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Well, theoretically, they can, because a CRT is an analog device, not a digital one.
You can't change between square and rectangular pixels, but a TV doesn't have any pixels.

A TV just has a fixed amount of lines (525 in NTSC, 625 in PAL).
The Video signal which is fed to the TV transmits all these lines 30 times per second (or 25 times when using PAL).

This is the vertical resolution, which is fixed.

However, theoretically, the horizontal resolution isn't fixed.
Because the horizontal resolution doesn't have a certain amount of pixels, the lines are transmitted analogue (using different kinds of voltages from 0.3 to 1 V for brightness and different frequencies to determine the shape).

Remember that when TVs have been invented there didn't exist any digital devices!

The resolutions you have heard of for TV (like 720x480 for NTSC DV) have been made up much later. It's the maximum nuber of lines and frequencies that fit into a TV signal (which doesn't mean all TVs can actually display them fully).

EVERY digital signal needs to be converted into an analogue signal to be displayed on standard CRT TVs.

So, the INTERNAL, DIGITAL resolution of the SNES and MD is lower of what the TV theoretically can display - nevertheless the signal has to be converted into an analogue TV signal, which is why it isn't really upscaled, it just doesn't have the resolution the TV can display.

It's much different from LCDs, as LCDs have fixed pixels. TVs don't.

 

[abigsmurf]

moaning about blurring due to filtering on an LCD is a bit silly as these were games designed to be blurred slightly anyway when displayed on a normal TV.

anyway surely the 2d accelerator could also be used to implement some of the more advanced filters like the super eagle one (thing that's it's name, been a long time since I used it) that can make some games look brilliant.

 

[junker]

yeah, and super 2xsai or whatever or hq2x. i love using filters when playing emulated 2d/arcade on lcds.

 

[rabbits with hats]

interpolation?

 

[reallynotnick]

yeah, and super 2xsai or whatever or hq2x. i love using filters when playing emulated 2d/arcade on lcds.

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those are the 2 best, well exept hq3x and hq4x. The hq ones look the best but they use alot more power, 2xsai looks great and uses lots less power.

 

[DaveC]

moaning about blurring due to filtering on an LCD is a bit silly as these were games designed to be blurred slightly anyway when displayed on a normal TV.

anyway surely the 2d accelerator could also be used to implement some of the more advanced filters like the super eagle one (thing that's it's name, been a long time since I used it) that can make some games look brilliant.

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Well some systems like arcade were meant to be played on sharp RGB monitors. Plus many of the consoles could be played on SCART RGB cables as well.

If the second core is wasted stretching the image you won't be able to use it for important things like GPU and sound chip emulation. I wouldn't want to give up alot of speed and have a choppy framerate just so you can have a blurry image when it is really not needed.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, yeah, though even those RGB Arcades have much more blurry images than an LCD.
The only arcades with REAL good RGB monitors were from past 1995, and I don't think we'll see them emulated on the gp2x anyways

 

[DaveC]

Well, yeah, though even those RGB Arcades have much more blurry images than an LCD.
The only arcades with REAL good RGB monitors were from past 1995, and I don't think we'll see them emulated on the gp2x anyways

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Even the old ones were pretty clear, until they burned in and drifted out of spec that is. I remember going into arcades to play Ms Pac-man, Galaga, Zaxxon etc. and the thing I remembered was the images being real sharp. They looked as good as an Amiga on its RGB monitor and they both used the same 15.75 KHz analog RGB. The LCD on the GP32 kind of looks similar in quality when at 1:1. The pixels are more square but it does look close. The arcade monitor you could see scan lines and on the GP32 LCD you get a little screen door so it is kind of close.

Yes an LCD is sharper but the image at 1:1 on the LCD looks closer to the arcade monitor than it does when stretched and blurred.

 

[psj3809]

It'll still look very good though, i regularly watch movies on my Pocket PC. To reduce the movie size on the new GP2X (because it crops them anyway) just go through Windows Movie Maker or something similar to make the film smaller. No point copying a 200 meg movie if its gonna be cropped to a smaller size anyway, resize it lower so its about 80 meg and copy more movies onto your memory card.

Should be great either way

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, yeah, though even those RGB Arcades have much more blurry images than an LCD.
The only arcades with REAL good RGB monitors were from past 1995, and I don't think we'll see them emulated on the gp2x anyways

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Even the old ones were pretty clear, until they burned in and drifted out of spec that is. I remember going into arcades to play Ms Pac-man, Galaga, Zaxxon etc. and the thing I remembered was the images being real sharp. They looked as good as an Amiga on its RGB monitor and they both used the same 15.75 KHz analog RGB. The LCD on the GP32 kind of looks similar in quality when at 1:1. The pixels are more square but it does look close. The arcade monitor you could see scan lines and on the GP32 LCD you get a little screen door so it is kind of close.

Yes an LCD is sharper but the image at 1:1 on the LCD looks closer to the arcade monitor than it does when stretched and blurred.

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Hm, I don't think so. I'm working with Sony Class 1 Reference Monitors here at the TV station, and though they are pretty sharp, they aren't as sharp as LCDs and still a bit blurry (they have to, as all CRTs work with analogue rays and the pixels itself aren't split as clean as they are on an LCD.

The Sony Class 1 Reference monitors are the best RGB monitors out there (21" cost about 30.000 Euro).

And Amiga monitors look REALLY blurry compared to the Sony ones!

 

[DaveC]

Well, yeah, though even those RGB Arcades have much more blurry images than an LCD.
The only arcades with REAL good RGB monitors were from past 1995, and I don't think we'll see them emulated on the gp2x anyways

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Even the old ones were pretty clear, until they burned in and drifted out of spec that is. I remember going into arcades to play Ms Pac-man, Galaga, Zaxxon etc. and the thing I remembered was the images being real sharp. They looked as good as an Amiga on its RGB monitor and they both used the same 15.75 KHz analog RGB. The LCD on the GP32 kind of looks similar in quality when at 1:1. The pixels are more square but it does look close. The arcade monitor you could see scan lines and on the GP32 LCD you get a little screen door so it is kind of close.

Yes an LCD is sharper but the image at 1:1 on the LCD looks closer to the arcade monitor than it does when stretched and blurred.

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Hm, I don't think so. I'm working with Sony Class 1 Reference Monitors here at the TV station, and though they are pretty sharp, they aren't as sharp as LCDs and still a bit blurry (they have to, as all CRTs work with analogue rays and the pixels itself aren't split as clean as they are on an LCD.

The Sony Class 1 Reference monitors are the best RGB monitors out there (21" cost about 30.000 Euro).

And Amiga monitors look REALLY blurry compared to the Sony ones!

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The point was that an RGB monitor still looks better than an image that is stretched and blurred out to cover up the stretching on a fixed pixel display. Because then not only do you have funky pixel distortion when stretching but then you add blurr on top of that. It just gets overcooked.

When both are displaying at their native res then obviously a fixed pixel device like an LCD will be sharper.