Correct aspect ratio option?

[eckso]

@Aleron: PAR is resolution agnostic, so mirrorbender's 4320/4739 should be pretty much in the ballpark, but as you saw it isn't, reason? probably your 720x480 capture image and mirrorbender's 710.85x486 buffer active frame are very different. Asumming 710.85x486 is correct your capture card converted/stretched this signal to 720x480, because there's stretching there is a ratio reinterpretation.
Why this yields correct results?? food for thought, ask mirrorbender how he does the thing.

[Aleron Ives]

I think I found the discrepancy. I've been having someone else take these screenshots, and the screenshot I posted with a 1.275:1 AR was taken from a Wii using component cables and set to display in 16:9 mode. It's my understanding that that setting is meant to inform Wii games that you want to display in widescreen (since Wii games usually support both 4:3 and 16:9), but I guess that setting breaks GC games, since they use in-game widescreen settings (assuming they have a toggle at all). I asked him to toggle the widescreen setting, and this is the same screenshot taken when the Wii is set to display in 4:3 mode:



If I crop to 704x480, resize to 640x480, and then crop the remaining black bars, the active image area is ~584x480, which exactly matches the 1.215:1 AR that Dolphin thinks the game has and confirms mirrorbender's math. I guess the Wii does "bad things" and distorts GC games if you tell it that you're using a 16:9 TV? That seems like a silly thing for the Wii to do, as GC games ought to ignore a setting meant for Wii games. In any case, it seems the problem was caused by faulty Wii settings in the previous screenshot and not by mirrorbender's approach. Thanks for the help, mirrorbender et al., and sorry for the trouble. I didn't know his Wii settings could affect the validity of the test.

[eckso]

Still some games play wrong with no option of a fix it in the foreseeable future...  Resident Evil, Star Wars Assault, WaveRace... all of them highly stretched vertically.

The Smart AR PR is halted, and for some reason the PAR box issue entry is tagged as questionable. I'm very interested on any updates on this regard, specially now that 5.0 is a reality.

[Aleron Ives]

The feature freeze for 5.0 happens in less than a week, so even if more AR work does happen, it won't make it into 5.0.

[Kurausukun]

Honestly, I'd say the chances of Smart AR getting added any time soon are slim to none. While I agree it's a great enhancement, it doesn't emulate the hardware accurately, and not in the same way that scaled EFB doesn't. From what I understand, it's pretty much guesswork, and while it does produce "circular geometry," that's not necessarily what an actual GC/Wii would do. I'm basically paraphrasing Phire at this point, but if you want to know why it probably won't happen soon if ever and why the issue is tagged as questionable, that's why. If I got anything wrong there, do feel free to correct me.

[eckso]

The "questionable" mark was on another PR to add a simple PAR box to manually configure heavily stretched games like the named ones. The 5.0 freeze is not yet a reality so this simple addition can be a great chance to finally address this problem once and for all on a new stable version.

I don't either believe on automations, call it cortana, kinect, youtube video suggestions, or whatever (despite being curious on how Smart AR could perform). I would rather configure PAR on personal preference beyond if ovals should be circles or not. This is as (if not more) legit as Dolphin's support to mods, texture filtering, IR, post effects, and so on (no hardware emulation here either) but without any of their drawbacks since we only scale the raster image plane. Because we are correcting a 3D space problem (more prominent on space-time reaction games and stereo 3D) I wouldn't call this an enhancement but a fix option, only one that takes us back to the production stage.

[Kurausukun]

(01-05-2016, 08:35 AM)eckso Wrote: I wouldn't call this an enhancement but a fix option, only one that takes us back to the production stage.

Right, this is the problem--that's not something the developers think Dolphin should be doing.

[eckso]

So developers bother themselves to the extent of writing a blog entry for allowing 60FPS games, but now aspect ratio is taboo?
Or to put it bluntly, creating a whole tab for a snake oil CPU overclock slider is fine, but a PAR checkbox is a heresy?

[JMC47]

The CPU Slider is not snake oil. You can bitch all you want about valid things (PAR checkbox being heresy is ridiculous) but when you start to spout bullshit that's when I stop listening to you.

We were working on an aspect ratio article; in fact, we have one probably more than half finished, but there are still unknowns involved in how the GameCube/Wii works. I don't feel confident posting an article where we literally do not understand everything about what's going on.

But, regardless, I do think it's annoying that there is no PAR checkbox or at least some way to test it further. I really loved that feature as a user and tester.

[eckso]

I'm sorry if it sounded harsh, but I wanted to give the reasoning an edge because that's how it sounds inside my head, it's beyond understanding.

Devs add a lot of questionable "features" or even fixes, but when it comes to AR, it's a touchy subject, when it's as simple as, add a checkbox and call it a day. You are never going to deal this the automatic way for one simple reason, developers back then had different understandings of analog sampling or VI scaling and hence the discrepancies in AR for different games, just try to explain why 2 different games diverge so much in AR to understand this. Yes, you can reproduce how a TV is (actually "should") scaling, but that means nothing when developers got it wrong. To put it in perspective, SNES games are mostly better proportioned at 8:7 DAR (or 1:1 PAR) which is how they were created, despite playing as 4:3 DAR in all homes, many would argue 4:3 as correct, but compare planets (and sun), explosions, boxes, and original designs/logos. It's a problem that dragged on.

The closest to an automatic solution is the "Smart AR" feature and I see it failing every now and then since it's based on heuristics AND on a per-scene level. 5.0 is wrapped now (for "features") so my original proposal means very little now. People will keep playing with stretched graphics and broken stereo for many years to come. I said it all so now I'll just wait and see.