Is "native" res accurate?

[vice350z]

Hello, newbie here to the site. Been messing around with Dolphin. What a great emulator! Anywho, "native" resolution is what the Wii resolution is correct? So playing a game in the Native res is accurate to what it looked like playing on he actual Wii?

I only ask because I played a little Sonic All Stars Racing to see how the emulator runs and comparing Native to 4K the difference is amazing. Native is so jaggy looking. Is that how the game actually looked on Wii? I can't remember, its been so long since I played my Wii.

Screen shots just to show...so this is how crappy the game looked on Wii back in the day? I don't remember it being so jaggy.



Then with some graphical adjustments. It's hard to believe that's a Wii game. The upscaling is amazing. It looks like a Wii U game now. 

[JosJuice]

Yes, it was actually that jaggy when rendered by a real Wii. But many people used composite cables with their Wiis, reducing the image quality so much that the jaggies became hard to see.

[Kurausukun]

Also, even if the screen is a large TV, when you're as far away from the TV as you usually are if you're sitting on a couch or something, it's harder to see fine details like that on the screen than it is with a laptop that's right in your face. Generally on a TV it ends up looking blurry rather than jagged.

[vice350z]

ah yes, forgot about composite and even playing on an old 4:3 tube TV...just the same way it made even lower res Genesis and SNES games look "better". Thanks for the reminders.

[DaRkL3AD3R]

I don't believe that's all there is to it. I've already confirmed Dolphin does not handle the native anti-aliasing and image softening that the real hardware does. Metroid Prime uses it's own custom anti-aliasing, something kind of like 3xMSAA, and Dolphin does not emulate this. I found this out when my brother-in-law and I hooked up the GameCube to his 4k Sony x800D TV with composite cables, then his PC with HDMI. We emulated Metroid Prime at 6xIR and 3840x2160 output, while the GameCube did it's thing. Flicking back and forth between the two, it was nowhere near as blatant a comparison as is posted above. After searching around the web, it was concluded that Metroid Prime indeed uses some form of anti-aliasing to clean up the image tremendously. Coupled with the softening of composite analog signal, and you get a significantly smoother image than the one posted above.

And please don't even try to use some excuse like the 4k TV was upscaling the image. That's nonsense, and especially so since we have the TV specifically set into Game Mode with all enhancers and upscalers turned off. It's taking a 480i image and blowing it up to 2160p, no filtering. Metroid Prime + composite cables just does that much for masking any low resolution badness.

[MayImilae]

I found this out when my brother-in-law and I hooked up the GameCube to his 4k Sony x800D TV with composite cables, then his PC with HDMI. We emulated Metroid Prime at 6xIR and 3840x2160 output, while the GameCube did it's thing.

You have you remember the blurring that comes with composite. Composite is hella fuzzy! You were seeing 480i in a single channel (RGBA in one signal!).

When I use my wii with component cables and my fantastic capture card, it is nearly identical to Dolphin's native resolution output. With composite, even with the same capture card, it's fuzzy and awful.

[mstreurman]

And please don't even try to use some excuse like the 4k TV was upscaling the image. That's nonsense, and especially so since we have the TV specifically set into Game Mode with all enhancers and upscalers turned off. It's taking a 480i image and blowing it up to 2160p, no filtering. Metroid Prime + composite cables just does that much for masking any low resolution badness.

This is exactly what upscaling is...

[Helios]

 And please don't even try to use some excuse like the 4k TV was upscaling the image. That's nonsense, and especially so since we have the TV specifically set into Game Mode with all enhancers and upscalers turned off. It's taking a 480i image and blowing it up to 2160p, no filtering. Metroid Prime + composite cables just does that much for masking any low resolution badness.

I don't think you understand what upscaling means. If it didn't upscale all you would get is a tiny image the middle of the display

Also why do you assume all TVs "game modes" work as advertised? Many don't. 

I'm curious to what your definition of upscaling is though, as I can't really think of any other way to translate that

[Kurausukun]

When I use my wii with component cables and my fantastic capture card, it is nearly identical to Dolphin's native resolution output. With component, even with the same capture card, it's fuzzy and awful.

You said component twice here--is that a typo, or do I just not know what you mean?

[mstreurman]

You said component twice here--is that a typo, or do I just not know what you mean?

I guess the second one should be composite.