Question about games being in HD...

[SuzanoSho]

Okay...first off, hi guys! I'm a little new to Dolphin (but not to emulating in general), and I have to say that this thing is pretty awesome all around...

The reason I made this post tonight however, is to settle a debate that me and my battle buddy were having a little earlier...he made a comment claiming that this emulator has the power to make Wii games (which, I thought, were developed sub-HD) high definition...

I, being the argumentative person that I am, immediately unleashed a full-on missile barrage of "Nuh-uhs" and z-snaps on his candy ass, under the belief that such a feat is impossible...so he tells me to look on here and see...

Sure enough, on the main website, it says so clear as day; "This emulator makes Wii game HD-ified!!!!!"...

So my question is, how is this even possible, considering that the games themselves aren't even HD? Or is it that they're being DISPLAYED in HD and not actually true high definition...

[ExtremeDude2]

Where as I cannot answer your question in depth it DOES play in true HD (and beyond).

[scummos]

Most 3D games are made in so-called "polygon graphics". This means, you don't specify the *pixels* which shall be drawn on the screen, but *points* in a virtual 3D space, which are then "converted" into pixels depending on where the camera (usually your avatar, or so) is (this process is called "rendering").

Here's an example. This is a cube in points:

Code:

v 1 -1 -1
v 1 -1 1
v -1 -1 1
v -1 -1 -1
v 1 1 -1
v 1 1 1
v -1 1 1
v -1 1 -1

If you imagine standing in your room, then the first number tells you how far to go left (or right if it has a minus sign), the second one tells you how far to go forward, and the third one tells you how far to go up away from floor. That's where your points are; if you draw those eight ones above, you'll receive the edge points of a cube.
You can easily verify this by drawing them into a three-dimensional coordinate system and connecting them.

Now, you can render this object* in any resolution. For example,25x25 pixels (I increased the image size so it's not as tiny, but the "real resolution" (dolphin calls it "internal resolution") is still 25x25 pixels):


Or, 200x200 pixels:


Or, in the wii native resolution:



Although all of the above images are created from exactly the same data, the highres ones obviously look much better. Games do the same: they specify all their geometry in such points, and if you render that geometry in a higher resolution, you'll receive a "better" image -- better in the way that the edges of the geomtry are less blurry.

There's limits, however: Games use so-called "textures", which are basically images drawn onto surfaces (like draw a smilie on top of that cube there, or so, or a semi-transparent leaf in order to make a tree, or a wall pattern, or whatever you want). Those are pixel-based graphics, which have a fixed resolution. Those cannot be upscaled nicely, and if dolphin renders games in very high resolutions, the textures might look a bit blurry compared to the rest of the game. Improving this issue is the aim of the various "high-resolution texture packs" which you sometimes encounter, in case you were wondering.

Here's a real-world example (cropped).
Wii Native Resolution:


Three times that resolution:


You can clearly see that the high-resolution image looks much nicer -- however, the blue floor tiles dont' look any "sharper", because they're a texture and cannot be upscaled canonically.

I hope this clears things up a bit: it is (at least theoretically) possible to play any 3D game in any resolution -- even if it was never meant to be. The resolution of the textures limits the quality of the best image you can theoretically generate (you can also play Nintendo64 games in HD, but they don't look near as good as the Wii ones, because the resolution of the textures is extremely low). Dolphin can play Wii and GameCube games in *true* high-definition, or even better, in any resolution you want (like, twice high-definition) -- given your graphics card is good enough.

Greetings
___
* actually you need to connect the points first, but I'll leave this out here

[HawaiianPunch]

The games are not upscaled. They are truly rendered in full HD (or whatever resolution you want). It's as if you increased the resolution in a PC game.


In other words, you are right.

[NaturalViolence]

Quote:In other words, you are wrong.

The OP was the one claiming that dolphin doesn't render in HD.

[ExtremeDude2]

(02-05-2012, 01:24 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote:

Quote:In other words, you are wrong.

The OP was the one claiming that dolphin doesn't render in HD.

I knew something was wrong