Question about Wii games in 1080p

Curtis Day · 09-03-2014, 01:23 AM #1

I apologize in advance if this has already been discussed but I couldn't find it. Like most others I have noticed that Wii games look better on Dolphin on my iMac than the actual Wii with my HDTV. My question is are Wii games actually 1080p natively and scaled down to SD by the Wii console? Or is Dolphin just making them look much better?

bomblord · (This post was last modified: 09-03-2014, 02:04 AM by bomblord.)

(09-03-2014, 01:23 AM)Curtis Day Wrote: I apologize in advance if this has already been discussed but I couldn't find it. Like most others I have noticed that Wii games look better on Dolphin on my iMac than the actual Wii with my HDTV. My question is are Wii games actually 1080p natively and scaled down to SD by the Wii console? Or is Dolphin just making them look much better?

The wii is incapable of rendering above 480p the wii does not "scale down" games to SD it just cannot render them higher. In case you don't know the wii has 88mb of ram and a single core cpu clocked at .729 ghz.

Dolphin emulates the wii hardware but is capable of rendering natively at considerably higher resolutions (like 1080p) and adding additional effects such as AA (anti aliasing makes images look smoother). So to answer your question dolphin is making your games look a lot better. I hope that helps clear up some of the confusion.

Curtis Day · 09-03-2014, 02:41 AM #3

So the game is actually only 480p as well?

bomblord · 09-03-2014, 02:46 AM #4

(09-03-2014, 02:41 AM)Curtis Day Wrote: So the game is actually only 480p as well?

a

On, the wii yes. Dolphin can render them higher though.

Curtis Day · 09-03-2014, 02:50 AM #5

If the game is 480p how can it be rendered in a higher resolution? 480p is the resolution.

**AnyOldName3** · 09-03-2014, 02:56 AM #6

As far as the game is concerned, what you see is a load of triangles. Triangles don't have a fixed resolution. The Wii draws these triangles in a 480p image, and Dolphin draws them at whatever size the user tells it to.

Curtis Day · (This post was last modified: 09-03-2014, 03:44 AM by Curtis Day.)

Oh ok. I thought the infinite scalability of the polygons would be halted by a set resolution when made into the playable game file. ie. when I create a 3D graphic in Maya and export it to another format like png it is no longer able to scale larger than the size I exported it as without losing quality. I get it now! Thanks!