Wii Backwards Compatibility

[NaturalViolence]

I feel like I'm going in circles here.

shoober420 Wrote:If the internal and output resolution match, and are HD, then I guess you wouldn't need to upscale the internal resolution in the first place.

"Upscale the internal resolution" does not mean what you seem to think it means. Once again upscaling and raising the internal resolution are not the same thing.

shoober420 Wrote:Are you for serious? The majority of PC emulators do let you increase the internal resolution. Examples:

NES - Nestopia
SNES - Higan
Genesis - KEGA Fusion
PS1 - ePSXe
N64 - Project64

I could go on and on. Increasing the internal resolution is a standard feature these days. Its in almost every software emulator.

I explained to you the difference between upscaling and raising internal resolution. You listed examples of emulators that support upscaling. Only some of those support increasing IR. Higan, nestopia, and kega fusion do not.

You must learn the difference between the two or your posts won't make any sense.

shoober420 Wrote:Dude you originally said it would be hard to spot the CPU and GPU.

You misinterpreted my post. Figuring out which chip is the cpu doesn't tell you which cpu that chip is. It doesn't tell you anything about the chip.

When I said

NaturalViolence Wrote:could you tell me what those chips were?

what that means is could you tell me which specific chip it is? Not "this is the cpu". More like "this is a PPC970 with a 1MB L2 cache".

shoober420 Wrote:The CPU and GPU are very easy to spot. They are almost always the biggest chips on the board.

Here's a picture of the Wii U motherboard.
Gee, I wonder which one the CPU+GPU is. Hmm...

Once again, figuring out which chip is the cpu or gpu tells you nothing about them.

To sum this all up (again) the answer to your original question is "nobody knows for sure". The rest of this thread is merely an explanation of why we don't know yet and evaluating potential hypotheses/theories. The easy way to figure this out would be to just ask Nintendo and have them provide an answer. But since they won't we must get die shots and evaluate them (which apparently has already happened) to get approximations. Or if further accuracy is required we need electron microscope scans, leaked documentation, and some time spent reverse engineering things.

[shoober420]

(06-27-2013, 11:19 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: "Upscale the internal resolution" does not mean what you seem to think it means. Once again upscaling and raising the internal resolution are not the same thing.

Yes it does. Its simply another way of saying "increasing the internal resolution". Upscaling means increasing resolution, so it can be used universally as long as you be more specific (which I wasn't until now).

(06-27-2013, 11:19 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: I explained to you the difference between upscaling and raising internal resolution. You listed examples of emulators that support upscaling. Only some of those support increasing IR. Higan, nestopia, and kega fusion do not.

Almost all PC emulators that emulate consoles that are based on 3D graphics support increasing the internal resolution. Its a common feature. Since 2D games don't use polygons, when you increase the resolution in 2D based emulators, you are automatically increasing the internal resolution. Hence why they look so sharp when you set them to HD resolutions.

[ExtremeDude2]

(06-27-2013, 11:38 AM)shoober420 Wrote:

(06-27-2013, 11:19 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: "Upscale the internal resolution" does not mean what you seem to think it means. Once again upscaling and raising the internal resolution are not the same thing.

Yes it does. Its simply another way of saying "increasing the internal resolution". Upscaling means increasing resolution, so it can be used universally as long as you be more specific (which I wasn't until now).

No it doesn't >.>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_scaler

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

I didn't read that so I hope it is right XD

[NaturalViolence]

shoober420 Wrote:Yes it does. Its simply another way of saying "increasing the internal resolution". Upscaling means increasing resolution, so it can be used universally as long as you be more specific (which I wasn't until now).

Upscaling refers to taking a raster image and generating a new output raster image based on the information in the input raster image with a higher resolution than the input raster image. It has nothing to do with 3D rendering. That is not "simply another way of saying increasing the internal resolution". You're going to confuse people if you use the word incorrectly like that. Please stop doing it. They're two completely different things.

shoober420 Wrote:Almost all PC emulators that emulate consoles that are based on 3D graphics support increasing the internal resolution. Its a common feature.

It's a common feature in the popular 3D emulators. The ones that people often talk about and use on forums. But for every emulator that supports it there are half a dozen that don't. My statement is not in any way invalid.

You can't immediately tell if something is being emulated or not by the resolution. Not all emulators support rendering at higher than native internal resolutions.

shoober420 Wrote:Since 2D games don't use polygons, when you increase the resolution in 2D based emulators, you are automatically increasing the internal resolution. Hence why they look so sharp when you set them to HD resolutions.

You cannot increase the internal resolution of 2D emulators. It is impossible. Sprites have fixed resolutions. You can upscale them but you can't change their internal resolution. The internal resolution of the game never changes no matter what you set the emulators resolution to.

[shoober420]

(06-27-2013, 12:16 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Upscaling refers to taking a raster image and generating a new output raster image based on the information in the input raster image with a higher resolution than the input raster image.

Sounds like increasing the resolution to me.
Upscaling the internal resolution is a legitimate statement meaning its increasing the internal resolution.

(06-27-2013, 12:16 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: It's a common feature in the popular 3D emulators. The ones that people often talk about and use on forums. But for every emulator that supports it there are half a dozen that don't. My statement is not in any way invalid.

The only emulator I can think of that doesn't support increasing the internal resolution is MAME (when it emulates 3D games) It does allow increasing the resolution for 2D games though. But that's only because its going for accuracy in 3D based games. The majority of emulators do indeed allow increasing internal resolution. Your statement is invalid. You were saying its not a common feature at all which is totally false.

(06-27-2013, 12:16 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: You cannot increase the internal resolution of 2D emulators. It is impossible. Sprites have fixed resolutions. You can upscale them but you can't change their internal resolution. The internal resolution of the game never changes no matter what you set the emulators resolution to.

I disagree. You can definitely increase the resolution of sprites. Sprites do not have fixed resolutions. I just did some research and technically, sprites have no internal resolution. Only 3D objects do.

Let's take this example. I'm playing a SNES game that uses the standard 256×224 resolution. I go into the options and increase the resolution to 1920x1080. Now, Higan will actually push the games resolution out at true 1920x1080. It doesn't do any upscaling. It is really a true 1920x1080 image its emulating. No upscaling involved. If it was upscaling, it would look like a blurry mess. But, since its a true 1920x1080 image, it looks very sharp and the pixels are well defined and square. When you upscale, the pixels bleed together and lack definition.

[NaturalViolence]

shoover420 Wrote:Sounds like increasing the resolution to me. Tongue
Upscaling the internal resolution is a legitimate statement meaning its increasing the internal resolution.

Then you still don't understand the difference. Scaling to a higher resolution and rendering at a higher resolution are two completely different things.

shoober420 Wrote:The only emulator I can think of that doesn't support increasing the internal resolution is MAME (when it emulates 3D games) It does allow increasing the resolution for 2D games though. But that's only because its going for accuracy in 3D based games. The majority of emulators do indeed allow increasing internal resolution. Your statement is invalid. You were saying its not a common feature at all which is totally false.

Once again this is because you've only used popular 3D console emulators. For example you've probably used dolphin but have you ever used any of the other GC/Wii emulators?

shoober420 Wrote:I disagree. You can definitely increase the resolution of sprites. Sprites do not have fixed resolutions.

Yes they do. This statement is ridiculous. Sprites are just raster images. Your statement is equivalent to "images don't have a fixed resolution". Of course they do! Every image has a resolution.

shoober420 Wrote:I just did some research and technically, sprites have no internal resolution. Only 3D objects do.

The exact opposite is true. 3D objects and 2D vectors don't have a resolution. They're made up of geometric information (vertexes and lines). Sprites on the other hand do. I don't know what kind of research you did but it's wrong. This is a really basic concept in graphic design. It's not something that's only known by a few people or hard to look up.

shoober420 Wrote:Now, Higan will actually push the games resolution out at true 1920x1080. It doesn't do any upscaling. It is really a true 1920x1080 image its emulating. No upscaling involved. If it was upscaling, it would look like a blurry mess. But, since its a true 1920x1080 image, it looks very sharp and the pixels are well defined and square.

It's rendering at native resolution then upscaling. It doesn't look like a blurry mess because the filter it's using doesn't have a blur component. If it were actually rendering at a higher resolution the pixels would not be "well defined and square". They would be so small that you wouldn't be able to see them and the image would look sharp and detailed at the same time.

shoober420 Wrote:When you upscale, the pixels bleed together and lack definition.

Not true at all. Some upscalers blur and some don't. For example nearest neighbor won't, but bicubic will.

[MayImilae]

I'll make it easy for you. Images are cropped cause I have dialup and didn't want to be doing this all night.

On the left is Melee at 1x Native internal resolution (640x528) upscaled with bicubic (I think) filtering to fit my 1920x1080 monitor. On the right is the same frame on "Auto (window size)", which raises the internal IR to match my 1920x1080 resolution.

-----

The upscaled version on the left is inferior because it is rendered at 640x528, and then that raster image is scaled up to fill the screen.

[shoober420]

(06-27-2013, 01:11 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Then you still don't understand the difference. Scaling to a higher resolution and rendering at a higher resolution are two completely different things.

You're not understanding my terminology. Yes, it is more politically correct to say "increasing" the native resolution, instead of upscaling the internal resolution. But, since upscaling technically means increasing the default resolution, then I can metaphorically say "upscaling" the INTERNAL resolution. If I simply said upscaling the resolution when talking about the internal resolution (like I did before), this would be wrong. But since I'm now saying upscaling the INTERNAL resolution, its no different then saying increasing the internal resolution.

(06-27-2013, 01:11 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Once again this is because you've only used popular 3D console emulators. For example you've probably used dolphin but have you ever used any of the other GC/Wii emulators?

Okay, HLE emulators (that allow increasing internal resolution) far outweigh the the LLE emulators (that don't allow increasing internal resolution). You're comment that its rare for emulators to allow increasing internal resolution is very wrong. I just thought of another emulator that doesn't allow increasing the internal resolution, and that's the PS1 emulator XEBRA (for accuracy purposes). The emulators that allow increasing internal resolution far out number those that don't allow it and go for accuracy. So saying that its rare for emulators to increase internal resolution is a bogus statement. The emulators that don't allow increasing the internal resolution are in the minority, the exact opposite of what you're trying to say.

(06-27-2013, 01:11 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Yes they do. This statement is ridiculous. Sprites are just raster images. Your statement is equivalent to "images don't have a fixed resolution". Of course they do! Every image has a resolution.

I wouldn't consider any image "fixed" since it can be changed at any time. What you mean is NATIVE resolution. Yes, all images have native resolutions, but I wouldn't consider any of them fixed since they can't be increased or decreased at any time.

(06-27-2013, 01:11 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: The exact opposite is true. 3D objects and 2D vectors don't have a resolution. They're made up of geometric information (vertexes and lines). Sprites on the other hand do. I don't know what kind of research you did but it's wrong. This is a really basic concept in graphic design. It's not something that's only known by a few people or hard to look up.

Alright, that is true. But you saying sprites have a fixed resolution is wrong. A sprite can be rendered at any resolution, depending on what the GPU's output internal resolution is set to without the need to scale. The internal resolution has nothing to do with the sprite. A sprite can be render at any resolution without using scaling to do so.

(06-27-2013, 01:11 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: It's rendering at native resolution then upscaling. It doesn't look like a blurry mess because the filter it's using doesn't have a blur component. If it were actually rendering at a higher resolution the pixels would not be "well defined and square". They would be so small that you wouldn't be able to see them and the image would look sharp and detailed at the same time.

I don't use any filter or any interpolation when I play 2D games (like HQ2x for example), hence why you can see it for the square that it is instead of blurriness, which is a side effect from upscaling. 2D emulators take the internal resolution of the system (SNES's 256×224 for example) and displays it at 1920x1080 instead. No upscaling involved. It simply raises the systems default video output to make it look really crisp and clear.

(06-27-2013, 01:11 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Not true at all. Some upscalers blur and some don't. For example nearest neighbor won't, but bicubic will.

Nearest neighbor and bicubic methods are forms of interpolation, not upscaling. No upscaling takes place when you interpolate an image. So, if you upscale an image, it will make it look blurry no matter what. Using nearest neighbor interpolation wouldn't fix the blur from upscaling images. If anything, it would make it a tad bit blurrier, since interpolation is used to smooth or blur images.

[AnyOldName3]

Where are you getting your information from? I've never seen anything so exactly wrong.

[Shonumi]

This thread sure got interesting while I was at work yesterday.

shoober420 Wrote:You're not understanding my terminology. Yes, it is more politically correct to say "increasing" the native resolution, instead of upscaling the internal resolution. But, since upscaling technically means increasing the default resolution, then I can metaphorically say "upscaling" the INTERNAL resolution. If I simply said upscaling the resolution when talking about the internal resolution (like I did before), this would be wrong. But since I'm now saying upscaling the INTERNAL resolution, its no different then saying increasing the internal resolution.

It's not just politically correct to say "increasing" the internal resolution, it's technically correct. Upscaling does not mean you're increasing the default resolution; it means you take an image at its native resolution and then perform an algorithm to estimate what the missing pixel information should look like at higher, non-native resolutions. You can scale the internal resolution up (2x, 3x, 4x, for example), but "upscaling" is a specific term with a specific meaning contrary to how you've been trying to use it.

shoober420 Wrote:Okay, HLE emulators (that allow increasing internal resolution) far outweigh the the LLE emulators (that don't allow increasing internal resolution). You're comment that its rare for emulators to allow increasing internal resolution is very wrong. I just thought of another emulator that doesn't allow increasing the internal resolution, and that's the PS1 emulator XEBRA (for accuracy purposes). The emulators that allow increasing internal resolution far out number those that don't allow it and go for accuracy. So saying that its rare for emulators to increase internal resolution is a bogus statement. The emulators that don't allow increasing the internal resolution are in the minority, the exact opposite of what you're trying to say.

There are quite a few more emulators (for 3D games where internal resolution is applicable) that I can think that don't support increasing the internal resolution. Notable ones that I use would be Desmume, Mednafen (for PSX emulation), and Gekko (because I have to work on it, she's not ready to play a lot of games yet :3). To be fair, Gekko will probably support internal resolutions in the future, but I've already written about internal resolutions in Desmume. The DS is a tricky system, since it has seperate 2D and 3D engines you need to emulate. If you increase the internal resolution, you'll only affect 3D objects. 2D objects need to have a scaling filter applied to them. At any rate, for emulators where internal resolution is applicable, I'd say it's not actually one sided when it comes to those that do or don't support increasing it. A good many actually do (PJ64, Mupen64Plus, epsxe, PCSXR, Yabause, NullDC JPCSP, PPSSPP, Dolphin) but it isn't hard to find a large number that don't (MESS, Desmume and all DS emulators really, Mednafen, SSF, lxdream, Gekko, etc).

shoober420 Wrote:I wouldn't consider any image "fixed" since it can be changed at any time. What you mean is NATIVE resolution. Yes, all images have native resolutions, but I wouldn't consider any of them fixed since they can't be increased or decreased at any time.

If you change an image's resolution, you will have to use a scaling algorithm, in which case you will have to guess what the missing data should look like. It has a "fixed" resolution where no information needs to be added or subtracted. This is the "native resolution", but changing it involves adding or subtracting data not found in the original image.

shoober420 Wrote:Alright, that is true. But you saying sprites have a fixed resolution is wrong. A sprite can be rendered at any resolution, depending on what the GPU's output internal resolution is set to without the need to scale. The internal resolution has nothing to do with the sprite. A sprite can be render at any resolution without using scaling to do so.

Sprites do have a fixed resolution. Rendering a sprite (or 3D object for that matter) is a different matter than actually drawing it to the screen. Rendering a sprite involves computing what that pixel data should look like. Take the original Game Boy (DMG) for example, in 8x8 sprite mode. The Game Boy reads 16 bytes from VRAM; every two bytes only contains enough data to represent 8 pixels (each with one of four shades of gray). In 8x8 mode, you can only ever have 64 pixels of data per sprite. You can't change this rendering process for 8x8 mode; neither the hardware nor the software, e.g. games, support it. You can switch between 8x8 mode and 8x16 mode, but that's only because it's allowed by the system.

What you can change is how you draw those 64 pixels on screen. Once you have that data, you can do whatever you want with it, including scaling it via an algorithm. You can't tell the GB to render sprites at 16x16, because the system was never designed to do that, but you can take the 8x8 spirtes it generates and scale them yourself during the drawing process. I can tell you this from hands-on experience; I've worked on Game Boy emulation personally (currently reworking the entire LCD code of my emulator for optimization).

shoober420 Wrote:I don't use any filter or any interpolation when I play 2D games (like HQ2x for example), hence why you can see it for the square that it is instead of blurriness, which is a side effect from upscaling. 2D emulators take the internal resolution of the system (SNES's 256×224 for example) and displays it at 1920x1080 instead. No upscaling involved. It simply raises the systems default video output to make it look really crisp and clear.

You're probably using Nearest Neighbor filtering (or a derivation to account for stretching to 1080p without black bars). It is a scaling algorithm, albeit, one of the simplest ones out there. 2X Nearest Neighbor generates 4 output pixels of the same color for every 1 input pixel. 3X Nearest Neighbor generates 9 output pixels of the same color for every 1 input pixel, and so on and so forth. The emulator takes the emulated system's rendered outputand works it through an algorithm to give you a final, larger image.

shoober420 Wrote:Nearest neighbor and bicubic methods are forms of interpolation, not upscaling. No upscaling takes place when you interpolate an image. So, if you upscale an image, it will make it look blurry no matter what. Using nearest neighbor interpolation wouldn't fix the blur from upscaling images. If anything, it would make it a tad bit blurrier, since interpolation is used to smooth or blur images.

Interpolation and upscaling go hand-in-hand. When you upscale or enlarge a 2D rasterized image, you have to create new data based on the current image data:

Wikipedia Wrote:Enlarging an image (upsampling or interpolating) is generally common for making smaller imagery fit a bigger screen in fullscreen mode, for example. In “zooming” a bitmap image, it is not possible to discover any more information in the image than already exists, and image quality inevitably suffers. However, there are several methods of increasing the number of pixels that an image contains, which evens out the appearance of the original pixels.

With Nearest Neighbor, you're only looking at one point as input while ignoring surrounding input. However, other scaling methods will look at surrounding data (other pixels) to generate those missing pixels. Have a look at what I wrote a while back detailing the Scale2x filter. Nearest Neighbor still creates data that didn't exist beforehand based on previously known data. It fits the mathematical definition of interpolation; simply because it doesn't generate new colors or mix them doesn't mean anything in this regard.