Wavebeam NES Palette for NESRGB, NT Mini, Emulators, etc

[nakedarthur]

Really dumb question, but where do I download Wavebeam2? Is it the link in the Wavebeam site? Just Co fused because when it downloads it's "Wavebeam" and not "Wavebeam2."
Cheers!

No worries, you got the right one. The Wavebeam site is always the latest version.

[romevi]

Really dumb question, but where do I download Wavebeam2? Is it the link in the Wavebeam site? Just Co fused because when it downloads it's "Wavebeam" and not "Wavebeam2."
Cheers!

No worries, you got the right one. The Wavebeam site is always the latest version.

Ah, okay. Gotcha! Cheers!
Downloaded to make sure I have the latest. This is my favorite palette.

[nakedarthur]

Ah, okay. Gotcha! Cheers!
Downloaded to make sure I have the latest. This is my favorite palette.

Awesome, thanks glad to hear

[nakedarthur]

I updated some of the screenshots from earlier in the thread to the latest version (10/1), and I'm really happy to see how it's progressed. Hopefully we'll get an updated NESRGB firmware set from Tim soon, but in the meantime:

[nakedarthur]

Just a heads up, I'm officially calling the Wavebeam palette finished as of the 10/1 revision. I wanted to give myself some time to check it over to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I feel like it's finally as good as it's getting now. There were a couple setbacks over the year I haven't really gone into, but basically between battling NESRGB video interference problems and a CRT mis-calibration, it wasn't easy getting a true grasp of where the palette was. I finally decided to just cut both out of the equation entirely and stuck with my UltraSharp and math instead for the final balancing and tweaks. I'm excited to see how it looks on my (finally fixed) setup, but at this point I've decided to just let the chips lay where they are. If I start trying to adjust it for a certain display I know I will never be happy. So, if you haven't grabbed the final .pal please grab it now, and beyond that just waiting for the good word from FBX regarding the final NESRGB firmware

[FBX]

If I start trying to adjust it for a certain display I know I will never be happy. So, if you haven't grabbed the final .pal please grab it now, and beyond that just waiting for the good word from FBX regarding the final NESRGB firmware

I hadn't heard back from Tim on those. But I would like to send him the finalized list anyway, because I recently re-grabbed the NES Classic palette using a superior capture card with full RGB lossless results. It's only marginally different than my previous grabs, but my OCD would feel better if I got it swapped in on new firmwares. I'll send them along to Tim and let you know if there's any news.

[nakedarthur]

I hadn't heard back from Tim on those. But I would like to send him the finalized list anyway, because I recently re-grabbed the NES Classic palette using a superior capture card with full RGB lossless results. It's only marginally different than my previous grabs, but my OCD would feel better if I got it swapped in on new firmwares. I'll send them along to Tim and let you know if there's any news.

Awesome thanks, will keep an eye out. Definitely interested in checking out the NES Classic update as well.

[FBX]

Final TDF files sent!

Here are the requested 'bookings':

Set 1: PC-10 >>> Wavebeam >>> Smooth
Set 2: PC-10 >>> Smooth >>> Nes Classic
Set 3: PC-10 >>> Smooth >>> Composite Direct
Set 4: PC-10 >>> Wavebeam >>> Composite Direct
Set 5: PVM Style D93 >>> Smooth >>> Wavebeam
Set 6: PVM Styel D93 >>> Smooth >>> NES Classic
Set 7: Sony CXA >>> Composite Direct >>> Wavebeam
Set 8: Sony CXA >>> Smooth >>> Wavebeam
Set 9: NES Classic >>> Smooth >>> Wavebeam
Set 10: NES Classic >>> Composite Direct >>> Wavebeam

That should cover a little something for everybody. Speaking of which, it would be greatly appreciated if we can get donations sent to Tim for his time on making these. I just send gift payments via Paypal. I'm hoping if there's enough interest in getting these final firmwares knocked out, people will send a few bucks here and there to him.

Cheers!
-FBX

[nakedarthur]

Sounds great, definitely something for everybody in there. Option 10 is sounding pretty good to me right now. Good point on the donations for Tim btw. What's the Paypal address? I didn't see it listed on his page.

[romevi]

This and the Nt mini has rekindled my love for NES games like no other. I've been on a crazy NES-hunt these past couple of weeks; my office desk is filled with games and accessories that are opened up, waiting to be cleaned. I get so excited popping in a game and checking the crispness with the Nt and the beautiful colors with the Wavebeam palette.

[FBX]

Good point on the donations for Tim btw. What's the Paypal address? I didn't see it listed on his page.

I just send as gift to his order paypal addy:

orders@etim.net.au


-FBX

[Taiyaki]

I love this thread.

[FBX]

Tim made the new firmware set!

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/NES ... 1-2017.zip

This includes all ten firmware choices. Speaking of, as you may notice in the set I no longer include the "NTSC Hardware" palette. This is because the "Smooth" palette is quite honestly a superior version of the same intent I was going for, and switching back and forth between the two, I'd rather people use the Smooth version. Going forward, I don't intend to do any more palette work until such time as someone designs a custom composite video adapter for the E1s capture card. Only then will I revisit direct capture palette work.

-FBX

[nakedarthur]

Awesome! Big thanks to Tim and FBX for making the new firmwares happen. I loaded set 10 on mine and everything is looking great.

[Ripthorn]

Nice
Thanks FBX and Tim. Installed set 1 on my AV Famicom and NES Top Loader

[xadox]

Thx again for another great update.
Think I finaly have to flash the new palettes to my nes.
Still using v5

[romevi]

Had to re-download it and thought the colors looked closer to the original Wavebeam, but probably my mind playing tricks. The blue in SMB wasn't as blue, but it may be my TV; looked fine to me before, though.

I'm using the palette in my Nt mini.


Edit:
Never mind. I was looking at the comparison shot on the first page, but the rebalanced shot on page 7 shows exactly what I saw on my screen. Carry on.

Why was the blue toned back? The screenshot on the first page under Wavebeam2 shows a lovely blue in SMB, but it seems it's been made a bit duller.

[nakedarthur]

Had to re-download it and thought the colors looked closer to the original Wavebeam, but probably my mind playing tricks. The blue in SMB wasn't as blue, but it may be my TV; looked fine to me before, though.

I'm using the palette in my Nt mini.


Edit:
Never mind. I was looking at the comparison shot on the first page, but the rebalanced shot on page 7 shows exactly what I saw on my screen. Carry on.

Why was the blue toned back? The screenshot on the first page under Wavebeam2 shows a lovely blue in SMB, but it seems it's been made a bit duller.

There are some colors in the NES' native YIQ colorspace that can't be exactly replicated in RGB, and that blue is one of them. RGB runs 0-255 for each color, so if you need a color at a certain brightness and blue is already maxed out at 255, the only way to get there is to raise the Red or Green channels. There is a constant push and pull when adjusting colors, some games will look better with it one way and worse with another, so I just did my best to find a middle ground.

[Racooll]

Hello, Nakedarthur. Thanks for your great job. Can you give a link to that tool you made for brightnes comparsion ? Just want to do some experiments with other palettes.

[nakedarthur]

Hello, Nakedarthur. Thanks for your great job. Can you give a link to that tool you made for brightnes comparsion ? Just want to do some experiments with other palettes.

I have no problem releasing it, but I'd like to clean some stuff up first since it's pretty rough around the edges. My intention was to eventually develop it into a full-on palette creation/editing tool with a real-time preview, similar to what you get in Nestopia. Anyway, just give me a little time and I'll get it out there.

[romevi]

Had to re-download it and thought the colors looked closer to the original Wavebeam, but probably my mind playing tricks. The blue in SMB wasn't as blue, but it may be my TV; looked fine to me before, though.

I'm using the palette in my Nt mini.


Edit:
Never mind. I was looking at the comparison shot on the first page, but the rebalanced shot on page 7 shows exactly what I saw on my screen. Carry on.

Why was the blue toned back? The screenshot on the first page under Wavebeam2 shows a lovely blue in SMB, but it seems it's been made a bit duller.

There are some colors in the NES' native YIQ colorspace that can't be exactly replicated in RGB, and that blue is one of them. RGB runs 0-255 for each color, so if you need a color at a certain brightness and blue is already maxed out at 255, the only way to get there is to raise the Red or Green channels. There is a constant push and pull when adjusting colors, some games will look better with it one way and worse with another, so I just did my best to find a middle ground.

Ah, that totally makes sense now. Should've known that.
Still my most-used palette, with Firebrand's Smooth in a close second. I'm crazy enough to throw in Grayscale and Sony in there as well!

[nakedarthur]

I finally had time to sit down with the latest NESRGB firmware over the holidays and I'm really happy with how it turned out. No plans for anymore updates to everyone's surprise

I'm still working on the palette creation tool here and there, and getting close to something releasable. There's a few bugs to fix and one feature I'm trying to get working first. I will update again when I have something worth showing off.

[torridgristle]

Been meaning to register so I could share some things in this thread for a while, so please excuse this post being all over the place. I'll split it up by subject with a series of hyphens.

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One of my favorite palettes is pixeltaoNESv2 which is based on a JVC CRT and is very vibrant and similar to Sony's hue shifts / decoding. There's 2 versions, the latest one is underneath the first outdated one. And here's a direct link in case you don't want to read about his methods and equipment.

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Regarding the NES outputting colors outside of sRGB's range, why not try another color space? There are monitors that cover more of Adobe RGB's gamut, though that doesn't change blue's gamut compared to sRGB and I believe that's the one out of range. The iPhone's DCI-P3 has more blue range. You could also record or build palettes in a wider gamut color space not currently popularly covered by monitors to future proof your measurements, like ACES, or storing as raw YIQ values.

--- --- ---

ICC3D (Interactive Color Correction in 3 Dimensions) is a color editor that lets you move around colors in 3D in LAB, sRGB, XYZ, Yxy, LCH, Luv, Linear RGB, CAT02, and whatever cs.reg is. I find it useful for intuitively mapping and editing colors to more smoothly blend or interpolate into each other.

--- --- ---

3D LUT Creator is a commercial piece of software for color manipulation in a wide variety of color spaces and I've found it useful for making 3D LUTs that mimic CRT displays and, more curiously, CRT decoders. I do this with the understanding that the Composite Direct palette from FirebrandX is the unaltered output of an NES and anything varying from this is due to a CRTs decoder and/or phosphors etc. I've also used FBX's NTSC Hardware palette to "map" differences in decoding. Using this I've done things like apply the hue differences in YUV to Composite Direct (FBX) and Smooth (FBX), and also roughly mimic the look of a JVC CRT's saturated colors over an (interpolated) full RGB range for a 3D LUT. I think the palettes I've made are neat but honestly I prefer one or the other, not my hybrids. Someone more creative could likely do some real damage with the software should they acquire it.

[nakedarthur]

There's not really any way to get unaltered output without using a scope. FBX used a capture card to get those values, which decodes the composite signal to RGB with its own process just like every other device you plug it into. Artemio and I started on a project the other year where we attempted to do our own decoding, but it presents a ton of its own challenges. We have the values he collected from a scope, but got stuck on the demodulation bit. It would be nice to have a real YIQ palette to work from (you could theoretically convert to sRGB and other colorspaces, as well as apply different TVs formulas for sweetening) so I will try to get back to it eventually.

[FBX]

Artemio and I started on a project the other year where we attempted to do our own decoding, but it presents a ton of its own challenges. We have the values he collected from a scope, but got stuck on the demodulation bit.

A couple years back Ste tried to use a vectorscope to plot the palette, but we found the swings were so wildly outside of mapping an RGB assignment that it was a goose chase.