Sharpscale - Native 960x544 Ouput on PSTV!

[Seraphic]

Came across something that many may find very interesting.
cuevavirus released a plugin yesterday that finally allows for native 960x544p output on hackable PSTV systems without the normal blurry forced upscaling to 1280x720p!

Sharpscale provides the following two features:

720p: outputs the native framebuffer size 960x544 with black borders
1080i: integer scale the framebuffer to 1920x1088 and trim the bottom 8 lines

Integer scaling is therefore possible up to 1440p and 4k.

Video Demo: Direct HDMI capture with native 960x544

Video Demo: 960x544 in 720p integer scaled to 1440p

Forum Post + Download Links

[Fudoh]

that's really good news - thanks for the links!

[Seraphic]

that's really good news - thanks for the links!

It sure is. Will be installing on my PSTV.

Sony really should have had this from the beginning on the PSTV.
Option One: Upscale games to 1280x720p (like it does now and how Sony originally implemented)
Option Two: 960x544p with Black Boarders using 1280x720p output (similar to what the PSP did with 480×272 with Black Boarder using 480p output)

[Gunstar]

Awesome, time to dust off the PSTV!

What does this mean for PSP games running on the PSTV? I forget how they were handled

[Konsolkongen]

Holy shit! :O

[bobrocks95]

Awesome, time to dust off the PSTV!

What does this mean for PSP games running on the PSTV? I forget how they were handled

Bilinear filtered upscale from original resolution. If you have a modded PSTV you should really have the modded ePSP as well though, which allows for an infinitely sharper 2x linear upscale.

[Gunstar]

Awesome, time to dust off the PSTV!

What does this mean for PSP games running on the PSTV? I forget how they were handled

Bilinear filtered upscale from original resolution. If you have a modded PSTV you should really have the modded ePSP as well though, which allows for an infinitely sharper 2x linear upscale.

My PSTV is still stock, I'll look into ePSP when I finally get to modding it. Thanks!

[ZellSF]

I wouldn't integer scale most Vita games, though with some TV zoom settings (and external scalers) you can probably avoid two scaling passes, which should help non-integer scaling quality too.

[shroom2k]

This is absolutely fantastic news! There may now finally be a good way to play PSone on modern displays, as even with OSSC it's pretty inconvenient due to multiple resolutions in different games.

Bilinear filtered upscale from original resolution. If you have a modded PSTV you should really have the modded ePSP as well though, which allows for an infinitely sharper 2x linear upscale.

Hmm, I don't think this was available back when I modded my PSTV last year. Is this a recent thing?

[strygo]

Is there a good resource that covers how to utilize this? I believe my PSTV is on the latest firmware.

[bobrocks95]

Hmm, I don't think this was available back when I modded my PSTV last year. Is this a recent thing?

It's available as part of Adrenaline, which can be updated if you need to. Pretty sure it's been out for a couple of years at this point though.

Is there a good resource that covers how to utilize this? I believe my PSTV is on the latest firmware.

https://vita.hacks.guide/ should be up to date.

[Gara]

Awesome, time to dust off the PSTV!

What does this mean for PSP games running on the PSTV? I forget how they were handled

Bilinear filtered upscale from original resolution. If you have a modded PSTV you should really have the modded ePSP as well though, which allows for an infinitely sharper 2x linear upscale.

I haven't kept up with the PSTV scene. Do you happen to know if the PSTV output with ePSP is now better than ypbpr output from the PSPgo for PSP games? I remember the PSTV output being just awful, but I was probably on stock software. It's kind of a pain running the PSPgo 2x through my OSSC and then zooming with the TV.

[shroom2k]

Hmm, I don't think this was available back when I modded my PSTV last year. Is this a recent thing?

It's available as part of Adrenaline, which can be updated if you need to. Pretty sure it's been out for a couple of years at this point though.

Oh, if this means just regular Adrenaline scalers/filters, then yeah, I've been using those since the beginning. They're still very far from satisfactory. I'll see what happens with this new scaling method though.

[Drunk_Caterpillar]

So maybe I'm using Adrenaline wrong, but any time I tried to adjust the ePSP video output settings when my VitaTV was set to 1080i I was only getting 30FPS. Is there a setting I missed?

[pcb_revival]

The bounty (current $1390) for PSP games running native 960X544 is still open if anyone wants to contribute in some way.

EDIT.
Bountysource link not working.

GitHub.

https://github.com/vita-nuova/bounties/issues/5

[Gunstar]

From the github:

-1080p possible in 30hz. I'll add that in the next version
-Yes I plan to make the trimming configurable (in resonse to 8 pixels being cut from the bottom in 1080i mode and requests for 4 top and 4 bottom pixels to be cut instead)

[Seraphic]

The bounty (current $1390) for PSP games running native 960X544 is still open if anyone wants to contribute in some way.

https://tinyurl.com/uxjwgef

That link does not seem to work.

Isn't native PSP 480×272? 960X544 would be a V/H line double, no?

Have not used my PSTV in long time. Is it currently possible to get 480×272 with black borders with PSP games using 480p output mode on PSTV with Adrenaline or ePSP?

If not, would it work if cuevavirus used a similar method to create a plugin for the VITA's 480p mode to output 480×272 with black borders for use with PSP games?

[shroom2k]

Okay, I've tried this briefly today.

It outputs the native PSP/Vita resolution within a 1280x720 frame. Therefore, there are quite large borders, and the image size is very small. So you need some kind of additional scaler, possibly an external one if you use a PC monitor.

Otherwise the image quality is much improved, Adrenaline scanlines look great now, everything is very sharp and crispy.

Unfortunately, my DualShock4 seems to have quite a lot of input lag. It's different between games, but really noticeable in SOTN, for example.

So this seems like a very good, if not the best, solution to play PSone/PSP games on HDMI displays, if you can tolerate the lag. Otherwise you should probably use native hardware or PSP with OSSC and deal with all the resolution switching : (

[Konsolkongen]

Tried this out too. Works really well and looks great. You can use VitaGrafix Configurator to incease resolution of some titles that aren’t native 960x544, combined with the OC options in the VSH menu if things are running slower as a result.

Doesn’t work for every game, but Persona looks great

[Seraphic]

Tried this out too. Works really well and looks great. You can use VitaGrafix Configurator to incease resolution of some titles that aren’t native 960x544, combined with the OC options in the VSH menu if things are running slower as a result.

Doesn’t work for every game, but Persona looks great

Didn't have a chance to dig out my PSTV yet to try this, but did you use the newest version of Sharpscale cuevavirus posted today?

Sharpscale has been update with new features:

All framebuffer sizes are now supported.

Scaling modes
Original: system default
Integer: integer scaling up to the largest size that fits inside the display resolution
Real: no scaling is performed

Bilinear filtering
On: system default
Off: nearest neighbour

Recommended configuration:
Games: integer bilinear off
HDMI capture: real
Media: original bilinear on

For Adrenaline and PS1 games, disable any built-in scaling via the adrenaline options or quick menu (official) options.

Configuration is provided by a text file at ur0:/data/sharpscale/config.txt containing two numbers separated by a space.

Scaling mode
0 original
1 integer
2 real
Bilinear filtering
0 off
1 on

For example, to use integer mode and turn off bilinear filtering, write "1 0" in the text file.

[Konsolkongen]

I don’t think so. I installed it using autoplugin.

Not sure I understand the difference between Integer and Real from that description.

EDIT: Here are before and after closeups. Both 720p:

Original:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... image0.jpg

Sharpscale (zoomed to fullsize by my LG OLED):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... image1.jpg

[shroom2k]

Not sure I understand the difference between Integer and Real from that description.

No doubling, probably? Exactly the native pixel size.

[Konsolkongen]

Are you talking about PSP games? I haven't tried that as I only own physical games and therefore have no way to play them on the Vita

[shroom2k]

Are you talking about PSP games? I haven't tried that as I only own physical games and therefore have no way to play them on the Vita

Haven't tried the new version of this tool yet, and I'm not very knowledgeable about psp resolution. For PSone, you need to at least double the image to make it have a normal viewable size within 720p or whatever the Vita is now ouputting.

[Konsolkongen]

I’m really only interested in Vita games (although there isn’t much worth playing).

Many PS1 games on the PSP screen cannot be scaled properly. I remember SotN and FF7 looking slightly blurry as they were stretched a bit on the horizontal axis. If this is how they look on the Vita too then I wouldn’t want that on the big screen.

[Seraphic]

Not too sure about PS1 games on Vita as well. My plan is using the PSTV for Vita/PSP games and PS2 for PS1/PS2 games.

[Konsolkongen]

No worries then

I imagine PSP games could look pretty sweet on the Vita TV if no blur is added

[Seraphic]

Not sure I understand the difference between Integer and Real from that description.

I believe this means it will scale the PS1/PSP/Vita game using Integer scaling up to whatever the Vita is set to.
For example if the Vita is set to 720p, PSP games I believe it will be scaled from 480x272p to 960x544 with black borders to fill out the rest of the 1280x720p screen.
And for Vita games, from what I understand, you have to use Vita's 1080i mode to get Integer scale to 1920x1088i (but it crops 8 pixels for even 1920x1080i).
Again, not sure about PS1 games as I have not tried it yet.

[Konsolkongen]

That makes sense. I thought the modes only applied to Vita games

[Lux]

Playing around with this as I just got myself a Playstation TV yesterday. I noticed some tearing when playing PSP games, but as I didn't have a PSTV before I'd like to know if this was an issue before Sharpscale or not. I noticed the My Life in Gaming video mentions it, and it's talked about in the official Sharpscale thread on the CBPS Forums, though.