NEC XV29 plus with Swiss 1080i option?

[andykara2003]

I'm using Swiss to output 1080i in 60Hz games on an NTSC Gamecube via a VGA modded official D-terminal cable to my NEC XV29 plus CRT monitor.

As far as I know, 1080i should work with that cable as official component cables work with that resolution (GCvideo doesn't apparently)

The monitor only supports up to 1024x768 and obviously I'm surpassing that with 1080i - although I think the frequency of 1080i will actually be less than the 48.363Khz of 1024x768 because it's interlaced.

Anyway, I'm appreciating Swiss' ability to output in higher resolutions as it smooths out the pixellation somewhat.

960i works fine on the monitor but is very flickery, being interlaced. But setting the output to 1080i, the image is perfectly stable, just like a progressive image - would anyone know why that is? I'm happy with the image, but just curious as to what's happening.

And could I be damaging the monitor by feeding it a resolution it wasn't designed for?

[Fudoh]

And could I be damaging the monitor by feeding it a resolution it wasn't designed for?

no, not unless you exceed the horizontal scanning frequency and as you said, 1080i is less taxing than 768p.

960i works fine on the monitor but is very flickery, being interlaced. But setting the output to 1080i, the image is perfectly stable, just like a progressive image - would anyone know why that is? I'm happy with the image, but just curious as to what's happening.

it's because you're exceeding the recommend vertical resolution, so the odd and even lines start to overlap. Depending on the CRT 1080i might look more like 540p.

[andykara2003]

it's because you're exceeding the recommend vertical resolution, so the odd and even lines start to overlap. Depending on the CRT 1080i might look more like 540p.

Perfect thanks Fudoh, yes that seems to be exactly what's happening. Looking a bit closer, the 1080i image isn't quite as stable as 480p. The aliasing is slightly less apparent but as you say, much closer to 540p than 1080i. I like a fully stable image so I won't bother with the higher resolutions.

I just wish there was a way of reducing the aliasing a bit on 480p GC games without losing clarity - would you have any suggestions by chance? The games look just a touch too blocky on my 29" NEC, even at a 6-7ft distance. I have a feeling it's pretty much impossible. You can add a horizontal blur filter in Swiss but even the lowest setting blurs the image too much. That's really meant for anti-flicker for 480i I think.

Swiss has an option to force anisotropic filtering which I find amazing. I've seen it said that this also reduces aliasing but it doesn't seem to - it just smooths mid-map textures as you would expect. It works well on earlier levels of super money ball, but the game judders on the later more detailed levels.

[Extrems]

I've seen it said that this also reduces aliasing but it doesn't seem to - it just smooths mid-map textures as you would expect.

It does reduce aliasing of bilinear filtered textures (no mipmaps).

[fernan1234]

I just wish there was a way of reducing the aliasing a bit on 480p GC games without losing clarity - would you have any suggestions by chance?

Have you given 480i a chance?

[andykara2003]

I've seen it said that this also reduces aliasing but it doesn't seem to - it just smooths mid-map textures as you would expect.

It does reduce aliasing of bilinear filtered textures (no mipmaps).

Ahh yes of course. I find it amazing that you guys managed to do that. The chequered textures of super monkey ball look awful in the distance with it turned off.

I don't suppose you would know of any other ways of reducing aliasing in general, i.e around the edges of 3D models/elements?

Have you given 480i a chance?

You hit the nail on the head. Unless Extrems or anyone else has a way of reducing aliasing in 480p without introducing blur, I think 480i might end up being my preferred way to playing these games, which is odd after years of perfuming 480p.

I just can't reconcile myself with the fact that to me, 480p just looks too pixelated and aliased with this generation. I'm fine with 240p on earlier gens, but to me the Gamecube should look clean and smooth. In some way, the interlacing added something to that look which my nostalgia is attached to.

The PS2's 480i looks beautiful, clean and sharp even on a 25" consumer set. I wish Nintendo had gone this route rather than just trying to blur everything with the GC. On a 21" consumer set, the GC looks pretty nice in 480i but a little blurry. I have a feeling that setting the 'force vertical filter' to one stage below default will clear that up a bit but might introduce too much flicker. I'll try that later tonight.

My BVM sorts the 480i blur out completely as it's such a sharp set. The image looks perfect in 480i, but I always enjoyed GC on a big set back in the day & having 480p clarity on a 29" NEC with none of the distracting interlacing that 480i gives should be and is a luxury. But as I say, something about the pixellated look just doesn't gel with my nostalgia. I might end up getting rid of the NEC and just getting used to the fact that 480i on a small 21" BVM is the only way I can enjoy the GC image..

[Extrems]

Ahh yes of course. I find it amazing that you guys managed to do that. The chequered textures of super monkey ball look awful in the distance with it turned off.

It's just something that the hardware does.

I don't suppose you would know of any other ways of reducing aliasing in general, i.e around the edges of 3D models/elements?

Maybe I should look at a sort of temporal anti-aliasing again. Basically field rendered 960i/1080i without the 960i/1080i.

[fernan1234]

You hit the nail on the head. Unless Extrems or anyone else has a way of reducing aliasing in 480p without introducing blur, I think 480i might end up being my preferred way to playing these games, which is odd after years of perfuming 480p.

I think the whole idea that this generation of game consoles, from the Dreamcast up to the Xbox and Wii, have to be played at 480p when possible comes from the fact that they came out around the time of the rise of flat panels, where interlaced signals into fixed pixel displays with different native resolutions led to all sorts of problems. ED is also a weird, transitional picture standard that doesn't really feel at home anywhere.

I also agree that this generation of consoles (yes, including the Dreamcast!) has its goldilocks sweet spot of sharp picture quality and reduced-aliasing/jagginess via RGB or YPbPr @ 480i. But nowadays this is still a kind of crazy sounding opinion to the majorities that have come to idolize 480p based purely on popular belief (as well as those who simply can't stand combing artifacts, which is a more reasonable factor). And yes, 480i on a BVM (and not a PVM, many of which cause it to look too flickery not due to high TVL as often said, but some other idiosyncratic factor) is the way to get an optimal picture from these systems, though as you said you'll have to accept screen sizes smaller than many consumer TV options.

[fernan1234]

Oh, and besides a BVM CRT, another virtually optimal solution for that generation of game consoles is to feed 480i into a scaler that reproduces the same effect, i.e. an OSSC with bob+100% scanlines, a GBS-C's bob, or a RT5X's CRT simulate mode. But all of these do require extra work to compensate on the display side for the darkening induced by the alternating black lines.

[andykara2003]

Maybe I should look at a sort of temporal anti-aliasing again. Basically field rendered 960i/1080i without the 960i/1080i.

That would be absolutely phenomenal, please do! I think a lot of people would love that - it'd make a huge difference to how these games look on any CRT size. I'm amazed that this would even be a possibility on real hardware.

If I have this right, this would apply to 60fps games, so a lot of top tier games would look so nice & clean in on CRTs in 480p. I guess not every game would work perfectly, but to play games like Timesplitters 2, Metroid prime 1&2, Melee, MKDD, Ikaruga and other greats with antialiasing would be really nice. I'd keep hold of the 29" NEC just for that.

[lalilulelo]

I have this same monitor. I didn't know it was capable of displaying 1080i, I might have to try that some time. One thing I've always wondered about this monitor is what its actual maximum resolution is. In the manual, it says it's compatible with XGA (1024x768) and it displays content at that resolution, but the manual also says (confusingly) that the "Maximum Resolution" is 800x600. So, I'm wonder if, when you display content at 1024x768, is it actually displayed at that resolution, or is it somehow converted to 800x600? Looking at the image, it looks pretty much like what I'd expect a 1024x768 image to look like, but it's hard to tell for sure. One idea I had is that maybe the way it works is that the electron gun scans at the same frequency as 1024x768 @ 60Hz (or whatever the vertical rate is), but there are only enough phosphors for roughly 800x600 - so basically each pixel of the source gets converted to less than a full pixel, like just one or two of the RGB phosphors rather than all 3. So, what do you guys think? What resolution does this monitor actually display?

In response to the original post, I play all GC games at 480p. I don't mind the aliasing - this is exactly what I want. In fact, I often use Swiss to disable flicker filtering on games where it's enabled. If aliasing really bothers you, you could run it in 480p (or some other resolution) with flicker filtering enabled in Swiss (in the options it says "soften" the image or something like that). Personally I don't like the filtering at all, because it makes everything look super blurry.