Increasing resolutions paranoia

[qmish]

Let's forget that many guys here has cool CRT setups, i wanted to talk about LCD/LED/whatever and one of their problems.

Increasing resolutions kill our past

What i mean. If you're using computers or smth for a while, you have a ton of things that was created when 640x480 was an average. You have photos, images, whatever that are 300px or less or more.

Me personally glad that i'm on my laptop with 1366x768 instead of 1920x1080 or whatever you have these days. Because, damn, those pics which i love so much aren't as small as on your ultraHD thing, and i can view them at 100% instead of killing my eyes with blurry zooming.

Now, about games. I'm not gonna touch that CRT emulation thing from Cave/Steam thread, because it's not about i'm talking. I'm talking about how we preserve great legacy of game culture that includes having screenshots. Now, take for example, average arcade/console game that you captured or took from emulator. Which is, like 320x224. It perfectly looks at it's 100% size on ur LCD... but if your monitor is real HD or, worse, 4k, then it's small as hell.

Okay you go to your image editor and resize it to 1280x896 or smth. You turn off resampling so there is no smoothing here. WELL WELL. And you have that creepy awful picture with HUGE PIXELS which looks good if you're 3 metres away from TV but absolutely disgusting when you're on ur PC and trying to put it into your article about your game.

While with 3D games it's usually easy "let's have our Quake in 1600x1200" and you have it so sharp, you can't do this with 2D games. You either trying to mess with filters like SuperSai which kinda deforms everything or "enjoying" those huge blocks (which is not freaking how game looks) after upscaling.

That kills me.

And yes i still have my 480x320 iPod to watch 240p videos ><

[Obiwanshinobi]

All that's needed to make nearest-neighbour upscaling easier on the eye are some fake scanlines LOOKING REAL GOOD ON LCD. The attempts I see folks posting on here all seem to try making the picture look OLD which is not what's really needed. Looking NICE is where it's at and good luck finding any consensus on the subject what really does (you can find people using bilinear filtering in 2D games even on these very forums). I'm afraid 768p might be too little for the job (when optimal solution finally arrives).

[neontropics]

I don't really get your point... A 320x240 image on a 1366x768 resolution screen looks the exact same as the image upscaled to 640x480 on a 2732x1536 resolution screen. Screenshots in early 90s game magazines look exactly the same as the image upscaled correctly and viewed on the same size on a computer screen (except for the paper texture and printing dots).

If you want to replicate how the games originally looked when you *played* them then you either connect to a CRT screen or use scanline generators and screen filters.

Also Quake looks strange as hell at any resolution higher than 1366x768 or arguably 800x600 anyway. It's supposed to be a chunky industrial nightmare, on higher resolutions there's just too much discrepancy between the low res textures and the clean high resolution edges.

[qmish]

A 320x240 image on a 1366x768 resolution screen looks the exact same as the image upscaled to 640x480 on a 2732x1536 resolution screen.

For example, you have a photo of your cat that you took in 2004 and it's, for example, 400x300 px. You can watch it on your 800x600 or 1280x960 monitor as it is, while you can't watch it fullscreen for good, it's still large enough to see it at normal size.

Then you transfer it to system with 3840x2160, where it's ultimately small. Now you can a) take a loop glass from your table and pretend you are Sherlock Holmes b) Just zoom it and you get blurry mess c) Resize it "preserving hard eges" and you get porridge of pixels.

Also Quake looks strange as hell

Yes, also Dreamcast games looked better on TV than in higher resolutions on emulators... But that's not the point, i just used it as example "at least, with 3d games we can make it rendered high-res".

[neontropics]

A 320x240 image on a 1366x768 resolution screen looks the exact same as the image upscaled to 640x480 on a 2732x1536 resolution screen.

For example, you have a photo of your cat that you took in 2004 and it's, for example, 400x300 px. You can watch it on your 800x600 or 1280x960 monitor as it is, while you can't watch it fullscreen for good, it's still large enough to see it at normal size.

Then you transfer it to system with 3840x2160, where it's ultimately small. Now you can a) take a loop glass from your table and pretend you are Sherlock Holmes b) Just zoom it and you get blurry mess c) Resize it "preserving hard eges" and you get porridge of pixels.

Also Quake looks strange as hell

Yes, also Dreamcast games looked better on TV than in higher resolutions on emulators... But that's not the point, i just used it as example "at least, with 3d games we can make it rendered high-res".

I disagree, there's no more of a porridge of pixels on the higher resolution screen than on the lower resolution one. The pixels are the exact same physical size if the image is upscaled correctly. The lower resolution screen was probably worse quality and had black edges around the pixels and scanlines and similar, but you can add filters to get that look if you want.

You could try it yourself, change your resolution to 800 x 600 on your computer and view an 800x600 image, then change the resolution to 1600 x 1200 and view an upscaled version of the image that's also 1600 x 1200. They will look the same.

[qmish]

Hm. I'll try.

Does that mean that i'm completely wrong when i think that the only good way to watch low res image/video on LCD is having LCD that's native resolution is close to that? Like me thinking that Salamander collection looks much better on PSP screen (when you choose correct aspect ratio) than if you emulate Salamander in MAME or smth on your desktop?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Whatever emulator you are using, make sure bi-linear filtering is DISABLED (sometimes it's on by default). Then to make it look any good in a resolution such as 768p, you need to put some scanlines on (unfortunately most I've seen looked pretty bad on LCDs, but I'm not really following the progress on that front).

[Xyga]

You'll have a hard time getting decent-looking 'scanlines' @768p if any method of interger scaling is missing in the emulator's settings.

The thing with scanlines~crt imitation is that any method will benefit from higher resolutions, to calculate and draw an even distribution of darkened lines, the more pixel real estate available the better.
Even more so when you start including any form of phosphor and shadow mask/grid emulation, even Full-HD is not enough.

[jepjepjep]

I wish we could get upscaling like this: (view at 1080p tate). I think this is how the framemeister looks so good.



Instead we usually only get these options:
simple bilinear (too blurry)


or

nearest neighbor (uneven pixel scaling and too blocky)

[Xyga]

Which is why I've mentioned the 'sharp bilinear' shader in the other thread, it seems to be a compromise between those methods.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Spoiler

I wish we could get upscaling like this: (view at 1080p tate). I think this is how the framemeister looks so good.



Instead we usually only get these options:
simple bilinear (too blurry)


or

nearest neighbor (uneven pixel scaling and too blocky)

Of the above 3 examples, nearest neighbour looks best to me (still off without scanlines, which I'm afraid won't be easy to do well in 768p).
When all is said and done, upscaling also looks better on a CRT, with or without sanlines emulation (truth be told, 640x480's real scanlines on a CRT work for me even with games as lo-res as GBA).

when you start including any form of phosphor and shadow mask/grid emulation

You can keep those for all I care. All I want is thin, yet defined enough "scanlines" & nearest neighbour looking as good as I remember them on a CRT (that of course won't be easy without some otherwise excessive resolutions).

[jepjepjep]

I'd never heard of this "sharp bilinear" shader before. Sounds like a good development.

The first image I posted was 2X integer scaling then bicubic interpolation to 1080p. If you like a sharper picture, you could do 4x integer scaling then interpolation, but I like the softer image. I think both ways look way better than simple bilinear or nearest neighbor.

Here's the 4X->bicubic interp: Do you like nearest neighbor better than this one Obiwanshinobi?

[neontropics]

Hm. I'll try.

Does that mean that i'm completely wrong when i think that the only good way to watch low res image/video on LCD is having LCD that's native resolution is close to that? Like me thinking that Salamander collection looks much better on PSP screen (when you choose correct aspect ratio) than if you emulate Salamander in MAME or smth on your desktop?

Only reason for that is probably that the PSP has pretty well defined pixels with black borders around them and thus looks pretty "old school". IMO a simple scanline filter makes most old games look really good on new screens, though as stated here you might need at least a 1080p resolution on your screen to really get it to look good.

PSP and old low-res iPod Touch screens do have their charm though, I found my old iPod touch the other week and really liked the look.

[Obiwanshinobi]

To begin with, I don't think those pre-rendered backdrops were much good to begin with (DDP DOJ and Espgaluda PS2 ports on RGB CRT in real 240p looked tackier than ye olde pixel art in your average older console shmup to me, and even CG pre-renders were done better in, say, Pulstar). Then again - opinions are like arses.

Here's the 4X->bicubic interp: Do you like nearest neighbor better than this one Obiwanshinobi?

I very slightly do (looking at both on a 768p LCD myself, so it's pretty blown-up & blocky either way), mostly the backdrop (which I don't think much of anyway as already said).

IMO a simple scanline filter makes most old games look really good on new screens, though as stated here you might need at least a 1080p resolution on your screen to really get it to look good.

Alas, I'd like to keep my 768p as an all-purpose PC LCDisplay because of computer gaming (no need for always-high-end rig to play in native resolution, even 640x480 letterboxed is big enough to still, you know, play games like Darkstone without scaling artifacts and - last but not least - it's reasonably responsive for an LCD, whereas I fear higher resolutions won't exactly make for less lag).

[qmish]

I'm looking at those pics and feeling that i don't understand something.

On my 768p this (smaller)



Looks better than this (larger)



My display is 14" of notebook, and i'm sitting closer to it than my hand's length.

So, first size is smaller than my palm when i put it on screen and second size is bigger than my palm (and can't shown fully because 800 px > 768 px)

Now, what could be my main problem of thinking. I think that if monitor would be 480p, then image would look on it fullscreen as good as it looks "windowed"/in small size on higher resolution display. I'm completely wrong, aren't I?

Please forgive me for talking non-sense, but that's based on my lack of experience (i never played arcade cabinet in my life, only CRT TV/CRT Computer Monitor/LCD TV/LCD Display/LED etc).

When you're sitting so close to display and you play game in "windowed" mode does that means you kinda imitate how it looks if you have it fullscreen BUT sitting 2-3 metres away? Sorry if i m asking "common knowledge", but this hacks my mind. And last time i played on TV from afar was 3 months ago at my brother's so i cant compare now.

But if i sit far away, i can't see hitbox of ship etc. ><

p.s.

And i got your message that UltraHD and more could help with filtering etc., though with old photos and videos (especially those 240-360p from youtube) i still gotta keep alive my ipod touch 2G or something...

[Obiwanshinobi]

On a 480p screen, 3:4 yoko picture will be 360x480. The smaller of your pictures is 240x320, so it will be upscaled, artifacts 'n' all, when displayed as 360x480.
With raster graphics, every up- (or down-)scaling makes for some artifacts that are generally not welcome. It's always a compromise at best. The bigger the screen, the more apparent scaling artifacts are.
You can put fake scanlines on nn-upscaled old photos and films too.

[ZellSF]

Higher resolutions: more room for the scaler to make the image look however you want it to. The image will look BETTER the higher up you go.

If you want to get away from the problems that plague scaling today, you should be advocating for higher resolution displays (not against them!) and better software scaling.

Oh and images look sharper the smaller they are. Nothing to do with resolution. That's why your iPod looks good. A small 1080p phone screen would likely look equally good.