PVM + Retroarch Resolution Confusion

[MmBuddha]

Hello again SHMUPS,

I came here not long ago asking about a hypothetical Wii + Retroarch to Sony PVM setup I was dreaming about, and due to some good luck and a lot of fiddling around, it has finally materialised.

I have Retroarch setup on my Wii and it's looking wonderful, but I've been somewhat confused about my resolution options. Thanks to the advice I was kindly given on this forum, I understand that when it comes to 240p and the like, the Wii can't output horizontal resolutions low enough to match most console's native resolution, and what people tend to do is double it. In other words for an NTSC SNES game, 512x224 is the best option via Retroarch on the Wii. From what I gather this should be very close or even indistinguishable from the native resolution.

My confusion lies in the fact that, having tried lots of different horizontal resolutions, seemingly no matter the system I'm emulating and its native resolution, 640 always looks best on my PVM. The lower I go from this resolution (keeping vertical at 224 or 240 depending on the system), the blurrier and less distinct the picture seems to become. Beginning with SNES games at 512x224, upping it to 640x224 noticeably increases the crispness and clarity. With CPS-2 arcade games I can output their exact native resolution: 384x224. I had previously thought native resolution on a CRT TV would always be preferable, yet changing the resolution to 640x224 is again an immediate improvement, even more noticeable in this case.

Wondering why this might be, I concluded that I don't really understand what's happening when it comes to doubling or even further raising the horizontal resolution in Retroarch on my PVM. The original system (via emulator) has a native resolution, and the monitor can support many but has its own native resolution. In upping these settings what am I actually doing, and why does it seem to increase the clarity? Are there any consequences to doing so? I've never heard anyone recommend doing this, but the improvments to my eye are hard to deny, so I'd be very grateful to hear your thoughts.

Thanks again for your help,

H.

[Blair]

oh, I understand your confusion.

one of the reasons I purchased my first PVM was to use as a dedicated Wii emulation machine (I've sense gone far past that goal)

in my testing this was what I came up with. (just a quick look at my old notes)

Code: Select all

256x240 - 512x480p for NES, and   (512x240p) (480x224P)

256x224 - 512x448p for SNES, and  (512x224p)

320x224 - 640x448p for Genesis	  (640x224p)

320×224 - 640x448p for NeoGeo     (640x224p)

240x160 - 480x320p for GBA	  (480x224p) (480x448i)

384×224 - 768x448P for CP System I&II (384×224p)

384×224 - 768x448p for CP System III  (384×224p) (496×224p widescreen mode)




256x240 - 512x480p for TG16	  (see note)


TurboGrafx-16 Resolution is variable, but most games ran at 256x240 - 512x480 (512x240p)

(512x232p - street fightr 2 tg16)

I remember I to had keep the resolutions mathematically accurate, (especially with bilinear off) I'm not sure what your settings are so you might need to explain how you have things set up in a little more detail.

do you have bilinear filtering on or off? (is your graphics output set to "nearest" ?) to get the sharpest picture I always made sure bilinear filtering was off and that my output was set to nearest, however resolution mismatches will cause tons of weird graphical glitches when scrolling, so you have to be really mindful of this. and it can get kind of fidilly

[MmBuddha]

Thanks for the reply, it looks like you were then where I am now in terms of trying to work out this Wii resolution business. That's the blessing and the curse of something ultra-configurable like Retroarch I suppose. If it's any help here is how I have things setup:

A PAL Wii via the official RGB cable into a scart-to-BNC adapter into a Sony PVM 20M4E (European model, but as with all PVM supports Pal and NTSC natively). My Wii is set to 480i 60hz (not sure of this makes a difference in Retroarch) and I'm playing pretty much exclusively US NTSC roms using the Libretro cores. I'm using the latest version of Retroarch (1.3.4 I believe). As far as settings are concerned, I have more or less everything off (bilinear filtering, VSinc, Integer scaling, soft-filter) as I assumed these were all undesirable when aiming to approximate the original console output on a CRT. I can't see anything in the settings mentioning 'output - nearest'. If I have anything setup incorrectly I'd value some guidance.

The resolutions you wrote down in your notes (native vertical resolution, horizontal resolution native or doubled where needed) are more or less where I began, and I assumed they would always be the best option. I'm confused to discover this doesn't seem to be the case on my PVM. Take for example emulating CPS-2 arcade games. This is an example where the exact native resolution (384x224) is possible from the Wii. I was surprised to find it looking terrible, incredibly blurry and indistinct in comparison to other 8/16-bit console ROMs. In fact it's so comparatively blurry that switching on the bilinear filter hardly makes it worse. If I change the resolution to 640x224 on the other hand, the bluriness clears up and it looks as I imagine it should: crisp and clear, and 'RGBish'.

What concerns me is the fact that this isn't a resolution (or even a clean ratio) that the games were intended to be played at. This goes for NES/SNES games too, which also seem to look noticably better at 640. I'm worried about graphical glitches, incorrect aspect ratios etc, but the improvements in image quality are undeniable so any advice about what's happening from anyone who can help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again.

EDIT: just to add, the only scrolling glitch I've encountered so far is a tearing/jumping effect while moving vertically. This only seems to happen when the vertical resolution is set to 240, and it seems to occur irrespective of whether that's the native resolution of the system (NES for instance).

[kardus]

A bit off topic but are you using any particular build of retroarch for Wii? I heard some of the older builds give better results. I recently tried retroarch with the latest builds on my PVM and I was pretty disappointed with the emulation. I tried a few systems including the Genesis/MD and definitely noticed slowdowns that shouldn't have been there.

I'm currently looking into a separate emulation PC running an Radeon card with crt_emudriver so I can actually output in the native reses and have better emulation and a larger variety of consoles compared to using just the Wii.

[MmBuddha]

A bit off topic but are you using any particular build of retroarch for Wii? I heard some of the older builds give better results. I recently tried retroarch with the latest builds on my PVM and I was pretty disappointed with the emulation. I tried a few systems including the Genesis/MD and definitely noticed slowdowns that shouldn't have been there.

I'm currently looking into a separate emulation PC running an Radeon card with crt_emudriver so I can actually output in the native reses and have better emulation and a larger variety of consoles compared to using just the Wii.

I'm running the latest build (1.3.4) on my Wii and have been happy with the speed so far. I've noticed some slowdown on Neo Geo games like Metal Slug but I think that was present on the original hardware. By the way, if my ROMs on Retroarch are running slower, would you expect that to be reflected in the frame count (using the optional FPS overlay they always remain around 60) or is it possible for an emulator to run slow and not show up as a lower framerate?

[kardus]

I'm running the latest build (1.3.4) on my Wii and have been happy with the speed so far. I've noticed some slowdown on Neo Geo games like Metal Slug but I think that was present on the original hardware. By the way, if my ROMs on Retroarch are running slower, would you expect that to be reflected in the frame count (using the optional FPS overlay they always remain around 60) or is it possible for an emulator to run slow and not show up as a lower framerate?

It should, although I did put the frames overlay on and I didn't notice any dips. It was a couple weeks ago so I don't remember for sure, I could be mistaken. I might test it again later, since it would be nice to have the Wii as a backup emulation machine.

I tried playing Sonic 2 since I had assumed the Wii should be able to emulate this no problem. The game does have slowdowns on original hardware at specific points but I know this game extremely well- I was experiencing slowdowns in places it should not be slowing down so I had just assumed it was some hiccups with the emulation.

[Blair]

I have not encountered any strange slowdowns when I play sonic the hedgehog 2 with RA wii, only if I enable certain processor intensive features of the emulation core (make sure those are turned off, go to the core options and especially make sure blargs NTSC filters aren't on, as the Wii just isn't really powerful of to run those with a reliable frame rate)

[Gunstar]

I've experienced slowdown with Sonic 1 through retroarch Wii, I haven't played around with it too much so don't know if it's a setting that should be on/off or what. Yoshi's Island on the other hand plays smoothly.