NESRGB New Firmware Palette Updates:

[nakedarthur]

The hue setting is actually a slider so I have granular control. For the photos I had it set to very blue and very purple. Normally its in the center and then the sky is slightly purple.

Your top pic with the blue sky is almost exactly how my 13" Trinitron looks with front-loading NES via composite. The ground isn't quite as red and saturation is a little lower, but damn it's close.

[paulb_nl]

So your Trinitron has no hue setting at display settings? For me its below the saturation setting. (with NTSC sources).

[nakedarthur]

So your Trinitron has no hue setting at display settings? For me its below the saturation setting. (with NTSC sources).

Yea, it has 3 knobs - Hue, Brightness and Color. I don't remember what they're set to though, it never really occurred to me at the time I guess. It's up at my in-laws with my frontloader right now for the nieces and nephews to play, so I guess I'll be stealing it back I really want the NES now though to hook up to my main CRT to compare directly with Unsaturated v6 NESRGB on same set..

[Yamato]

So here are some PAL comparison shots I'd like to share with you (see my original posting on the previous page if you like). I took them with my camera. After finding the right camera adjustments the pictures resembled quite well what I saw on the CRT.

The shots show an unmodified PAL NES via composite (left) vs. a RGB modified PAL NES / Natural palette (right). Both systems were connected to a Sony BVM 20F1E.


The bricks in Castlevania stage 2 are purple either way. The Natural palette seems to fit it quite well (not perfect though, but in reality the difference was not as pronounced as in the pictures I took). The reds are pretty washed out via Composite. After reading through this thread I thought the background had to be red, but it seems like PAL gamers always saw it as purple. Is this due to a basic PAL/NTSC difference?


The sky colors in Super Mario Bros. looked identical. It had a light red tint. This seems to be ok then? Seemed identical to the NES Classic Mini color by the way. Although the brown color of the bricks is much more saturated than on the NES Classic Mini.


In Metroid the surface had a more golden/brown tone via composite. The Natural palette is clearly more yellow / "greenish".

[austin532]

I can agree that the pics on the right posted by nakedarthur are very close to what they look like on a CRT.

[nakedarthur]

I hooked up my CRT_Emudriver PC to my consumer CRT and played via Nestopia with FBX's latest Nostalgia palette, and I can confirm it's bangin! Excellent work man. Everything looks spot on that I've tested so far.

I still think for people wanting a classic CRT experience on LCD or RGB Monitor there should be a hue-shifted option. It's crazy, but my consumer CRT with Nostalgia looks just like the altered pics on the right (as I always remembered it... talk about nostalgia ), while my PVM looks like the untouched pics on the left. I guess American consumer sets must have some sort of built-in hue shift. Personally, I'd rather play in the hue-shifted style I remember even if it's not necessarily accurate.

Nostalgia / Nostagia with -8 Hue aka "Huemongous"

[austin532]

I agree, there should be two palettes. Nostalgia, and one for LCD's that matches Nostalgia. So maybe Nostalgia CRT and Nostalgia LCD?

[tjstogy]

I'd really be interested in playing through my RGB monitor with the same colors that show up when using composite. Basically just a cleaned up version of composite. It seems based on these pictures that this clearly isn't the case. I would imagine it would require someone with a reference quality RGB monitor to take pictures of composite and change the values of them in RGB, because there is obviously a color conversion going on when going through composite...

[atheistgod1999]

You know, I actually figured out that it is possible to get the true, objective RGB values from the composite PPU.

If you look at the waveform it's supposed to output for a given color, you can get the exact Lima and chroma values from that, due to knowing that they're constant. Then, knowing that Pb and Pr are constant, you can get the exact values from the chroma. Then, knowing the exact values for Y, Pb, and Pr, you can calculate the exact RGB values.

Understand what I'm saying?

[tjstogy]

I have no idea what you're saying... but you def have my vote if you'd ever like to make a palette lol

You know, I actually figured out that it is possible to get the true, objective RGB values from the composite PPU.

If you look at the waveform it's supposed to output for a given color, you can get the exact Lima and chroma values from that, due to knowing that they're constant. Then, knowing that Pb and Pr are constant, you can get the exact values from the chroma. Then, knowing the exact values for Y, Pb, and Pr, you can calculate the exact RGB values.

Understand what I'm saying?

[tjstogy]

Btw, even if developers were making games in RGB, with say a PVM...I'd assume they were daisy chanining it to another PVM in composite to see what effect changing the colors would have... since it clearly wasn't the same... I'm only speculating, but wouldn't a developer make the game with colors for the intended consumer tv users and not RGB monitors which almost no one owned? I understand consumer tvs are all different and it's tough to say what colors are correct, but a reference quality monitor like a BVM should show some of the best reference worthy composite colors, right? I'd imagine that would/should be a baseline for a palette, and any deviation from that would be based on whatever consumer tv someone is using, but it shouldn't be as drastic as the above pictures.

[NJRoadfan]

Did developers actually have a "reference" to calibrate their test NES hardware and monitor to? In the realm of NTSC video, you need to verify if you signal/levels are correct using a test pattern (bars and tone along with a waveform monitor and vectorscope). After that you need to calibrate the monitor with your "known good" signal. I can say first hand that many capture cards are NOT calibrated out of the box. You will run into color and brightness variation between multiple capture cards with the same source out of the box (before calibration). Its one resaon why there are so many palettes with seemingly trivial differences.

The next issue is color space conversion, every device does it differently (capture cards and LCD monitors should be following Rec.601). The NES simply is NOT a native RGB device, the video output is natively YUV (technically YIQ with NTSC, but few sets properly decoded it). In the end, it might have been wiser to create a "NESYUV" adapter that outputted YPbPr component video as that is closer to the native hardware.

There are other NTSC-only platforms that struggled with the transition to RGB video. The Apple II series of computers is a good example of this. Its native video is strictly NTSC, but Apple had to come out with a way to display it in RGB for the Apple IIgs. The results weren't all that great since NTSC artifacting was exploited quite a bit by software. Emulators are now going the route of decoding raw NTSC video and its quirks instead of approximating it with RGB.

[tjstogy]

I would imagine a company like Nintendo would've had any and every tool known to man... look at Yamatos pictures, all the colors are different.

Did developers actually have a "reference" to calibrate their test NES hardware and monitor to? In the realm of NTSC video, you need to verify if you signal/levels are correct using a test pattern (bars and tone along with a waveform monitor and vectorscope). After that you need to calibrate the monitor with your "known good" signal. I can say first hand that many capture cards are NOT calibrated out of the box. You will run into color and brightness variation between multiple capture cards with the same source out of the box (before calibration). Its one resaon why there are so many palettes with seemingly trivial differences.

The next issue is color space conversion, every device does it differently (capture cards and LCD monitors should be following Rec.601). The NES simply is NOT a native RGB device, the video output is natively YUV (technically YIQ with NTSC, but few sets properly decoded it). In the end, it might have been wiser to create a "NESYUV" adapter that outputted YPbPr component video as that is closer to the native hardware.

There are other NTSC-only platforms that struggled with the transition to RGB video. The Apple II series of computers is a good example of this. Its native video is strictly NTSC, but Apple had to come out with a way to display it in RGB for the Apple IIgs. The results weren't all that great since NTSC artifacting was exploited quite a bit by software. Emulators are now going the route of decoding raw NTSC video and its quirks instead of approximating it with RGB.

[nakedarthur]

Btw, even if developers were making games in RGB, with say a PVM...I'd assume they were daisy chanining it to another PVM in composite to see what effect changing the colors would have... since it clearly wasn't the same... I'm only speculating, but wouldn't a developer make the game with colors for the intended consumer tv users and not RGB monitors which almost no one owned? I understand consumer tvs are all different and it's tough to say what colors are correct, but a reference quality monitor like a BVM should show some of the best reference worthy composite colors, right? I'd imagine that would/should be a baseline for a palette, and any deviation from that would be based on whatever consumer tv someone is using, but it shouldn't be as drastic as the above pictures.

A BVM will most likely show you the images on the left above. Perhaps someone in the forums can confirm, but I highly doubt they're going to have off spec hue and saturation tweaks. The question is what consumer TVs are doing with it.

[tjstogy]

All I know is yamatos pictures show a composite signal with completely different colors than the latest RGB palette on arguably the best reference monitor money can buy. Doesnt matter how many capture cards you put it into, once it's out on the screen it looks different. I now understand why FBX initially darkened the olive color even though his direct capture said otherwise- once it goes into a crt it don't look right. Perhaps capture cards aren't the best way to obtain what a composite signal shows up as on a crt...?

[nakedarthur]

All I know is yamatos pictures show a composite signal with completely different colors than the latest RGB palette on arguably the best reference monitor money can buy. Doesnt matter how many capture cards you put it into, once it's out on the screen it looks different. I now understand why FBX initially darkened the olive color even though his direct capture said otherwise- once it goes into a crt it don't look right. Perhaps capture cards aren't the best way to obtain what a composite signal shows up as on a crt...?

That's the PAL palette, it's been proven to be completely different than NTSC.

[nakedarthur]

Here's a few crappy photos for reference. These were taken with an iPhone on a calibrated 27" Toshiba consumer CRT running NESRGB with Unsaturated v6. You can see they look much closer to the hue shift versions above than the raw composite. It's pretty much identical to my memory. The only wildcard here is that I'm using a Shinybow SB-2840 to convert RGB to Component for the TV. If I have time tomorrow I will test with same setup on my PVM that shows the exact Unsaturated v6 palette through straight RGB.

[atheistgod1999]

In the end, it might have been wiser to create a "NESYUV" adapter that outputted YPbPr component video as that is closer to the native hardware.

Heh, I came up with something that did just that, with the same exact name.

[tjstogy]

Nakedarthur- Could you instead take pictures of the same game in composite on your crt and then also with the RGB mod/palette for comparison? If they don't look the same then my point remains...

[nakedarthur]

Nakedarthur- Could you instead take pictures of the same game in composite on your crt and then also with the RGB mod/palette for comparison? If they don't look the same then my point remains...

I will get my unmodded NES back soon to compare.

[FBX]

I hooked up my CRT_Emudriver PC to my consumer CRT and played via Nestopia with FBX's latest Nostalgia palette, and I can confirm it's bangin! Excellent work man. Everything looks spot on that I've tested so far.

I still think for people wanting a classic CRT experience on LCD or RGB Monitor there should be a hue-shifted option. It's crazy, but my consumer CRT with Nostalgia looks just like the altered pics on the right (as I always remembered it... talk about nostalgia ), while my PVM looks like the untouched pics on the left. I guess American consumer sets must have some sort of built-in hue shift. Personally, I'd rather play in the hue-shifted style I remember even if it's not necessarily accurate.

Nostalgia / Nostagia with -8 Hue aka "Huemongous"

The pictures on the right (except for the SMB sky) look strikingly similar to my older Unsaturated-V6 palette.

[panzeroceania]

capture palette with the exact same brightness level as NESCAP, fine. I'll do it. But I'm telling you now, it's not going to be as fun to play on as a palette tuned for flat panel displays.

I appreciate your frustration, I think a lot of people are just confused on the method and use case for these and that's what is generating a lot of this discussion.

Something that might help with that is to give a more in depth explanation on your site on what your process is and which settings you use, what alterations you make and why. What displays the palette is intended for and which ones it is not intended for.

It sounds like for you and most people on here you are playing on and tuning for an LCD. Maybe in the future there will be profiles for CRT, Plasma, OLED, and Laser.

I think if people understand the goals and the process more, they'll be less afraid of the results.

I think if people understand up front what the goal is (literal capture vs adjusted) and the use case (CRT vs LCD) then they'll be less likely to expect something out of it that it wasn't designed for.

[FBX]

capture palette with the exact same brightness level as NESCAP, fine. I'll do it. But I'm telling you now, it's not going to be as fun to play on as a palette tuned for flat panel displays.

I appreciate your frustration, I think a lot of people are just confused on the method and use case for these and that's what is generating a lot of this discussion.

Something that might help with that is to give a more in depth explanation on your site on what your process is and which settings you use, what alterations you make and why. What displays the palette is intended for and which ones it is not intended for.

It sounds like for you and most people on here you are playing on and tuning for an LCD. Maybe in the future there will be profiles for CRT, Plasma, OLED, and Laser.

I think if people understand the goals and the process more, they'll be less afraid of the results.

I think if people understand up front what the goal is (literal capture vs adjusted) and the use case (CRT vs LCD) then they'll be less likely to expect something out of it that it wasn't designed for.

My frustration at the time was due to people somehow believing that one capture card's interpretation of brightness levels must somehow be more "truthful" to the way it is, when it merely is just another interpretation. I can see the case being made for hues, but I seriously doubt brightness can be proven to be more accurate. Nevertheless, I did end up making that capture with nearly identical brightness levels (see Nostalgia-(FBX) ). It seems like we've moved away from hues and switched to that now, but so be it. One can argue our hues are as close as they can get when you consider the palette on the NES Classic, which only slightly deviates from original hardware on the red and brown swatches. Everything else is close enough on it to direct-capture work that at least we know the hues really are where they should be.

[tjstogy]

Can anyone take pictures of regular ntsc composite NES games vs the latest palettes in RGB through a BVM or pvm? I'd be interested to see if the colors are off like the pal console above and also I can't be the only one that's interested in playing NES with accurate composite colors on a crt....

[austin532]

The majority of people here want an accurate palette and a corrected palette.

[tjstogy]

Accurate in what context? Looking at yamatos pictures above, the colors are very different. FBX are your nostalgia palettes made for the framemeister only? For people who play on crts is there such a thing as a composite color accurate palette?

[nakedarthur]

Accurate in what context? Looking at yamatos pictures above, the colors are very different. FBX are your nostalgia palettes made for the framemeister only? For people who play on crts is there such a thing as a composite color accurate palette?

The PAL palette that he's showing on the BVM is completely different than the NTSC.

[austin532]

Accurate as in direct capture. Meaning the palette matches a stock NES using composite. Also what is the easiest way to flash the RGB board? It would be nice to have those adapters that Ste made.

[FBX]

FBX are your nostalgia palettes made for the framemeister only? For people who play on crts is there such a thing as a composite color accurate palette?

"Nostalgia (FBX)" is meant to be faithful to what comes out of the original NES NTSC front-loader's composite video jack. So it's good for either Framemeister or digital systems like the AVS. Theoretically speaking, it may also work for CRTs, but I don't have the means of testing it without some way of outputting the palette via 240p component and/or composite.

However, I just obtained a very nice consumer-grade CRT monitor with both composite and component video, and I'm actually going to work on an NTSC CRT palette now. I know I swore off doing those, but I think I need to start doing something different as the current hardware palettes are about as fine-tuned as they are likely to get.

So in this case, I'll be mounting the CRT right next to my monitor and doing side-by-side comparisons of each color entry using both a tripod-mounted camera and eyeball (in case I get mixed results from the camera).

[panzeroceania]

FBX, would you like access to an RGB broadcast monitor? It would help with testing your pallette output.