Optimal resolution for playing 360 shmups through VGA?

[cave hermit]

I received a 17" Dell PC CRT from a friend recently, and I was thinking of using it with my Xbox 360 to play my library of shmups in tate.

Since the monitor supports a fair number of resolutions above 480p, I was wondering if I would get the best picture for tate shmups in 480p, or if I should go higher. For the cave shmups that support native res arcade graphics, correct me if I'm wrong but I would assume that 480p would produce near arcade quality picture since 480p is just line doubled 240p.

I'm also taking into consideration that apparently according to MarkMSX, the 360 port of Saidaioujou has input lag tied to higher resolutions, so I'm assuming 480p would be better for those purposes.

[spmbx]

There are more games like for example outrun online that perform better at lower resolution so for 360 i usually keep the res as low as possible. I don’t think higher res really adds much quality-wise for many 360 games anyway and i appreciate the better framerate and performance of lower res.

[spmbx]

There are more games like for example outrun online that perform better at lower resolution so for 360 i usually keep the res as low as possible. I don’t think higher res really adds much quality-wise for many 360 games anyway and i appreciate the better framerate and performance of lower res.

I thought this was only the case with some PS3 games due to the lack of a full hardware scaler (which the 360 has)?

I don't know the theory, but using the VGA cable outrun does perform better at lower res than at higher. You don't notice it all the time but there are certain points where the game struggles (like the stage with falling stars) where the difference is very apparent.

[Bassa-Bassa]

For the cave shmups that support native res arcade graphics, correct me if I'm wrong but I would assume that 480p would produce near arcade quality picture since 480p is just line doubled 240p.

That would only be the case if you can add fake scanlines somehow (some VGA cables do this these days) or use Futari's scanline filter (I think it's the only game which has this option). Line doubled visuals are nothing like 240p.

[matt]

480p is best if you want to reduce scaling artifacts. It looks very good with a VGA cable and a scanline generator.

[Xer Xian]

They will generally look good, but if they will produce "nearly arcade quality picture" depends on how strict you are.

Some Cave games run at something like 384x224 (eg. Ketsui), and are thus scaled no matter what. For those titles, you will probably need to tinker a bit with the filter and zoom settings - especially if you're adding scanlines, you'd probably have to find the sweet spot at least on the vertical axis.