Yoko Mode in 360 Modes

[Menteith]

Hi all,

Have been following the boards for quite a time already.

Anyways, discussions here have really sparken an interest for Cave shooters and I'm considering going the full line: Ordering a Jap Xbox360 + arcade stick and a couple of games.

However, there's one thing I'm not 100% sure about yet, and wasnt able finding an answer here in the boards. Now I understand that the original resolution in most cases is 240x320 (tate). But what about the new XBox 360 modes which are included in some new games? I understand those are upgraded to 480x640, right? My question now is if tateing the TV/monitor is absolutely necessary for an improved image quality in these occasions?

Let's take the XBox 360 mode (480x640) - that is 640p. Now let's assume I have a HD (720p) or Full-HD (1080p) TV: That would theoretically mean that I can play these games in Yoko-Mode without ANY deficiencies in image quality. Am I right in that assumption?

In the end what I'm just wondering is if tateing your TV with these new HD upgrades still provides a real advantage in image quality.

Reasong I'm asking: I have a 60" Plasma - and tateing it is out of the way. Would I lose pixel fidelity when playing in Yoko Mode? (I'm only talking about the "upgraded" Xbox360 modes). Because, if that is the case, its certainly better to get my 24" monitor and just tate that (the picture size overall would me much smaller, but I would prefer this setup, if the other one would lose me image quality).

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Hibachi]

Hey there and welcome to the board.

My TV is a 42" and it's never been used in Tate mode as it's just not practical.

The PCB fans would give you a better clue regarding image loss but as I've not played half the games available in the arcades, Yoko suits me fine although this does fall under ignorance is bliss.

I took the dive for the JP 360 and a stick and haven't looked back.

[antron]

Let's take the XBox 360 mode (480x640) - that is 640p. Now let's assume I have a HD (720p) or Full-HD (1080p) TV: That would theoretically mean that I can play these games in Yoko-Mode without ANY deficiencies in image quality. Am I right in that assumption?

that's probably true. for the 720p case you might notice some pixel averaging if you expand to fill the screen vertically.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I have a 60" Plasma

[moozooh]

However, there's one thing I'm not 100% sure about yet, and wasnt able finding an answer here in the boards. Now I understand that the original resolution in most cases is 240x320 (tate). But what about the new XBox 360 modes which are included in some new games? I understand those are upgraded to 480x640, right? My question now is if tateing the TV/monitor is absolutely necessary for an improved image quality in these occasions?

Let's take the XBox 360 mode (480x640) - that is 640p. Now let's assume I have a HD (720p) or Full-HD (1080p) TV: That would theoretically mean that I can play these games in Yoko-Mode without ANY deficiencies in image quality. Am I right in that assumption?

In the end what I'm just wondering is if tateing your TV with these new HD upgrades still provides a real advantage in image quality.

Not quite. The actual resolution will be smaller than what your TV outputs anyway (and 480x640 is not 640p, it's 480p rotated sideways and stretched across the screen; you don't gain resolution that way, you rather avoid the possible resolution loss that would have been there in yoko mode if the game was designed specifically for 480x640). The point, however, is to reach a scaling ratio with the minimal amount of artifacts (i. e., 2:1 or 3:1). Artifacts manifest themselves in excess blur if the smoothing filter is on, and ugly blockiness if it's off. You should be able to notice the difference if you turn the filter on and try scaling one step at a time: at an integer ratio the blur will disappear and reappear again on the next increment.

I don't know the exact resolution of an "upgraded" game, but, if taking the DDP DFK 1.5 port as an example, I can say for sure that with Xbox set to 480p output, a tate'd VGA monitor gives a perfect scaling at the zoom setting set to 150%. Mushi Futari actually does show you the ratio in "maniac" screen settings so you can set it to 4.0 or 5.0 or something, whatever suits you best.

So the answer to your question is: with upgraded ports and your Xbox set to 720p or 1080p, no, you won't lose any fidelity. Neither will you with 480p ports, but finding a proper ratio for those that doesn't look like complete shit on a huge plasma will likely be a nightmare, though I wish you good luck.

[chempop]

Short answer is that a big screen will do you fine in yoko for playing 360 shmups.
Now if we were talking about something like Gunbird 2 on Dreamcast, well, that would be a different story.

[Menteith]

Thanks for your answers, guys, really helpful.

The spark basically which made me doubt was DoDonPachi (PS1/PSN).

This game is unplayable in Yoko Mode - despite the big screen.
You can literally tell that there is something wrong with the resolution - and I'm not talking about scaling in this case.

It's just the fact that the game is output in 320x240, and when playing in yoko mode you only have 240p vertical resolution which in turn means you cannot output this game in the required 320p vertical resolution which would be required - am I missing something here?

However this problem should be resolved in the newer console generation due to the fact that we are now able to output effective 720p. This vertical resolution would be enough in any case you rotate your display. Also when we put out a game in its higher resolution Xbox360 mode there shouldn't be any scaling effect I imagine, because we would adapt the screen pixelperfect to the TV which should look ok? (of course you woud have borders in this case - even below and on top of the actual gaming screen - but that would be no problem due to the size of the TV.

In the end I'm just trying to avoid this DoDonPachi isse, because as I already said, this is not a playable state, hell no japanes Pro would be able to dodge the bullets in this shit mode.

[moozooh]

PS1 outputs DDP (a 240p tate game) in 240p in both yoko and tate, so when it isn't played in tate you lose precious pixels to and overall fidelity loss and the nightmare that is nearest neighbor downscaling.

Xbox outputs everything in 480p minimum, and no Cave game has a higher resolution originally, neither vertical nor horizontal (Ketsui and DOJ are the highest at 448x224 stretched to 448:336, so 480p covers them both ways). Plus, there are much better scaling filters involved, so you're safe either way.