OSSC Pro

[LDigital]

So I have been playing with my pro a few days now and it is magnificent. I sold my 5x to fund this and it was definitely the right decision.

120hz bfi is great and being able to scanline Nintendo Switch games that have no scanline options or terrible crt filters is one of the key draws. I have been playing some Espgaluda and gunvein with scanlines and it really cleans up the graphics. Pixel art games like the messenger and Axiom verge are also looking incredible now.

I really need the crt extension unit as I could not get it to work on my crt using a variety of dac but I think there must be something I was missing with this. I am keen to test the downscaling for my crt’s although I’m now considering if this is the device that finally helps me let them go. It certainly feels like it.

Just a few QOL feedback

1. Can the standby red light be made optionally dimmer please? It’s incredibly bright and distracting when powered off so I am removing the power jack

Edit: this function is in there in settings as LED PWM

2. Is there a way to stop resolution switches from being reported at the top left of the screen. I’m seeing it happen quite a lot on switch when entering and leaving the dashboard to games and it’s distracting.

Edit: This setting is there as OSD Status Display time

3. Can you make it so that different functions can be hopped to by pressing the function rather than having to return out of the option before selecting a new one

For example for setting scanlines I’m pressing SL.Mode > OK > Return > SL type > OK > return etc.
It would be nicer if hitting the function button takes you to the function no matter where in the menu you are.

4. Please can you investigate auto detect and switching inputs.

5. Scanline profiles that can be attached to certain resolution. For example: 480p input apply default horizontal scanlines. 240p input apply custom scanlines

6. Are there plans for alternative colour cases? I would much prefer black to be honest.

[SGGG2]

Re:Josh128

This is a bizarre take. All these titles all look like they’ve been smeared with Vaseline. The XboxHD+ HDMI cleans up the image on the original Xbox significantly by forcing 1:1 output. Scaling options for 1:1 sources would be integer with black bars, overscan/cutoff, sharp bilinear (nearest neighbor into bilinear), or standard scaling algorithms. Any of these would be an improvement over 560p scaled into 720 or 1080p.

Does anyone know if 1080p output on either system uses two step scaling? i.e, 560p into 720p into 1080p?

[Josh128]

Re:Josh128

This is a bizarre take. All these titles all look like they’ve been smeared with Vaseline. The XboxHD+ HDMI cleans up the image on the original Xbox significantly by forcing 1:1 output. Scaling options for 1:1 sources would be integer with black bars, overscan/cutoff, sharp bilinear (nearest neighbor into bilinear), or standard scaling algorithms. Any of these would be an improvement over 560p scaled into 720 or 1080p.

Does anyone know if 1080p output on either system uses two step scaling? i.e, 560p into 720p into 1080p?

I did conclude that it could be of value if you are willing to deal with some over/under scan. The severity of the blur problem probably depends on the display you are using. The entirety of my X360 experience was on a 768p plasma, and 720p out from the Xbox via component was beautiful and razor sharp on that panel. If your experience was on a 1080p panel or higher, I could see where you might have issues there-- I hadnt considered that. I actually thought that 480p to that same set looked great while the same image to its 1080p brother in the same size panel was not to my liking.

My experience:
https://i.imgur.com/zBvnpdk.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/nbWYr1X.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/0BiFFUw.jpg

[SGGG2]

1080p is the default for these systems, 720p (or whatever) sets were on their way out when these consoles were released. The plasma grid (and native-ish res) are masking scaling issues. In any event, 1:1 output should be the default setting. I’m fairly certain the 360 does two step scaling, 560 scaled to 720 on the game level, and 720 to 1080 on the system level if 1080p output is enabled.

[orange808]

Developers on the Xbox 360 were never limited to 560p by the hardware API or the SDK. That's nonsense.

[SGGG2]

It would be, if I had actually said that. Developers used sub 720p resolutions for performance reasons.

[bobrocks95]

As Sharpscale on PSTV has already proven to people, you'll get much better results by having a modern scaler integer scale it as close as it can to 4K, and then sharp bilinear/whatever else to get rid of the letterboxing. People figured it out quickly for Vita, not sure why it's never been done for PS3 or 360.

[tongshadow]

1080p is the default for these systems, 720p (or whatever) sets were on their way out when these consoles were released. The plasma grid (and native-ish res) are masking scaling issues. In any event, 1:1 output should be the default setting. I’m fairly certain the 360 does two step scaling, 560 scaled to 720 on the game level, and 720 to 1080 on the system level if 1080p output is enabled.

No such thing as a "720p TV set", most were 768p with varying horizontal resolutions. There were exceptions, but these TVs are incredibly rare.
What can I say is that the Xbox 360 has superior scaling options compared to the PS3. Unlike the PS3, it offers a multitude of 768p resolutions, and even PC resolutions. Depending on the game it will even output a sharp 1280x720 picture inside a 768p container (black bars), such as Burnout Revenge. This is as good as it can possibly get, outside of getting those unobtanium 1024x720 TVs.
And even better, some Arcade games were actually 1280x768, so you can get 1:1 scaling on 768p displays, but pillar boxes will be visible. Here are some of examples of 1280x768 games on a 1024x768 (Widescreen) Plasma:
https://i.imgur.com/QCam4RB.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/smKcXE8.jpeg

For the most part, the XBox 360 and PS3 should be treated as 720p systems, and playing on higher resolution displays will often result in a sub-par, softer picture.

[SGGG2]

Yes, hence the “whatever”. 720ish sets are clearly the ideal here, but in practice the 360 and PS3 were somewhat mismatched with display technology of the time.

Depending on the game it will even output a sharp 1280x720 picture inside a 768p container (black bars), such as Burnout Revenge. This is as good as it can possibly get

Not if the game is rendered at 560p and scaled to 720p. Obviously, games that don’t have this problem, don’t have this problem…

Do I need to remind people this is a scaling thread?

[tongshadow]

Yes, hence the “whatever”. 720ish sets are clearly the ideal here, but in practice the 360 and PS3 were somewhat mismatched with display technology of the time.

Depending on the game it will even output a sharp 1280x720 picture inside a 768p container (black bars), such as Burnout Revenge. This is as good as it can possibly get

Not if the game is rendered at 560p and scaled to 720p. Obviously, games that don’t have this problem, don’t have this problem…

Do I need to remind people this is a scaling thread?

Then, the best choice for those ugly 540p games is to output 480p because you'll get the benefit of supersampling a higher resolution source.

[SGGG2]

Not So High Definiton

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundr ... on-article

So what's the score with sub-HD gaming on Xbox 360? Why can't we have full 720p and 4xMSAA, as seen on very clean-looking games like DiRT 2 or Fight Night Round 4? The answer, ironically, is all down to one of the architecture's greatest strengths. The Xenos GPU is able to achieve massive throughput due to the fact that 10 megabytes of so-called eDRAM is attached directly to the graphics core. An effectively infinite level of bandwidth is available to cope with "expensive" effects such as transparent (alpha) textures and of course anti-aliasing. It's one of the key reasons why Xbox 360 cross-format titles often have a graphical edge over the PS3 versions.

Unfortunately, that 10MB limit is the 360's Achilles heel. It's enough to contain a 720p image, but with no anti-aliasing. To incorporate 2x anti-aliasing simultaneously, resolution needs to drop to the 1024x600 or thereabouts seen in titles like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Project Gotham Racing 3 or Oblivion. If you want to go higher, a process called tiling kicks in, where the framebuffer is split into chunks and swapped out into normal memory, impacting performance. Geometry that spans tiles has to processed twice, or even three times. Some developer estimates put the cost of using two tiles (enough for 720p, 2xMSAA) at around 1.4 times the level of keeping everything in the eDRAM. Three tiles, as used for a 720p, 4xMSAA image, or a non-AA 1080p framebuffer, up that requirement to 1.6 times the overhead.

I’d prefer disabling AA over sub 720p resolution.

[orange808]

Rendering decisions varied. Multiple titles used 600p. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

And, I'm not specifically knowledgeable about how the 360 GPU handled upscaling, but I strongly believe that would have been done in a single pass. So, if you're running 600p (like Call of Duty did), the GPU scaled that to your chosen output signal--and that was almost certainly accomplished in a single pass. There was no superfluous 720p middle step involved that I know of. I'd need to see a link from a proven expert to believe otherwise.

[SGGG2]

I’m with you. IIRC, Dark from Digital Foundry says so in one of their videos. I could’ve misinterpreted what he said.

EDIT: List of Rendering Resolutions (360 and PS3)

Xbox 360: In upscaling to 1080p, some games may first scale to 720p in software before the GPU scales to a 1080p output. e.g. RR6, SCIV, VF5, CoD4, H3, TR:L...

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/list ... st-1114421

[orange808]

I’m with you. IIRC, Dark from Digital Foundry says so in one of their videos. I could’ve misinterpreted what he said.

EDIT: List of Rendering Resolutions (360 and PS3)

Xbox 360: In upscaling to 1080p, some games may first scale to 720p in software before the GPU scales to a 1080p output. e.g. RR6, SCIV, VF5, CoD4, H3, TR:L...

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/list ... st-1114421

It's certainly not impossible in user land. Some devs could have targeted 720p directly, if they were dissatisfied with the hardware processing. Those devs would have purposely wandered out into the wilderness, though. That's off the map.

As far as the hardware is concerned, you're rendering at 720p in that situation.

[Guspaz]

The 360 did the scaling in hardware, so the game could just throw whatever framebuffer resolution it wanted at the hardware and it was taken care of. The PS3 could only do very limited scaling (only horizontal, IIRC) in hardware, so doing anything else required a software scaling step. Now, I say software, it could still be done on the GPU, but I mean that the software was the thing setting up the scale, and it required a bunch more framebuffer memory be allocated. The PS3 only had 256 MB of VRAM, so even one or two extra framebuffers is a not insignificant chunk of the total available VRAM. Adding two 1080p 8bpc framebuffers, that's ~5% of your entire VRAM right there. Not to mention the portion of the frametime you now have to dedicate to the scaling step.

[tongshadow]

Not So High Definiton

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundr ... on-article

So what's the score with sub-HD gaming on Xbox 360? Why can't we have full 720p and 4xMSAA, as seen on very clean-looking games like DiRT 2 or Fight Night Round 4? The answer, ironically, is all down to one of the architecture's greatest strengths. The Xenos GPU is able to achieve massive throughput due to the fact that 10 megabytes of so-called eDRAM is attached directly to the graphics core. An effectively infinite level of bandwidth is available to cope with "expensive" effects such as transparent (alpha) textures and of course anti-aliasing. It's one of the key reasons why Xbox 360 cross-format titles often have a graphical edge over the PS3 versions.

Unfortunately, that 10MB limit is the 360's Achilles heel. It's enough to contain a 720p image, but with no anti-aliasing. To incorporate 2x anti-aliasing simultaneously, resolution needs to drop to the 1024x600 or thereabouts seen in titles like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Project Gotham Racing 3 or Oblivion. If you want to go higher, a process called tiling kicks in, where the framebuffer is split into chunks and swapped out into normal memory, impacting performance. Geometry that spans tiles has to processed twice, or even three times. Some developer estimates put the cost of using two tiles (enough for 720p, 2xMSAA) at around 1.4 times the level of keeping everything in the eDRAM. Three tiles, as used for a 720p, 4xMSAA image, or a non-AA 1080p framebuffer, up that requirement to 1.6 times the overhead.

I’d prefer disabling AA over sub 720p resolution.

Consoles suck, specially towards the end of the generation. Look at all the 4k reconstruction techniques being used:
https://youtu.be/_Oyjldkh5kE?t=1289

In fact, running the PS5 at 720p would give you a more stable experience than garbage 4k reconstruction.

[Konsolkongen]

Consoles suck, specially towards the end of the generation. Look at all the 4k reconstruction techniques being used:
https://youtu.be/_Oyjldkh5kE?t=1289

In fact, running the PS5 at 720p would give you a more stable experience than garbage 4k reconstruction.

How many PC games are free of reconstruction techniques these days? DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS are very common in titles. Sure DLSS often produces a superior image than FSR2, but besides games like Immortals of Avium most games tend to hold up pretty well on consoles*, especially considering their pricepoint relative to a PC capable of doing better.

* By that I mean PS5 and Xbox Series X. The Series S often looks like crap.

I would argue that PC gaming is in a terrible state and has been for a long time now. A huge number of Unreal Engine-titles have very bad shader compilation stutters making them unplayable, for me at least. This is not an issue on console. I doesn't look like this is going away any time soon, but we can hope that UE5 can improve on that. Especially when Unreal will be even more dominant going forward than it currently is, as I can't imagine many games devs will choose Unity anymore :/

[ZellSF]

In fact, running the PS5 at 720p would give you a more stable experience than garbage 4k reconstruction.

Then, the best choice for those ugly 540p games is to output 480p because you'll get the benefit of supersampling a higher resolution source.

Have you actually tried this?

Two scaling passes and no scaling reconstruction method I've heard of looks as bad as a notable drop in resolution.

Not saying you can't prefer this, it's not much crazier than people stretching 4:3 games to 16:9, but it is weird.

[tongshadow]

It can look as bad if the TV scales 720p to 4k poorly (99% of them), but on an HD panel it would probably look better than both alternatives.

How many PC games are free of reconstruction techniques these days? DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS are very common in titles. Sure DLSS often produces a superior image than FSR2, but besides games like Immortals of Avium most games tend to hold up pretty well on consoles*, especially considering their pricepoint relative to a PC capable of doing better.

* By that I mean PS5 and Xbox Series X. The Series S often looks like crap.

I would argue that PC gaming is in a terrible state and has been for a long time now. A huge number of Unreal Engine-titles have very bad shader compilation stutters making them unplayable, for me at least. This is not an issue on console. I doesn't look like this is going away any time soon, but we can hope that UE5 can improve on that. Especially when Unreal will be even more dominant going forward than it currently is, as I can't imagine many games devs will choose Unity anymore :/

PC gaming doesnt have the same compromises as consoles, you can have your cake and eat it too. And if newer games on PC appear to only run decently with reconstruction, it's due to devs being too lazy to optimize.

[SGGG2]

Have you actually tried this?

Two scaling passes and no scaling reconstruction method I've heard of looks as bad as a notable drop in resolution.

It would be interesting to try, although my first thoughts are there isn’t enough resolution for a decent implementation, and I’m concerned font rendering. I often prefer the look of 480p/1080i PS2 games forced into anamorphic 16:9 over native 4:3. It has a more pixelated retro aesthetic. The detail loss isn’t always worth it, though

Personally, I’m not too concerned with the 360. The vast majority of games I’m Interested in are either 2D, have low power demands, or superior PC versions. I’d love to see AA disabled in the Original Xbox Emulator, I can’t stand it.

For anyone who doubts 1:1 output is a worthy endeavor:

https://twitter.com/WobblingP/status/16 ... 1208301568

[ZellSF]

It can look as bad if the TV scales 720p to 4k poorly (99% of them), but on an HD panel it would probably look better than both alternatives.

Which of the two scenarios are you talking about here? And again; have you actually tried it?

I've tried lots of scenarios and in none of them have taken a higher resolution image, outputting it in a lower resolution container and upscaling it again made any sense*.

* Unless the game is integer scaled to begin with and it is done to recover the original resolution, but we're talking about 360 and PS3 games here.

[SGGG2]

I’ve done something similar on my capture set up with the Original Xbox. The goal was to try and negate the software rescale to get a sharper, more defined image with 3D games.

Chain is 480p > Extron DSC 301 - 1080p > capture card > Scaled to 4k via capture software (trying multiple algorithms) > Downscaled to 480p with ReShade. Unfortunately, it made little difference. 240p downscaling however, was very sharp and well defined, other than UI elements. The best way I’ve found to get a sharp image is an OSSC set to 2x480p, but even that made no difference with 480p downscaling.

[Konsolkongen]

It can look as bad if the TV scales 720p to 4k poorly (99% of them), but on an HD panel it would probably look better than both alternatives.

How many PC games are free of reconstruction techniques these days? DLSS, FSR2 and XeSS are very common in titles. Sure DLSS often produces a superior image than FSR2, but besides games like Immortals of Avium most games tend to hold up pretty well on consoles*, especially considering their pricepoint relative to a PC capable of doing better.

* By that I mean PS5 and Xbox Series X. The Series S often looks like crap.

I would argue that PC gaming is in a terrible state and has been for a long time now. A huge number of Unreal Engine-titles have very bad shader compilation stutters making them unplayable, for me at least. This is not an issue on console. I doesn't look like this is going away any time soon, but we can hope that UE5 can improve on that. Especially when Unreal will be even more dominant going forward than it currently is, as I can't imagine many games devs will choose Unity anymore :/

PC gaming doesnt have the same compromises as consoles, you can have your cake and eat it too. And if newer games on PC appear to only run decently with reconstruction, it's due to devs being too lazy to optimize.

You don’t really address my main criticism of PC gaming. You will never get a locked 60 in some of these titles regardless of how much money you throw at your system.
Used to be that you could just power through and get much better experiences on PC than consoles. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. Some PC games are just broken.

You may not notice or care about poor performance in games, and more power to you if you don’t. If you only care about image quality then you are right. But gameplay wise it’s not as cut and dried as you claim.

[bobrocks95]

Yeah it's been a very bad year for PC ports. Stuttering in most every UE4 title I believe. Shader compilation on Last of Us taking 30-60 minutes then still running terribly. Elden Ring ran better on PS5 or Steam Deck than some beefy rigs.

[orange808]

There are some bad ports, for sure.

But, it's common to hear complaints that don't make a lot of sense. It would be interesting to actually inspect people's real rigs and settings. A lot of people on Steam feel entitled to push all the sliders to Ultra, output 4k, turn on ray tracing, max out the image quality setting in the control panel, and turn on Ultra Low Latency (which enforces a non-negotiable double buffer).

And, they wonder why it's not running smoothly.

[Konsolkongen]

That is not the issue here. Digital Foundry has made a lot of videos explaining it.

[marqs]

I ended up connecting my ps3 with component to get around this, however I had some issues. 1080i gave a rolling image and 1080p gave a stable image but it was shrunk and off center. It looked weird. The best I could get was 720p so not great. I’ll have another play tomorrow to see if I can hdmi it again

I tested PAL PS3 Slim with component yesterday and 1080i and 1080p worked without issue. I can test NTSC Fat model later, but it'd be strange if analog output would have significant differences between models.

Regarding upcoming output presets, the table below shows a proposal based on initial feedback and requests:

Output presets
DFP	DFP-HDready	CRT
1280x720	720x480	240p
1280x1024	720x480 WS	240p WS
1920x1080	720x576	288p
1600x1200	720x576 WS	288p WS
1920x1200	1024x768 WS	480i
1920x1440	1280x768	480i WS
2048x1536	1360x768	576i
2560x1440	1366x768	576i WS
2880x2160		480p
		540p
		800x600
		1024x768
		1920x1080i

[orange808]

That is not the issue here. Digital Foundry has made a lot of videos explaining it.

Yes, Digital Foundry is talking about valid issues and they aren't some angry kid with a cheap card. But, that scenario is the true most common issue on Steam and I see nonsense complaints about games that don't have real issues all the time.

As for Epic and Unreal, they are to blame. Hardware fragmentation isn't a new thing in PC gaming. Their middleware is a shameless undercooked cash grab right now. A game engine that can't stream assets to PC machines without cheating isn't much good to anyone. This problem reached a boiling point over a year ago, so it's frustrating that the market leaders aren't rolling any solutions. Maybe they're too busy suing app stores and trying to score points on Twitter to care about actual video games.

[tongshadow]

Thanks for the Plasma presets, marqs. Now I can confidently say the OSSC Pro will be a worthy upgrade on my setup!

Which of the two scenarios are you talking about here? And again; have you actually tried it?

Guess I wasnt clear enough, sorry about that. I mean outputting 720p from the PS5 into an HD display, instead of using 4k and letting it horribly reconstruct the picture.

You don’t really address my main criticism of PC gaming. You will never get a locked 60 in some of these titles regardless of how much money you throw at your system.

Come on now, that's simply not true if you invest into mid/high-tier hardware. The only time I ever felt I was getting an inferior experience on PC was with my first rig, a Pentium 4 with a lowly NVIDIA FX5200. But as soon as I upgraded to a Core2Duo/8800GTS 320mb, I was never envious of console gaming.

And it has been this way ever since... Right now, my i5 12400F/RTX 3080 runs everything I throw at it with ease, and paired with an LG C2 at that.
Also, 60fps in reality is a very low bar for PC gaming, considering 120fps and beyond is starting to become the norm.

[dead_screem]

Regarding upcoming output presets, the table below shows a proposal based on initial feedback and requests:

still no 704x480i and 704x480p?

Also I'm getting ALOT of buzzing in the audio even with the volume at a reasonable level. With the original OSSC I get none at all over the SCART connector, even if I turn the volume up all the way. (only a little noise from the famicom over TRS input, which I think is from the famicom itself)