Higher resolution rendering

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zeroobligation
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by zeroobligation » Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:06 pm

TkSilver wrote:Maybe it's because I am getting older and grew up durring 80-90 but even though I can see the difference between the 2 screens I don't honestly seem to care too much. If it causes no loss of framerate or playability on my galaxy tab S I guess I will use it and if it dose I will turn it off and be just as happy I don't have to carry a DS plus 15+ cartridges when I travel.
@TkSilver did you turn on HD when watching that video? because, dare i say it, the differences is quite drastic.

TkSilver
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by TkSilver » Sat Apr 18, 2015 6:38 pm

I have a nice internet connection so hd is always on. I also said that I could see the difference, but I guess growing up with everything being pixelated and playing pc games before MSAA, HD, heck even lcd, has made me not really care. I tend to prefer a smoother experience as long as I still get all or at least most of the graphical effects.

That tends to be my issue with epsxe I have to use the opengl renderer to get some graphical effects to work but then I end up having to use minor frameskip to smooth out play which annoys me. I would like to get the framebuffer effects and the off screen drawing without the resolution boost, especially since in opengl's case on psx games it looks unnatural to me.

I also don't really use the filters that exo has so kindly provided because it makes things look unnatural.

zeroobligation
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by zeroobligation » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:02 pm

Correct me if I am wrong, but doessn't the native software renderer in ePSXe display all effects perfectly? :?:

Exophase
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by Exophase » Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:34 pm

I don't really like scale filters in emulated games either, outside of filtering/smoothing (depending). Filters like HQ2x for example make games look too much like stained glass art to me. It's especially bad for 3D where it wobbles as the angles of edges change. And even when it works well for 90% of what's on screen, it can still feel like it's totally breaking that last 10% (like for instance, text), which takes the whole thing down for me. But I seem to be in the minority on this one. For what it's worth, Lordus has done all the shaders, although if it were strictly up to me I still would have included them.

Opinions will vary on higher resolution rendering as well, and I'm probably in the less impressed camp despite implementing it. But sometimes it let you see more detail in a way that makes the game more immersive. In DraStic's case, it also makes the camera movement look a lot smoother, because DS doesn't have sub-pixel rendering, so this naturally gives the geometry output one more bit of precision. This is something that you don't get from resolution enhancement in PS1 games, because the extra geometry precision is already lost by the time commands are received by the GPU.

reeve
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by reeve » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:57 pm

The high resolution version looks very nice Exo, can't wait to try it out :D
About the filters, I also dislike the "artificial" look provided by them. I use Quilez because I don't see any drawback in using it (as opposed to simple linear filter). Is it based on this http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/ ... exture.htm ?

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ericbazinga
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by ericbazinga » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:39 pm

zeroobligation wrote:
TkSilver wrote:Maybe it's because I am getting older and grew up durring 80-90 but even though I can see the difference between the 2 screens I don't honestly seem to care too much. If it causes no loss of framerate or playability on my galaxy tab S I guess I will use it and if it dose I will turn it off and be just as happy I don't have to carry a DS plus 15+ cartridges when I travel.
@TkSilver did you turn on HD when watching that video? because, dare i say it, the differences is quite drastic.
What videos? SEND ME THE LINK
Image

You can also find me on Reddit (u/Ericbazinga) and Discord (in the DraStic Discord server). You'll find me in those places almost daily and here almost never.

TkSilver
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by TkSilver » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:47 pm

zeroobligation wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but doessn't the native software renderer in ePSXe display all effects perfectly? :?:
Not in the android version, the native hardware one comes close but still misses some rain effects, depth effects, motion blur effects here and there. Compared to original hardware there are very few missed by the opengl plugin assuming you get the settings right, a handfull or so missed by the hardware accel, and some more missed by the software renderer. Though the software renderer might have left out some by choice for speed of emulation and compatability. I don't think I found any missed by the arm neon gpu implementation but exo would know better about that.
Exophase wrote: Opinions will vary on higher resolution rendering as well, and I'm probably in the less impressed camp despite implementing it. But sometimes it let you see more detail in a way that makes the game more immersive. In DraStic's case, it also makes the camera movement look a lot smoother, because DS doesn't have sub-pixel rendering, so this naturally gives the geometry output one more bit of precision. This is something that you don't get from resolution enhancement in PS1 games, because the extra geometry precision is already lost by the time commands are received by the GPU.
Interesting, you learn something new every day. So the psx has sub pixel rendering but no sub pixel accuracy, hence the magic jumping 3d models? Does the DS cpu just handle swaping information better with it's gpu or is a bonus that drastic gets from it's jit implementation?

Exophase
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by Exophase » Sun Apr 19, 2015 12:29 am

ericbazinga wrote:What videos? SEND ME THE LINK
I posted the link on the last page.
reeve wrote:The high resolution version looks very nice Exo, can't wait to try it out :D
About the filters, I also dislike the "artificial" look provided by them. I use Quilez because I don't see any drawback in using it (as opposed to simple linear filter). Is it based on this http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/ ... exture.htm ?
Yeah it's based on that.
TkSilver wrote:Not in the android version, the native hardware one comes close but still misses some rain effects, depth effects, motion blur effects here and there. Compared to original hardware there are very few missed by the opengl plugin assuming you get the settings right, a handfull or so missed by the hardware accel, and some more missed by the software renderer. Though the software renderer might have left out some by choice for speed of emulation and compatability. I don't think I found any missed by the arm neon gpu implementation but exo would know better about that.
That's unfortunate. It sounds like it's just not a very complete implementation. I don't think you pay a lot of performance to get accurate GPU emulation on PS1, its featureset is pretty simple.

At the time I wrote it, I was determined to get pixel-correct results with the NEON renderer, as compared with several frame dumps captured from a PS1. This was tricky because it meant determining some nuances in the GPU's internal precision and the order in which it rendered things, something which other emulators hadn't yet done. But it was worth the effort to figure out because it made unit testing a lot easier since I could check directly if it matched the originals without giving a subjective assessment.

That's not to say it's perfect though. I'm sure there are some issues in games outside of the ones I tested again.
TkSilver wrote:Interesting, you learn something new every day. So the psx has sub pixel rendering but no sub pixel accuracy, hence the magic jumping 3d models? Does the DS cpu just handle swaping information better with it's gpu or is a bonus that drastic gets from it's jit implementation?
On DS, the game submits the vertexes of a model to the geometry unit, which performs transformation, lighting, clipping, culling, and some other stuff, and then passes the result directly to the GPU. The DS CPU has no way of ever seeing the results of the geometry unit except for how it appears on the screen. So there's more opportunity to deal with the original data.

On PS1 the game uses the GTE (a coprocessor attached to the CPU) to perform transformation and lighting, then the CPU reads back the results from the GTE and uses it to form command lists which it sends to the GPU. To further complicate things, the order vertexes are processed by the GTE is probably not the same as the order they're processed by the GPU, because they have to be sorted (due to lack of depth buffer).

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huckleberrypie
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by huckleberrypie » Sun Apr 19, 2015 1:10 am

If I'm not mistaken the PS1 suffers from jittering due to the lack of higher-precision math, though other plugins enhance it. But what about the way things are textured? Does the console really use affine texturing or is it just a quirk with the GTE/renderer?

Exophase
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Re: Higher resolution rendering

Post by Exophase » Sun Apr 19, 2015 1:55 am

huckleberrypie wrote:If I'm not mistaken the PS1 suffers from jittering due to the lack of higher-precision math, though other plugins enhance it.
It's not really for a lack of precision in the GTE, it's the fact that GPU commands are given in screen coordinates with no fractional part. Emulators don't enhance this.
huckleberrypie wrote:But what about the way things are textured? Does the console really use affine texturing or is it just a quirk with the GTE/renderer?
The GPU really uses affine interpolation.

Perspective correct interpolation would mean calculating a reciprocal and five multiplications every pixel. It's a lot more expensive.

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