Why are some PS1 games rendered in such a wide resolution?
Because they're made for analog displays that would squish the aspect ratio down but still maintain the resolution.
>>3025965
Because more horizontal detail.
It's supposed to be corrected to 4:3 by the tube monitor.
why not?
>>3025965
save framebuffer space?
>>3026037
If anything it's doing the opposite, otherwise they would render in 320x240 like they did with the original Tomb Raider, while saving additional GPU cycles.
512x480x15 on a 1024x512x15 VRAM is a huge amount of space.
>>3025965
To increase the resolution. Non-square pixels were a pretty normal thing back in the days.
Doesn't this yield diminishing returns? Even if you rendered thousands of pixels wide, it would still look like shit in the vertical direction.
>>3025965
it gives them a more sharp high definition look when outputted in the end.
>>3029204
No it looks better than 320x240.
The best resolution you actually get with
480i/448i games be it 512 or 640 wide. It may has less fps, but the interlacing adds alot of detail when viewed on a crt. 640x240 progressive games are also very good looking.
>>3029204
of course it does. Just the same way as proportionally increasing the resolution does. There is no conceptual difference between increasing only one dimension, or increasing both proportionally. The only thing that sets them apart is that one relies on pixels being square
>>3029242
A shame that the data is not interlaced, or the signal
>>3029242
Not, that picture is actually a progressive 640x240 game.
>>3029241
I was trying to specifically mention that one would be different with the same amount of pixels. Which of the following do you think would provide a sharper and less aliased image? 5760x240 or 1024x768?
>>3029272
What's on the image? Text vastly benefits from increased horizontal resolution, and so does anything with mostly but not perfectly vertical objects (like the center line of a road, in a racing game)
>>3029290
General 3D I guess.
>>3025965
>>3029219
>>3029241
>>3029272
>>3029290
I hope this answers all questions or doubts why increased horizontal or vertical resolution is superior to 320x240. (Silent Hill has a menu screen that is 320x480)
>>3029303
>why increased horizontal or vertical resolution is superior to 320x240
no one asked that. The question was merely why to increase only one, instead of both, and what about diminishing returns when increasing resolution further
>>3029312
>why to increase only one, instead of both
because memory is limited and that is the best you get without lowering one's sight. It's a compromise between complexity/composition and quality/resolution. You can put a lot of stuff on the screen and make a 320x240p game or make a very minimal game in 640x480p. Or make a compromise between these two. Depending on the composition of the game there was more room or less room for resolution. RPGs like FF could easily do higher res, but there was no money for prerendered backgrounds and FMVs beyond 320x240.
>>3029324
No, I have to correct myself. This may be true for FF7, but for FF9 the assets were hq, yet the game is still in 320x240, so there were other reasons to why choose this resolution.
>>3029324
Okay another correction to myself. The ps1 can't do 480p. Here are all the modes:
* NTSC Display Resolution
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| Mode | Resolution (H x V) | Scan |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 0 | 256 x 240 | |
| 1 | 320 x 240 | Non-Interlaced |
| 2 | 512 x 240 | |
| 3 | 640 x 240 | |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
| 4 | 256 x 480 | |
| 5 | 320 x 480 | Interlaced |
| 6 | 512 x 480 | |
| 7 | 640 x 480 | |
+-------+--------------------+-------------------+
So in other words, if you want progressive you can only go 240p. That must be the reason why so many games are 240p.
>>3029336
considering mode 0 and 3 differ by a factor of more than 2 I find the usage of "240p" questionable at best, if not outright wrong
People are struggling with this?
>Why 512 wide?
TECHNOLOGY!
>Why 240p/480i?
SD TV
>>3029336
PS1 is very flexible with its resolution modes, with the max vertical resolution being 512, because that's also VRAM's height.
GP1(06h) is used to set the screen horizontal RANGE (as in, internal area to draw into), while GP1(07h) controls the vertical range (both can go as low as they see fit). While GP1(08h) takes care of the actual display mode.
http://problemkaputt.de/psx-spx.htm#gpudisplaycontrolcommandsgp1
There's a second display command in charge of horizontal resolution, in bit 6 of GP1(08h), which when set to 1 forces the horizontal resolution to 368.
So, the total horizontal allowed resolutions are:
256, 320, 368, 512, 640
While the common vertical ones are
224(NTSC Overscan 240), 256(PAL Overscan 264), 448(NTSC Overscan 480), 512(PAL Overscan 528).
Both values are freely mixable.
Lowest allowed resolution: 256x224
Highest allowed resolution: 640x528 (used by the BIOS in PAL consoles)
>>3029397
>256x224
Meant to say 240 because that's the actual resolution, 224 is just the usual value set by GP1(07h) because that's where overscan starts.
>>3029397
No Playstation game uses the full overscan height?
What part of the process ensures that the rendered image is exactly 4:3 on the display?
>>3029397
>>3029408
Not to mention one can abuse the internal drawing timings to fill the whole frigging analog signal
http://psx.amidog.se/doku.php?id=psx:download:gpu#GPU_Test
>>3029415
That would be the video DAC, or RAMDAC, which is appropriately engineered to deal with SD analog signals according to every possible standard. Then it's up to the TV to receive these signals and do the rastering.
>>3029397
>>3029408
But there a lot of games that are rendered 240 instead of 224, so they overpass the so called scan area, that is not fixed anyway and different from tv to tv or even non-existend. The only true overscan are is the horizontal overscan beyond 640px. So you are correct by saying 224, because there is a difference between 224 and 240 games.
>>3029427
240 is the internal resolution, so games are indeed allowed to draw 240 rows because you can extend the RANGE (drawing window) to 240, even if most games default at 224. You could even go 192, like the Master System, or 144, like the Game Boy. but the total vertical lines are always 240 on 60Hz.
224 is indeed, and that ain't me, the actual scan area used by most PVMs on their factory settings in 60Hz progressive hack mode. Of course you could play with the dials to decrease the amplitude so you could force those lines to cram up into the displayed area but you can't do that on a standard TV set.
>The only true overscan are is the horizontal overscan beyond 640px
Again, you could play with the dials of PVMs to compress the horizontal raster area so that you see overscan. Just because games didn't draw on it doesn't mean it couldn't be seen by some sets: see >>3029426
>>3029445
True. I agree with you.
>>3029449
*I just meant there is nothing beyond 640. while there is in some games beyond 224/448
>>3029445
But if the rendered resolution varies so much, how is the pixel clock adjusted? The time every line gets is fixed, which is ~64 microseconds. Let's use a resolution of 320x224. This should appear as 4:3 on screen, and the aspect ratio is 10:7. This gives a desired pixel aspect ratio of 15:14. I don't know the math here, but each pixel should be a fraction of a millisecond. The point is that if we used a different resolution, we would need a different pixel clock. Does the hardware have a way of knowing this to avoid incorrect stretching?
>>3031863
No, 320x224 does not appear as 4:3. It appears as 1.43:1 (imax format - near 4:3). 320x240 display as 4:3. 320x224 only appears as 4:3 on older or incorrectly calibrated tvs because the remaining 6 vertical pixels are swallowed by overscan. The image is still 1.43:1 but appears to look like 4:3 because no borders are visible.
>>3031863
All outputed resolutions of the ps1 are stretched to an area of horizontal lines equivalent to 640 px. The overscan area is equivalent to about 60px horizontally which makes an area equivalent of about 700px.
All vertical lines are outputted to a resolution equivalent to 480px, while 224px get letterboxed and 240px games fill the formar.
>>3032038
I thought the industry was obsessed with not showing any borders, as dumb consumers would perceive them as flaws and ruin their reputation.
>>3033043
That's why there were screen centering options for people without professional monitors.
>>3032046
I'm pretty sure there's no point in chiming in on OP's question at this point, but my question is why does Playstation stretch to 640px first instead of just displaying 512x240 dots of light beams and then spacing the rows out vertically until it resembles the ratio of 4:3? That way, you are getting a the cleanest analog picture possible.
>>3033319
anon said "equivalent to". The PS is not performing any resampling. Under the hood it's doing pretty much what you're saying, though on CRTs there are no "dots". A line is an analog signal of changing brightness. If two pixels have the same brightness, it just stays on the same level. That's why for analog systems you tend to not hear about pixels, but about lines. The lines are the only distinct elements. And yes, they are just "spacing them out vertically", which is the cause of scanlines.
>>3033372
>The PS is not performing any resampling. Under the hood it's doing pretty much what you're saying
I heard in other threads that Playstation hardware stretches to 640px first before shooting light to the screen. If that's wrong, then well thank fucking god.
>on CRTs there are no "dots"
That's pretty much what I meant, dots opposed to pixels. In print media, dots refers to physical ink, pixel refers to screen pixels. Dot (or technically vertical beams) = light beams.
>>3025965
Cuz they had that one game that needed to show yo momma's vagina
>>3036219
you really bumped the thread for that line?
![[Sae-nce]_Hidamari_Sketch_-_02_(1280x720_Blu-ray_FLAC).mkv_snapshot_05.27_[2015.10.08_02.13.27].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/46370dz.jpg "[Sae-nce]_Hidamari_Sketch_-_02_(1280x720_Blu-ray_FLAC).mkv_snapshot_05.27_[2015.10.08_02.13.27].jpg")
The developers were afflicted by an unusual condition called Ume Aoki Syndrome. It's the reason why we have widescreen displays.
>>3025965
Because you are limited in vertical resolution to 224/240 or 448/480 lines, but you have much more steps in horizontal resolution: 256, 320, 384, 512, 640, 768. So this way you add more detail but don't lose that much VRAM, and the TV will stretch it correctly.
Additionally, using interlaced modes gave you hell of a lot of blur on some sets, so it was used less often. You also had no "scanlines" effect, since the empty lines were used for display.
>>3036232
thats the most dumb thing i ever read
