[Sentinel]

How are people upscaling 2D games like Muramasa up to HD without using filtering?

The resolution for Wii games is 640x480.

 

[lestar]

using an internal resolution of 1280x720 for example

 

[masta.g.86]

They aren't. You can't get true HD when the source is lower than HD. That's why it's called upscaling.

 

[ector]

You actually can, if the game uses textures that are higher res than necessary. Usually you'll see that 2D things that scale or zoom can look way better at high res than originally on the Wii.

 

[Sentinel]

Could you or somebody give me an example?

 

[lestar]

the real way to get real HD is using an internal resolution of 1280x720 in 3d games, and using Hi-res textures, in 2D games, the only way is upscaling, or, using hi-res textures

 

[Sentinel]

For 2D games, will doing that method make the graphics sharper or as sharp as 640x480?

 

[indecisive985]

Well what ector said is right. For some cases if the texture were already high res it will look good upscaled.

For muramasa, it looks great at higher resolutions, although I prefer the look of the game at 720p or less windowed. Full resolution of my monitor, the sprites look a bit blurry (1680x9something - 16:9)

 

[Sentinel]

Since Muramasa is a 2D game the only things I have to do is:

1. In the OpenGl plugin, check the Hires option.

2. Turn on Progressive Scan.

3. Increase the window size to 1280x 720.

Am I missing anything else?

 

[DinJerr]

AFAIK, that Progressive Scan option is pretty pointless since Dolphin's output is already proper without it enabled. I checked the SVN discussion thread and nobody seems to know what it's used for.

Anyway, if you want to go to the extreme, you can dump the texture and manually apply some scaler algorithm to it like so:

Note:Scale2x on Momohime only. I'd use HQ2x, but Hiend3d.com seems to have vanished.

... but it'd be a time-consuming process to rescale each and every texture that comes your way.

The craziest option would be to make a hires retexture for everything. Good luck trying to find someone who'd want to do that (though I would join such a valiant project if it ever existed).

 

[Sentinel]

I see. Progressive Scan is useless.

So what is the point of the option Load Hires textures in the OpenGl plugin?

 

[DinJerr]

So what is the point of the option Load Hires textures in the OpenGl plugin?

That's what I did in the screenshot above. It replaces the texture with another one. I'd post a screenshot taken during my testing stage of a hilarious bug-eyed Momo I drew, but it was too disturbing so I deleted it.

 

[Sentinel]

I see you did the Scale2x. Is the Scale2x there in the OpenGl plugin? What would happen if I did Scale2x on 640x480?

 

[DinJerr]

Is the Scale2x there in the OpenGl plugin?

No, there isn't. Most of the emulators for the previous gen consoles (I consider the Wii to have previous gen hardware, lol) do not have 2xSaI texture scaling for a number of reasons, of which I assume are:
1) texture size. In the last 2 gens, it was about 16-128 px while in PS2 it can reach up to 256 px and 512 px (perhaps more) for the Wii. To make the emulator upscale all of the textures on the fly will bring the computer to its knees. (IMHO, since I don't have proper metrics for these)
2) the scaling algorithms are more useful for pixels that have lots of flat, vibrant colours. Thus they produce more noticible results in older games as compared to the textures of nowadays that have a lot of gradients and minute details. Even from the modified texture I posted in the example above, you can see that although the sprite is less blurry, there is still some distortion where the pixel edge were, as seen at the sword for example.

If you're looking into a full-screen filter (as in the shader settings), I'm not sure which would produce the best result. Perhaps a 'sharpen' filter would be good, but it's not there in the shader list so you'd have have to program one yourself.

I'd rather live with the blurriness and sit a bit further from the monitor than play with effed-up sprites.

 

[indecisive985]

When it comes to 2D games, keep in mind that any of these filtering procedures don't compare to how the graphics appear at the original resolution. It's worth it to play on a CRT at low resolutions vs an lcd/plasma with all the fancy filtering that, to me anyway, alters the style too much by rounding off everything.

 

[Sentinel]

Is there anything I could do to make the window size larger and at the same time have the graphics look exactly how it is at the original resolution without filtering?

 

[indecisive985]

Unfortunately, no

For 2D games, it's either scaled up and blocky, or scaled up and blurry/smoothish (filter).
But for this game, it looks great scaled up.

 

[Sentinel]

Darn it. I wish there was a way.

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

What we need is something like traditional lanczos image upscaling, but I don't think anyone's ever made real-time GPU code for lanczos (the closest thing is GPU-accelerated video upscaling).

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

No, there isn't. Most of the emulators for the previous gen consoles (I consider the Wii to have previous gen hardware, lol) do not have 2xSaI texture scaling for a number of reasons, of which I assume are:
1) texture size. In the last 2 gens, it was about 16-128 px while in PS2 it can reach up to 256 px and 512 px (perhaps more) for the Wii. To make the emulator upscale all of the textures on the fly will bring the computer to its knees. (IMHO, since I don't have proper metrics for these)
2) the scaling algorithms are more useful for pixels that have lots of flat, vibrant colours. Thus they produce more noticible results in older games as compared to the textures of nowadays that have a lot of gradients and minute details. Even from the modified texture I posted in the example above, you can see that although the sprite is less blurry, there is still some distortion where the pixel edge were, as seen at the sword for example.

If you're looking into a full-screen filter (as in the shader settings), I'm not sure which would produce the best result. Perhaps a 'sharpen' filter would be good, but it's not there in the shader list so you'd have have to program one yourself.

I'd rather live with the blurriness and sit a bit further from the monitor than play with effed-up sprites.

Thats not a good reason, the filter can be adapted to only effect textures below a certain size >.>