With what we have, that is pretty much what we can do (explained above).
I already made some petitions that got no attention. Although this gets into a development topic.
I pretty much test with 1:1 PAR, 4:3 DAR, 7:5 for some arcades…
I say this because normally designers would pixel-draw in 1:1 par, so most likely that is the good ratio. Sometimes is not and I would default to 4:3 since RetroArch doesn’t give any more options. To judge by your clock rate link let’s take CPS3 9:11 PAR, what this means is that in order to show a perfect square perfectly square one would need to multiply the width with this ratio, so 384x224 becomes 314.18x224. This makes 1.40 DAR, so your average display TV would then resize it to 298x224 (4:3). So this is no different than directly let your old TV scale the signal (224 by (4/3) = 298x224)
But now we can do things that weren’t possible back then and truly show the desired(?) 1.40 ratio.
I made some tests.
CPS3 in 4:3
1194x896
CPS3 in 1.4026:1 (9:11 PAR)
1257x896
How do you see it?
Here a proof at ideal 9:11 PAR. What I said above (mixing sprites with different PAR in mind). The circle looks fine, the in-game drawing looks horizontally stretched, the drawing would match the in-game one if this was stretched to 4:3 (1194x896).
Anyways this is pure theory, we can’t do anything until the RetroArch guys either put a meaningful DAR (based on clock rate) available to choose or let us make a real custom DAR (instead of the current custom resolution thing).
edit: btw here’s a lot of talk on clock rate and stuff if you are interested.
You’re forgetting the extra 16 lines that are in the real signal. The active area on CPS3 is indeed 224 lines tall, but the full signal is 240. So using the “always 4:3” policy, the TV would "scale this to 320240" (scaling is kind of a digital process and not really the right word, but that’s largely semantics). Adding a 4 scale onto this as in your screenshots, you’d be looking at 1280960. In practice, emulators don’t show all 240 lines, so the equivalent for RetroArch purposes would be 1280896, and there’s your 4:3 display aspect ratio. Your screenshot is quite slim relative to this, which is what the game really looks like at 4:3.
Using 9:11 PAR, that would be 314240, or including the 4 scale, 1257960. Again, dropping the empty area, in RetroArch that’s 1257896, as in your image, which is dead on accurate. But when you include the cropped area (as is correct), you get a DAR of 72:55. Perhaps a more useful way to describe that is 3.93:3, which is just 1.82% slimmer than 4:3, hence why there’s only a 23 pixel difference from 4:3. And there’s the ball park.
The curious note is on your “which is dead on accurate”. Did you read what I said? Circle is “accurate”, drawing is not. The reason I got it “right” is because PAR is resolution independent. It’s simply a ratio regardless of resolution.
Now that I know full signal size I redid the 4:3 one and went as far as measuring the pixels (for circle), what happens is that the 4:3 seems to be more exact than the 9:11, actually they are both very similar. The issue is that RetroArch is calculating the 4:3 of the cropped signal (bug?), which in my opinion is wrong, that’s why my initial calculations were wrong. In both the in-game drawing is wrong, that is unsettling because for the 4:3 version of the cropped signal it matched exactly with the illustration. In the end it boils down to a subjective view as I said. Problem is nobody knows what the full signal size is. You say it’s 240 for CPS3, that’s fine, for N64? for PSX? Saturn? This is not commonly exposed information, and unless RetroArch takes this into account probably everything done in the Aspect Ratio label will be wrong (with the exception of 1:1 PAR and custom). More importantly would be to know, what does RetroArch crops? At least they better fix the wrongly labeled “custom DAR” so we can input resolution independent DAR’s.
I simply meant “you accurately captured an image of the game as seen using 9:11 pixels”, in contrast to the 4:3 shot, which was originally somewhat inaccurate. I didn’t mean to imply any judgment about what looked best or seemed most in-line with developer intent. I agree that the circle is more circular in 4:3, but when we’re down to 3-pixel differences at 4* scale I guess it’s not much of a problem either way. I do agree that RetroArch adjusting aspect ratios based on cropped images is kind of weird and faulty reasoning, but I guess it’s an upstream problem, since it wasn’t RetroArch’s decision to work with cropped images in the first place.
Signal height of games intended for running on NTSC monitors is actually very well known. It’s either 240 lines (progressive) or 480 lines (interlaced). NTSC is 480 interlaced lines by its nature and 240p is a cheap trick where each line is sent twice. The SNES does both (try some of those hi-res mode games like … that dumb racing game), N64 does both, PSX and Saturn probably do both, too. Things are pretty similar on the PAL side, 288p or 576i.
Games are all running at one of these resolutions, frequently with black emptiness filling up the area between the active area and the edge of the signal (although other platforms like the Master System fill with a solid border color). See, e.g. PAL SNES games running at 224 lines in a 288-line window and have a guess why it sucks. If the developer was feeling charitable, they might choose to expand the picture out to the full 240 lines (the SNES’s maximum) to soften the blow a bit, but 240/288 is still pretty mediocre, and it really shows that these consoles are built for NTSC and PAL is an afterthought. But yeah, it is definitely known what signal these systems were outputting.
Yes, I was rethinking on my wording and went directly to edit the post just to see you already posted. Rather than what’s the full signal, the real question should be what systems is RetroArch cropping the resolution to.
I just realized, coming from the video field, that the padding is simply what I call overscan, or NAB. With that on mind it makes sense now all of these are 240. But as I said people are so so confused that lies like these expand like the cholera. Go to system16 for CPSII and resolution is filled with 384x224 (really?), I just went to a page saying some Genesis games were 224 and others 240… So there’s the conflicting point. Because DVD video has NAB at the sides you don’t say DVD resolution is 704x480. You normally say the full 720x480 resolution.
I’m very worried because the RetroArch guys want to do a bunch of not realistic additions, and I predict necessary things like these won’t be fixed. So basic that one would think they had been addressed very long ago (similar to the genesis aspect ratio issue now -recently- fixed upon my call).
RetroArch just takes whatever frame the core hands over. Turn off ‘crop overscan’ and bsnes core gives the padded, letterboxed image, snes9x core does not.
Aspect ratio obsession isn’t a particularly interesting topic for most devs. It’s hard to get excited about minutiae like that, particularly when, as soon as you get something implemented, someone else comes along and says “no, no, no, you’re doing it all wrong. I know because of circles!”
Yes, obsession isn’t a very exciting thing, getting things (minutiae you say the phosphor guy) fixed is. I’m impressed by your words, ignoring everything shed on this thread and trivializing everything to “circle or not circle”. I would have expected wiser comments from someone who makes shaders. Aspect ratios is a trivial thing if you have the data, and if you are a developer you surely have a few spec papers. I do even understand this, surprises me you don’t. I thought by common sense game developers were shooting for 4:3, but seems mostly not, they were limited by the chips they used and hence made the graphics according to that. Then they would have stopped there or go beyond and take into account the later 4:3 readjust, some did think on that others don’t, at that point you can start talking about circles (which one did they comply to) not before. (read the “hunterk, the circle and me” section)
The interesting bit is why on earth RetroArch decided to crop signal output on all cores (or rather why didn’t they fixed it on cores), and why don’t many of them won’t show the padding even with overscan = false? So much effort on screen, game and audio synchronization, and so little efforts on ratio synchronization, 100% unbalanced. Incoherent decisions everywhere.
What we don’t need is to repeat to boredome the same over and over again. But add new data.
If you wanted to shoot for accuracy, then allow an easy way to set custom dar’s (or par, I don’t care which), so we can do what we please. If you wanted to shoot for nostalgia, then you got it ALL wrong. Current RetroArch’s DAR only work with the cropped signal (which is wrong, again I don’t have any papers to proof this), so currently the image shown will be slimmer than you remember if 4:3. AND some cores don’t allow to show the full signal (case in point CPS3), so settings do different things in different cores, a hurrah for inconsistency! If you wanted to show real 4:3 in these cores you would need to ignore the 4:3 setting and set a custom DAR (yes custom to the rescue again!). So there are 2 broken things in RA, but mainly the most important one “custom DAR” setting. Then if you feel generous you could force all cores to output full signal (not a bad idea), and make the overscan setting functional for all cores too. Then we can start talking about circles.
hunterk, the circle and me:
In snes (256x240) most of the games were designed with a 8:7 PAR on mind. That would become 292x240.
Yes, SMW coin blocks are not square anymore, where’s the trick now?
Other games were designed with 4:3 DAR on mind, like fighter games, SFA2 is one of them. That would become 320x240 (double that in my screens) (*note the game has inherent letterbox, sorry, not the best game as example).
Now everything looks fat!
cropped signal…full signal
So why is everything wrong after I did “the right thing”? Well simple, because developers didn’t. So bottom line, what Lex says: MIMIC THE HARDWARE, let nostalgics “enjoy” their thing, and fix “custom DAR” setting so “accurators” can do our accurate thing talking about circles or whether designers accounted for NAB/overscan or not, and so forth doing the likes of applying 8:7 DAR on a cropped snes signal (this is what supposedly developers aimed at) for the right geometry.
Anyone else gone way past giving a shit ?
What started out as a decent interesting thread has been ruined by a couple of arrogant, self-centered, obsessed wankers.
Could the mods just ban the prick above and lock this thread, it serves no purpose anymore except to fuel obsessive arrogance.
Nice to meet you John.Merrit, are your other 9 posts just like this one?
If so I would vote for banning you instead. Show respect to older users who push forward development instead of whinning about those that actually DO SOMETHING.
Keep wanking my friend, good one.
For the rest interested on the topic, here are some shots comparing different ratios of what I explained above and a photo I just scanned of when I was a kid (Merrit I wonder if you were already born at that time)
[Moderator note: User was warned for this post. Please keep our community civil. We are all working toward a common goal.]
Keep it civil, please. No need to insult one another. We don’t want/need the forums to become places where people are afraid to ask questions or discuss things for risk of flaming and verbal abuse.
@Dogway
Yes, core changes happen sometimes, but it’s a pretty tall order to suggest changing how almost all of them function, particularly ones where the libretroization has been upstreamed.
Re: phosphors/shaders, yes, we all have our kinks. The key difference here is that I write my own solutions rather than demanding others to do it for me. Vague Rant and SuperSonic in the Wii subforum wanted a similar option (ViWidth or something…?), so SuperSonic made a patch that mostly worked, submitted a pull request and Squarepusher cleaned it up and merged it. I think it currently is only exposed for Wii/GCN, but perhaps you could tweak it just a bit to make it suit your purposes, as well (or perhaps SuperSonic would be willing to help).
Respect for you, dogshit ? Get fucked you arrogant fuck. Perhaps if you shut the fuck for a few minutes and let the devs do their work. Or why don’t YOU show everyone how Wonderful you are and write your own emulator, otherwise Shut the FUCK up.
[Moderator note: User was warned for this post. Please keep our community civil. We are all working toward a common goal.]
I know it was probably only an early attempt at diplomacy (before tearing down that facade in your followup post), but in my reading this board since sometime last Fall, I’ve really only seen one person that meets your description above. Such behavior is otherworldly in its lack of graciousness and over-the-top sense of entitlement, and I’d like to be able to blame that behavior on a language barrier, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. It’s a shame because of the negative impact on community. Otherwise, I see cordial, if enthusiastic, emulations purists, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
It would not work, viWidth is a part of the specific video code for GC/Wii. It was already in RA, what I did was make it editable without needing to recompile for every core.
I didn’t want to fuel trolls like Merrit so I kept mute the last day, but seems this wasn’t even considered, I got warned and another troll joined the offtopic, with only 19 posts he is known for that though. I don’t think I deserve a warning only because I defend from the rage of a clear troll, I didn’t burst in rage there’s moderation in my words. If I knew this I would at least told him to try to fit his fist in his mouth or something, you know I was going to get a warning either case.
@ralphonzo: I wouldn’t call “wankers” being of any diplomacy. Nor I see emulation purism in hunterk and all the developers he says that do “not giving a damn on aspect ratio”. Thanks to Vague Rant, SuperrSonic, and all of us (I’m long in RA community in the Wii scene when it started a few years ago) you can enjoy more accurate emulation. Having wrong aspect ratio affects on how you play, the distances, speed, movement path, and hence reaction, it has a strong impact on gameplay, if you care for games you should care for correct geometry or at least aim for it.
The recurring excuse to attack people. I have seen this hundreds of times, the never ending report-demand conflict lol. I guess you do everything yourself, cook, laundry, paint walls, fix lamps, car… I have several projects, and I also get reports from people, I don’t treat them like shit though, this was a debate also back then in the Wii scene with Squarepusher and gbatemp users. It’s nice we all have toned down for a common goal, let’s not get users that are only attracted for the conflict and chit-chat destroy the constructive talk we have here. I do my best. It’s very pity the fix only works for Wii, I will give a try to check if that’s what I meant.
Notice I highlighted “couple”. It was diplomatic of him not to specifically finger you as the sole problem in this thread (and in so many other threads you’ve graced).
He is fine, he didn’t call wanker to me alone, he did to a few of us, that’s diplomatic.
Ah and yes, “the prick above”, he didn’t finger me at all (see to believe).
That’s right: suggesting equivalence by falsely spreading the blame around through pluralizing “wanker” was certainly a diplomatic measure, and a courtesy you did not deserve. You’re on a level of your own here and clearly relishing it.
The reason this was locked is because it became extremely counter-productive. This project (libretro and retroarch) is intended to consider everyone’s viewpoints, which is why it’s so versatile. There’s a lot of work to do to achieve this, so please stick to civility and productivity in these forums to promote reader sanity.
CPS3 in 1.4026:1 (9:11 PAR)
1257x896
How do you see it?
