I think the only setting that doesn’t save (as intended by the devs) are the resolution settings so this info is very useful. U do the math once and that’s it, you’ll always know the resolution you want and it’s a quick setting to change. If in the future the devs can find a stable way to save resolution settings it would be ideal but it’s not a big deal to change it.
I’ve gotten great satisfaction out of setting up all my cores by using this info, thanks so much! I was wondering, is it possible to edit the config file so that you can add an asterisk or change what is displayed for the desired resolution i.e. “Optimum.” So instead of 530 x 480p it would show 530 x 480p* so that I know straight away this is the setting I want?
EDIT: I assume these are shared between cores so this may not work. Perhaps if they could be edited manually to read : NES, TG16 etc.? At least then I could tell it’s the right one for a particular system or systems.
I should’ve posted this a week ago, but kept forgetting/was lazy. Here’s a 512x448 overlay for use with Snes Next. Using the standard one included doesn’t line up right. Most of the credit goes to Godlance; I just cropped his image and changed the config file. Enjoy!
Dear Vague Rant!
Thank you SO much for this extensive information. It is nice to see that there also is someone out there fighting for the correct screen sizes. I have been drowning on this subject back on old (and first) Xbox scene. I remember to even install many parallel MAME emulators, each one with its own video settings, just to have the games on correct pixel aspect ratio.
Back to the present, on RA Wii, I did the same. I took the RA emulator, and, through HEX edit, made several parallel versions, each one for each core, and each one adjusted to work by factory on the respective correct screen size. I have even two RA for NeoGeo… 320 and 304… =D
And yes, I agree with you on all your math. It is the same math I achieved down here.
Thanks! Keep up the good fight!
AH ~ I strongly recommend: if any of you guys want a perfect setup, just plug your Wii with component cables to a VGA converter, and from the VGA converter into a SLG-3000 (scanline generator) or a Retro-VGA. The results are marvelous.
I had a minor revelation about the Game Boy Advance and WonderSwan that I really should have figured out earlier: you can get an exceptionally nice picture on those platforms using some creative scaling and a widescreen TV, without needing to resort to bilinear filtering. Here’s a photo of the WonderSwan Color title Mr. Driller running with the new suggested settings, which have been edited into the topic post. I have gradually edited in a few other things, like a number of arcade games, but the result here was pleasing enough that it seemed worthy of noting separately.
This information is unhelpful for those not using widescreen televisions, but the improvement, especially for WonderSwan, is vast. It takes the games from a 448*288 window sitting in the middle of the screen to a massive, almost full-screen display, making much better use of screen real estate, with a more accurate PAR than is otherwise possible in current RetroArch, to boot.
Which methods do you use to figure out overscan? I have one of those hybrid 4:3 CRT EDTV’s with a flat screen and component input. Just wondering how many pixels I’m losing to overscan so I can do some calculations u suggested.
You’re in luck, as I just added a quick guide to the main post earlier today:
You should keep in mind that many CRTs have rounded corners, so you might lose more in the corners than you do in the center, which may be important depending on whether you want to play games which display parts of the interface there. The amount most TVs will lose from top/bottom is probably somewhere between 6 and 16 pixels each, so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding the rough area.
I want to play some vertical shmups on FBA, such as 1941 Counter Attack or the Toaplan games. However, the image is horribly stretched when I select their native screen resolution. I can’t rotate my screen (Tate mode), so is there any recommendations to properly display those vertical games in horizontal mode (Yoko mode)? Thanks in advance.
I’ve been putting off detailing vertical games, because there’s not really a wholly satisfying thing you can do short of rotating your screen. As a general rule, the Wii doesn’t have the resolution to fit a 2* scale of most vertical games, since they’re running at resolutions like 256 or 320 tall. This means we have to either use a 1* scale (which will look quite small) or we’re pretty much stuck with bilinear filtering. One quasi-exception to this is CPS games, which at 384 tall, do still do a sort of reasonable job of filling up the Wii’s vertical resolution. So we’ll start out with a 1* scale for vertical CPS-1/2 games, which includes 1941.
Vertical CPS-1 / CPS-2 (FBA) We already know the PAR of the CPS-1 and CPS-2: it’s usually 135:176, but since the screen is rotated by 90 degrees, the PAR is actually 176:135 when it comes to vertical games. This is about 1.3:1. Unfortunately, we can’t really get a pixel of this shape in current RetroArch, so we’ll have to use a bit of a rough approximation.
First off, set your Wii (not your TV) to widescreen, for the 678-wide scaling.
Screen Resolution: 512x480p Custom Ratio: 144, 48: 224x384
Hypothetical video encoder scaling: 720 Without video encoder scaling, this gives us a PAR of about 1.2:1, noticeably slimmer than the original hardware. Even with the maximum video encoder scaling, we’re not going to hit 176:135 pixels. However, the next widest we can go while still using point filtering is about 1.52:1, which is even less correct. I guess what we need is an intermediary resolution somewhere between 384 and 512. Doot-doot-doot-doot thinking, OK, a nice round number would be something like 480x480p. Then we’d drop our 224x384 picture in there, with a video encoder scaling of 688, and we’ve got something that looks, at least in shape, arcade perfect. You’ll just need to sit a little closer because it’s kinda small, but you were stood like a foot away from the screen in arcades, so that’s pretty reasonable.
OK, if the “windowboxed” (black bars on all sides) look isn’t cutting it, we’re going to have to scale to fit the screen using bilinear. The first step is to find how much of the display fits on your screen, vertically. For me, this is 464 pixels; most people should see somewhere between 448 and 480 pixels depending on their TV and its options. We need to know this so that we can fill all the way to the edges of our screens.
For CPS-1/2, we’ve got a resolution of 224*384. We’re going to make that 384 fill our screen, so for me, that means my picture is 464 pixels high. How wide do I need to go? Here’s the formula:
(MyHeight/384) * (11/10) * (176/135) * 224 = MyWidth For me, with 464 in “MyHeight”, I find that “MyWidth” is 388 pixels.
Remember that this assumes your Wii is back on 4:3 again, and more importantly, that you have exactly the same TV as me. Remember to fill in the correct settings for your TV, using the above formula.
Screen Resolution: 640*480p Default Filter: Bilinear filtering Custom Ratio: 126, 8: 388x464p
Other Vertical Games (FBA) As a general rule, we probably just want to use bilinear for vertical games, since they’re otherwise in tiny windows on-screen. So once we know our TV’s overscan, we need to find the original game’s resolution and, if possible, pixel aspect ratio. Unfortunately, there are many cases where the PAR isn’t known, so we’ll try a couple of things. Here’s the formula when the PAR is known.
(MyHeight/GameHeight) * (11/10) * GamePAR * GameWidth = MyWidth
If the PAR is not known, then how wide you should go is kind of guesswork. If you leave the GamePAR portion out of the formula, the resulting width will produce 1:1, square pixels. This will probably look reasonable for a lot of games, so it might work to just go with that. Otherwise, you could try to guess the intended PAR by observing shapes on the screen, like I did with Snow Bros.: by looking at the oval-shaped snowballs and adjusting the PAR to make them round.
Let’s do Toaplan second-gen hardware using that formula. This means games like Fire Shark, Truxton and Vimana, with a known PAR of 11:10 and a resolution of 240*320.
(MyHeight/320) * (11/10) * (11/10) * 240 = MyWidth
For me, with 464 in MyHeight, MyWidth is about 421.1. Because odd numbers suck, let’s call it 422.
Screen Resolution: 640*480p Default Filter: Bilinear filtering Custom Ratio: 109, 8: 422x464p
Now, if we hadn’t known the intended PAR, the formula for Toaplan second-gen hardware would have looked like this:
(MyHeight/320) * (11/10) * 240 = MyWidth
Which, for me, gives 382.8, which we’ll call 382. As you can see, the square pixels result in a slimmer image than when we were aiming for 11/10 pixels. Still, it’s not so thin that the games will look awful, so it’s a workable solution if you don’t want to try to find an exact PAR to shoot for.
Sorry for all the numbers, I hope this was helpful.
Hey Vague Rant,
Thank you so much for this detailed information!! TBH I’m not looking for pixel perfect solution as I am aware that the unique solution for it is to rotate the screen. However, your suggestions make sense. It should be fine to enjoy those awesome vert games. I’m going to check this tonight after the work and I’ll let you know.
You also have guessed that I was also looking forward to playing vertical Toaplan games, too, hehe. =D
If I set Retroarch to output 240p via RGB does the CRT television deal with the aspect ratios automatically? Do I have to worry about the custom ratios and hypothetical encoder settings?
This thread is fascinating. Thank you.
Yes, any resolution that doesn’t end in x480 is fixed to the center of the screen, custom ratios won’t work with this.
For the hypothetical encoder settings, I would recommend using it because it’s generally a one time thing, GBA games look much better in their correct pixel width. However this feature is missing from the current(1.0.0.2) version, the next version will have it though, it’s called ‘Set Screen Width’ and is in the video settings.
Regarding the info on this thread, every time the op refers to ‘switch Wii to 16:9’ means that the video encoder will use 678 but this will not work in the next version, 640 is the default value now, for both modes.
Thanks for this, but could you or anyone else give a little more insight in getting the height of your TV for the GBA core? I mean what do you do with the upper and lower overscan numbers? I think I got 9 in both but I don’t know if i should use 471 or 462 as the custom height as both seem way off with the custom ratio 23, 0
sorry if being dumb
… I would like to ask something.
But first, thank you a lot for these useful notes.
I’ve been looking into them after a long time being busy with other things and this was very helpful, I even discovered that my LCD HDTV with Component is capable of doing Double Strike (I don’t find the Intro from Batman THAT annoying but it surely would make my sight tired if it was used more) and using your recommendations most games looks much better compared with my ridiculous Custom Ratio “guesses” with 640x480 on everything, lol. Now everything looks near perfect to me.
Now, here you recommend that we should use GenPlus GX over RA Core… And while I think that homebrew application is amazing since the day I tried it, and it’s true that changing RA’s resolution and Custom Resolution would be very, very tiring, If I change the res on RA to 640x448 with Core Provided Ratio, I get a more clear image than the one I get with GenPlus GX with Megadrive/Genesis games.
Am I missing something on GenPlus? Some option or change that I should know? I can get a pretty decent (Even Great) image on it, but RA is a little more clear. If GenPlus can pull that off too, what kind of configuration should I try?
And by the way, I don’t know if it happens with other Genesis games, but I tried LandStalker on RA with a Gamecube controller, and the analog stick would get stuck really often. I don’t think i had that problem with other Genesis games, but it surely is annoying there, the isometric view + stuck direction is kind of fatal, lol.
With a Classic Controller it doesn’t happen, though, which is why I find that curious. And sorry if i’m asking something stupid.
Deflicker perhaps? There isn’t much either could do to change the look of the image. RA uses deflicker in 480i, in 480p I’m still not sure if it’s active. Genesis Plus GX has an option for it, try seeing if the image quality is closer with it off. 240p never uses deflicker. The easiest way to tell is in 480i mode, when the image is sharp but shaky or still but blurry but apps can be coded to not use df in progressive mode.
I dunno about the controller problem but the analog stick is uncomfortably set, it doesn’t read the inputs unless the stick is moved all the way.
Thank You SuperrSonic, I will take a look at that Deflicker option!
I just gave it a check, I think I now recognize the problem and even if you don’t see this it might help someone else.
The standalone version with borders enabled is 384x pixels wide, without the borders it’s 640/512 depending on the game. Notice the problem? In order to cram all game and border pixels into the Wii’s 640 output 384 is used, as you may know the doubled version of this 768 is not a valid frame buffer for Wii and by using the unscaled width you get a more filtered image.
In short set borders to none for a sharper image.
Just wondering, do these settings apply to Wii U as well? I see no mention of HDMI, 1080p etc…
Does anyone else have an issue on the Wii U where it won’t go above 240 in progressive? 480i seems to be the max allowed for screen resolution. 480p doesn’t even show up as an option. I am connected via HDMI to a Samsung Plasma screen at 1080p. Granted everything is upscaled by the Wii U to 1080p anyways, however the rendered resolution still makes a huge difference.
EDIT: I downloaded the new nightly (2015-03-08) and the resolution is no longer displayed as interlaced or progressive so I assume that its all progressive now.
I am new on retroarch, but have played snes9x on wii for some years. The original SNES hardware I’ve played since 1995, so besides the most time I was using composite or rf cables on the crapiest tv I know pretty much how the games on this system (my main concern on retroarch) should be (video, speed, audio)… I have learned so much from this topic and boring. Thank you V. Rant! I still have some doubts, if you guys could help:
I am using a CRT TV with component (480i) on my wii. I’ve tested couple games on snes9x and snes9x next cores, also snes9xWiiStandalone…Snes standalone looks better for me, i dont know if i’m using configs wrong on retroarch, see that:
I don’t know what some configs on retroarch exactly means;
[ol] [li]“Monitor index” [/li][li]What “Refresh rate” have to do with “Estimated Monitor Framerate” (do I need to change that?) [/li][li]“Force aspect ratio” [/li][li]“Integer scale” [/li][li]“Set VI Screen Width” [/li][li]“Vsync/swap Interval” and “hard GPU sync/frames” [/li][li]Soft filter 2 bilinear filter difference [/li][/ol]
I’m pretty sure that this could help so many noobies like me that just started out using some advance emulation settings…Thanks since now.