Epsxe and gpuBladeSoft-1.41-Windows-x86 fullscreen native resolution switching

[Stevacus]

Hello all, I'm having slowdown issues in Epsxe with the gpuBladeSoft-1.41-Windows-x86 plugin using full screen native resolutions option. I've tried playing with the vsnyc settings and other options for the gpubladesoft plugin and my gfx card including its triple buffering and other hardware acceleration to no avail.

This never happens on any emulator i use at native resolution, even final burn alpha which has a native resolution switch that i use for the street fighter 3 gaint impact wide screen mode in the bios (384x224-496x224) and Changes perfectly.

Example of my problem, I play sotn or legend of mana, menus and cutscenes have different resolutions but if i keep my native in game for sotn which is 256x240 or legend of mana 320x224 it works perfect in game menus are warped but w/e it even runs smooth at 1080i max settings. but as soon as i hit native resolution switching option i get 25% speed.

here is my hardware,

For my display I have a widescreen CRT HDTV (HDMI/Component/S-Video/RCA) 175Hz-120Hz-60Hz frequencies I use power strip which is a custom resolution software and have been able to use any resolution from 160x140i/p(Game boy)to ????x720i/p up to ????x1080i I also use a Lut software called Atrise lutcurve for monitor calibration(looks mad sweet)

For my PC,

OS: windows 7 64
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 4000+ SAN DIEGO
1 gig ram
ATI radeon 2600 HD 512MB (the same used to make ARCADEVGA cards)

Heres a list of my custom resolutions as you can see i have Most of the native psx resolutions

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[Andy_Jerk]

YO STEVACUS! "Nobody gets down like BIG gets down."


Sorry, that's all the help I can offer. :/

[Stevacus]

ANDY WHATS UP MY DUDE glad to see you here, wondered where everyone went after snes o rama and i lost interest in forums for a bit ill add you as a friend asap. hopefully someone can fix my issue

[Andy_Jerk]

They will. They have the knowledge here.

[Stevacus]

I hope so i even posted my issue over at the authors emurussias forum, and i translated my post through Google, i can only imagine what they are actually comprehending from that _^ I thought they may have a Russian language policy so hopefully i get an A for effort *laugh* http://forum.emu-russia.net/viewtopi...p=17910#p17910

[MaslowK]

I guess my question would be, why not use any of the default plugins that come with ePSXe? I've never had issues with any of them.

On that note I've never been able to get the gpubladesoft plugin working correctly myself, mostly speed issues.

[Stevacus]

I guess my question would be, why not use any of the default plugins that come with ePSXe? I've never had issues with any of them.

On that note I've never been able to get the gpubladesoft plugin working correctly myself, mostly speed issues.

The ps1 has many different resolutions and switches between them in game gpubladesoft is the only plugin (besides final burn alpha) that can emulate this process, correct geometry, color palette, and it also can disable interlaced emulation making my colors pop like a M**** F**** , I have a calibrated CRT HDTV and use a software tool called powerstrip http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm to implement custom resolutions and frequencies so i have every ps1 resolution interlaced or progressive ready to be used.

So unless i use gpubladesoft i get stuck with one resolution which i always choose the in game resolution but higher resolution menus and titles look like garbage so a native resolution switcher is very much needed, i could play in higher resolutions but stretching is like putting play dough on a news paper and stretching the play dough and puts the wrong color gradients into the image i have a term for this i call it smearing the mona lisa.

and also most blitters are used 2sai, hq2x, ect use the extra lines of resolution to make the image look more native(or not) for instance if i run mame marvel vs capcom is 384x224 if i use hqx4 blitter there is absolutely no change because the filter/blitter wants to look like the native resolution and there is no lines of space to add the filter. here is a reference picture of why i cant stand stretching/scaling you may need to download it to zoom in http://i47.tinypic.com/oqauxw.png

also think about how pro arcade monitors were they all had been calibrated that's why instead of the grainy plain color scheme you get to see the actual colors and darkness needed to see the clarity and shadowing the artist meant for people to see is displayed, i use a tool call atrise lutcurve for this http://atrise.com/lutcurve/ in fact 99.9% of TVs and monitors come uncalibrated unless you get a De fact o sony broadcast monitor http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/cat-mon...-oledmonitors/ and even that refers you to a hardware calibrator called the colormunki which is f***** awesome apart from being $450 there is much more to calibration than just brightness color contrast and gamma i mean tweaking each individual pixel, here is an excellent blog about it http://www.tlvexp.ca/2011/12/why-tvs...-from-factory/ this combined with native resolution is really sexy plus its nice that my printed photos come out the way my display shows them.

[MaslowK]

Very interesting. So it was more or less meant to emulate the video more accurately it sounds like? Might have to give it a second look once I get a slightly more updated computer; this 8 year old laptop just doesn't cut it for anything quite that advanced.

[Ma Troy]

Ah! The Celti-cock! Figured I'd see you turn up here at some point.

As Andy has said, not much to offer myself. You seem to be one of the few who do this sort of thing with the resolutions.

[Stevacus]

YO whats up MA TROY! good to see you again . I'll keep you all updated since I'm the only one doing this, it may actually be the speed of my processor, next month I'll buy a unit with 6 cores at 4ghz maybe than i can get this working.

[Zorlon]

Hate to point this out but game like Symphony of the night ect actually use hardware to change the strectched image to 320x240 though yes some of the displays are actually 320x120 ect but they all get pushed to the same res on real hardware

P.S. that is an example I don't know the exacts and not realy going to dig it out either, though you are welcome to dig round for that info, SOTN does use some odd res setups though between in game and start menu but is both displayed at the same res just has the image stretched but this is purposly done

Hope this is the info you wanted, I haven't had time to fully read what you have posted at this time... with that note I'm off to bed

You can use a none stretching setup using good olde HQ3/2x or a very basic 2/3x just set the res up correctly and all is fine 320x240/640x480/960x720 ect... those will all give that native look and will not be stretched

[Stevacus]

I can see the difference and filters darken the gradients to much for instance in some games stars and pixels will disappear here is my reference image to why this happens again.http://i47.tinypic.com/oqauxw.png I do appreciate your input though (320x240? thats what capcom games like megaman x 4on psx use when my screen switches in SOTN it uses 256x240 in game are you sure you have 256x240 in your EDID?), I'm just going to take my cpu is too slow into consideration and just buy a new unit next month with a very fast CPU.

Double post, but i will say what does look really good is uping the vertical resolution with the petes opengl 2.9 to 256x480 which is the progressive resolution and using the HQ2x filter. still menus and other ish looks f'd up but in game is beautiful it just to bad it only has the interlaced display which darkens the colors due to interlacing lines gpubladesoft has a progressive option which is breath taking.

[Zorlon]

256x480 is just what it gets stretched to and you can kill the scanlines, they are an effect to simulate older TV sets, truth be told it's nothing like an old TV set, you never could see any blank lines, you can have a solid stretched image and it takes nothing from the quality of the image, infact it looks better as it doesn't darken the image (if I remember correctly you had 25 frames with scanlines in one pos and another 25 frames in another pos filling in the blank lines, together giving a full screen image)

if you want to use 2x and 3x ect.. or go for higher res setup just times the res by 2 or 3 or even 4 if you like e.g. 512x960 (x2) or 768x1440 (x3)

P.S. the 2nd and 3rd images are more like what they looked like via a TV as olde TV sets did have a slight blur to them making pixcels less sharp and seem to be more rounded, unlike the super sharp HD sets you get nowerdays

If you look at it another way

PSX hardware support width's of 256, 384, 512 (<-not so common but are used) 320 or 640. The height can be 240 or 480(interlaced) for NTSC, PAL supports 256 or 512(interlaced) [I'm sure there are more but not sure on the exacts at the moment, you should be able to find that out yourself though, you seem resorceful enough]. but these are all forced to display 4:3 on your TV set (PAL is also forced to 4:3) sit a NTSC TV displaying a NTSC game next to a PAL TV displaying the same game but of the PAL region there is no difference even though one has more lines of display than the other (another point is that although NTSC runs at 60Hz 30fps interlased (x2 because the blank line is replaced by a second set of images so 60fps) and PAL display is 50Hz 25fps x2=50fps they both run at the same speed, just NTSC has an extra 5/10 frames in the time PAL displays 25/50 frames)

interlased....

think of interlased like this

(111111=displayed image 0000000=blank line)


frame 0

1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000

frame 1

0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111

frame 2

1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000
1111111111111111111111111111111
0000000000000000000000000000000

ect ect...

beacuse these change so quick you don't realy notice them with the naked eye so although there are blank lines those lines are replaced by image and the old image replaced by a blank lines then back again, this just appears as a single image without lines between

EDIT:- FMV I remember actually hacking Resident evil and can tell you that the Video used in that game also varies from 10fps to 12.5fps, kinda sucky realy but at the end of the day looked just fine, the game will run at normal speed but video cuts did run at a lower rate and lower res but got stretched via the game

Wish I had my PSone set up so I could test out CSotN and double check to make sure the menu is at the same display ratio to the game, I do know that the image for the menu and in-game are different as in that the menu is more widescreen to what the in-game image is res wise, but the PSX hardware was made for 4:3 TV sets only, but it's been too long since I played that game on real PSX hardware, though one of my fav games, to remember exactly how it looks on real hardware via a standard TV

[Stevacus]

Again thank you for your intelligent post, the theory/fact on the pox hardware stretching is very interesting but the fact is though it is stretched from 256x240 to a 320x240 aspect the native resolution is 256x240 and than stretched to a 4:3 aspect ratio the same idea but ass backwards from the CPS1 or CPS2 games display they have 384x224 which is a wide screen aspect but made for 4:3 for extra detail and it shows. here is an if how bad stretching and interlacing effects a psx display. ( i know they are not scaled by multiples but its the same effect)

Unstretched menu
http://i45.tinypic.com/141tj52.jpg

Stretched menu
http://i45.tinypic.com/238xlj.jpg

Unstretched in game
http://i50.tinypic.com/348gb5c.jpg

stretched in game
http://i48.tinypic.com/20at1ch.jpg

you can see the difference is evident stretching causes loss of gfx tricks the developers used like the waterfall those non hard lines follow the player up and down, when stretched they are irreverent and you can clearly see using petes opengl 2.9 those hard interlacing lines the stretched screen is more colorful because the lines are thinner but the native is ugly because they are so thick and muck up the image gpubladesoft fixes this by giving the user a clear progressive image.

you mentioned sharpness, sharpness is nothing but smoke and mirrors what it does is darken one pixel behind a pixel and brighten one in front of it, as someone that that calibrates displays being able to accurately print out a photo the way is displayed is crucial for the artists that employ me and using magician tricks would only screw them over.

[Zorlon]

Arcade is a different story and using it's own display hardware (i.e it doesn't use a TV set and the arcade screens are alot more high def) and most use custom resolutions, best bet is MAME for accuracy, asides from anything it tells you what the native res is, it's up to you to change it, but the best way to get a higher res is just to double what the native res is

You can use other Acrcade emulators but just grab the settings from MAME

MAME will almost always be more accurate but not always the fastest, other emulators tend to use more tricks and shortcuts to get the speed up but MAME focuses on accurate emulation without any tricks or unemulated parts to get the game more playable/faster

EDIT: your shots are very hard to see what you are talking about, try using ePSXe's screen shot short cut key to take pics (F8) or just hit the print screen key (prt scn or prt sc) on some keyboards than go into Paint and hit ctrl and v (or paste in Paint) save your shot as a jpg (high quality) or a raw bmp for the best quality

From my old messing on with ePSXe (I don't realy use much now just for testing mostly) but I did play round for the best image back in the day, I think I ended up with 2 setups I used for most games, but sounds like you have found what I did back then though I don't remember the exacts from then, it does look like what you have mentioned

If you realy wanted real accuracy though display your comp via an olde TV set via A/V (red white, sound + yellow video) and set everything to it's native 4:3 setup, because of the blur effect everything should look just fine (thoerectly that is, it did for me but I was using CVGS back then, that was a very basic emulator but very compatible at the time compared to it's counterpart Bleem!) [You could also use a projector but you will loose colour quality, though not sure about newer projectors heard they are alot beter than the older ones]

EDIT:-

For displaying this via a High Def display basicly you will want what feels right for you that may not be a 4:3 display as you can't accuratly simulate what a standard TV set used to do to the image, using the native res setups will not always look good on a computer screen/high def TV as they are not ment for that type of display.

Even though images without filters on a hifdef display will look pixcelated, put that same image through a standard TV will look alit less pixcelated giving a more natural looking image