Hardware Why the Pica 200?

[DiscostewSM]

I don't think touch-screen usage on the 3DS in DS/DSi mode will be a problem. You'd be touching the screen in places relative to where things are displayed anyways. All you'll have is an extended null area surrounding the display window.

And as far as how much space would be empty when running DS games on the 3DS...

(256 * 192) / (400 * 240) = 0.512 -> 51.2% space used = 48.8% space empty
(256 * 192) / (320 * 240 ) = 0.64 -> 64% space used = 36% space empty

 

[pachura]

(256 * 192) / (400 * 240) = 0.512 -> 51.2% space used = 48.8% space empty
(256 * 192) / (320 * 240 ) = 0.64 -> 64% space used = 36% space empty

That's quite a lot. I think they might provide a choice between small 1:1 and upscaling to full screen. I guess that bilinear interpolation should consume no CPU time when Pica200 is on board (DS was so horribly underpowered that even such a basic operation was costly).

 

[macgeek417]

I meant 3DS' backwards compatibility with DS(i). Displaying 256x192 picture on a 320x240 screen means 20% of screen width and height occupied by black bars. That's quite a lot, isn't it ?

It's quite a chunk of space, yes.

In another post I basically expressed my concerns about this. It's quite a jump in resolution and DS games will have to use less of the screen real-estate, including touch screen. Will make things sort of odd. I'm quite sure Nintendo won't fill the screen, interpolating the graphics.

Anyway, to me it never felt right playing GBA on DS, but I can understand there are some real fans. Ideally it would be nice if Nintendo still sold their old units, but it's probably not realistic, business-wise. I would definitely buy them, though...all the way back to Game Boy original.

Remember the GBA, anyone? You could choose to either not scale it (default) or use the L/R buttons to make it stretch it.

 

[Isabelyes]

What I'm worried about, is the fact that a lot of hands-on stated, that the directional pad feels quite uncomfortable.

Unless they run DS games in a special way that'll make the analog stick work,
I think playing DS games on the 3DS will be way worse than playing them on a normal DS.

 

[geoflcl]

(256 * 192) / (400 * 240) = 0.512 -> 51.2% space used = 48.8% space empty
(256 * 192) / (320 * 240 ) = 0.64 -> 64% space used = 36% space empty

That's quite a lot. I think they might provide a choice between small 1:1 and upscaling to full screen. I guess that bilinear interpolation should consume no CPU time when Pica200 is on board (DS was so horribly underpowered that even such a basic operation was costly).

Gosh, that is a lot.
Nintendo is in a real pickle here. If they do use interpolation or upscaling (which they really have no choice but to use, considering the comparative tininess of the DS screen), it's going to have to be quite sharp-looking, or it may ruin how some DS games look on the 3DS.

 

[KingVamp]

Remember the GBA, anyone? You could choose to either not scale it (default) or use the L/R buttons to make it stretch it.
U may can go to the home menu to change it.


QUOTE(geoflcl @ Aug 16 2010, 12:00 PM) Nintendo is in a real pickle here. If they do use interpolation or upscaling (which they really have no choice but to use, considering the comparative tininess of the DS screen), it's going to have to be quite sharp-looking, or it may ruin how some DS games look on the 3DS.

Nintendo probably got this cover.

 

[DiscostewSM]

When I was first thinking of the screen being stretched, I had thought that with 3D, they could just internally expand the viewport, and as long as they kept the width/height ratio the same as on the DS, you'd only notice stretching of things represented as 2D elements. But after thinking about it again, they couldn't do that when the display capture unit is involved, because it has a hard limit of 256x192 16-bit pixels, taking up 96KBytes of a video bank that has up to 128KBytes in each. A capture of 320x240 16-bit pixels is about 150KBytes, which already goes over the limit, not to mention would overwrite anything in that last 32KBytes of the memory bank. I'm sure there would be a lot of other problems, but that was one that came to mind.

Pretty much the only thing they could do is take the final render of everything (2D + 3D), and stretch it with some form of filtering.