Gaming Wii U renders Wii games differently in Wii mode?

[DCG]

Spoiler

Is it just me, or does the metroid prime trilogy looking worse on the Wii U.
Yes, at first it looks upscaled to 720p, but when using the scan visor, the zoomed part looks like hell.

It seems as if the zoomed part isn't upscaled :/
I haven't started the "old" Wii up to compare, but it I don't remember it being this bad...
Do other games suffer from this aswell?

 

[jalaneme]

yeah twilight princess has quite a few jaggies, i haven't touched that game in a while though, i wish nintendo had put a smooth setting like the ps3 does with ps1 games.

 

[9thSage]

I'm pretty sure that it's just upscaling the video output before it sends it out to your TV. this isn't the same thing as rendering the entire thing at 1080p, you shouldn't expect it to be. (by the way, that's just how scan visor looks when you scan something...it always looked more blurry)

 

[Rydian]

If the Wii U is upscaling them before sending them to the TV, then they're being sent at a resolution that displays the aliasing and artifacts.

The issues were always there. just blurred out on the original Wii due to it's lower output resolution.

Now you can see clearer... that the chick you slept with while drunk is not as pretty as you remember.

 

[Deltaechoe]

As rydian just said, the picture is definitely upscaled but upscaling is not the same as rendering at a higher resolution.

Upscaling is pretty damn useless as it just makes low resolution artifacting stand out WAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than it would if you were just outputting that resolution. It just sharpens the picture at the resolution that the game rendered at (in the case of the wii 480p)

 

[Haliinen]

My question is though, does the upscaling produce more input lag? Reason I ask is because I suffer a slight bit of input lag already, not that much though thankfully but you can definitely feel it.

 

[Rydian]

If the games are being output at a higher resolution from the Wii itself internally, then you shouldn't see the kind of input lag you get when the TV is doing it.

 

[Foxi4]

If the games are being output at a higher resolution from the Wii itself internally, then you shouldn't see the kind of input lag you get when the TV is doing it.

Adding to what you already said, the "jaggies" can be explained by the type of upscaling used.

From what I'm seeing on the screens provided, I'd assume that the WiiU does this:

1. Render the game at its original resolution.
2. Upscale to the native WiiU resolution for the purpose of outputting it via HDMI-compatible means, use Nearest Neighbour to minimize the lag.
3. Jaggies Country!

I think it's plausible.

 

[Rydian]

If jaggies are visible then it's definitely nearest-neighbor, sounds right to me.

 

[Haliinen]

Thanks for the input, I guess I don't need to be worried about it, it's funny when you go over from the Wii U Game Pad to the projection screen, then back to the Wii U Game pad again when playing NSBMU, on the Game Pad, the inputs are instant, whereas on the projection screen it feels like the delay is about 5 frames, more or less.

 

[Foxi4]

If jaggies are visible then it's definitely nearest-neighbor, sounds right to me.

Perhaps it's for the better. I, for one, don't enjoy upscaling with extensive use of filtering - usually it blurs the screen so much that fonts are barely visible. I'd rather see jaggies than f*ck all, but I suppose that's a matter of preference (and the size of the TV itself ).

 

[Supercool330]

Upscale to the native WiiU resolution for the purpose of outputting it via HDMI-compatible means, use Nearest Neighbour to minimize the lag.

Why oh why would they not apply bicubic interpolation, it isn't that hard, and the Wii U should have more than enough extra horse power to do it (or at least bilinear).

 

[Rydian]

Eh, it's not like it's a single image. The Wii U's likely more concerned with using it's resources to deliver a smooth experience opposed to running a filter a ton of times a second. Most video upscaling is simplistic in nature, the exceptions being emulators on the PC, where the filtering is often done by the GPu that's not getting much of a load in the first place (and that's where really fancy shit like the NTSC-lookalike filters and Super Eagle are feasible).

I mean, we've all either seen or read about what happens when TVs try to upscale a live video. Latency.

 

[Supercool330]

Mostly that is because TVs don't have the hardware to do real time video filtering, and they have to wait until they receive the signal. The Wii U should have substantially more horsepower than your TV, and it can just do it as it renders the image. I work in rendering, and I have implemented very efficient CPU tricubic interpolation (admittedly, this was for x86 preprocessor with SIMD instructions, not PPC), so unless the Wii U isn't that much more powerful than the Wii, it should be able to handle the extra load.

 

[Rydian]

This isn't just that it's PPC, it's in the 750 family, which is a pretty old base (1998 or whatever IIRC) so I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any sort of modern instruction set additions to make that sort of thing almost painless.

Yes, the Wii does have more horsepower than the TV, but the Wii is also busy actually creating the signal, while the TV just decodes.

The Wii U's CPU appears to be a higher-clocked version of the Wii's, with three cores, and potentially more L2 cache (we don't have too many official details).

 

[DCG]

I know what upscaling is....
the point is, it looked better on the same tv on the wii.

The metroid prime trilogy is a HD game (at least nr 3).
I'll run it trough the wii today and see how it looked there.

(btw. It isn't upscaled to full screen, there are 3 black borders...)

 

[Foxi4]

Why oh why would they not apply bicubic interpolation, it isn't that hard, and the Wii U should have more than enough extra horse power to do it (or at least bilinear).

Good luck resizing 30/60 480p/i to 1080p frames per second with bicubic without lag on a system that's already busy doing "other things". Not to mention that for all we know, most of the WiiU assets are actually idle during vWii Mode.

 

[driverdis]

Good luck resizing 30/60 480p/i to 1080p frames per second with bicubic without lag on a system that's already busy doing "other things". Not to mention that for all we know, most of the WiiU assets are actually idle during vWii Mode.

exactly, the Wii U's assets are idle since the Wii U dumbs itself down to a Wii simular to how the Wii did so with Gamecube Mode. that means no extra horsepower for filtering or rendering game at 1080p or 720p like dolphin can since dolphin can utilize more horsepower then the Wii and has less hardware limitations that the actual Wii does since it emulates the hardware as it sees fit. WiiMode cannot. it could possibly do it if WiiMode ran like how the xbox 360 runs xbox 1 games where the 360 is still running ontop of the xbox1 emulator meaning it could apply filtering and stuff with its leftover "horsepower" if Microsoft would of decided to let it do so. Yes, I do realize the 360 emulates Xbox1 games but the concept is still valid as having WiiMode run in a VM with direct hardware access to the seperate NAND, 2 USB ports, SD Card slot, and Optical Drive would allow WiiMode to run from within Wii U Mode allowing the Wii U to enhance Wii Games with filtering and stuff with its unused "horsepower".

 

[nukeboy95]

Adding to what you already said, the "jaggies" can be explained by the type of upscaling used.

From what I'm seeing on the screens provided, I'd assume that the WiiU does this:

1. Render the game at its original resolution.
2. Upscale to the native WiiU resolution for the purpose of outputting it via HDMI-compatible means, use Nearest Neighbour to minimize the lag.
3. Jaggies Country!

I think it's plausible.

1. yes
2. no if you use dolphin emulater on wii games at 1080p it looks fine

 

[Foxi4]

1. yes
2. no if you use dolphin emulater on wii games at 1080p it looks fine

AFAIK, Dolphin doesn't upscale graphics post-rendering - it renders at a target resolution. It's a world of difference.