Hacking Dios Mios Widescreen hacking works. The question is HOW ?

[Tangeek]

Hi everyone,

First of all, I'm of course sorry if this has been answered before. I did search here and on the web, but I didn't find a proper response to my question. So I registered and came here to ask it, since it seems this is the biggest community that could have an answer. Note that I'm not an expert of anything. I'm just really passionnate about that stuff, so I could be very wrong. And that's why I'm asking. Anyway, here's my question.

As said in the title, I am playing a GameCube game (Mario Sunshine for now) with Dios Mios Lite from a backup ISO on a SD card. I am not asking how to launch a game with the widescreen hack. I know that, and it succeeded. I'm asking how does it work : how is it able to correct the ratio. I'm one of those who cannot stand any ratio deformation. That's why I haven't tested that hack for so long : I was thinking that the 4:3 is perfectly fine. But today I tried, and I had to admit it works surpringly well.

But my TV tells me something funny... When I launch the game with the hack, and when I launch it from the CD with the original mIOS (so without any modification)... Both in 4/3 and 16/9, it's always the same resolution : 720x480 (it's a PAL system connected through an componant cable). I pulled out my calculator and checked it. ... I was surprised to see that this resolution is neither 4/3 or 16/9... It's 3/2.

I searched what the heck was going on (please realize that my whole world collapsed there ) and I found on the web some guy who said that, for example, in a DVD the image is 720x480, but there's actually a meta-data that says if the image should be displayed in 4/3 ou 16/9. Then only the DVD player makes arrangements to have square pixels and a correct ratio.

But I couldn't find any documentation to how Dios Mios does it. I'm guessing it's the same, but I cannot be sure.

So, if I understood the thing correctly, the hack does not actually hack the game engine to have a wider field of vision or anything like that. It just change that meta-data and tells the Wii system to display a 16/9 image. It is really weird for me to think that the image is truly widescreen, but the field of vision is the same. That's why I can't be sure.

So, what are your thoughts/knowledge on the matter ?

 

[Drak0rex]

Use Nintendont. It's much better.

 

[Tangeek]

It very well could be, but I don't really care right now. (I'll give it a shot, though, I promise. )

But that doesn't help me understand the matter. D:

 

[SuperrSonic]

DM still runs GC games in the original performance speed of a GC, something nintendont or devolution will never be able to do, whether if it's a good thing or bad is up to the user.

But my TV tells me something funny... When I launch the game with the hack, and when I launch it from the CD with the original mIOS (so without any modification)... Both in 4/3 and 16/9, it's always the same resolution : 720x480 (it's a PAL system connected through an componant cable). I pulled out my calculator and checked it. ... I was surprised to see that this resolution is neither 4/3 or 16/9... It's 3/2.

The GameCube and Wii are very similar. Their output signal is either 720x480 or 720x240p, it doesn't matter what; the TV will always read it like that because that's just how it is.

In square pixels it would be 3:2 but the GC/Wii does not have square pixels(1:1), it actually has a PAR of 10:11 but the actual rendering of the image is only 640 pixels wide. This means that if you display an image of a square when using 640 as the width the square ends up distorted. The video hardware of both consoles can correct this easily but in most cases the developers just use a random amount of scaling.

I like to use this image as an example of the GBP taken from a capture device. The GBA has square pixels and the GC doesn't so the devs simply use a 608 width framebuffer(any width will end up as 640 on the TV) and perform additional scaling to get to the same width of Game Boy pixels; using math it is off by 2 pixels but there's really no reason to even care.

I searched what the heck was going on (please realize that my whole world collapsed there ) and I found on the web some guy who said that, for example, in a DVD the image is 720x480, but there's actually a meta-data that says if the image should be displayed in 4/3 ou 16/9. Then only the DVD player makes arrangements to have square pixels and a correct ratio.

Yes, but the 4:3 flag would be to let the image stay in 720x480 because the DVD Video standard does not involve square pixels; this is why playing DVDs on the PC, the picture ends up resized in 720x540 or 640x480 because computers use square pixels.

So, if I understood the thing correctly, the hack does not actually hack the game engine to have a wider field of vision or anything like that. It just change that meta-data and tells the Wii system to display a 16/9 image. It is really weird for me to think that the image is truly widescreen, but the field of vision is the same. That's why I can't be sure.

I don't know how the code for widescreen works, but the process is just squishing textures and models to a certain amount so that when the fancy HDTVs stretch the thing to 16:9 it will look correct. Yes, it is still 640 pixels in width and it isn't rendering anything that wasn't previously rendered, otherwise we'd be seeing posts claiming that the widescreen hack lowers the framerate on numerous games; same applies to Wii games since it is essentially the same thing.

 

[Tangeek]

Thank you for that very long answer ! It cleared up a few things already. :-)

DM still runs GC games in the original performance speed of a GC, something nintendont or devolution will never be able to do, whether if it's a good thing or bad is up to the user.

Yes, I searched a little about Nintendont, and I learned that this is not actually based on the native retrocompatibility of the Wii, but it has an interpreter of his own to launch the game. I don't like that idea one bit. My Wii has a native retrocompatibility, I don't see why I should be using something else. The GC games have to be played as the original hardware intended to (some games like hardcore shoot'em ups even count on it). If not, you not only have the risk of random bugs, but you also have the risk of playing the game too fast. Dios Mios is based on that retrocompatibility since it only changes a few thinks on the original mIOS. If you have a Wii that is not compatible with the GameCube, those can be a great solution, but otherwise, no.