Hardware Do Wii games available on Wii U Eshop suffer from Vwii's image quality issues ?

[CS_Remnant]

Hi there ! First time posting here.

So, It has been established that playing your Wii games on WiiU through its Wii mode result in all around poor image quality, and I havent seen anything indicating that the Homebrew community has found a way to fix that issue. At least this is what I've found when searching on the subject (Can't seem to be able to post a link, but do look up for the Wii w Framesteir vs WiiU comparison thread on shmups.system).


(7:00 mark)

However, the WiiU's Eshop has a selection of Wii games that, as far as I can tell, are acting like proper WiiU games. This list also happen to include most of the games that I would like to play on original hardware and don't already own on Disc. So, are these Wii games running as native WiiU applications unaffected by the aforementioned Vwii image quality issues ? Or do they also look mediocre next to a Wii Dual Hdmi setup or even an original Wii with component cables ?

 

[Extrems]

It's the same as Wii Mode.

 

[CS_Remnant]

Well, that's a bummer. Thanks for the answer !

 

[CHEMI6DER]

Hi there ! First time posting here.

So, It has been established that playing your Wii games on WiiU through its Wii mode result in all around poor image quality, and I havent seen anything indicating that the Homebrew community has found a way to fix that issue. At least this is what I've found when searching on the subject (Can't seem to be able to post a link, but do look up for the Wii w Framesteir vs WiiU comparison thread on shmups.system).


(7:00 mark)

However, the WiiU's Eshop has a selection of Wii games that, as far as I can tell, are acting like proper WiiU games. This list also happen to include most of the games that I would like to play on original hardware and don't already own on Disc. So, are these Wii games running as native WiiU applications unaffected by the aforementioned Vwii image quality issues ? Or do they also look mediocre next to a Wii Dual Hdmi setup or even an original Wii with component cables ?

The eShop editions just reboot the console into vWii mode and virtually mount that game disk image. As far as I've read up online achieving 720p/1080p resolution for Wii titles on WiiU could only be done by rewriting parts of Wii's graphics library GX or making Nintendont Wii edition...and that's if WiiU is even powerful enough to run the old Wii games at that resolution(though it's h/w compativility should aid it a lot in that task)
As for which existing solution is better: seems like the Wii Dual looks way more sharper than WiiU's HDMI out so you might want to do that.

 

[ScrubLordm8]

Yeah it's the unfortunate answer which is yes. But that's how wii games always looked from what I rememberd.

 

[bootmonster]

A good (but expensive) Wii U solution for playing Wii games, is to set the HDMI output to 480p for vWii, and use an HDMI upscaler such as the mcable.

https://www.marseilleinc.com/mcable-gaming-edition/

Good video here explaining it.

 

[Clector]

They are running on the same hardware as the vWii so it's the same for the most part, although the "VC" Wii games use an different IOS that let them use some enhancements about using the Wii U hardware in some ways like for example usethe Wii U GamePad as a controller, although the IOS used by them also removes some features from IOS, but it's not really something that should affect how any of the official games avaliable through the eShop runs in comparision to the original releases really, it could be a bit troublesome in some specific situations if you inject something by thought. Some things about it are explained here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/savegame-manager-gx.210111/page-88#post-7577590

Also to let people new to this to know about the Wii U vWii mode output, well it has some problems.
First with something simple and understandable, the Wii U in general doesn't outpt 240p, not even if one uses the analog outputs, if 240p is used by something on the vWii the Wii U hardware will upscale it to the output resolution set in the Wii U settings, but is easy to understand the reason of this I guess, since 240p isn't an standard resolution and the Wii U side won't use a resolution like this for anything either.

But then there are some problems with the output in comparision to a Wii console and how the output could have been handled.

1. First some pixels are cut always in the spaces with a fixed quantity, this makes 480 have more overscan than other modes and 1080p have less than others, the overscan isn't a problem with the VI mode used in some games (Kirby Wii for example), but it's in some, specially 4:3 games, you can easily see the overscan in Game Cube games if you compare the output with the different resolutions settings if you run them on Nintendont.
2. There's a slight chroma shft on the image.
3. For some weird reason 480p seems to be sort of filtered making it blurrier than 720p and 1080p, and so making the 720p and 1080p output on the Wii U vWii mode sharper than 480p. And there's not 1:1 option avaliable.
4. There's no color space convertion and because of the Wii U color space and range with the digital output it results in wrong colors with the HDMI output, meaning that one will need to color convert it manually to get the correct colors. This is more noticiable on the Wii U GamePad because of the color compression in it.

Is also good note the VI in the Wii U vWii mode is emulated by the DMCU microcontroller that's only active on the vWii mode and the DMCU communicates with the Wii software and translates things to the Wii U Radeon and it does some more things as well. It also seems to be possible to update the firmware of the DMCU (Nintendo updated it at least one time), so I wonder if it's possible to make a custom firmware for it.

If anyone wants to as well, I can post images comparing the 480p, 720p and 1080p output from the Wii U on vWii mode, although I only have capture from HDMI, but if it's really wanted too, I could capture it using component too.
Although most of the original Wii models (RVL-001) output quality over component in 480p is really blurry to a point where I think that it's blurrier than the Wii U vWii 720p and 1080p, the last Wii motherboards used on the RVL-001 and the ones used in the RVL-101 (Family Edition) output is sharper than the previous ones in the Original Wii model, but still blurrier than the Game Cube and I'm not sure in how that ones compare to the Wii U vWii.

 

[ScrubLordm8]

They are running on the same hardware as the vWii so it's the same for the most part, although the "VC" Wii games use an different IOS that let them use some enhancements about using the Wii U hardware in some ways like for example usethe Wii U GamePad as a controller, although the IOS used by them also removes some features from IOS, but it's not really something that should affect how any of the official games avaliable through the eShop runs in comparision to the original releases really, it could be a bit troublesome in some specific situations if you inject something by thought. Some things about it are explained here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/savegame-manager-gx.210111/page-88#post-7577590

Also to let people new to this to know about the Wii U vWii mode output, well it has some problems.
First with something simple and understandable, the Wii U in general doesn't outpt 240p, not even if one uses the analog outputs, if 240p is used by something on the vWii the Wii U hardware will upscale it to the output resolution set in the Wii U settings, but is easy to understand the reason of this I guess, since 240p isn't an standard resolution and the Wii U side won't use a resolution like this for anything either.

But then there are some problems with the output in comparision to a Wii console and how the output could have been handled.

1. First some pixels are cut always in the spaces with a fixed quantity, this makes 480 have more overscan than other modes and 1080p have less than others, the overscan isn't a problem with the VI mode used in some games (Kirby Wii for example), but it's in some, specially 4:3 games, you can easily see the overscan in Game Cube games if you compare the output with the different resolutions settings if you run them on Nintendont.
2. There's a slight chroma shft on the image.
3. For some weird reason 480p seems to be sort of filtered making it blurrier than 720p and 1080p, and so making the 720p and 1080p output on the Wii U vWii mode sharper than 480p. And there's not 1:1 option avaliable.
4. There's no color space convertion and because of the Wii U color space and range with the digital output it results in wrong colors with the HDMI output, meaning that one will need to color convert it manually to get the correct colors. This is more noticiable on the Wii U GamePad because of the color compression in it.

Is also good note the VI in the Wii U vWii mode is emulated by the DMCU microcontroller that's only active on the vWii mode and the DMCU communicates with the Wii software and translates things to the Wii U Radeon and it does some more things as well. It also seems to be possible to update the firmware of the DMCU (Nintendo updated it at least one time), so I wonder if it's possible to make a custom firmware for it.

If anyone wants to as well, I can post images comparing the 480p, 720p and 1080p output from the Wii U on vWii mode, although I only have capture from HDMI, but if it's really wanted too, I could capture it using component too.
Although most of the original Wii models (RVL-001) output quality over component in 480p is really blurry to a point where I think that it's blurrier than the Wii U vWii 720p and 1080p, the last Wii motherboards used on the RVL-001 and the ones used in the RVL-101 (Family Edition) output is sharper than the previous ones in the Original Wii model, but still blurrier than the Game Cube and I'm not sure in how that ones compare to the Wii U vWii.

That was very informative. Thank you I appreciate it.

 

[Dust2dust]

A good (but expensive) Wii U solution for playing Wii games, is to set the HDMI output to 480p for vWii, and use an HDMI upscaler such as the mcable.

https://www.marseilleinc.com/mcable-gaming-edition/

Do you own one? If so, what do you think of it, in terms of performance, after your tests? I would just like to read comments from a real user in real life.

 

[duwen]

A good (but expensive) Wii U solution for playing Wii games, is to set the HDMI output to 480p for vWii, and use an HDMI upscaler such as the mcable.

https://www.marseilleinc.com/mcable-gaming-edition/

The mCable doesn't upscale - it's "post processing". You'll still need an OSSC or Framemeister to do the upscale (or use your tv's own upscaling).

 

[bootmonster]

Do you own one? If so, what do you think of it, in terms of performance, after your tests? I would just like to read comments from a real user in real life.

I haven’t used one, but the video I embedded includes comparison footage and it looks much cleaner, as well as filling the entire 1080p space properly.

The mCable doesn't upscale - it's "post processing". You'll still need an OSSC or Framemeister to do the upscale (or use your tv's own upscaling).

Sorry you are wrong, it absolutely does upscale. Even states it clearly on the website.

 

[leon315]

but you can buy a component cable and force games to run in 576i mode!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

The mCable doesn't upscale - it's "post processing". You'll still need an OSSC or Framemeister to do the upscale (or use your tv's own upscaling).

It says right there on their website: "Upscale your games to 4K or True HD"

 

[miiuwiiu]

To me the Wii U is the ultimate next gen console. It can play GameCube Wii and Wii U games. It’s just a bummer that the video out just sucks for the two previous ones. With the Wii Dual the gentleman was able to sharpen the image. Why not with the Wii U?