Hacking Fixing vWii Mode

[Clector]

Just converted the color space of the recording.

 

[NoobletCheese]

Just converted the color space of the recording.

Cool. I also notice you don't seem to have chroma bleeding in those screenshots — did you fix that too?
Edit: on closer examination there does appear to be some bleeding: [1][2]

On another note, I'm starting to lose faith in running games on original vWii/Wii hardware because of GXNtsc480ProgSoft(). This disgusting function seems to be the main culprit for the general blurriness of the Wii's image. It seems to be somewhat equivalent to GameCube's deflicker filter. It appears that some games do not use GXNtsc480ProgSoft() and look satisfactory to my eyes, eg. Skyward Sword and the Kirby games.

I haven't played with Dolphin yet, but it seems it doesn't suffer from GXNtsc480ProgSoft().
601/709 shouldn't be an issue if Dolphin is getting RGB from the GPU, otherwise we could fix it with ReShade.
Plus you get control over aspect ratio issues with some GameCube games.
Starting to wonder if Dolphin might be the better solution?
Depends how it feels to play, how much input lag, graphical glitches, stutters etc.
I will certainly give it a go.

 

[Clector]

I only converted the color space, didn't do anything to the chroma, so should still be there.
As for GameCube games, you can get sharp and control if you use a GCVideo solution plus Swiss.
For Wii games, if you want the sharpest, Dolphin may be the sharpest, you can turn on or off the deflicker and you have two ways to handle colors so that won't be a problem.
Dolphin is very developed so you won't find graphical glitches or major ones in most games, for a similar feeling you could use real Wii or GC controllers I guess; for input lag you'll have to play and see, stutters may vary and can be sort of accounted on more demanding games, but you'll need powerful hardware.

 

[NoobletCheese]

After reading about supposed video DAC differences between Wii models, I've ordered a RVL-101 to compare with the RVL-001.

Got RVL-101 with K01 board, picture seems no different after an hour of subjective analysis.

Still got another 2 things to try:

1. Installing d2x-cIOS and see if that affects/enables Extrems' 480p pixel fix
2. Try applying the fix via Mario Kart Wii cheat code instead

In the meantime the only way I can make the image tolerable for games which use this horrid GXNtsc480ProgSoft() function is to turn up my TV's sharpness control. This tends to bring the image into focus, but at the expense of ugly ringing artefacts.

Regarding the chroma shift issue on vWii, a convenient test pattern for checking its presence is simply the Wii menu, particularly the cyan outlines around the circles in the bottom corners will have a double edge to it.

 

[NoobletCheese]

I've noticed that vWii's colour bleeding issue disappears when playing Gamecube games with Nintendont if I set video width to a certain value, eg. 666 for Twilight Princess and Mario Golf. [edit: or playing with the horizontal offset setting].

However this isn't a viable solution as the width setting is ignored by some games, eg. Mario Sunshine, and some games will have incorrect geometry when using the setting which eliminates bleeding.

But it may offer a clue that the issue is somehow related to viWidth/viXOrigin.

 

[kingjinxy2]

Doesn't anyone have Wii U update files or instructions on how to acquire them?

 

[Extrems]

I've noticed that vWii's colour bleeding issue disappears when playing Gamecube games with Nintendont if I set video width to a certain value, eg. 666 for Twilight Princess and Mario Golf, 640 for Wave Race.

However this isn't a viable solution as the width setting is ignored by some games, eg. Mario Sunshine, and some games will have incorrect geometry when using the setting which eliminates bleeding.

But it may offer a clue that the issue is somehow related to viWidth.

666 result in a odd viXOrigin, which could result in a chroma shift depending on the implementation. We had this problem before with GCVideo.

 

[NoobletCheese]

666 result in a odd viXOrigin, which could result in a chroma shift depending on the implementation. We had this problem before with GCVideo.

Yes it seems to be related to viXOrigin, but the bug is dynamic, eg. on the very first launch of Nintendont all I need to do to fix it is set origin to +1, but then if I load certain other games it no longer works, and in some cases operates according to some rules like if the width is a multiple of 8 then it's fixed but only if the game's internal res is also a multiple of 8, or something like that.

 

[NoobletCheese]

I looked into it now. The game is using a frustum projection with an aspect ratio of 4:3 divided by 11:10 for everything, so I'm not sure why the HUD is wrong.

Are you able to do me a huge favour and find out the same information for the titles Wave Race, Burnout, and Burnout 2? Or even just Wave Race would help.

I'm asking because I suspect those games actually render in square pixels, and if they do, I believe I could then finally understand what the correct viWidth is for any game.

edit: ultimately I'd like to create my own database of games internal resolution and aspect ratio, similar to your Swiss compatibility list wiki. This would allow me to generate a loader config file to automatically set all games to the correct viWidth. If you could help me out with the tools or methodology to discover the internal resolution and aspect ratio of Gamecube games, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Extrems]

Are you able to do me a huge favour and find out the same information for the titles Wave Race, Burnout, and Burnout 2? Or even just Wave Race would help.

I'm asking because I suspect those games actually render in square pixels, and if they do, I believe I could then finally understand what the correct viWidth is for any game.

Wave Race: Blue Storm: 4:3
Burnout: 4:3
Burnout 2: Point of Impact: 4:3

I don't know what makes you think you can solve this.

 

[NoobletCheese]

Wave Race: Blue Storm: 4:3
Burnout: 4:3
Burnout 2: Point of Impact: 4:3

I don't know what makes you think you can solve this.

Thank you!
(see edited post).

 

[Extrems]

You need to use a debugger and set breakpoints on VIConfigure, VIConfigurePan, C_MTXFrustum, C_MTXPerspective, C_MTXOrtho, GXSetProjection and possibly more. Swiss' USB Gecko output can tell you where these functions are. There are many holes in Dolphin's signature database.

 

[pedroka26]

Sorry if Im barging into a necro post, but is this still feasible?

 

[NoobletCheese]

Sorry if Im barging into a necro post, but is this still feasible?

I lost hope in a solution and bought some used Wiis as they are so cheap.

The only downside is no HDMI output, and all the cheap HDMI adaptors I tested are problematic.

Modern TV's are starting to phase out component inputs, so that could be a problem, however there are expensive solutions like OSSC and just now the Retrotink5x.

 

[Clector]

Cool. I also notice you don't seem to have chroma bleeding in those screenshots — did you fix that too?
Edit: on closer examination there does appear to be some bleeding: [1][2]

Sorry for necro bumping, but I don't log in that much in here anymore, but isn't the blue slight shifting normal, even on Wii and GameCube?
Since the GameCube and Wii internally does YCbCr instead of RGB.

 

[NoobletCheese]

Sorry for necro bumping, but I don't log in that much in here anymore, but isn't the blue slight shifting normal, even on Wii and GameCube?
Since the GameCube and Wii internally does YCbCr instead of RGB.

They render internally in digital RGB, eg. GX_PF_RGB8_Z24 but is converted to analogue YCbCr for the 480p component output, which appears to be 4:2:2 judging by the red and blue vertical bars in 240p test suite which show horizontal 1px bleeding on the red and blue bars but not on the green and white bars (although it's possible my TV may be downscaling to 4:2:2 internally, but seems unlikely).

So yes there will be 1px horizontal bleeding on blues and reds if vWii is emulating Wii's 4:2:2 output, however the amount of bleeding is much worse on vWii, and it also bleeds on green. Nudging the viWidth and xOrigin can sometimes temporarily fix it such that pixel transitions become pixel perfect which looks like 4:4:4 to my eyes so I'd imagine vWii is not emulating the Wii's downconversion to 4:2:2 and perhaps using the RGB from the framebuffer and converting it to HDMI YCrCb 4:4:4 although I have no way of confirming this.

 

[kingjinxy2]

They render internally in digital RGB, eg. GX_PF_RGB8_Z24 but is converted to analogue YCbCr for the 480p component output, which appears to be 4:2:2 judging by the red and blue vertical bars in 240p test suite which show horizontal 1px bleeding on the red and blue bars but not on the green and white bars (although it's possible my TV may be downscaling to 4:2:2 internally, but seems unlikely).

So yes there will be 1px horizontal bleeding on blues and reds if vWii is emulating Wii's 4:2:2 output, however the amount of bleeding is much worse on vWii, and it also bleeds on green. Nudging the viWidth and xOrigin can sometimes temporarily fix it such that pixel transitions become pixel perfect which looks like 4:4:4 to my eyes so I'd imagine vWii is not emulating the Wii's downconversion to 4:2:2 and perhaps using the RGB from the framebuffer and converting it to HDMI YCrCb 4:4:4 although I have no way of confirming this.

But what about the XFB? To my knowledge, the EFB is indeed RGB, but its data are copied to the XFB before output, and they are downsampled to YCbCr 4:2:2.

 

[NoobletCheese]

But what about the XFB? To my knowledge, the EFB is indeed RGB, but its data are copied to the XFB before output, and they are downsampled to YCbCr 4:2:2.

I think that's how it works on Wii hardware, but for vWii I suspect it's not emulating the 4:2:2 downsampling as when I nudge width/xorigin for certain games it produces what looks to me like full 4:4:4 resolution. eg. Ryota's red life jacket on blue background in Waverace Blue Storm is a completely perfect transition from a red to blue pixel.

Normally Wii U outputs RGB only, but in vWii mode it switches to YCbCr and I suspect it's 4:4:4 but I have no way of knowing for certain. The only reason I know it's YCbCr is because my TV happens to have some gamut settings which become greyed out for RGB signals.

 

[Clector]

Anyways, here's Wii and vWii.
I think Wii is sharper than the vWii at 1080p, at least on the late revision that I have, can't tell you for sure in an unit with the 480p bug as I don't have one of these.
Wii:

Wii U:

 

[NoobletCheese]

Personally I never had any issues with the sharpness of vWii vs Wii.

If anything, the vWii should look sharper as the use of HDMI avoids the unnecessary digital > analogue > digital conversion.

In your screenshots, the Wii obviously looks sharper, and I think it's entirely due to OSSC's line 2x mode.

The vWii's issues are more related to colour bleeding in the horizontal direction only, and incorrect colour encoding for its HDMI 1080p output.

The horizontal colour bleeding issue doesn't seem to be very noticeable in your Kirby vWii screenshots. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's due to the nature of the graphics of the game. Or maybe that game happens to use a viWidth or viXOrigin setting that just happens to cause less bleeding.

The colour encoding issue is due to vWii neglecting to convert the luma coefficients from SD to HD for its HDMI 1080p output. I have no idea if OSSC handles the luma coefficients correctly either (is it outputting YCbCr or RGB?). For all I know the capture software might not be decoding it correctly either.

edit: in your screenshots, the Wii's brighter reds, greens, oranges and browns are consistent with OSSC converting to HD colours properly, since that is the colour difference we should observe as per this article: