Hacking Fixing vWii Mode

NoobletCheese · Feb 27, 2021

kingjinxy2 said:
Yep, even without very accurate measurements, I can see that the "circle" is taller than it is wide: about 8.3cm x 8.8cm.

Thanks.

I was also wondering what you think about the dimensions of the 3D character models in the opening cutscene (the one that plays directly after clicking new game). Would you say their faces look too wide if you stretch the width so that the battle hud circle is round, eg 704 or 720. To me it looks that way, so I am confused - either the HUD is symmetrical and character models stretched, or character models good and HUD squished :wacko:

I have an original GameCube and copy of the game, but it's PAL so imo not a valid reference point for anything.

kingjinxy2 · Feb 27, 2021

NoobletCheese said:
Thanks.

I was also wondering what you think about the dimensions of the 3D character models in the opening cutscene (the one that plays directly after clicking new game). Would you say their faces look too wide if you stretch the width so that the battle hud circle is round, eg 704 or 720. To me it looks that way, so I am confused - either the HUD is symmetrical and character models stretched, or character models good and HUD squished

I have an original GameCube and copy of the game, but it's PAL so imo not a valid reference point for anything.

To be honest, I don't think that I can answer this question, because the game's art is very stylized. Perhaps there is a an object in the game that is supposed to be spherical or circular, mentioned in dialog, perhaps? Extrems's explanation makes sense to me, i.e. the developers simply didn't account for the GameCube's non-square pixels when porting their Dreamcast game.

I think that Phire on the Dolphin Forums gives a good explanation of this issue, which I finally understand after reading lots about it:

To add to this, dolphin is already emulating the game accurately. When the developers tested their game on the dev console, they saw the wrong aspect ratio. When their QA testers played the game, they saw the wrong aspect ratio. When they sent it off to Nintendo for verification, Nintendo verified and approved the wrong aspect ratio. When the Developer signed off the disk for manufacturing, it had the wrong aspect ratio. The reviewers reviewed the game with the wrong aspect ratio. Every single person who played the game on real hardware saw the same wrong aspect ratio.

(https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-correct-aspect-ratio-option?pid=396653#pid396653)

I think that an apt comparison is with the original Dreamcast version, side-by-side. There are three possible scenarios for the GameCube port: the internal 3D projection is wrong, but the HUD is right (unlikely, considering that the circle is not a circle, but not impossible); the internal 3D projection is right, but the HUD is wrong (likely, considering what we've seen); or both the internal 3D projection and the HUD are wrong (equally likely, considering what Extrems said)

In any case, I think that we can say more or less definitively that the Wii U does not stretch, but I still need to consider this next part:

Mongeta said:
Hi folks !

Does anyone here have never though that the issue come from anamorphic 16:9 handled by the Wii U ?
It seems like an evidence for me, but maybe I’m wrong...

I haven’t a softmoded Wii U yet, but still play my original Wii games on Wii U setting to 480p 4:3. In that way, there is no Chroma Shift, and it’s outputting Rec 601 as expected. (However, I haven’t verify the overscan and the amount of pixels cropped on each side, maybe this issue still remains...)

So basically if I’m right, to play in 16:9, we got to output as intented in a 720x480 4:3 frame and let the TV stretch to 16:9.
If I had a modded Wii U, I will seek in that way :
(I cant post link yet.. I’m talking about « Forcing 4:3 display in Wii retail VC injections » thread on this forum )

Edit : I've verified there is no problem of overscan in 480p 4:3. However, the Wii U output a standard DTV 480p frame (720x480) and the Wii in 4:3 only uses the inner 640x480 of it (resulting in an aspect ratio that is slightly too narrow). It's the same issue as the Dreamcast aspect ratio pecularities in progressive. Perhaps, using the Wii via YUV in 480p 4:3 appears to be the same on certain TV.

Ok, I have a few questions for you.

1. Do you mean to say that there is no chroma shift when using the Wii U with 4:3 modes? I find that difficult to believe, given that @nastys demonstrated it quite clearly. I don't think that outputting Rec.601 ever happens on Wii U, but I don't know how to test that except with a capture card. I also don't know if the Wii U has different color spaces with HDMI vs analog video out.

2. Can you test the Wii U with both HDMI and analog video out at 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p? I know that it's a lot, but it would really help. Test specifically for overscan and/or geometry in the 240p Test Suite or test for geometry with Twilight Princess like @NoobletCheese and I have. Also, take pictures if you can. Make sure to test 480i/p with 4:3 and 16:9 modes.

3. The thread that you're talking about is relevant to this one, as the Wii U should handle all of the Wii's video modes properly. I wonder if the Wii U can be forced to support 240p. I know that it doesn't work now, but I wonder if it could still be supported by the hardware or not.

Extrems · Feb 27, 2021

kingjinxy2 said:
I think that an apt comparison is with the original Dreamcast version, side-by-side. There are three possible scenarios for the GameCube port: the internal 3D projection is wrong, but the HUD is right (unlikely, considering that the circle is not a circle, but not impossible); the internal 3D projection is right, but the HUD is wrong (likely, considering what we've seen); or both the internal 3D projection and the HUD are wrong (equally likely, considering what Extrems said)

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.

NoobletCheese · Feb 28, 2021

Firstly, it seems I was wrong about my WiiU not having the same kind of chroma shift as the Pokemon Colosseum image in OP.

At the Mario Sunshine file select screen:

Note the green edge on the left side of Mario, and the overshoot of red pixels on the right edge of his cap. I would speculate the chroma is offset from luma by 1px.

Secondly, Mario Sunshine appears to contain a geometric reference point: box B on the file select screen:

On my screen I measure it 75mmx75mm, so again Nintendont appears to be handling it correctly (assuming the box is meant to be square).

As kingjinxy has mentioned, and Extrems seems to have confirmed, the mathematically correct aspect ratio isn't necessarily the one which recreates the artistic intent. i.e the art that was signed off on by the devs, play testers and Nintendo QC, seems to be different to the art which is being rendered in the 3D engine's viewing frustum.

If I had to pick between mathematical correctness vs artistic intent, I would have to go with artistic intent.

The only way to be sure is to connect an original NTSC GameCube and measure what shape the squares are in the Twilight Princess test pattern.

I would bet a lot of money they are rectangular by 9%

kingjinxy2 said:
Can you test the Wii U with both HDMI and analog video out at 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p? I know that it's a lot, but it would really help. Test specifically for overscan and/or geometry in the 240p Test Suite or test for geometry with Twilight Princess like @NoobletCheese and I have. Also, take pictures if you can. Make sure to test 480i/p with 4:3 and 16:9 modes.

I have tested all combinations of all HDMI modes (I don't have a component cable yet).

All of them have the chroma shift issue, and the only mode which widens the image such that Skies of Arcadia's HUD circles are symmetrical, is WiiU outputting 480p. Although as mentioned, this is not a viable option since WiiU's aspect must be set to 16:9 for it to work, and doing this causes the game's raster to be pillarboxed inside the 16:9 720x480 raster, which results in only 540x480 of active pixels, which is less than the game's internal resolution in most cases.

Extrems said:
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.

Great discovery, and I am curious to know what tools you used to discover this!

I have also updated my post in the Nintendon't thread to reflect your finding.

kingjinxy2 · Feb 28, 2021

NoobletCheese said:
If I had to pick between mathematical correctness vs artistic intent, I would have to go with artistic intent.

The only way to be sure is to connect an original NTSC GameCube and measure what shape the squares are in the Twilight Princess test pattern.

I would bet a lot of money they are rectangular by 9%

I would bet that they are square.

Given the extreme similarities between the GC and the Wii, I'm not sure why you think that the squares wouldn't be square. Even if Nintendont implemented VI width scaling wrongly, Swiss runs in GameCube mode and definitely implements it properly.

NoobletCheese · Feb 28, 2021

kingjinxy2 said:
I would bet that they are square.
Given the extreme similarities between the GC and the Wii, I'm not sure why you think that the squares wouldn't be square. Even if Nintendont implemented VI width scaling wrongly, Swiss runs in GameCube mode and definitely implements it properly.

I set up my PAL GameCube console and checked two PAL games outputting in PAL60 mode (holding B button at game boot). According to my TV's info banner the console is outputting 720x480i@60hz.

Mario Sunshine
GameCube shows the save file B square is symmetrical (80x80mm).
vWii Nintendont running the NTSC version with width=Auto is actually 2% narrower at 78x80mm.

Wind Waker
GameCube shows symmetrical circles on the file select screen (52x52mm)
vWii Nintendont running NTSC version is again 2% narrower at 51x52mm.

Speculation: 2% is the difference in width between 704x480 and 720x480 — coincidence?

Skies of Arcadia
Doesn't have a PAL60 mode so my GameCube can only output it at 720x576i@50hz.
The HUD circles are symmetrical.
I suspect either the devs fixed the aspect for the PAL version, since a YouTube playthrough of the Dreamcast version (which renders square pixels according to Extrems) also shows symmetrical HUD circles.
Perhaps the NTSC version of the game is just a bad port where they didn't realise GameCube's 640x480 raster has a pixel aspect of 10:11.
After comparing PAL and NTSC versions of the game, it seems to only be the 2D HUD sprite elements which are distorted on the NTSC version. i.e the dimensions of characters inside the 3D viewport are the same for both versions.

Mario Golf
Doesn't have a PAL60 mode so my GameCube can only output it at 720x576i@50hz.
The golf ball HUD sprite in bottom right corner is still horizontally squished (70x75mm).
vWii Nintendont running the NTSC version is even more squished at 68x77mm.

My conclusion: it seems vWii Nintendont is doing the right thing with respect to both its mathematical scaling of the raster, and preserving the artistic intent of games. The 2% discrepancy in width may be due to a 704 vs 720 width discrepancy between PAL60 and NTSC, or even NTSC and NTSC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio said:
ITU-R BT.601 specified that standard-definition television pictures are made of lines of 720 non-square pixels, sampled with a precisely specified sampling rate. A simple mathematical calculation reveals that a 704 pixel width would be enough to contain a 480i or 576i standard 4:3 picture

In the meantime I will be getting a RVL-001 Wii as it seems to be the optimal way to play GameCube games in 2021, i.e has GameCube controller ports, no colour bleeding, 601 colourimetry, and games can be forced to progressive and/or widescreen via Nintendont. On the downside, Wii uses component output only, and even if its video DAC is good, the TV's ADC may not be, potentially resulting in worse image than HDMI.

NoobletCheese · Mar 3, 2021

NoobletCheese said:
In the meantime I will be getting a RVL-001 Wii as it seems to be the optimal way to play GameCube games in 2021, i.e has GameCube controller ports, no colour bleeding, 601 colourimetry, and games can be forced to progressive and/or widescreen via Nintendont. On the downside, Wii uses component output only, and even if its video DAC is good, the TV's ADC may not be, potentially resulting in worse image than HDMI.

It seems original Wii's 480p output has issues as well, and Extrems has actually fixed it:
https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?p=1361158#p1361158

However I can't tell if Extrems fix can be applied to Wii and GCN titles.
i.e have the latest versions of USB Loader and Nintendont been compiled with Extrems fix?

On another note, that thread seems to indicate some of the later Wii's with CPU-40 or CPU-60 have a better video DAC, but it's ultimately still a lottery as they found some of the inferior DAC's in CPU-40's and 60's too.

To determine yours: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/revision-identification-guide.863/

jjonesmnn · Mar 3, 2021

I believe USB Loader GX has as of 1272:
https://gbatemp.net/posts/8672438

NoobletCheese · Mar 3, 2021

Fixing chroma bleeding
I noticed when entering vWii mode, WiiU's HDMI output colour space changes from RGB to YCbCr.
As chroma bleeding may be an issue with the conversion from RGB to YCbCr, a potential solution might be patching vWii to output RGB instead?

Removing the blur filter
I noticed the title Skyward Sword appears to remove the blur filter? Even the vWii's OS overlays appear sharper when Skyward Sword is running.
Whereas with Mario Galaxy, both the game's raster and the OS overlays seem to have the blur filter applied.
Perhaps someone with hacking expertise could debug these 2 games to find the relevant system functions/addresses which Skyward Sword is calling on launch, but which Mario Galaxy is not?

NoobletCheese · Mar 3, 2021

From https://gbatemp.net/threads/possible-to-disable-the-wiis-de-flicker-filter.477163/ :

Razor83 said:
with a progessive signal (480p) the flicker filter should always be disabled, since there are no interlaced lines to flicker. However Nintendo did something odd - they instead created a new video mode that deliberately 'softens' the picture when in progressive scan mode.

Ok, talking to a developer friend of mine, there are 2 specific wii/gcn API calls to turn on deflickering mode.
For interlaced displays, you call GXNtsc480IntDf().
For progressive scan displays, you call GXNtsc480ProgSoft().
Since anti-aliasing is really a side effect of deflickering and you don't actually deflicker anything in 480p, the api ends with "soft" in proscan, instead of "df" for interlaced displays.

Click to expand...

SuperrSonic said:
try opening the dol in a hex editor and look for either 08080A0C0A0808 or 04080c100c0804 and replace it with 00001516150000

Datmonkey said:
I have played a couple of hours of RE4 now, and am really enjoying the sharper picture (and great motion controls!). But the game uses lots of dithering, which doesn't look that good. I am guessing the (de)flicker filter hides it normally, but without it, the dithering is too much.

As I have also noticed the strong dithering effect in Skyward Sword, that is consistent with my observation that Skyward Sword seems to have the filter removed.

Per jjonesmnn's comment, Extrem's fix might already be patched into the latest version of USB Loader GX for Wii, therefore we should try that first.

But OP mentions they may have tried it already:

PlayNeth said:
i also tested this on Wii games and even forced the USB Loader to force 480p to bypass the deflicker filter

However I'm unsure if that setting is actually Extrem's fix or just some other setting.

kingjinxy2 · Mar 3, 2021

NoobletCheese said:
From https://gbatemp.net/threads/possible-to-disable-the-wiis-de-flicker-filter.477163/ :

As I have also noticed the strong dithering effect in Skyward Sword, that is consistent with my observation that Skyward Sword seems to have the filter removed.

Per jjonesmnn's comment, Extrem's fix might already be patched into the latest version of USB Loader GX for Wii, therefore we should try that first.

But OP mentions they may have tried it already:

However I'm unsure if that setting is actually Extrem's fix or just some other setting.

The setting in USB Loader GX is "480p pixel fix", which (correct me if I'm wrong) effectively fixes an SDK bug related to VI settings for 480p. It is unrelated to the deflicker filter. If you want to see the deflicker filter applied to 480p, simply boot up Twilight Princess Wii PAL with the system set to 480p.

As for the deflicker filter, as far as I know, nobody has looked into disabling it for all games. You should try to see if there's a difference between forcing 480p and allowing the game to simply use the system settings, because I think that GameCube games may not necessarily always disable the deflicker filter in 480p, instead reducing it, as I have seen a difference when using Swiss to boot a 480p-compatible GC game and forcing the "Vertical Filter" option to 0. However, it seems that forcing 480p also disables the deflicker filter in Swiss. This may not hold true for Nintendont, as that application has separate settings for the deflicker filter when forcing a video mode.

Extrems · Mar 3, 2021

Forcing 480p in Swiss indeed disable deflickering in 99% of cases. Outliers are Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness and Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike.

NoobletCheese said:
As chroma bleeding may be an issue with the conversion from RGB to YCbCr, a potential solution might be patching vWii to output RGB instead?

It already does if your EDID doesn't specify YCbCr support. But you're still converting from RGB to YCbCr 4:2:2 to RGB regardless.

NoobletCheese · Mar 4, 2021

kingjinxy2 said:
The setting in USB Loader GX is "480p pixel fix", which (correct me if I'm wrong) effectively fixes an SDK bug related to VI settings for 480p. It is unrelated to the deflicker filter.

Oh dear... so there are actually 3 things going on then: chroma shift + GXNtsc480ProgSoft() + SDK bug :wacko:

Extrems said:
It already does if your EDID doesn't specify YCbCr support. But you're still converting from RGB to YCbCr 4:2:2 to RGB regardless.

Damn, in that case how likely is it the chroma issue could be patched? Are there even any SDK functions which set the chroma offset?

Extrems said:
I think that GameCube games may not necessarily always disable the deflicker filter in 480p, instead reducing it, as I have seen a difference when using Swiss to boot a 480p-compatible GC game and forcing the "Vertical Filter" option to 0. However, it seems that forcing 480p also disables the deflicker filter in Swiss. This may not hold true for Nintendont, as that application has separate settings for the deflicker filter when forcing a video mode.

I observe some games which don't obey Nintendont's "Force progressive" setting (which is supposed to disable the deflicker filter). Skies of Arcadia is an example, and the workaround was to also set Nintendont's video mode to "Force NTSC", then the deflicker filter is truly disabled. [late edit: at the time of writing this, I didn't realise "Force NTSC" means "Force NTSC and turn off deflicker"]

Other things that can make games blurrier include running 4:3 games in 16:9 as the pixel density is worse due to there being 33% more image but no increase in pixel count, or having WiiU perform 4:3 pillarboxing inside its 720x480i/p output.

NoobletCheese · Mar 4, 2021

Has anyone tried the component cable on WiiU? I've ordered one but it won't arrive for another 5 days — itching to know if it makes a difference.

In the meantime I have acquired a black Wii console, RVL-001 with GameCube ports and CPU-40 board.
Basically the ideal Wii version for me, but no component cable so I can't test it yet

kingjinxy2 · Mar 4, 2021

NoobletCheese said:
Oh dear... so there are actually 3 things going on then: chroma shift + GXNtsc480ProgSoft() + SDK bug

Damn, in that case how likely is it the chroma issue could be patched? Are there even any SDK functions which set the chroma offset?

Other things that can make games blurrier include running 4:3 games in 16:9 as the pixel density is worse due to there being 33% more image but no increase in pixel count, or having WiiU perform 4:3 pillarboxing inside its 720x480i/p output.

1) Well, the second thing is not really a problem unless the developers enabled it on purpose. The first thing is uncontrollable (for now) and the third thing was uncontrollable (until recently).
2) I don't know if there's some kind of programmer's manual or developer SDK that's been leaked, but I would start looking there.
3) Usually I find the increase in horizontal blurriness negligible compared to the increase in horizontal view, but it is worth noting that the Wii/Wii U will always be sharper when running Wii games in 4:3 mode unless the game does not support 4:3.

NoobletCheese · Mar 5, 2021

Here is my analysis of the picture quality coming out of my RVL-001 CPU-40 black shell Wii via 480p component video. Unfortunately I don't have a capture card so I'm going to have to ramble a bit.

The Wii's component output is still filtered and softened to heck, and the overall sharpness seems no better than vWii upscaling to 1080p. If anything the vWii produces the slightly sharper image, despite its chroma bleeding issue.

I am not sure why OP gets better resolution retention from his Wii vs vWii. There is definitely something going on in OP's case because his 240p test suite is showing Nyquist aliasing on alternating line patterns whereas mine isn't.

I tried playing with USB Launcher's '480p pixel fix' setting on both Wii and vWii, but couldn't get a noticeable result. However I only have one game to test (Mario Kart Wii). I'll try to source some more games for testing.

So the choices to me are currently:

a) original Wii with correct Rec.601 colours and no chroma bleeding, but slightly softer image
b) vWii with incorrect Rec.709 colours and chroma bleeding on red/blue edges, but slightly sharper image

In the case of (a) I can artificially offset some of that softness by increasing my TV's sharpness a little bit.

Another improvement can be had by running Wii games in 4:3 instead of 16:9. imo 640 is not enough horizontal pixels for 16:9 — it really needs to be 854 imo to look decent at 16:9, as that would be equivalent pixel density to 640 at 4:3. Remember GameCube is 640x480 40:33, so Wii is actually inferior to GameCube in terms of pixel density. Nintendont at 40:33 with deflicker disabled is stunning compared to Wii.

Currently leaning towards using the original Wii and just accepting that's how the console was designed. "It is what it is".

On a separate note, WiiU output is bad at component 1080p — there are obvious ringing artefacts on edges of text. I seem to recall component video was supposed to top out at 1080i in terms of bandwidth, maybe that has something to do with it. It looks fine in 1080i or less, but obviously that's insufficient as WiiU games may render at 1080p.

NoobletCheese · Mar 6, 2021

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

NoobletCheese · Mar 7, 2021

Another terrible discovery... for some reason my TV decodes the Wii's 480p component signal using the HD 709 coefficients instead of the correct SD 601 ones. Basically my TV seems to think 480p is HDTV and decodes the colours as if they were HD colours, and the result is the same dull reds and greens that I get on vWii.

I guess this isn't really Wii's fault, but God Damn I am having a heck of a time getting a good picture out of these consoles!

On vWii I believe the issue is that the game is rendering SD 601 colours, but vWii is neglecting to convert them to HD 709 colours before outputting them as 709 colours over HDMI. The display then decodes them as 709 colours, and the end-to-end result is that 601 colours are being decoded as 709, which produces these dull reds and greens, among other innacuracies.

Clector · Mar 8, 2021

vWii on 480p, 720p and 1080p with corrected colors attached.
480p:

720p:

1080p:

NoobletCheese · Mar 8, 2021

Clector said:
vWii on 480p, 720p and 1080p with corrected colors attached.

How did you correct them?

Hacking Fixing vWii Mode

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