Gaming How do GameCube games look better on the PC than

RemixDeluxe

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its native system?

Ive always believed that games can only look as good as the system they were built for. Then I see this amazing video gameplay of Kirby Air Ride and when played on the Dolphin Emulator it makes the game look like it has HD graphics but I didn't think it was possible. So how much greater can the game look as far as resolution go. Is it possible for it to be pushed farther than 1080p.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WxEB36Hxng&NR=1
 

Twiffles

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Rendering the game at a higher resolution than what a Wii/Gamecube can't possibly do. Along side anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.
At the time I'm writing this, you can render a Wii/Gamecube game 2560x2112 (more than 1080p), which is 4x the original internal resolution.

That is why the PC master race scoffs at console plebeians.
 

RemixDeluxe

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You completely jumped my question. I mean I just wanted to know if the GPU on the PC has anything to do with enhancing the quality of some gamecube games. so is it possible for the games to look even better than they are now?
 

Twiffles

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RemixDeluxe said:
I mean I just wanted to know if the GPU on the PC has anything to do with enhancing the quality of some gamecube games. so is it possible for the games to look even better than they are now?
In short: Yes.
For the most part, at least.
 

RemixDeluxe

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Wow thats really amazing. I can see why PC gamers seem so superior above console gamers. I want to ask an off topic question. How do you translate resolution to times table. Im sorry for sounding ignorant its just I always found it fascinating to learn all this and was curious how its done.

so how do you get XXXX(times)XXXX = XXXXp
 

YayMii

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RemixDeluxe said:
YayMii said:
RemixDeluxe said:
so how do you get XXXX(times)XXXX = XXXXp
It's simple, really. 1920x1080=1080p.

If its so simple then why didn't you explain it? I just want to know how you came to that conclusion without just showing me random numbers.
...the 1080p means there are 1080 lines of pixels. 1920x1080 means 1920 vertical lines, and 1080 horizontal lines (or it's 1920 lines wide and 1080 lines tall). Therefore, there are 1080 progressive lines of pixels, which is referred to as 1080p.
Was it that hard to understand from what I posted? There's absolutely no math involved.
 

krzym1

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RemixDeluxe said:
YayMii said:
RemixDeluxe said:
so how do you get XXXX(times)XXXX = XXXXp
It's simple, really. 1920x1080=1080p.

If its so simple then why didn't you explain it? I just want to know how you came to that conclusion without just showing me random numbers.

If u cant understand it this way I would suggest u to move on without this knowledge.

Also there could be 1080i, if u really want to know, read something about interlaced/progressive picture.
 

RemixDeluxe

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YayMii said:
RemixDeluxe said:
YayMii said:
RemixDeluxe said:
so how do you get XXXX(times)XXXX = XXXXp
It's simple, really. 1920x1080=1080p.

If its so simple then why didn't you explain it? I just want to know how you came to that conclusion without just showing me random numbers.
...the 1080p means there are 1080 lines of pixels. 1920x1080 means 1920 vertical lines, and 1080 horizontal lines (or it's 1920 lines wide and 1080 lines tall). Therefore, there are 1080 progressive lines of pixels, which is referred to as 1080p.
Was it that hard to understand from what I posted? There's absolutely no math involved.

Alright that is much better explanation thank you. So the first set is vertical X Horizontal = XXXX lines of pixel so in reality its only the horizontal part that matters right?
 

YayMii

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RemixDeluxe said:
Alright that is much better explanation thank you. So the first set is vertical X Horizontal = XXXX lines of pixel so in reality its only the horizontal part that matters right?
Well, if you're naming HDTV resolutions. If you're talking about monitor resolutions, then you'll still need to know the full XXXX by XXXX resolution.
But if you know how ratios work, then you can calculate the vertical lines easily. Most HDTV is in 16:9 widescreen (or 16 vertical lines per 9 horizontal lines), so with that ratio 1080 lines would have 1920 pixels each. The issue is that most GameCube games are in 4:3 (not widescreen) so putting a game in a 16:9 ratio would (obviously) stretch it sideways.

Also if you're wondering about 1080p vs 1080i, the 'i' stands for interlaced, where every second line of pixels is refreshed alternately from the rest, each set of pixels refreshing 30FPS each. This can cause blurring or distortion, this is used in analog film and CRT TVs (the big old tube TVs). The 'p' is progressive, which means the whole screen is refreshed at the same time, eliminating the issues interlacing cause. Screens that are progressive are physically unable to display interlaced video, so it attempts to deinterlace any incoming interlaced video (the result is better, but not as good as true progressive video). This is how most modern TVs (such as LCD, plasma, LED) work.
 

machomuu

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YayMii said:
RemixDeluxe said:
Alright that is much better explanation thank you. So the first set is vertical X Horizontal = XXXX lines of pixel so in reality its only the horizontal part that matters right?
Well, if you're naming HDTV resolutions. If you're talking about monitor resolutions, then you'll still need to know the full XXXX by XXXX resolution.
But if you know how ratios work, then you can calculate the vertical lines easily. Most HDTV is in 16:9 widescreen (or 16 vertical lines per 9 horizontal lines), so with that ratio 1080 lines would have 1920 pixels each. The issue is that most GameCube games are in 4:3 (not widescreen) so putting a game in a 16:9 ratio would (obviously) stretch it sideways.

Also if you're wondering about 1080p vs 1080i, the 'i' stands for interlaced, where every second line of pixels is refreshed alternately from the rest, each set of pixels refreshing 30FPS each. This can cause blurring or distortion, this is used in analog film and CRT TVs (the big old tube TVs). The 'p' is progressive, which means the whole screen is refreshed at the same time, eliminating the issues interlacing cause. Screens that are progressive are physically unable to display interlaced video, so it attempts to deinterlace any incoming interlaced video (the result is better, but not as good as true progressive video). This is how most modern TVs (such as LCD, plasma, LED) work.
Thanks for that explanation, I've been wondering that for a while.
 

FAST6191

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Ignoring the resolution discussion for now as it is not all that relevant to what I wish to say

Others have hinted at it but it looks like emulation theory time

Computers are made of parts and the method by which they are put together becomes known as the architecture (although the term is used across computing with subtly different meanings)

Broadly speaking you have the CPU, any associated processing abilities, the graphics, the input methods, the extra hardware (link ports, network and the like) and the ram. They are all connected in various ways, have various abilities and have various constraints- these constraints are often not exactly that and if you fail to emulate them you get somewhat broken emulation- this is why you need the likes of say bsnes rather than snes9x for some games and why some of the handheld/console ports of emulators fall short (people are now taking it to the extreme and emulating things from the transistors up- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWqBmmPQP40 but that is getting away from the point).

On top of this consider that computer graphics are incredibly costly in terms of resources to produce so there are all sorts of tricks that can be done to make things work- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00gAbgBu8R4 has some of the tricks starting around 3 minutes in with the good stuff not long after 4 minutes in (watch the whole thing if you want but it is only tangentially related to what is being discussed here aside from those tricks) but and as Twiffles says on top of this you can also have filtering happen where the original hardware was lacking it.

Anyhow the job (well the drastically simplified version of) of the emulator author is to map the joypad or whatever to the IO ports that it would usually come into in the game memory, convert instructions that would usually run on the console CPU to ones that run on the host system (some more advanced emulation techniques attempt to figure out how the program was coded and adjust for that) but the big one comes with 3d- most people that are not masochists will use the 3d hardware that is provided by the console when it all comes down to it and this hardware is probably going to be close to the general mathematical methods of having 3d work which means it can then be converted to the host machine where all sorts of things can be done. This can range from improving textures, adding them where there were none, outright replacing textures, improving lighting (although this is not so common yet), rendering another frame using midpoints of an animation (again not necessarily the best idea but more often than not worth a punt) and with it being now just numbers on a machine the host machine can use its presumably far superior 3d processing abilities to clean up the graphics (anti aliasing and such- http://www.hamst3r.com/images/aacomparison.jpg and http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/07/0...ing_filtering/1 ) before "passing it back" (in practice most emulator authors I imagine will opt to render it outside the emulation of the console hardware). Along the same lines you can also break spec and render things as fast as they need to be/can be rendered on the host system rather than as fast as the original hardware would allow which has all sorts of benefits.

2d works along similar lines although it is usually combined with (up)scaling/interpolation which has other things at play- http://www.general-cathexis.com/interpolation/index.html .

How hard this is to do can vary between game (or even versions thereof), SDK version, console (thinking PC for a moment it is not without reason most PC games rely on windows/directX) and can come with serious speed penalties if you are not careful.
 

RemixDeluxe

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I had to read it over a couple of times to understand it and I get what you mean. So if you don't have the necessary specs to run emulation it will fall short on you even if you have a powerful CPU.
 

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