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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

lidnariq wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 12:37 pm Lots of TVs from the contemporary era were not capable of showing the resolution improvement of the 512px mode. It's easy to look back down with our modern HDTVs even with old consoles and wonder, but between the first model of the SNES blurring everything horizontally, and many 80s and 90s era CRT TVs blurring things on both axes, losing the parallax layer for maybe-not-even-seen extra horizontal resolution was again a very bitter pill.
Honestly, how can this be true?

Are you literally saying that an old CRT cannot draw that amount of lines vertically and "dots" horizontally?

Because, my understanding is that old CRTs technically didn't really have the hard "pixel" limit that the likes of modern fixed-pixel digital TVs do. And, if you wanted to draw 448 vertical lines rather than 224 it would simply be a matter of telling the TV to draw more line with the electron beam, and I guess same with the "dots" horizontally.

And, most TVs at the time were SD 640x480p or 640x480i as far as I recall.

So, how can it be possible that you wouldn't be able to see the SNES 448 vertical lines or the 512 "dots" horizontally?

Were there CRT TVs out there that couldn't actually draw more than 224 lines to the screen vertically and 256 "dots" horizontally? If so, were there really so many of them vs the typical SD 640x480 resolution I recall that it would honestly not be worth using the 512x448 mode in a modern SNES game?

I'm really just not grasping here what the major issue is with SNES' 512x448 resolution?

And, when you say "blurring", I assume you just mean the natural effect of using a CRT at all, which REALLY isn't a reason not to display something in the 512x448 resolution imo. What you call "blurring" like it's a bad thing is literally one of things I love and miss most about old TVs vs modern TVs, especially when trying to play old SNES and Genesis games, which never look quite the way they should on these modern displays. Dithering, for example, just does not work visually on modern displays. And everything actually looks too sharp and clean now, such that some of the illusion of old pixel art is lost, with curves clearly looking like a series of small squares and sharp edges rather than actual smooth curves and the like. I long for someone to find a way to create a truly representative "CRT" filter on modern emulators.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sat May 07, 2022 2:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by rainwarrior »

Señor Ventura wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 11:15 amI will never undertand how games with static screen doesen't used 512x224 or 512x448...
If you wanna play "what if" with any specific game, I'd recommend opening up that game in Mesen-S and taking a look in the tile viewer. Figure out how much space is empty during the title screen or whatever you're proposing. See if there's space to double or triple the tiles there. (I guess while you're at it look for equivalent empty space in the ROM.)

There's probably many cases where you could do it. It's not like SNES games use all their memory all the time, but I expect with a lot of them you'll find the memory budget just isn't there unless you start simplifying the graphics in question.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 1:55 pmAre you literally saying that an old CRT cannot draw that amount of lines vertically and "dots" horizontally?
CRTs don't have any specific horizontal dots. They have horizontal bandwidth. If a signal exceeds the bandwidth, it just gets blurred out.

The composite signal design puts a pretty inflexible limit on your bandwidth. We definitely don't have anywhere near enough chroma bandwidth for 512px, so that's not really helped at all by SNES hires. The luma detail does seem to get through a fair bit, but it is still blurred. Some TVs will blur it more than others.

Just in case those terms need definition, luma is the brightness/intensity, and chroma is the colour/hue. You can change brightness at higher resolution than colour, because that's how video signals are designed. (They modelled their bandwidth usage on how good our eyes are at perceiving these things.)
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 1:55 pmAnd, most TVs at the time were 640x480p as far as I recall.
RGB monitors are capable of a clean 640x480p. Composite television is not, and it definitely can't do progressive scan. SNES can't do 480p either.

If you have an RGB setup you can definitely get a clean 512px with a good monitor. Not many consumers had this sort of thing during the SNES' lifetime.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:18 pm
Señor Ventura wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 11:15 amI will never undertand how games with static screen doesen't used 512x224 or 512x448...
If you wanna play "what if" with any specific game, I'd recommend opening up that game in Mesen-S and taking a look in the tile viewer. Figure out how much space is empty during the title screen or whatever you're proposing. See if there's space to double or triple the tiles there. (I guess while you're at it look for equivalent empty space in the ROM.)

There's probably many cases where you could do it. It's not like SNES games use all their memory all the time, but I expect with a lot of them you'll find the memory budget just isn't there unless you start simplifying the graphics in question.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 1:55 pmAre you literally saying that an old CRT cannot draw that amount of lines vertically and "dots" horizontally?
CRTs don't have any horizontal dots. They have horizontal bandwidth. If a signal exceeds the bandwidth, it just gets blurred out.

The composite signal design puts a pretty inflexible limit on your bandwidth. We definitely don't have anywhere near enough chroma bandwidth for 512px, so that's not really helped at all by SNES hires. The luma detail does seem to get through a fair bit, but it is still blurred. Some TVs will blur it more than others.

Just in case those terms need definition, luma is the brightness/intensity, and chroma is the colour/hue. You can change brightness at higher resolution than colour, because that's how video signals are designed. (They modelled their bandwidth usage on how good our eyes are at perceiving these things.)
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 1:55 pmAnd, most TVs at the time were 640x480p as far as I recall.
RGB monitors are capable of a clean 640x480p. Composite television is not, and it definitely can't do progressive scan. SNES can't do 480p either.

If you have an RGB setup you can definitely get a clean 512px with a good monitor. Not many consumers had this sort of thing during the SNES' lifetime.
OK, I think this might just be the problem here: That people from the US [or just who think like someone from the US] are ascribing that utterly crappy composite signal to everything retro, and to everyone playing retro games, even today.

I live in the UK, and, trust me, these pixelated visuals were pretty clean and clear on my SDTV (but still subtle and soft due to effects of CRTs in general), so long as you used the correct connection. As far I recall, my SNES was connected up via SCART (as were all my consoles connected via SCART, and maybe S-Video or component in some cases), and that looked great. And I mean great--better than how ANY YouTube footage would have you believe these consoles looked like on a CRT. I literally had an SD Wii connected up to an SD Sony Trinitron via SCART until a few years ago, and it looked gorgeous. Again, FAR nicer than a quick YouTube video search would ever make anyone believe--FAR nicer. I lament the day I threw that TV out for an utterly shitty "modern" [but still old for the time] plasma HDTV. I personally would 100% not avoid SNES' 512x448 mode if it's because some people simply can't see beyond, from what I can tell, the worst possible connector know to man.

If the problem here is composite--why in the living Christ would anyone still be subjecting themselves to composite in 2022--then the problem simply doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, and I will design my game to use 512x448 in some places without any more worry or fear on this matter.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sat May 07, 2022 2:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by lidnariq »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 1:55 pm Are you literally saying that an old CRT cannot draw that amount of lines vertically and "dots" horizontally?
That is exactly what I'm saying. The pixels blurred. You tried to draw more and you couldn't discern them.
if you wanted to draw 448 vertical lines rather than 224 it would simply be a matter of telling the TV to draw more line with the electron beam
You simply do not get to "draw more lines" with the electron beam. After each line, the beam moves a fixed distance down the screen. You don't get to resize things, this isn't a multisync monitor, it's just a TV.

Interlacing is not a "get twice the vertical resolution free" card. At best, in order to keep the screen from flickering horribly, you must blur the screen vertically to very roughly 3/4 the theoretical resolution.
And, most TVs at the time were SD 640x480p or 640x480i as far as I recall.
There are so many places you're confusing things together it's hard to start saying where.

So:

1- CRT TVs capable of displaying what is commonly now known as "480p" only briefly existed around 2000, plus a little. These multisync monitors don't correlate with any consumer video standard, but some could be used with a computer's VGA port.

2- "480p" and "480i" only talk about just how frequently new rows of data are sent relative to how often new "frames" of data are sent. In the analog era, "480p60" meant "vsync 60Hz, hsync 31.5kHz" and "480i60" mean "vsync 60Hz, hsync 15.75kHz". The baroque video mode used by legacy consoles, "240p60" meant the same timing as "480i60" but interpret the output differently.

3- The actual amount that showed up on the screen was dramatically less than 480 lines. A substantial number of pixels above and below, and sometimes on the side as well, were outside the geometry of the CRT and from edge itself. At absolute best, CRT TVs tried to show roughly 440 lines vertically when interlaced and 220 when not.

4- The TVs themselves were practically never capable of displaying a full 440 lines. The electron guns and phosphor mask reduced this resolution. The CRT TV currently sitting in my house is rated for "330" lines, which is to say that higher resolution content is blurred down to something equivalent of only 330 lines
So, how can it be possible that you wouldn't be able to see the SNES 448 vertical lines or the 512 "dots" horizontally?
Everything simply blurred together. If you tried to push more, horizontally it was simply all a blur. Vertically, it would flicker horribly or else be a blur.

Color detail is especially guaranteed to get lost - in the US and Japan (NTSC) you only got around 140 pixels of different hue/satuation information on each line.
Were there CRT TVs out there that couldn't actually draw more than 224 lines to the screen vertically and 256 "dots" horizontally?
Tons! I have used ones that have a rated vertical resolution of 100-ish lines, 180-ish lines, and 220-ish lines, as well as ones that actually are capable of displaying any resolution benefit from interlacing.
If so, were there really so many of them vs the typical SD 640x480 resolution I recall that it would honestly not be worth using the 512x448 mode in a modern SNES game?
You are asking two questions.

In the original commercial SNES era? Absolutely. Not even a question.

Now? You've already made it clear that you don't care if people have to play on an emulator to get the benefit.
I'm really just not grasping here what the major issue is with SNES' 512x448 resolution?
The TVs simply could not display it. If you asked for 512x448, you'd get a blurry mess full of flicker.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

lidnariq wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:41 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 1:55 pm Are you literally saying that an old CRT cannot draw that amount of lines vertically and "dots" horizontally?
That is exactly what I'm saying. The pixels blurred. You tried to draw more and you couldn't discern them.
if you wanted to draw 448 vertical lines rather than 224 it would simply be a matter of telling the TV to draw more line with the electron beam
You simply do not get to "draw more lines" with the electron beam. After each line, the beam moves a fixed distance down the screen. You don't get to resize things, this isn't a multisync monitor, it's just a TV.

Interlacing is not a "get twice the vertical resolution free" card. At best, in order to keep the screen from flickering horribly, you must blur the screen vertically to very roughly 3/4 the theoretical resolution.
And, most TVs at the time were SD 640x480p or 640x480i as far as I recall.
There are so many places you're confusing things together it's hard to start saying where.

So:

1- CRT TVs capable of displaying what is commonly now known as "480p" only briefly existed around 2000, plus a little. These multisync monitors don't correlate with any consumer video standard, but some could be used with a computer's VGA port.

2- "480p" and "480i" only talk about just how frequently new rows of data are sent relative to how often new "frames" of data are sent. In the analog era, "480p60" meant "vsync 60Hz, hsync 31.5kHz" and "480i60" mean "vsync 60Hz, hsync 15.75kHz". The baroque video mode used by legacy consoles, "240p60" meant the same timing as "480i60" but interpret the output differently.

3- The actual amount that showed up on the screen was dramatically less than 480 lines. A substantial number of pixels above and below, and sometimes on the side as well, were outside the geometry of the CRT and from edge itself. At absolute best, CRT TVs tried to show roughly 440 lines vertically when interlaced and 220 when not.

4- The TVs themselves were practically never capable of displaying a full 440 lines. The electron guns and phosphor mask reduced this resolution. The CRT TV currently sitting in my house is rated for "330" lines, which is to say that higher resolution content is blurred down to something equivalent of only 330 lines
So, how can it be possible that you wouldn't be able to see the SNES 448 vertical lines or the 512 "dots" horizontally?
Everything simply blurred together. If you tried to push more, horizontally it was simply all a blur. Vertically, it would flicker horribly or else be a blur.

Color detail is especially guaranteed to get lost - in the US and Japan (NTSC) you only got around 140 pixels of different hue/satuation information on each line.
Were there CRT TVs out there that couldn't actually draw more than 224 lines to the screen vertically and 256 "dots" horizontally?
Tons! I have used ones that have a rated vertical resolution of 100-ish lines, 180-ish lines, and 220-ish lines, as well as ones that actually are capable of displaying any resolution benefit from interlacing.
If so, were there really so many of them vs the typical SD 640x480 resolution I recall that it would honestly not be worth using the 512x448 mode in a modern SNES game?
You are asking two questions.

In the original commercial SNES era? Absolutely. Not even a question.

Now? You've already made it clear that you don't care if people have to play on an emulator to get the benefit.
I'm really just not grasping here what the major issue is with SNES' 512x448 resolution?
The TVs simply could not display it. If you asked for 512x448, you'd get a blurry mess full of flicker.
Yeah, as I said in my previous comment, I think the biggest issue here is more of an American composite thing than an actual SNES or CRT thing. I'm from the UK and I do not ascribe to the whole composite garbage. So I don't think I have to worry about using 512x448 because it won't be seen due to "blurriness" or whatever. I genuinely feel bad for Americans who grew up playing NES and SNES games and the like and had to put up with that. But, just in case no one from America realises this, it's 2022--and you don't have to put up with composite anymore. :-o
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Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by lidnariq »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:47 pm Yeah, as I said in my previous comment, I think the biggest issue here is more of an American composite thing than an actual SNES or CRT thing. I'm from the UK and I do not ascribe to the whole composite garbage. So I don't think I have to worry about using 512x448 because it won't be seen due to "blurriness" or whatever. I genuinely feel bad for Americans who grew up playing NES and SNES games and the like and had to put up with that. But, just in case no one from America realises this, it's 2020--and you don't have to put up with composite anymore. :-o
Approximately 30% of what I said had anything to do with composite.

Plus, you know what's even better than bad interlacing causing obnoxious flicker at 30Hz? Bad interlacing causing obnoxious flicker at 25Hz.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

lidnariq wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:51 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:47 pm Yeah, as I said in my previous comment, I think the biggest issue here is more of an American composite thing than an actual SNES or CRT thing. I'm from the UK and I do not ascribe to the whole composite garbage. So I don't think I have to worry about using 512x448 because it won't be seen due to "blurriness" or whatever. I genuinely feel bad for Americans who grew up playing NES and SNES games and the like and had to put up with that. But, just in case no one from America realises this, it's 2020--and you don't have to put up with composite anymore. :-o
Approximately 30% of what I said had anything to do with composite.

Plus, you know what's even better than bad interlacing causing obnoxious flicker at 30Hz? Bad interlacing causing obnoxious flicker at 25Hz.
Yeah, I think I'll just use 512x448 in my game at some point, maybe for a few menu screens and possibly a boss fight in one level or whatever, might even be a whole level, and let the chips fall where the may. . . .
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Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by rainwarrior »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:28 pmOK, I think this might just be the problem here: That people from the US [or just who think like someone from the US] are ascribing that utterly crappy composite signal to everything retro, and to everyone playing retro games, even today.

I live in the UK, and, trust me, these pixelated visuals were pretty clean and clear on my SDTV (but still subtle and soft due to effects of CRTs in general), so long as you used the correct connection. As far I recall, my SNES was connected up via SCART (as were all my consoles), and that looked great. And I mean great--better than how ANY YouTube footage would have you believe these consoles looked like on a CRT. I literally had an SD Wii connected up to an SD Sony Trinitron via SCART until a few years ago, and it looked gorgeous. Again, FAR nicer than a quick YouTube video would ever make anyone believe--FAR nicer. I personally would 100% not avoid SNES' 512x448 mode if it's because some people simply can't see beyond, from what I can tell, the worse possible connector know to man.

If the problem here is composite--why in the living Christ would anyone still be subjecting themselves to composite in 2022--then the problem simply doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, and I will design my game to use 512x448 in some places without any more worry or fear on this matter.
As far as I know, Nintendo never shipped any model of SNES with SCART cables. They always came with an RF switch instead. (RF being an even worse form of composite.) I could be wrong, but that's the best of my knowledge on it.

I've seen separately sold SCART adapters that appear to be officially branded (example), though every one of those I've seen is not RGB SCART, but instead just Composite SCART. The same composite you're saying doesn't exist. Maybe there were official RGB Scart cables at some point, but I have not been able to find evidence of any for SNES.

You can easily get RGB SCART cables for SNES now from third parties, but I can't tell you how common it was in the past in Europe. I can certainly believe you used a SCART cable in the past, but the question is whether it was composite or RGB and you're not able to give an answer on that one.

The Wii absolutel does look better with RGB! It does 480p natively and looks great that way. It also came out at a time where HDTVs were beginning to be widely adopted and there were tons of reasons for game publishers to make HD-ready graphics. Not really relevant to the question. It's a different era. Also, video capturing today is much better than it was 15 years ago. A lot of old footage is just bad for reasons that don't have to do with the console.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote:As far I recall, my SNES was connected up via SCART (as were all my consoles), and that looked great.
Nobody's saying SNES didn't look great over composite either... at the resolution that EVERY GAME used, composite was plenty good enough. Your past experience is not relevant evidence.


We're having a bit of a strawman problem here. The question was why didn't people use this mode. A big part of the answer is that the consumer hardware just wouldn't have done it justice at the time. Even if everybody in Europe was running their SNES as RGB (which they weren't), that would just mean you're asking why they don't spend resources on a feature that's only relevant to half the market?


Would you please stop acting like pointing out this fact has anything to do with whether you should use it now for your game? Nobody is stopping you. Go do it. The reasons for past games are their own.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 3:02 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 2:28 pmOK, I think this might just be the problem here: That people from the US [or just who think like someone from the US] are ascribing that utterly crappy composite signal to everything retro, and to everyone playing retro games, even today.

I live in the UK, and, trust me, these pixelated visuals were pretty clean and clear on my SDTV (but still subtle and soft due to effects of CRTs in general), so long as you used the correct connection. As far I recall, my SNES was connected up via SCART (as were all my consoles), and that looked great. And I mean great--better than how ANY YouTube footage would have you believe these consoles looked like on a CRT. I literally had an SD Wii connected up to an SD Sony Trinitron via SCART until a few years ago, and it looked gorgeous. Again, FAR nicer than a quick YouTube video would ever make anyone believe--FAR nicer. I personally would 100% not avoid SNES' 512x448 mode if it's because some people simply can't see beyond, from what I can tell, the worse possible connector know to man.

If the problem here is composite--why in the living Christ would anyone still be subjecting themselves to composite in 2022--then the problem simply doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned, and I will design my game to use 512x448 in some places without any more worry or fear on this matter.
As far as I know, Nintendo never shipped any model of SNES with SCART cables. They always came with an RF switch instead. (RF being an even worse form of composite.) I could be wrong, but that's the best of my knowledge on it.

I've seen separately sold SCART adapters that appear to be officially branded (example), though every one of those I've seen is not RGB SCART, but instead just Composite SCART. The same composite you're saying doesn't exist. Maybe there were official RGB Scart cables at some point, but I have not been able to find evidence of any for SNES.

You can easily get RGB SCART cables for SNES now from third parties, but I can't tell you how common it was in the past in Europe. I can certainly believe you used a SCART cable in the past, but the question is whether it was composite or RGB and you're not able to give an answer on that one.

The Wii absolutel does look better with RGB! It does 480p natively and looks great that way. It also came out at a time where HDTVs were beginning to be widely adopted and there were tons of reasons for game publishers to make HD-ready graphics. Not really relevant to the question. It's a different era. Also, video capturing today is much better than it was 15 years ago. A lot of old footage is just bad for reasons that don't have to do with the console.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote:As far I recall, my SNES was connected up via SCART (as were all my consoles), and that looked great.
Nobody's saying SNES didn't look great over composite either... at the resolution that EVERY GAME used, composite was plenty good enough. Your past experience is not relevant evidence.


We're having a bit of a strawman problem here. The question was why didn't people use this mode. A big part of the answer is that the consumer hardware just wouldn't have done it justice at the time. Even if everybody in Europe was running their SNES as RGB (which they weren't), that would just mean you're asking why they don't spend resources on a feature that's only relevant to half the market?


Would you please stop acting like pointing out this fact has anything to do with whether you should use it now for your game? Nobody is stopping you. Go do it. The reasons for past games are their own.
Well, I can tell you for a fact that my SNES was connected via either SCART, S-Video or Component (and I'm sure, even if it didn't come in the box, I got a SCART connector for it at some point down the line--but I'm still talking like 20+ years ago either way). And, whichever one it was, it was an order of magnitude better than Composite (based on the turd videos I've seen of composite in action or images of how it looked). So I'm not going to worry about all the "blurriness" and "lines not being visible" stuff and the like any more. I'll simply have some 512x448 parts in my game, and see how it plays out. I've wasted days thinking, being convinced, the SNES somehow couldn't properly show 512x448 and it wasn't worth using--blimmin' hell.
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Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by Pokun »

SCART is just a connector though and it can carry composite, RGB and even S-video, though I think it's not too common for a SCART TV to support S-video via the SCART socket.
The SCART you had was most definitely composite, which is much better than the RF-switch the PAL SNES came with (and adds the benefit of stereo audio), but it's not as good as S-video or RGB, so it's no different from what the Americans could use. As for component the SNES doesn't output that.

The PAL Nintendo 64 did come with a composite cable with RCA plugs and an attached SCART-adapter for TV-sets that lacks RCA jacks, and so did every other Nintendo console after that up to and including the Wii (which also included a component cable). I guess you might have used one of those composite cables with your SNES, that's what I did and still do with my PAL SNES.

I use an RGB SCART cable with my SFC but it's an aftermarket cable as Nintendo never released an RGB SCART cable. They only released an RGB cable in Japan (SHVC-010) which used a Japanese standard which is often called "RGB21" or "JP21". It uses the exact same 21-pin connector as SCART, but the pinnout is different and if you use it in a European TV it will blow something. That cable will only work with certain Asian TV-sets and Asian RGB monitors, and it's quite rare and expensive as RGB21 never became the common standard like SCART did in Europe.


As for the bandwith of how many dots the electron gun can draw on a single line before they become indistinguishable and blur together (i.e. the "horizontal resolution" of a CRT), it has a name and can be measured. It's called TV Lines or TVL (not to be confused with scanlines which are horizontal and are always 625 for PAL and 525 for NTSC including the non-visible ones). Consumer CRT TV-sets typically has around 300 TVL, while arcade monitors and professional or broadcast CRT monitors has a lot more, up to around 1000 TVL.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Pokun wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 4:13 pm SCART is just a connector though and it can carry composite, RGB and even S-video, though I think it's not too common for a SCART TV to support S-video via the SCART socket.
The SCART you had was most definitely composite, which is much better than the RF-switch the PAL SNES came with (and adds the benefit of stereo audio), but it's not as good as S-video or RGB, so it's no different from what the Americans could use. As for component the SNES doesn't output that.

The PAL Nintendo 64 did come with a composite cable with RCA plugs and an attached SCART-adapter for TV-sets that lacks RCA jacks, and so did every other Nintendo console after that up to and including the Wii (which also included a component cable). I guess you might have used one of those composite cables with your SNES, that's what I did and still do with my PAL SNES.

I use an RGB SCART cable with my SFC but it's an aftermarket cable as Nintendo never released an RGB SCART cable. They only released an RGB cable in Japan (SHVC-010) which used a Japanese standard which is often called "RGB21" or "JP21". It uses the exact same 21-pin connector as SCART, but the pinnout is different and if you use it in a European TV it will blow something. That cable will only work with certain Asian TV-sets and Asian RGB monitors, and it's quite rare and expensive as RGB21 never became the common standard like SCART did in Europe.


As for the bandwith of how many dots the electron gun can draw on a single line before they become indistinguishable and blur together (i.e. the "horizontal resolution" of a CRT), it has a name and can be measured. It's called TV Lines or TVL (not to be confused with scanlines which are horizontal and are always 625 for PAL and 525 for NTSC including the non-visible ones). Consumer CRT TV-sets typically has around 300 TVL, while arcade monitors and professional or broadcast CRT monitors has a lot more, up to around 1000 TVL.
Yeah, then I think some people are way overthinking and over dramatizing the "issue" regardless.

I never had any issue with stuff not being visible on my SNES: The picture absolutely looked far better than any footage/images of NTSC composite I have ever seen; the colours were nice and clean; the pixels were soft but I could absolutely see each one nice and clearly (so it wasn't just a blurry and dirty mess, and text and stuff was very legible); the scanlines were never ever as visible as people online always suggest they were (at least not for me on my TV setup), etc.

Maybe my Toshiba and Sony Trinitron TVs really were working some magic. Also, one of my foster parents was some kind of TV engineer, so I often had my consoles connected up to some sweet high-end PVM monitors or something, as I recall. I mean the kind of stuff people seem to be really after in the retro gaming scene these days. I guess I was real lucky there.

I think I'm gonna go with using that 512x448 mode in my game in some places, including in an actual level, and let everyone else out there deal with the exact display and device/method they're using in 2022 and beyond to view it correctly (real SNES console, emulator, FPGA, CRT, HDTV, monitor, etc).

And, if it somehow really doesn't work, so be it. It's not like I'd build an entire game without getting the programmer to do a test for me anyway.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sat May 07, 2022 5:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Señor Ventura
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Joined: Sat Aug 20, 2016 3:58 am

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by Señor Ventura »

turboxray wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 12:27 pmSimply because high res graphics take up more memory. If you have a static display with unique tiles, then 512x224 equivalent takes twice the amount, and 512x448 takes up 4 times the amount. VRAM aside, that's also rom space.
64 Bytes per tile.

64KB of vram -CRAM -OAM= 1007 tiles at 512x224.

1007 tiles of 16x8 pixels is good.
lidnariq wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 12:37 pmThe PPU cannot use compressed data. The limit is strictly 64 KiB, for all data, uncompressed.
I meant about repeating the same tiles across the screen to save memory, like a loop.
lidnariq
Posts: 11432
Joined: Sun Apr 13, 2008 11:12 am

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by lidnariq »

Señor Ventura wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 5:35 pm
64 Bytes per tile.

64KB of vram -CRAM -OAM= 1007 tiles at 512x224.

1007 tiles of 16x8 pixels is good.
Nope, that's not how the SNES works.

For each active layer, your tile library is always a 128x512 pixel square, arranged as 16x64 8x8 tiles. In modes 5 and 6, you either get 512 unique tiles (in 16x8 mode) or 256 unique tiles (in 16x16 mode).

(Yes, mode 7 is different)
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

lidnariq wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 5:43 pm In modes 5 and 6, you either get 512 unique tiles (in 16x8 mode) or 256 unique tiles (in 16x16 mode).
At the SNES high resolution of 512x448, am I correct that it would be a little bit less than 1/3 of the screen worth of unique 16x16 tiles?

Honestly doesn't seem THAT terrible to me. I mean, not exactly great. And boy would you have to get creative. But I think I could create some passable level art with that amount of unique tiles.
creaothceann
Posts: 611
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:47 am
Location: Germany
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Re: Two Ship mode 5 hires + interlaced comparison

Post by creaothceann »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 5:24 pm I never had any issue with stuff not being visible on my SNES: The picture absolutely looked far better than any footage/images of NTSC composite I have ever seen; the colours were nice and clean; the pixels were soft but I could absolutely see each one nice and clearly (so it wasn't just a blurry and dirty mess, and text and stuff was very legible); the scanlines were never ever as visible as people online always suggest they were (at least not for me on my TV setup), etc.
- get bsnes nightly, set the video driver to OpenGL, set your input keys, set your hotkeys for fullscreen, and load a game (e.g. Super Mario World)
- in "menu | settings | shader" select e.g. "CRT-Glow"
- in "menu | settings | filter" select the various NTSC options

- - -

And the various shaders are meant to 1. break up the low resolution blocks of old consoles and 2. make it look more authentic.
My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
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