2xsai filter

Legend said:

Just wondering if you're planning on incoroperating that to fullscreen mode and not just 500x300 or whatever. I really think that would be the coolest thing ever. It would completely change the whole nes experience.

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actually... how about:

http://www.hiend3d.com/hq3x.html

or

http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/

those would be much cooler, no?

I wanna see hq3x or even 4x put in this, any many many other emulators

Hexidecimal said:

I wanna see hq3x or even 4x put in this, any many many other emulators

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it is already in zsnes, but you have to be in a high resolution to see the option listed in the video config. it does look stellar though.

i haven't found a REALLY pretty nes emu just yet. but i know jabo could make jnes really pretty very quickly if he wanted to.

and xodinel showed a screenshot of fce ultra with hq3x running, but hasn't put it in the WIP afaik.

pretty cool stuff, though, as i love old nes and snes games, and they look so GOOD now!!!

Fullscreen I'll try to do for 0.5.2, as far as the other filters Scale2x isn't as good as 2xSaI really, plus if you read the homepage it has all these licensing restrictions which make it less fun to use

hq2x and hq3x I can definitely look at trying

Jabo said:

Fullscreen I'll try to do for 0.5.2, as far as the other filters Scale2x isn't as good as 2xSaI really, plus if you read the homepage it has all these licensing restrictions which make it less fun to use

hq2x and hq3x I can definitely look at trying

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way cool. u rock!

cool, i'm looking foward to seeing the next version of jnes.

Alright, just to let you guys know the HQ 2x/3x filter set only supports 16bit colour input, the output is 32-bit, this isn't a problem for ZSNES (educated guess) since 16-bit is their depth natively (dithering the output from 32-bit back to 16-bit is more trivial than the input), but as you know jnes can use 32-bit even with 2xSaI, which is actually the color depth I use all the time personally

As a result I dont think hq3x is really worth implementing, I'm not one to let people down but doesn't everyone use 32-bit color these days ?

I'm still hopeful however about adding 2xSaI to full screen resolutions > 640x480, If anyone has any info on 32-bit HQ 2x/3x let me know, I really don't have the time to modify the algorithm, plus my initial testing shows that the library is rather large (40k per filter!, altho maybe as a dll this isnt as as concerning)

Man that sucks about hq3x

I've actually just about completed 32-bit versions of HQ2X and HQ4X (I haven't touched HQ3X because I'm doing this for glN64, and 3x scaling of textures causes obvious problems).

It was actually easier than I thought it might be, just took a small amount of MMX asm work, and writing a new RGB->YUV conversion routine. The problem is that it might be slow for something like JNes, because I'm no longer using a lookup table for the conversion (a 32MB lookup table would be kinda silly), so it has to do the math for each pixel.

I can send the modified source to you when it's finished if you want.

Orkin

For better or worse most overhead in real time rendering for these types of filters comes from all the memory reads/writes and data movement in dx.. putting in the pixel conversion doesnt bother me too much. My concern is the bloat of this filter.. it's like 200k to use all of them (damn macros! ), so I wanna put it in a dll

Thanks for the heads up, it's nice to know someone else was thinking about this same problem, it encourages me to give it another chance (I also just remembered how ugly hardware bilinear 3x is! :/, maybe that's what i needed lol). it sounds like we have similar methods which is real groovy. I haven't plugged it into my emu yet due to my schedule, I'm at work so I've only been playing with the filter code when I get a spare minute.

Fore those of you who are curious here is how hq2x and 2xSaI match up when implemented in Jnes, other than the fact hq2x supports 3x/4x image enhancement (which will require a beefy box for 60fps) can you tell the difference ?

To me it looks like hq2x is just a tad bit clearer, nothing that big.

Hexidecimal said:

To me it looks like hq2x is just a tad bit clearer, nothing that big.

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i'd have to agree, though ingame that clearness may be slightly more profound. over all i'm just a technology nut, and any NEW way of doing things is at least POTENTIALLY better..

but some kind of filter would be nice, and none of the NES emus that i actively use really support it, or have it easy to implement in the gui.

i agree jabo, i only use 32 bit for everything. forget changing resolutions hardly ever is my motto. i pretty much run every program i have at 1024x768x32 and up my monitor HZ to 100. Things look really nice that way, and i don't have to way for the monitor to do it's resolution switch thing (except of course win winxp reboots ).

if anything, i'll get a projector (for a full wall monitor) or multiple monitors, before i bother changing resolutions... LOL

what about that 3d filter on the hq2x site? any chance of that showing up in a n64 emu gfx plug? or is that what you guys were talking about.

i'm just a stupid webmonkey.



btw, this kind of author interaction in a public forum is rad. This community ownz.
oh, and also, might hq4x be ALOT better than 2xsai at a much higher resolution?

i run EVERYTHING at 1024x 768, remember..

Yeah that's why I'm still looking at it and put the time in to make the filter support 16bit/32bit, I need a 3x and 4x filter, altho it will require a fairly good system i think it's worth it (hardware stretching is so ugly, that's all the encouragement you need )

I also checked out the texture filter on that site, it's really fregen cool I must say! Maybe the author could look at using pixel shader 2/3 for texture addressing. Keep in mind that it's also a demo, not all textures are as simple as the one in it, but hey it would be cool to check out. I've seen a few sweet enhancements on the N64 with these filters.

Hey Jabo. Nice to finally meet you. You've done a fine job with JNES. Once I got my hands on it I got rid of all other NES emus I had molding in the far reaches of my hard drives. Didn't expect to find the author of JNES lurking about some random forum I just happen to come across. Small world... (Nice forum, too.)

Either way... Reading this discussion makes me ponder a phrase that I like in particular. "The path of least resistance will seldom lead you beyond your door step." While all of these filters and implementations are nice, I have found that filters such as the Scale2x seem to distort the edges of the images rather than smooth them out in the same manner as anti-aliasing does. (I'm not certain how the filter works...) The results seem to be over-pronounced and the image edges seem to be somewhat exaggerated. I remember the day I brought home my Voodoo5 5500 graphics card, slapped it in, activated FSAA and loaded up Halflife. I was amazed at the clarity I found on the edges of the textures. There was a fine balance between detail and quality. What form of anti-aliasing could one use in an emu such as yours? While these other filters seem to be at least mostly effective, they also seem overly complicated for an NES emu. (They ARE welcome, however. ) It's just a simple idea I thought I'd throw out on the table in the midst of all of the complicated feature talk. I'm guessing there's already a feature that does pretty much what I'm talking about, though. This is just brainstorming.

BTW... Would you happen to have an E-T-A on when your next version of JNES might be ready? Don't mean to bother you. You do great work. Just curious. 8)

Lotta questions I'll try to answer concisely.

AA in 3D deals with edges primarily (well, its suppose to, most IHV's do that "render double resolution" crap), 2D there is no lines/points, you have your set resolution for a given console like the NES. I'm not in favor of Scale2x either, it's an oustanding algorithm for it's simplicity, 2x SaI is good enough tho. I agree, these filters are somewhat overkill, a few years ago I would never consider implementing them, that changed as I've gotten a better PC and seen what they actually do tho.

Next version of Jnes is done, I'm in the process of trying to fulfill the last minute request for HQ 2x/3x/4x filter. As of right now that is done, but I'm not sure what of it will be included, 2x version is 60fps, the 3x filter in 32bpp is 52fps, in 16bpp is 60fps which is real nice. I'll see if I can come up with a good way to get around the extra overhead in 32bpp.. I have a few ideas, just I wish things came better stock since I have other stuff to do

This is on a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4 (DDR), on my other machine 1.3 ghz Pentium III, the 2x filter is is about 46fps, which isnt that fun at all.

CyrylTheWolf said:

Those are very good answers. I admit that I somewhat expected to hear a few of those things. (I also understand what you said. Nice!) Thanks for takin' the time! :chinese:

As for your next version... Don't rush. Take your time. Another saying I live my life by...

"Do you want it done NOW or do you want it done RIGHT?"

So take your time until you're satisfied. We can wait a little longer.

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awesome....
i wonder how it'll run on my athlon...
is there a way to make any of these filters use gfx card hardware?
is that what you're doing? i don't know anything obviously, i'm just excited by the end result....

either way, this should be a killer release!

thanks!

If everything goes as planned, Jnes will be the best NES Emulator out there. Only thing left afterwards would be to implement Online play...probably won't happen, but it'd be nice