Why do emulated N64 Games still look different than on real N64?

[KiLLeRuNiT]

Hi,

I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. If I remember the good old time, when me and my neighbour were playing N64 the whole day I think of this "special" look of the N64. It was the big difference to the Playstation. I'm talking about smooth display and edges that aren't really edges because they were so round and soft. You know what I mean?
Don't get me wrong, Emulators do a real good job and I don't want to miss them because they give me back the feeling of many years ago. And my respect to the developers that spend their time for these projects. But WHY is it impossible to let N64 Roms look like on real N64?
Is the resolution the problem?
May someone explain to me?



Thanks and greets

[Clements]

Resolution is one of them. Play at 640x480 with TV-out on a CRT SDTV of 4:3 aspect and it'll look a lot more like the real thing. Low polygon counts and lack of detailed textures really shows on hi-res monitors. Also, the blurry anti-aliasing the N64 had is not actually emulated.

[Another N00b]

I guess it depends on the hardware. The n64 hardware is emulated on the hardware one´s using. Same goes for the rendering (dunno if it´s true).

[KiLLeRuNiT]

Also, the blurry anti-aliasing the N64 had is not actually emulated.

WhY?

[Clements]

Because the devs haven't implemented it.

[KiLLeRuNiT]

Wouldn't it look nicer with the blurry?!

[Clements]

Depends on your perspective. Critics of the N64 thought that the AA made everything too blurry in some games. You could probably semi-simulate the effect with ATI's wide tent filters or NVIDIA's Quincunx.

[Cyberman]

Wouldn't it look nicer with the blurry?!

In addition to what Clements stated, there is the fact AA uses processing power. If the N64 game doesn't run full speed for you now it sure as heck won't with any AA turned on. More importantly if you have done anything with image manipulation graphics and have attempted to scale an image linearly or via pixel addition etc. you will realize that if the resolution was never there to begin with (IE the original image) you cannot create details that never existed. It is the same with games. If the resolution (IE textures et al) weren't in fine detail to begin with, expanding it to a larger scale and BLURRING it won't make it look better, ever. That's reality.

Cyb