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[baphomet]

Here's a comparison with your retrotink 5x screenshot. Remember that your screenshot shows real colours, whereas my photos have washed out colours that don't represent what I can see in real life.

Your retrotink 5x screenhsot

How it looks on my LCD from up close:

Plasma

CRT

IMO not even my LCD show such extreme pixelation like your retrotink screenshot. On my plasma photo I can see aliasing that is inherent to this game, but there's no pixelation (simply because the image isnt upscaled so many times).

BTW- the dots on my photos, that's dithering, PS2 games had limited colour depth, so developers used dithering to mask colour imperfections. On SD CRT, the dithering dots are blurred, but at 480p they are clearly visible on both my plasma and LCD. IMO Xbox version looks and runs way better despite running at the same resolution (there is no dithering and aiming is much smoother and more responsive).

You realize the "pixelation" is the game right? Black specifically has nearly everything dithered and no AA.

You're not seeing it because youre displaying a non-native resolution image and the actual details are just getting blurred out during it being scaled to the panels native resolution.

That is the most basic knowledge for correctly scaling games.

Doing this from my phone, but even then it's easy to see the difference.

Which of these looks correctly scaled to you? CRT is just being included for completeness, it looks fine.

 

[polybius80]

Yep 100% PS2 lack of mipmapping makes it soar in HD. Mid and far away assets look a generation ahead. Some PS1 games benefit the same aswell.

the ps2 doesnt lack mip mapping, it can and use mip maps in its games(not every game) in fact there are a lot of good practices and recommendation from sony about them, speed texture transfers, bump mapping, LOD, etc, each year they gave information to devs about what was mostly used by games as well as other third party devs shared their knowledge and improvements

 

[CGNoire]

the ps2 doesnt lack mip mapping, it can and use mip maps in its games(not every game) in fact there are a lot of good practices and recommendation from sony about them, speed texture transfers, bump mapping, LOD, etc, each year they gave information to devs about what was mostly used by games as well as other third party devs shared their knowledge and improvements

I know. I meant it is very often not used which leads to great results via emulation.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Games on PS2 that had more stylize visuals aged better than the games that were trying to be more realistic visually.

So basically like every console ever made. I agree with this, btw. Although for me, stylized = anything not going for near hyperrealism (of what would have been considered it at the time for the era).

Games like the Onimusha series for example still look fantastic even if they had a more "realistic" look because they weren't aiming for overt realism, and were fantasy/feudal-based anyway. I'd say anything that isn't a sports game from the era generally looks good today if it looked at least upper of its class back in the day.

There still aren't that many sim racers that look as visually striking and as a cohesive whole package for their day as GT4 did on the PS2, and that's just a single example of many.

It was the most successful in sales but it was by far the ugliest system of the 3, and the weakest.

1. Xbox
2. GameCube
3. PS2

Multiplat games were far worse on PS2. Like Silent Hill 2, Soul Calibur 2, Resident Evil 4 and on. It aged during the gen itself.

This might break your heart but the Gamecube had a few technical advantages over the OG Xbox when it came to processing power. I would need to re-look them up, but it definitely has a few advantages power-wise over the Xbox that surprised me when I first learned of them.

The PS2 might have technically been the weakest of the three, and it had the worst video output of the three easily, but you're only comparing multiplats and in some cases like RE4, the PS2 port was rather quick and a bit dirty. The PS2, obviously, had a lot of exclusives and a lot of those were still going toe-to-toe with the best looking games on Xbox and Gamecube right up until the end of that generation.

In some cases, looking even better. GT4 for example, really makes Forza Motorsport look a bit silly since the latter can only run at 30 FPS, and it has a worst color palette and lighting comparatively in terms of the whole visual look (technical & artistic).

 

[fart town usa]

this begins my extended break from gaf.

Some of you have lost your damn minds.

 

[Doom85]

this begins my extended break from gaf.

Some of you have lost your damn minds.

(slowly turns to all the heretics who disrespected the Playstation 2)

 

[RaduN]

Hmmmm....i'm playing MGS3 via emulator as we speak, with a bit higher res and extra AA compared to original (also with constantly smooth 30 fps) and it is absolutely gorgeous. There's really, no other word to describe it.

 

[RaduN]

Still looks insane to me.

Also, in terms of body mo-cap finesse and cutscene direction, these games are not only not surpassed, but are yet to be matched.

 

[polybius80]

Ive had it way below 26fps, i mean i have a ps2 thats chipped, never known it to cause issues other then being a bastard to launch games but definitely the last 2 missions frame dips are really bad, last atleast 5 secs again with heavy explosions,

but that is very different from what you said, in fact is not uncommon in games to have lower framerate in heavy explosion or scenes, the console its not more or less powerfull because devs decided to make a couple of complex situations

didnt say it was a bad port but ps2 after 3 years had afew games where dips were incredibly obvious but at the time people wouldnt of realised, just like how red dead redemption runs ass on ps3, even viewtiful joe has frame dips which involve the game being slow but again at later levels

there will always be games where there are problems, some minor some major some weird and some without a clear explanation and that is regardless the system you can watch framerate comparisons and see dips in any system in many games in certain situations you can check framerates for games on every console no matter if they were released at the third year of the console you are talking as if this only happens on ps2, if you have game with frame dips but you also have a more complex games with or without them, then it means the original game with dips can be made better given more time and knowledge about the system

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

You realize the "pixelation" is the game right? Black specifically has nearly everything dithered and no AA.

You're not seeing it because youre displaying a non-native resolution image and the actual details are just getting blurred out during it being scaled to the panels native resolution.

That is the most basic knowledge for correctly scaling games.

Doing this from my phone, but even then it's easy to see the difference.

Which of these looks correctly scaled to you? CRT is just being included for completeness, it looks fine.

I'm not talking about aliasing (stair-stepped appearance of diagonal lines). Your retrotink 5x seems to be using nearest neighbor upscaling.

Here you can see the difference. The first image (nearest neighbor upscaling) is pixelated, and I absolutely hate this pixelated look. Of course the 2'nd picture is more blury because of filtering, but TV upscaling can refine it with sharpening mask so the image will look sharp and without pixelation. Can you turn filtering on your retrotink upscaler to make it look more like the 2'nd image?

 

[K.N.W.]

Here's a comparison with your retrotink 5x screenshot. Remember that your screenshot shows real colours, whereas my photos have washed out colours that don't represent what I can see in real life.

Your retrotink 5x screenhsot

How it looks on my LCD from up close:

Plasma

CRT
399999

IMO not even my LCD show such extreme pixelation like your retrotink screenshot. ON my plasma screenshot there is some aliasing that is inherent to this game, but there's no pixelation (simply because the image isnt upscaled many times).

BTW- the dots on my photos, that's dithering, PS2 games had limited colour depth, so developers used dithering to mask colour imperfections. On SD CRT, the dithering dots are blurred, but at 480p they are clearly visible.

Also, some Hi-Fi guru told me that if you are actually able to discern dither you are too close to tv, and that way I can see it even on my CRT at 0.5 mt of distance, even tough not all games do that, Black doesn't for example, but I think it's because that and other games don't use it in interlaced mode, GT4 in 480P has 16 BIT Colors + Dither, and just hi colors with no dither in standard definition.

CRTS on OG hardware blurs the shit out of the image and hides a lot of the detail and crisp polygons.

Emulation & HD remasters truly exposes how fucking beautiful most of these games look

call me a zoomer but you'll never catch me playing these artistic masterpieces on a CRT. 6th gen was the last gen you even needed those TVs and the games honestly aged better without them

Ps2 games might look crisper on more modern tvs, but the original look only works on CRT, the right color and lighting balance only works in conjunction with right tv, image settings, cable and room lighting. Like, on an old school TV doesn't make polygons pop out crispily (for the better, considering aliasing, but generates much of the pseudo-photorealism everybody talks about when speaking about old PS2 memories, on a modern screen that Photorealistic-balance gets lost, due to colors being different compared to CRT, thus leaving you without a part of that artistic masterpiece.
Source: I live with 6 TVs in my room, and watch Silent Hill 3 ending everyday.

 

[Lysandros]

I don't think so at all. At the time it was known that of the "big three", it was in last place in terms of visual power.

In multiplatform titles that's actually GameCube which often came last between the three, it often struggled in texture detail, effects, post processing/lighting but had less shimmering and up to date compression ('smoother' textures). And around the time there was by no means a general consensus about which of two was more capable overall among developers or audiences just like today. Which makes sense, each had their own weakness and strengths based on their hardware.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

So basically like every console ever made. I agree with this, btw. Although for me, stylized = anything not going for near hyperrealism (of what would have been considered it at the time for the era).

Games like the Onimusha series for example still look fantastic even if they had a more "realistic" look because they weren't aiming for overt realism, and were fantasy/feudal-based anyway. I'd say anything that isn't a sports game from the era generally looks good today if it looked at least upper of its class back in the day.

There still aren't that many sim racers that look as visually striking and as a cohesive whole package for their day as GT4 did on the PS2, and that's just a single example of many.



This might break your heart but the Gamecube had a few technical advantages over the OG Xbox when it came to processing power. I would need to re-look them up, but it definitely has a few advantages power-wise over the Xbox that surprised me when I first learned of them.

The PS2 might have technically been the weakest of the three, and it had the worst video output of the three easily, but you're only comparing multiplats and in some cases like RE4, the PS2 port was rather quick and a bit dirty. The PS2, obviously, had a lot of exclusives and a lot of those were still going toe-to-toe with the best looking games on Xbox and Gamecube right up until the end of that generation.

In some cases, looking even better. GT4 for example, really makes Forza Motorsport look a bit silly since the latter can only run at 30 FPS, and it has a worst color palette and lighting comparatively in terms of the whole visual look (technical & artistic).

IMO the PS2 has better video output quality. 480p form PS2 (I'm using sony brand component cable) looks perfect, because the image has this sharp (digital) look, while the same 480p from xbox has that analogue softness (I'm using MS cable), with some ringing around the edges (it looks like contrast sharpening to me). PS2 games however run at lower resolution and lower color depth (with dithering on top of that) most of the time, so overall xbox game will look much better despite the PS2 having supperior component video output. Some PS2 games looks better with old 480i, because low resolution will mask dithering, while extremely shartp 480p compoment video output will show it.

I still remember how blown away I was when I saw the GT3 for the first time, however with time I have raelized what Polyphony did to make gran turismo look so good amd they used clever tricks and gimmicks to achieve realistic graphics. For example the shadows were preblaked (there was no dynamic shadows), car models had no interriors (just dark windows to mask this imperfection) and tree were made just from bitmaps. IMO something like PGR2 on xbox had way more detailed graphics (car models had interiors), and way supperior lighting effects (dynamic shadows thanks to shadow buffers) than GT3/GT4, although gran turismo still looks better to my eyes despite being less detailed .

 

[hemo memo]

 

[Lysandros]

Yes But it was the only system to fully use it's power. I remember a EGM article about this. It Said the PS2 was the weakest out of the GameCube and Xbox, but GameCube and Xbox would never reach their maximum potential while the PlayStation 2 did.

Now that's completely bollocks. Just to mention one thing, even the more elaborate PS2 games managed to achieve about 20% of utilisation of VU0 vector co-processor in micro mode. The developers were still discovering new techniques and still learning even at the very end of the generation. The machine had such a deep grunt and kept on giving. If there was one system which came close/r to its theoretical peak, that was the Gamecube with its more straightforward, easier to exploit architecture, this was the machine's main strength.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

Also, some Hi-Fi guru told me that if you are actually able to discern dither you are too close to tv, and that way I can see it even on my CRT at 0.5 mt of distance, even tough not all games do that, Black doesn't for example, but I think it's because that and other games don't use it in interlaced mode, GT4 in 480P has 16 BIT Colors + Dither, and just hi colors with no dither in standard definition.

Ps2 games might look crisper on more modern tvs, but the original look only works on CRT, the right color and lighting balance only works in conjunction with right tv, image settings, cable and room lighting. Like, on an old school TV doesn't make polygons pop out crispily (for the better, considering aliasing, but generates much of the pseudo-photorealism everybody talks about when speaking about old PS2 memories, on a modern screen that Photorealistic-balance gets lost, due to colors being different compared to CRT, thus leaving you without a part of that artistic masterpiece.
Source: I live with 6 TVs in my room, and watch Silent Hill 3 ending everyday.

I have played the Silent Hill 3 for the first time just recently. IMO that's the best looking PS2 game. I dont know how they did it, but the shadows in SH3 looked comparable to xbox games (before playing SH2, I thought only the Xbox was capable of rendering real-time shadows.). Also textures and character models were surprisingly detailed for a PS2 game. Unfortunately Sillent Hill 3 runs at sub 480i (512x480 rather than 640x480), so the image quality hides how good looking game the SH3 really is. On the emulator however it's possible to run this game at much higher internal resolution.

CRT TVs have amazing color depth and contrast compared to modern displays, and they dont need to upscale the image. On LCD you will not get similar image quality for sure, however my plasma also has this CRT like depth, and because it has low resolution even 480i PS2 games looks amazing on it. I prefer playing PS2 games on my PDP, because CRT blurs the image way too much, sometimes I can barely read the minimap, or read the text, while the text on my PDP even at 480i is reasonably sharp.

 

[baphomet]

I'm not talking about aliasing (stair-stepped appearance of diagonal lines). Your retrotink 5x seems to be using nearest neighbor upscaling.

Here you can see the difference. The first image (nearest neighbor upscaling) is pixelated, and I absolutely hate this pixelated look. Of course the 2'nd picture is more blury because of filtering, but TV upscaling can refine it with sharpening mask so the image will look sharp and without pixelation. Can you turn upscaling filtering on your retrotink upscaler?

It's bilinear sharp polyphase upscaling, not nearest neighbor. You might as well just plug these consoles in via composite since it seems like you're trying to get the shittiest image quality possible.

That second image isn't ever going to not look terrible. Especially after over sharpening it on a TV.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

It's bilinear sharp polyphase upscaling, not nearest neighbor. You might as well just plug these consoles in via composite since it seems like you're trying to get the shittiest image quality possible.

That second image isn't ever going to not look terrible. Especially after over sharpening it on a TV.

Listen mate, on my CRT or even plasma I dont get this pixelated look. If I would be forced to play PS2 game on LCD, I would rather display 640x480 1:1 with extremely large black borders, rather than upscale the image with retrotink 5x and play with such extreme pixelation. I absolutely hate this pixelated look, because that's not how PS2 games should look.

 

[Lysandros]

Pretty sure most people who owned both have said the PS2 version had better audio and FMV quality. The Xbox port was not handled by Team Silent, probably the reason.

PS2 version had also more complex/thicker fog effects. Which is not suprising given the alpha differential between machines due to much higher framebuffer bandwidth and fill rate on PS2.

 

[64bitmodels]

Here you can see the difference. The first image (nearest neighbor upscaling) is pixelated, and I absolutely hate this pixelated look. Of course the 2'nd picture is more blury because of filtering, but TV upscaling can refine it with sharpening mask so the image will look sharp and without pixelation. Can you turn filtering on your retrotink upscaler to make it look more like the 2'nd image?

me just chilling with my uprezzed 1440p Dolphin image that reduces all aliasing, makes polys less visible thanks to per pixel lighting, and doesn't need a blurry shit image to smooth out artifacts

 

[baphomet]

Listen mate, on my CRT or even plasma I dont get this pixelated look. If I would be forced to play PS2 game on LCD, I would rather display 640x480 1:1 with extremely large black borders, rather than upscale the image with retrotink 5x and play with such extreme pixelation. I absolutely hate this pixelated look, because that's not how PS2 games should look.

I'm done here, it's clear you don't know anything about upscaling, let alone lossless upscaling. As long as you're fine playing on that plasma ringing purple and green lines everywhere, then go for it.

Pixels are squares. Upscaling a square you're going to end up with, yup a bigger square.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

me just chilling with my uprezzed 1440p Dolphin image that reduces all aliasing, makes polys less visible thanks to per pixel lighting, and doesn't need a blurry shit image to smooth out artifacts

I love emulators. It's almost like playing a remastered version when you run old games on the emulator. Currently, Gamecube and PS2 emulators can run the vast majority of games without any problems however Xbox (Classic) emulation is still not as good.

I'm done here, it's clear you don't know anything about upscaling, let alone lossless upscaling. As long as you're fine playing on that plasma ringing purple and green lines everywhere, then go for it.

Pixels are squares. Upscaling a square you're going to end up with, yup a bigger square.

I don't think there's such a thing as lossless upscaling, because I've never seen an upscaled image that looked good to my eyes. For this reason I still keep my old TV's. I use FULLHD LCD for 1080p games and BD movies, and subHD plasma for sd content and x360/PS3 games. My sony 4K LCD TV has very good upscaling (at least compared to other TV brands), but I still can see when the image is upscaled. Bilinear sharp polyphase upscaling on your retrotink doesnt look much different compared to the nearest neighbor upscaling, the only difference is that some pixels will have different size, to avoid slight blur on non-integer resolutions.

I have tried pretty much every display technology for my retro games. From what I have seen, only HD CRT or PVM can beat the picture quality of my plasma in 480i/480p content. Remember that you are only looking at photos taken from my Plasma and I have taken them from a very close distance. Photo will always exaggerate everything and in real life I cannot see any purple ringing or geen lines. Try taking a photo of your TV and you'll see what I mean.

Here's a photo of my CRT tv. You can see the horizontal lines but in real life I cant see anything like that.

Metal slug x PSX

GT2 PSX

Even colours don't look the same as they do in real life. For example my CRT can display perfectly saturated yellow color, but on the photo below yellow color is extremely washed out:

Here is a screenshot of the emulator to show you what the colours should look like. On my CRT and Plasma I can see similar saturation instead of washed out colors.

IMO, the dynamic range and colours that our eyes can see in real life cannot be captured by a camera.

If you could see how good the 480i/480p image can look in real life on CRT or low resolution PDP you would understand my perspective . Your retrotink screenshots look pixelated and that's not how these PS2 games look on CRT or even my low resolution plasma.