Framebuffer is waaaaaaaay to small to feasibly and efficiently pull 720p w/o sacrificing too much in another graphical area of a game.
Native Wii Resolution?
- Thread starter michaeljamesjohnson
- Start date
If I remember correctly, you can render to the main memory directly. It would be excruciatingly slow and thus useless in any reasonable scenario involving gaming, but rendering a higher (than what the 2MB eDRAM could hold) resolution framebuffer might be done theoritically.
Whatever the resolution, my new monitor recognizes it as 4:3. If I set my monitor to maintain aspect ratio, it squishes the Wiis 16:9 output into 4:3 with pillar boxing. If I set my monitor to fill it takes the 16:9 output and stretches it to 16:10, which is preferable but not optimal.
DeadlyNinja
Veteran
I have a question: The Wii renders at 640 x 480, then stretched (or whatever's the proper term) to look 800 x 480, correct? I've been suspicious of it for quite some time. It seems NOA likes to take 640 x 480 screens and stretch them with photoshop to give it that horrific look in many of their screens.
That stretching is anamorphic widescreen. It's what widescreen TV broadcasts and DVDs come as.
So, for anamorphic widescreen, the image is rendered in a 4:3 resolution and then stretched to fill a 16:9 screen, or displayed on a 4:3 screen with letterboxing inserted? So my monitor is displaying the Wiis 16:9 output as 4:3 when I tell it to maintain aspect ratio, because that's the true ratio of anamorphic content? So if you have a 16:10 display, you can't really get around having to fill the screen to get the correct width, which messes up by slightly stretching vertically. Sucks a bit. Guess it's not as much an issue with proper tvs, because they have the correct aspect ratio.
The NTSC/PAL video signal standards are for a 4:3 aspect ratio. To get around this widescreen is squeezed horizontally and then stretched onto widescreen displays. Or letterboxed, as you say.
Yes, I would imagine so. The video signal is 640x480 or whatever it is.
This is also a problem with some monitors. If they don't have a letterboxing mode, 16:9 content is stretched to 16:10. What imbecile decided to create displays to a resolution that was entirely divorced from the standards that content is produced at? I've no idea, but that idiot has managed to create a world of display madness!
I'm using the new Dell 2408wfp. For wide modes it supports 1:1, aspect and fill. I guess whatever flag it's supposed to pick up on for anamorphic content is being missed, because aspect keeps it at 4:3. I've tested some true 16:9 resolutions with the aspect setting, and it works perfectly.
I also do not understand this 16:10 business. First it was 5:4 LCDs and now we've got 16:10 LCDs. Great display though.
grandmaster
Veteran
If memory serves there is no 16:9 flagging system available to 480p component.
My anamorphic DVDs automatically play widescreen on my widescreen tv over 480p. This is through my x360 over component and I checked in the service menu and the TV was receiving a 480p signal(since the x360 doesn't upscale over component). Videogames don't use this flag for some reason.
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The_legend_of_drtre
Newcomer
You're getting confused like I did. The rendered resolution of 480p widescreen videogames is 640x448. Then the console sends it out as a 640x480p signal which you manually set the tv to stretch the image to the 480p widescreen res of 853x480. 480p doesn't have to be widescreen.
480p TVs can accept a maximum resolution of 720x480p for anamoprhic DVDs which the TV stretches out to 853x480p. Games however only render at a maximum of 640 horizontal for some reason. I guess they don't want to spend resources rendering those 80 extra horizontal pixels since most people are likely to play those SD games on 4:3 composite interlaced(480i can only accept a maximum resolution of 640x480i). Probably also technical reasons of the console as people in this thread seem to suggest the framebuffer is barely enough for 640x448.
480p TVs can accept a maximum resolution of 720x480p for anamoprhic DVDs which the TV stretches out to 853x480p. Games however only render at a maximum of 640 horizontal for some reason. I guess they don't want to spend resources rendering those 80 extra horizontal pixels since most people are likely to play those SD games on 4:3 composite interlaced(480i can only accept a maximum resolution of 640x480i). Probably also technical reasons of the console as people in this thread seem to suggest the framebuffer is barely enough for 640x448.
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The_legend_of_drtre
Newcomer
Well that's why I said "true 16x9 480p is 854x 480". I know games can be 480p without widescreen but most games that have 480p support are widescreen as well.
I mentioned the 854 x 480 number because most people seem to be under the impression that the highest res the Wii can output is 640 x 480 and that is false.
That is the max for the N64. Not the Wii.
I mentioned the 854 x 480 number because most people seem to be under the impression that the highest res the Wii can output is 640 x 480 and that is false.
That is the max for the N64. Not the Wii.
No, it's true. Or at least, Wii doesn't render 854x480. I don't know if it can render 720x576 which is the official PAL resolution.
The widescreen 480p is horizontally stretched to the same size as 854x480 would be with normal square pixels. It's the same trick as PS3 rendering a 960x720 and stretching it to 1280x720. You render the same number of pixels as the 4:3 aspect, but scale them to a widescreen image with a sacrifice of quality versus rendering to the true 16:9 render buffer.
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