Why/how does the dreamcast vga swap trick work?

Fox5

Veteran
Just wondering, why is it that games that didn't support vga officially could easily be made too. Wouldn't it mean the system is outputting a vga image anyhow? And why wouldn't this work on other systems for a progressive image?
 
That is not always the case. For example, IIRC, "Incoming" only used a 640x240 framebuffer to get as much texture space as possible, probably because it was a quick port and they may have been pre-loadeding all the textures and/or didn't use any texture compression.

Furthermore, the display system definitely had a mode to do interlaced where it would down-filter the 640x480 image to produce each field.
 
see thats one of the things i love about DC..... why they had to exclude VGA from following consoles is beyond me..... (at least "officially", as it stands it's a pain to connect PS2, GC and Xbox to monitors today and feels more like a "hack" than anything....)
 
I found owning a vga monitor that doesn't do 30hz vertical signal to be part of the problem when it came to gaming and image quality. I remedied this situation by buying an rgb monitor that they uses at conventions that did 480p and 480i through 5 pin bnc or s-video. Though getting a ps2 hookup for the monitor is a bit of pain even with a blaze vga adapter. BTW london boy I have yet to see GGXX on the ps2 in progressive scan.
 
theafu said:
I found owning a vga monitor that doesn't do 30hz vertical signal to be part of the problem when it came to gaming and image quality. I remedied this situation by buying an rgb monitor that they uses at conventions that did 480p and 480i through 5 pin bnc or s-video. Though getting a ps2 hookup for the monitor is a bit of pain even with a blaze vga adapter. BTW london boy I have yet to see GGXX on the ps2 in progressive scan.


you MUST. it's very very cheap now (it came out at a lower price actually), it's a real gem with LOADS of stuff to unlock...And absolutely gorgeous, playing any Capcom 2D fighters after having played this is painful... i mean, really...
 
In time maybe I will though price isn't the issue of me not playing GGXX rather the fact the ps2 systems I have access to is selective and when it happens vf4evo and sc2 are the focus. At the same time I'm iffy at best about taking my vga enabled devices out of my house since they always get broke at a tourney or in a college dorm.
 
So dreamcast could do that vga trick because it almost always was outputting a progressive image, and then that image was converted to interlaced?

Bleh, I want an easy to use swap trick on gamecube like there was on gamecube so I can get timesplitters 2 running in progressive, maybe clone wars too...ooh and super monkey ball! I'd like the resident evil games in progressive scan too, but since they're prerendered I doubt that would work.
 
Fox5 said:
I'd like the resident evil games in progressive scan too, but since they're prerendered I doubt that would work.


huh???
what does the fact that it uses pre-rendered backgrounds have to do with anything? :D
 
Well, I heard something about final fantasy 10 had to have its FMV redone for either progressive scan support, or PAL support....one of those. ?Anyhow, I just thought that since it is prerendered, maybe it would be stored in memory in such a way that it couldn't be displayed in progressive scan without reprogramming the game.
 
Fox5 said:
Well, I heard something about final fantasy 10 had to have its FMV redone for either progressive scan support, or PAL support....one of those. ?Anyhow, I just thought that since it is prerendered, maybe it would be stored in memory in such a way that it couldn't be displayed in progressive scan without reprogramming the game.


well, FFX PAL version forced to run at 60Hz progressive DOES yeld synch problems in the cutscenes.
but thats because Square ususllay cant get their hands out of their asses to release a PAL version A WHOLE YEAR AFTER NTSC RELEASE and *forget* to put even a simple 60Hz option....
i mean, there are LOADS of games out there with prerendered videos that have at least a 60HZ option, why can't they do it???
anyway, yeah it might have some problems if the game cant be played at 60Hz.
the NTSC version should be just fine though.
 
So I take it something like the Blaze VGA box for PS2 could work on gamecube, but no swap tricks like on dreamcast. Too bad no such box exists for gamecube.(who'd bother, with the lower user base for a niche product, the difficulty of producing gamecube disks, and that most of the games already support P-scan)
 
Fox5 said:
So I take it something like the Blaze VGA box for PS2 could work on gamecube, but no swap tricks like on dreamcast. Too bad no such box exists for gamecube.(who'd bother, with the lower user base for a niche product, the difficulty of producing gamecube disks, and that most of the games already support P-scan)


Doesn't gamecube have an official VGA cable? Of course not in Europe for reasons we already discussed in other threads...
the big bulk of the Blaze thing for PS2 is actually the software, because the "box" is just a modified version of the VGA cable that came with the Linux Kit... (this one works with any monitor, not only monitors that support Sync-on-green like the original that came with the Linux Kit)
 
Gamecube does have a vga cable, but it's not official. It's either a modified component or d-terminal cable. The problem is that it only works with gamecube games that support P-scan.(maybe if you had a monitor that could support the correct frequencies you could at least get an interlaced image, but you can't force non P-scan games to run in P-scan)
 
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