Post subject: Reduced brightness in some NES games
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Felix the Cat: Snapshot from FCEUX Snapshot from direct console video output Snapshot from TV One more gallery with very noticable difference Jungle Book: FCEUX Gallery of snapshots James Bond jr: FCEUX Different snaps with visible difference The cause of that. TV corrects the picture which was designed with care about this correction. But is it at all possible to get such pucture from emulator? No? Maybe we could work out how much was reduced & make an encode that would consider it. EDIT: added James Bond link
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The problem might be that the emulator is not doing some gamma correction it should...
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Warp, the console doesn't either! Only the TV-set does. I believe that if you connect console or even emulator to TV, they both would look perfect.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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TV also corrects the aspect ratio, it doesn't mean an emulator shouldn't do that.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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If we wanted to have accurate emulators, we wouldn't use Mupen, PSCX, Gens (soundwise), Final Burn Alpha... let's face it. It's a minefield, and it's best left as it is.
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That's a really poor, apologetic argument, though. :3
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Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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I was exaggerating the problem. I still absolutely hate Gens's sound emulation, however, it really isn't helping the reputation of the sound system (Granted, most games did just have genuinely bad music).
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moozooh wrote:
TV also corrects the aspect ratio, it doesn't mean an emulator shouldn't do that.
moozooh, yes! But ENCODE should. It must give us as similar to TV's picture as possible. That's why I want to know, how to do that for these 3 games.
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feos wrote:
That's why I want to know, how to do that for these 3 games.
I still think you should try gamma correction to see if you can get close to what you want.
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Emulator authors are usually not very interested in making the output resemble that of a genuine monitor. Only a handful of them have implemented Blargg's filters, for example. And even those are rather limited. Another good example of a correctly emulated system that looks nothing like the real thing: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=25987
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Nestopia has a function of increasing yellow. But I still don't know if it's supposed to emulate the discussed subject (though its NTSC filter is awesome)
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AnS
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FCEUX is accurate in emulating these games. These games use "tint" bits of $2001 register to make palette darker. They are supposed to be dark. Of course player can manually adjust TV brightness to compensate this effect. And those gamefaqs.com screenshots were either created using older emulator or they were edited (brightness increased).
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The last scanline of level BG isn't darkened in Jungle Book & James Bond It is so not every frame though. AnS: can we find out how the picture would look without this darkening? It will be like on these scanlines.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Some games are just dark like that. I've played that Spiderman vs Sinister Six game on hardware and yes, it's as dark as the screenshots suggest.
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AnS
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feos wrote:
AnS: can we find out how the picture would look without this darkening? It will be like on these scanlines.
Here: http://shedevr.org.ru/stuff/hacks/tint_bits_hacks.rar
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I'm currently processing the publication for Jungle Book and want to suggest the rule that those 3 games must be encoded with the above patches applied, because with bright enough colors they all look incredible, while dull dark palette kills some of the entertainment of the TASes of them.
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AnS
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Well, this definitely should not be a *RULE*, maybe just an exception, like for those encodes with Input Display/additional HUD/etc.
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The evidence is presented isn't very strong: any photograph of a TV screen is going to involve the camera doing all sorts of exposure/light level correction. I also wouldn't trust any end-user off the shelf video capture card to not muck with levels. Still, it's probable that AGC made these shitty games look less shitty on real hardware. I've noticed a few genesis titles with suspect light levels as well. I'm a bit worried that mucking around will make a precedent of "fixing" things that look bad.
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The question is, shall I make standard encodes that look as death, or encode all bright and add an original youtuber as an option? Bright encode would be added optionally anyway, if I have to stick to the former, which I wouldn't wish. Well, in James Bond that darkeining MIGHT stand for atmosphere and all, but in Felix, it's JUST WEIRD. Also, Lungle Book "day" looks like all jungle is in smoke.
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Jungles are pretty dark, even in the day; just sayin'.
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The raw console/emulator output might be naturally darkened because of the black scanlines. This might be what it should look like (note that both the shader and the filter have gamma controls; I didn't adjust them).
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I don't see the problem in brightening the videos. It's not like we are modifying the game or doing video editing. It's completely akin to gamma correction. And it's not like there can be an "absolutely correct" brightness setting. Even if you knew the exact luminosity of every single palette entry as presented by the real console on a standard average analog TV with factory-recommended brightness and contrast settings (which most TVs probably don't have anyways), it would still be really difficult to reproduce in an exact manner in a computer display, because also the display's brightness, contrast and gamma settings would have to conform to exact specifications (which 99.9% of people don't.) I'd say that if brightening the video makes it look better, go for it.
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Warp wrote:
I don't see the problem in brightening the videos. It's not like we are modifying the game or doing video editing. It's completely akin to gamma correction. And it's not like there can be an "absolutely correct" brightness setting. Even if you knew the exact luminosity of every single palette entry as presented by the real console on a standard average analog TV with factory-recommended brightness and contrast settings (which most TVs probably don't have anyways), it would still be really difficult to reproduce in an exact manner in a computer display, because also the display's brightness, contrast and gamma settings would have to conform to exact specifications (which 99.9% of people don't.) I'd say that if brightening the video makes it look better, go for it.
What I don't want though, is to have encoders to have a burden to "correct" crappy games, or be subject to complaints from users "this game looks/sounds like crap, why not make it better", especially when it's not really possible. If someone's actually going to encode something, could I maybe see a comparison screenshot or two, "hack off" vs "hack on"?
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Yeah, that will work. I can't help but wonder if there's some subtle analog effect inside the NES's video output track that's not being emulated correctly, though...