Do you believe in this stretch technology?

Hyllian · Post by **Hyllian** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:02 pm

http://www.imagener.com/unlimited.html

I was thinking about zsnes running with this technology. It's unbelievable.

RealmRPGer · Post by **RealmRPGer** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:29 pm

It really works best with photos, but sure. Looks like it analyzes all the fading and blurring / "anti-aliasing" and creates a larger image from that. None of that is present in a 2D environment like ZSNES.

It'd also probably be unbelievably slow realtime.

DataPath · Post by **DataPath** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:32 pm

raster vectorizers are hardly well-suited to real-time performance. Two slightly different scenes could take wildly different amounts of time to vectorize. And they're just plain slow. You have to do a multipass approach, re-processing the image maybe 50 times to get the scaling in the example image you posted.

Not only that - non-commercial/open source vectorizers really aren't that good (at least, I haven't yet found a good one).

Post by **grinvader** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 1:34 pm

Looks like bicubic. It fails hard with lowres pixel-precise details.

[Edit] "Looks like bicubic" meant as in "looks as crappy as bicubic".
It's even worse, since it uses advanced shit to pull that.

MisterJones · Post by **MisterJones** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 4:43 pm

Unlimited Enlargement

WHOAH THERE!

Player1 · Post by **Player1** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:27 pm

I believe in this stretch technology for picture manipulation programs, especiallay to make bigger prints of small jpeg files. But for emulation it is not suitable. Maybe some technology could be derived to make the picture look a bit better and doesn't cost you all CPU power.

But I think Zsnes should play and emulate games like a real Snes did, not only for nostalgia reasons.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:35 pm

What is good for a static image.. is not necessarily good for real time images... something to keep in mind.

Post by **grinvader** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:06 am

And maybe you didn't know, but hq*x and even 2xsai use vector-based fitlering. The vectors are just tiny enough to get a realtime-able filter.

Joe Camacho · Post by **Joe Camacho** » Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:07 am

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT STRETCH TECHNOLOGY!(tm)

DOLLS (J) [!] · Post by **DOLLS (J) [!]** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 9:29 am

Besides, there are a number of algorithms that do better than this.

paulguy · Post by **paulguy** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:15 am

when you look up close to that image.. eww

but yeah who needs filters anyway? im happy with blurry hardware scaling. most SNES games are cartoony anyway and won't get much out of filters.

Echoecho · Post by **Echoecho** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:07 am

imo the existing stretching modes are more than enough already. The hq modes are nice (when not running on a slow machine), but even the regular hardware stretch is good enough for me. Let's face it, in snes we're not looking at a huge hi-res screen but a tiny low-res screen. I am almost sure that the ability to blur the image as it is now, even with regular bilinear, would have been a popular thing on the real snes. What zsnes and more emulators really need is a selectable aspect ratio when stretching in fullscreen. I've only seen 1 or 2 emulators do this but it is nice. This way you can play fullscreen in the original aspect ratio. Some Europeans may want the PAL snes aspect ratio. Or the common 4:3 aspect ratio could be displayed on a weird monitor, like a tall TFT or a widescreen.

edit: The SVN has it I see, I haven't tried it. I hope it works since I've gotten a wide and there's no choice about it.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:11 am

Echoecho wrote:Some Europeans may want the PAL snes aspect ratio.

It's the same as the NTSC pixel ratio.

Echoecho · Post by **Echoecho** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:13 am

creaothceann wrote:
Echoecho wrote:Some Europeans may want the PAL snes aspect ratio.
It's the same as the NTSC pixel ratio.

O rly? Well I guess I was misinformed. But I've been told it's slightly different and there was no way for me to see it.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:26 pm

Yes it's slightly different, but I doubt anybody could see a difference. On a NTSC screen, 224 lines make up all the screen area; on a PAL screen the same area contains 240 lines. So the first 224 lines are compressed down to 224/240=93.3333... percent of their NTSC size.

That's not enough to make the videogame graphics look squished, IMO.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 2:30 pm

creaothceann wrote:Yes it's slightly different, but I doubt anybody could see a difference. On a NTSC screen, 224 lines make up all the screen area; on a PAL screen the same area contains 240 lines. So the first 224 lines are compressed down to 224/240=93.3333... percent of their NTSC size.

That's not enough to make the videogame graphics look squished, IMO.

Oh, then you haven't played a PAL console.

Though if you get used to it, of course you won't notice it anymore. It's just that when you switch straight from playing a fullscreen version of a game on Zsnes to playing a real game on the console with PAL borders that you see it immediately. The black bars are pretty huge.

It has a certain nostalgic value. :p

Post by **Agozer** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 2:43 pm

blackmyst wrote:Oh, then you haven't played a PAL console.

Though if you get used to it, of course you won't notice it anymore. It's just that when you switch straight from playing a fullscreen version of a game on Zsnes to playing a real game on the console with PAL borders that you see it immediately. The black bars are pretty huge.

It has a certain nostalgic value. :p

I concur.

PHoNyMiKe · Post by **PHoNyMiKe** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:18 pm

what do I win?

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:32 pm

blackmyst wrote:It's just that when you switch straight from playing a fullscreen version of a game on Zsnes to playing a real game on the console with PAL borders that you see it immediately. The black bars are pretty huge.

Yeah, I'm sure you can see the difference when you compare the two next to each other. You'll still see squares as squares though, not as rectangles.

blackmyst wrote:Though if you get used to it, of course you won't notice it anymore.

That must be it then... never saw a NTSC screen, only PAL.

Echoecho · Post by **Echoecho** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:55 pm

creaothceann wrote:That must be it then... never saw a NTSC screen, only PAL.

Oh great, so you really didn't know!

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:29 am

Well, I did try blargg's TV filter...

PHoNyMiKe · Post by **PHoNyMiKe** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:25 pm

just so you guys know that image is bullshit. if you see in the larger image, the dog has whiskers that aren't in the reduced image. there's no way a computer can just go and create whiskers on a dog's face like that. also brown spots have white streaks of fur not visible on the 'original' image. unless when they photoshoped it they put too much jpg compression, which makes the smaller image appear worse off than it was at first.

MisterJones · Post by **MisterJones** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:34 pm

You are just jealous because you can't get Unlimited Enlargement.

SquareHead · Post by **SquareHead** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 2:02 am

MisterJones wrote:You are just jealous because you can't get Unlimited Enlargement.

Hey I'm jealous about that!

PHoNyMiKe · Post by **PHoNyMiKe** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 3:35 am

MisterJones wrote:You are just jealous because you can't get Unlimited Enlargement.

tell that to my pants mofo!