Gsdx future discussion

[tsunami2311]

back to my original question gregory are we getting ready to remove it Custom Res from windows GUI too? and finally make it so Custom Res is do able in the ini

[gregory]

I won't touch windows GUI. I work only for linux people. Yes we might remove it in the future but it isn't important. Linux misses the gui entry to set the custom resolution value, so instead to have a half broken GUI, I just completely remove it.

We need to discuss how we can plug a countinuous scaling factor, the size of the step 0.1 (bigger?, smaller?).

[willkuer]

.1 doesnt make sense I guess. Maybe 2^(x/2) with x from -1 to 6? That would allow all integer resolutions 1/2/4/8 and some inbetween as 0.7, 3 and 5x native.

For sure i would do it in log-space. Lin-space doesnt make sense at higher resolutions.


Maybe 2^(x/4) or 2^(x/8) if you like.

[Mako]

ol. Seriously "didn't dig"... Do you think that I fixed hundred of game by accident 

My apologies if you took it that way, but that was not even implied. You've seem to have taken my one remark pertaining to this subject only, and applied it to everything you have ever contributed to the project ever... That would be incorrect, I'm sure your contributions to the project are commendable and I appreciate the time you've taken out to contribute.

I will list what I feel is the real complied pros and cons  of completely removing this I will do my best but there is likely many games that still require this feature and is unlikely and unrealistic that it only effects these games in the library.

Pros

• Star Ocean - Till the end of Time: Fixes various GUI and screen blending effects that produce black lines when increasing resolution. HW hacks can solve some of these issues but not all, custom resolution is the work around setting them to 1200 x1200.
  
• Tri-Ace games: Radiata Stories and Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria: Both Fixes various GUI and screen blending effects that produce black lines when increasing resolution. HW hacks can solve some of these issues but not all, custom resolution is the work around setting them to 1200 x1200. Both of these games don't exhibit the issue as bad as Star Ocean but during some cut scenes black lines appear throughout. Star Ocean seems to use the effect more and the other two less, but they do use it and the only fix for them is setting the custom resolution.
  
• People have weaker Hardware that can't quite achieve 2x - or they are "cutting" in areas to gain performance. - Might be debunked by your own research. But some people report (and still do) up to a 20% gain.
  
• People who use custom resolution to fit their hardware needs, like dual monitoring, or resolutions beyond the maximum allowed.
  
• *This person (and others) report a clearer image using custom resolution, while it is likely improbable, users might have some unaccounted receiver or scaler that might process a specific resolution better (as in clearer image or better looking to them) or monitor with an internal scaler that produces these results.
  

[b]Cons

• Takes up space in the GUI, while might seem trivial to most and has been around for the better part of the last decade and a half this seems to have had a recent offense to developers.
  
• Might result in code cleanup.
  

To your cons listed in the other thread, they don't really apply... Snow Engine games are not effected because the users of those games would simply not use the function. That same argument can be applied to your other list of very small cons. With all do respect these issues were very easy to find and were found in threads you started or commented in. You and others just rebuked them with what ultimately boils down to "its to few to count" so they don't matter. Most (if not all) of my pros there is no recourse for these people and in some cases games that once ran and played beautifully would ultimately be permanently broken, or those that use hardware.

The future that seemed to take the stance that everyone is considered when trying to use the software, the future proposed sets it on a direction of who is more popular and what group should be discounted. I believe this to be an incorrect path.

*This does seem to be converting in BBcode. Hyperlinks don't seem to be converting right I hate MyBB.

[gregory]

My apologies if you took it that way, but that was not even implied. You've seem to have taken my one remark pertaining to this subject only, and applied it to everything you have ever contributed to the project ever... That would be incorrect, I'm sure your contributions to the project are commendable and I appreciate the time you've taken out to contribute.

No worry, I'm not that serious

* Star ocean and Tri-ace game uses same rendering engine. A couple of other games (yakuza) can be hacked with CR to mitigate upscaling issue. Actually what happen it that due to different upscaling factor. 1 will be sampled as 0.999999 rounded to 0 or sampled as 1.0000001 rounded to 1. I'm nearly sure you can do the same with a floating scaling factor such as 1.85 (vs 1 or 2).

* Again a floating factor might help for people that want to do 1.5 for performance reason.

* IMHO, 8x and above are only useful to fill the GPU memory faster. Dual monitoring suck to play a game, so remain triple monitor. Seriously how many users? And they can still use an older version/legacy plugin.

* clearer image => yes it is possible. Well depends of the "clearer" definition. if you could avoid a final down-scaling, it can be sharper. You will be able to do it (with float scaling) but it won't be as straightforward. And it would need a setting by game.


Otherwise for the issue. You seem to imply that features are orthogonal. Speed/CR/... are independent of each others. Reality is that everything is mixed together. For example there are some scaling code that must work for both upscaling/CR. The code is far from perfect, you can see glitches on shadows on Star Ocean. So technically I won't remove CR soon, reality is that I'm currently working code depth handling differently to avoid glitches (rainbow effect), better support strange 16 bits format (Silent Hill). There is a high probability that code won't be compatible anymore with CR.

played beautifully would ultimately be permanently broken

When you dig a little, you could find only few game that aren't broken on Dx+Upscaling. (just look at the hundred of hack in the source code to drop draw call).

[Mako]

If your sure floating the resolution is a viable recourse for those games as it is now they by all means. I welcome the change.

As for the hardware scaling I believe your talking more in a general sense... since it's impossible to know what reciever and scaler handles what resolution best and what looks most "clearest" to the end user. Custom Resolution perfectly fits those users needs currently. But if you have a better alternative than that is fantastic news.

[gregory]

I'm not sure but it is the only possibilities I see. But I need to double check if it is really doable. Hopefully it would solve 90% of the need of CR.

[Mako]

When you dig a little, you could find only few game that aren't broken on Dx+Upscaling. (just look at the hundred of hack in the source code to drop draw call).

Sorry for the late reply busy at work. I only dug for about 5min, and like I stated before it be pretty foolhardy to think that these are the only games effected. I bet every last dollar I had on it effecting more, its completely unrealistic to assume that these are the only games effected.

[BlackTelomeres]

I can definitely see people wanting to do say 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 etc for performance reasons if they just can't get the evens at full speed. I don't tend to use custom res to achieve that because I'm too lazy to calculate what say 2.5 res on any particular game would be given some of the weird and variable(?) resolutions of some PS2 games.

I take it that with games where setting them to a specific custom res fixes issues, those issues are essentially innate to the game when uprezzing and not anything that can be fixed naturally in PCSX2 code or would need to be hacked around for those games specifically because of their particular quirks.

[tsunami2311]

Sorry for the late reply busy at work. I only dug for about 5min, and like I stated before it be pretty foolhardy to think that these are the only games effected. I bet every last dollar I had on it effecting more, its completely unrealistic to assume that these are the only games effected.

I highly doubt you know better then gregory., CR as it is cause MORE issue then just Normal Upscaling. and there is only hand full game the need "specific" cr settings. Most of which have been fixed in Opengl or VIA HW hacks