PCSX2 - Widescreen Game Patches

[Leapo]

Out of curiosity, I gave it a whirl on KH2. The first thing I noticed was lag caused by all the extra rendering, so I had to switch it to native.

Dunno what to tell you. All of these games run at a solid 60 FPS for me at 5760x1200, with v-sync enabled. I was actually running Crash Bandicoot at an internal resolution 5760x2400 (scaled down to 5760x1200 by PCSX2) to help reduce its interlacing artifacts.

My rig consists of a Core i5 2500K at 4.6GHz, 16GB DDR3, Asus P8Z68V/GEN3 motherboard, Asus Xonar sound card, and a Radeon HD 6970.

Right after when Pence notices the missing photos ("ALL OUR ____ ARE GONE!"), Roxas enters the frame on the right. His model suddenly popped-in, ruining some of the integrity of the game. I watched the same scene again with 16:9 hacks, and his model never pops-in. This is one con of using widescreen hacks, especially at 48:10 moreso than 16:9. And if I saw pop-in in one of the first few cutscenes, I bet there's going to be much more later on.

Considering how far we're pushing the game here, I think that's to be expected.

Again, this has been known to happen in PC games as well (even ones specifically designed for Eyefinity, like Hitman Absolution). Not really that big a deal, honestly. Many people just ignore it, and enjoy the view

All the speech bubbles and subtitles were... well, eye-gauging for me. The extra rendering felt rather disorienting, kind of like looking in a funhouse mirror or something to that effect.

That's probably because you were viewing it on a single screen. A given FOV value is correct as a function of screen size and distance from said screen. You were effectively viewing it too small and too far away for how high the FOV is. It looks amazing on an appropriate display setup.

I disagree, I think 2D graphics can be just as important as 3D, especially in games where artists put a lot of time into character portraits and 2D graphics. Having to tap F6 all the time would be pretty tedious. Think about how many times you have to navigate a menu in an RPG. Here's an illustration... which portrait looks better?

Like I said, it doesn't bother a lot of people. Yes, it'd be nice if 2D didn't stretch, but it does, and there's a simple work-around.

We can deal with it if we get views like the ones in the screenshots I posted.

The reason why it works with 16:9 is because it's far closer to 4:3 than 48:10 is.

Still distorted either way, just not as much. If you're really worried about distortion, then 16:10 is probably the best widescreen aspect ratio for you, since it's even closer to 4:3...

But yeah, I (and many others) have put up with stretched HUDs before. This is nothing new for us, and not a reason to totally abandon making these patches...

I think Eyefinity is best for racing games where peripheral vision immerses you in more, as well as games specifically designed for it, but with PS2 games, where developers never intended games to be shown in such a manner with super stretched 2D graphics... nah. Just not digging it. If there was a way to keep the 2D intact, I'd be more enthusiastic.

I use it in all sorts of games. It works great in racing games, but it also works amazingly in first person shooters (gotta love the extra peripheral vision), and in 3rd person games like Hitman: Absolution. Heck, even Sonic Generations is mind-blowing with the extra width. The sense of speed with the additional aspect ratio is crazy.

As for keeping 2D in-tact, I think it might be worthwhile to get in touch with the author of the GSDX plugin. He might be able to shed some light on weather or not it's possible to change the aspect ratio of 2D overlays independently of the 3D render target.



Edit 1: I will totally try and hack Gran Turismo, but there's no existing 16:9 hack for it, so it could take a while...



Edit 2: While attempting to fix Dark Cloud (NTSC-U) for 48:10, I discovered the current 16:9 hack doesn't actually work properly.

The first line "patch=1,EE,202A194C,extended,3F206D3A" does indeed correct the aspect ratio (crops off the top and bottom of the picture).
The second line "patch=1,EE,202A1F18,extended,42BC0000" does not increase the FOV to compensate. What this value actually does is set the distance that the camera hovers behind the player in some (not all) areas.

So all the current Dark Cloud patch does is crop the game and make outdoor areas look "flat" because the FOV is wrong and the camera has been pulled back too far. The value to adjust FOV still needs to be tracked down to do 16:9 correctly.

[nemesis2000]

Requesting Silent Hill 2 Director's Cut PAL (SLES 51156 - CRC: 6BBD4932)

6BBD4932.pnach

So all the current Dark Cloud patch does is crop the game and make outdoor areas look "flat"

lol

http://ps2wide.net/d.html

[Bositman]

Damn nemesis that was fast, thanks

[Leapo]

lol

http://ps2wide.net/d.html

Not sure what you're laughing at, those screenshots appear to be from the PAL version of the game (unless there's a newer hack available for the NTSC-U version that works right?). The widescreen hack for the PAL version of Dark Cloud (created by ElHecht here: http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-PCSX2-Wid...#pid253201 ) actually works correctly, as it adjusts the FOV and the aspect ratio.

The widescreen hack I described above is for the NTSC-U version of the game, which is the hack included in devina40's latest pack. It does exactly what I described in my previous post (crops the game and moves the camera in some in-game areas).

Edit: Here's a screenshot of exactly what I described. This is that second value in the Dark Cloud NTSC-U pnach file turned waaaaaay up. This is clearly camera distance, not FOV.

   

And here is an interior scene (camera distance setting has no effect here). First with the NTSC-U patch enabled (cropped 16:9) and then original 4:3 for comparison.

       

The patch for the PAL version of the game works perfectly in all areas (adds additional width by adjusting the FOV and aspect ratio).

[jadentheman]

Out of curiosity, I gave it a whirl on KH2. The first thing I noticed was lag caused by all the extra rendering, so I had to switch it to native.

Right after when Pence notices the missing photos ("ALL OUR ____ ARE GONE!"), Roxas enters the frame on the right. His model suddenly popped-in, ruining some of the integrity of the game. I watched the same scene again with 16:9 hacks, and his model never pops-in. This is one con of using widescreen hacks, especially at 48:10 moreso than 16:9. And if I saw pop-in in one of the first few cutscenes, I bet there's going to be much more later on.

All the speech bubbles and subtitles were... well, eye-gauging for me. The extra rendering felt rather disorienting, kind of like looking in a funhouse mirror or something to that effect.

One think I noticed about the Kingdom Hearts series id that the game automatically throws cutscenes in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio through cropping. If someone can make a proper widescreen hack for KH,RE:COM, and KH2 for both cutscenes and gameplay we're set. The HD collection is using the aspect ratio of 1.66:1 (cropped to 1.77:1) for cutscenes and extended to 1.77:1 for gameplay. The speech bubbles and HUD are stretched as the game is fitting the HUD to the screen size. IF there is someway to fix those textures to properly fit the 16x9 ratio.

[Leapo]

@nemesis2000
Just noticed that the page you linked to has your pnach posted, and it works correctly on the NTSC-U version of the game (same as the PAL patch). Wish you would have mentioned that when you linked it

devina40 might want to look at including your widescreen hack in her pack instead of the current one...

Anyway, this one was super easy to patch for 48:10. Only real issue with it is the stretched HUD. Screenshot time!

   

   

   

   

   


Edit: Just noticed you also did the Final Fantasy X hack. I notice it adjusts the boundary at which the engine culls geometry, but most values I try to use simply result in visual artifacts. Any idea how that works / what I need to set to widen the culling boundary even farther?

[iakoboss7]

@Leapo
wow.... with your setup games are starting to look like cinema movies xD kh <3

[Devina]

My PC is a budget build with an entry-level card around $100, not $300, so that's why it lagged. You need a powerhouse for Eyefinity, and that could be a con to some people who can't afford high-end gaming PCs (I don't mean to use it in an argument against Eyefinity, but it is a truth). And yeah, I was viewing it on a single screen, and also tried viewing it really closely, so I'll admit it was biased. I can see why some people would like the effect, but it's certainly not for everyone.

I understand your point about how wider adds more. Back on page 105, I was arguing why I preferred 16:9 over 16:10. It's just that the way 2D graphics are displayed rubs me the wrong way and why I wouldn't go further than 16:9, since I can put up with 16:9 2D, but not 48:10 2D. A 2D fix is ultimately up to the PCSX2 coders and developers. I'm just the widescreen archivist.

Thanks for the notification about Dark Cloud.

If you notice something wrong about the archive, that's why you need to contact me through PM or in this topic.
I'm not going double-check hundreds of games to see if they work fine, I also rely on the players using the patches.

[VIRGIN KLM]

PCSX2 devs can't do nothing about the HUD/2D ellements since it can't "guess" where are the borders of the actual game's real aspect ratio since such mechanism depends to values in the memory which are already modified in the widescreen patches so it will strech them to those boarders since the game is programmed to do so. It's not like in Gamecube or PSOne that you tell the video card to reveal more stuff that are rendered in the VRAM (with an ultimate point revealing the game's textures somewhere in the corners of the VRAM limmits), in PS2 it works differently. A patch that do what you say, is the Digimon Data Squad patch I did, I had to modify the value for the HUD because it affected alot (fake) 3D stuff that were in the screen and appear weird because you would think they are 3D but in reality they are 2D flat textures.

I'll try to break it down why Widescreen in PS2 is really such a big issue.
Take a careful look at this image, Gamecube on the left, PS2 on the right (inaccurate but as noob friendly as possible):


On the left side of the image you see what Gamecube and PSOne do to render image and what the emulator does to trick the hardware to output widescreen. It's the whole (3D) VRAM is Yellow area and the Texture Cache of the rendered oblects in Light Blue area rednered flat. The Green area is inside the yellow arean and it has 4:3 proportions which is what you see on the screen of your console. What the emulator does is steal some extra bit of area from the Yellow area and render that too. Now in contrast, on PS2, the VRAM is the Green area which is also what is out of the bounds of what you see in your screen, which is marked as the Red/Black area. The problem is that that out of bounds area is fixed you cannot steal anything from it because the borders around what can get rendered are fixed geometricaly. So you noticed those squares inside the render area? Let's name those samples (or pixels, they are not pixels but it helps thinking them as that). They are perfect squares right? If you change the shape of those squares to a percentage counter opposite to 16:9 it will result stuff that are assigned to those fixed borders move inside the rendered area and get squished/appear a little bit like anamorphic widescreen though their samples are still a whole pixel. What you so after that is revert the aspect ratio back to perfect squares and this will result into correctly shaped widescreen image with no image quality loss (if your resolution fits the final pixel aspect ratio in a square pixel maner).

So the conclusion is that that "thing" that defines where the HUD should be placed is always set from the developers to "any place that fits the corners" so whatever you'll do unless you modify it manualy, it will always fit the corners of the screen whatever aspect ratio.

[nemesis2000]

updates, updates, updates
all the differences on the screens

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