GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[mistamontiel]

Dragons, isn't that hardly a difference to standard res..?

480i .. or the "i" itself rather.. I haven't understood yet

On another topic.. "p" is supposed to mean 16:9 ratio ?

[PacmanPlush]

mistamontiel wrote:

Dragons, isn't that hardly a difference to standard res..? 480i .. or the "i" itself rather.. I haven't understood yet On another topic.. "p" is supposed to mean 16:9 ratio ?

i and p stand for interlaced and progressive, respectively--they are completely independent of the aspect ratio. Each represents a different way of displaying video on a television set.

By design, televisions in North America, Japan, and a few other parts of the world refresh their image 60 times a second, though most video is displayed at 29.97 (approximately 30) frames per second. With progressive video, the entire frame is shown all at once, giving us a full 60 frames per second (with each frame of video being shown twice, since 60/30=2)

In the early days of television, this method took up too much transmission bandwidth to be feasible, so interlaced video was devised. With interlaced video, each frame is broken into two fields, which are alternated between every 1/60th of a second--the first field contains every even scanline, and the second contains every odd scanline, as they appear 1/60th of a second after the image in the first field. To our eyes, we see one complete image, and we perceive it as having twice the actual frame rate.

In simpler terms, each frame of interlaced video actually contains half of the current frame and half of the next, with each line alternating between the current frame and the next one--but it refreshes so fast you never see this.

As Trevor stated, the N64 supports two video modes: 240p (each frame has 240 vertical lines of information, and is displayed as one complete image) and 480i (each frame has 480 vertical lines of information, giving us a higher resolution image, BUT it is broken into two fields--thus, still only 240 lines are displayed at one time, but due to interlacing we see the full 480.)

GoldenEye's high-res mode, as Dragonsbrethen stated, is 440x330. This, I presume (and if I'm wrong here, I'm wrong about everything after this point), is scaled up to fit the N64's 640x480i high-res mode. Compared to GoldenEye's regular 320x240 mode, you're getting 1.375 times the vertical and horizontal picture information. Unless my math's off, this means the image is just a bit over 27% larger.

While you are correct that it isn't a huge difference, it's clearly necessary--if the credits were displayed at 640x480 but rendered at 320x240, all you're doing is scaling the image up to twice its size AND losing the benefits of progressive scan. Instead, the credits (and Facility in this case, thanks to bmw's hack) are displayed at 640x480 and rendered at 440x330 (no doubt the maximum Rare could do without the expansion pack, as they would later do with Perfect Dark), which as we've seen actually makes for quite a noticeable difference.
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[mistamontiel]

Pacman, thanks much for the input, not as complex as I thought

Hm.. I'm not sure if I've ever had a TV running half 60FPS .. that would suck ass

[Dragonsbrethren]

PacmanPlush wrote:

While you are correct that it isn't a huge difference, it's clearly necessary--if the credits were displayed at 640x480 but rendered at 320x240, all you're doing is scaling the image up to twice its size AND losing the benefits of progressive scan. Instead, the credits (and Facility in this case, thanks to bmw's hack) are displayed at 640x480 and rendered at 440x330 (no doubt the maximum Rare could do without the expansion pack, as they would later do with Perfect Dark), which as we've seen actually makes for quite a noticeable difference.

Interestingly, they opted for 640x240 for PD's hi-res option, which of course means the N64 can just double it vertically on output. Because of the higher vertical res in the PAL version, though, they had to go with 448x268, so hi-res in PAL is slighter lower res and stretched horizontally too. GE's high res scenes are rendered the same in NTSC and PAL, only the output changes.

PD's starting sequence is 576x480 in all regions, even without the expansion pak, but those are pretty barebones compared to GE's credits sequence so they could probably get away with the higher resolution.

[Trevor]

Yeah, p and i are different to the extent of our dicussion as i was almost always used untull the advent of modern HD TV's (which initially were i) where we then moved to p for blu-rays.

The framebuffer adds an extra more complicated layer to the N64, but it does allow developers to squeeze as much out as they can without being limited to 2 res options.

When you first read the section on VI (Video Interface) it seems as though Nintendo only have provisions for 2 options, but as is the case with GE/PD they changed the frame buffer too.

Talking of PD, I found these framebuffer caps on the internet and so joined them into 1 image for comparison.
http://fgfc.ddns.net/PD%20FrameBufferRes%20Comparison.bmp
I hope that framebuffer shots like these could be taken by the everdrive at some point in the future

What I find odd is the resolution of PAL. Normally (in low resolution) PAL has a greater resolution, and in this respect this holds true for PD, however switch to High Res and bam, NTSC has more total pixles.
I am quite dissapointed and I now play NTSC PD in Hi-res.

Oh, and to complement PacManPlush - PAL
Those of Euro, UK, Austrailia who have PAL sets, the refresh is 50 Hz with 25 frames per second. The rest holds true for both.
Also, to put both PAL ant NTSC framerates into perspective, movies in the cinema are 24 fps (albeit 'progressive' since its an actual frame of film)
Of cource, now this changes too, with HD Digital media and HighFrameRate comeing onto the scene, but then you also get HD TV's running at 600Hz. we dont want to talk about these though

Anyone want to have a guess at what deflickered interlaced is?
High-resolution
N = Normal interlacing
F = Deflickered interlacing

Trev
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Last edited by Trevor on Sat Nov 01, 2014 4:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

[Dragonsbrethren]

I read something on deflickering recently but I can't remember the details all that well. (I remember the conclusion being that deflickering was bad on modern displays, though.) If I happen to come across it again I'll post a link.