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View Full Version : Why does PS1 games look awful on a PS2?



MrTeressaBond
April 2nd, 2009, 18:30
I know this may have been brought up a million times, but i couldnt find a definatel answer, because i dont have my precious PSX anymore, plus it was modchipped! :( and it was only done for £5 around 10 years ago,because it was done by a friend of my uncle.

now, i have this PS2, and when i would like to play the good old PSX games, they just dont look great as they did on the original console. They lagg like hell and it seems to be resolution resized, which im not too sure about because i dont see the point.

can anyone settle this for me may i ask?

quzar
April 2nd, 2009, 23:34
The PS emulation/BC in the PS2 is laggy because it puts the controller through an extra set of circuitry and such, it has to route it in a slightly different way, which gives that bit of controller lag.

The bad look is because they render exactly the way the PS did, but double the resolution, which exacerbates the flaws in the original.

If you hook up a DVD player and bluray to an old tube tv you probably won't be able to tell the difference. Put it onto a nice big HDTV and it should become clear. The same idea comes in here, the PS2 is playing something that looked fine at a lower resolution in a higher one.

MrTeressaBond
April 3rd, 2009, 00:07
i see, the controller thing is something i am not totally understandable of, i am assuming u are talking about certain chipsets inside the PS2 and not the actual control pad itself? :D

and yeah, i always thought it was resizing, but i just wanted confirmation, the original PS resolution is around 320x240, so its most likely that the PS2 is resizing it to the console's native resolution; 640x480. Is there any way to stop it resizing at all? it i hella annoying.

and wat can be done (in theory aswell) to stop the lagging?

quzar
April 3rd, 2009, 02:22
i see, the controller thing is something i am not totally understandable of, i am assuming u are talking about certain chipsets inside the PS2 and not the actual control pad itself? :D

and yeah, i always thought it was resizing, but i just wanted confirmation, the original PS resolution is around 320x240, so its most likely that the PS2 is resizing it to the console's native resolution; 640x480. Is there any way to stop it resizing at all? it i hella annoying.

and wat can be done (in theory aswell) to stop the lagging?

Nothing can be done about the lag. In the original playstation, you have controls and they lead directly to the proper input on whatever chip. On the PS2, they go elsewhere and are routed back to the right place when in BC mode, so it causes a slight delay (as I understand it).

I don't know about menus and settings, but I could have sworn it had filtering options in the BIOS.

JLF65
April 3rd, 2009, 02:25
Can you describe a place where it "lags" so that others can check this? "Lag" doesn't really describe the problem well enough to say what is the issue. I haven't seen any "lag" on my PS2.

Also, the PS2 runs the PSX discs in the SAME resolution as the PSX. If the PSX games was 320x240, the PS2 will be running in 320x240. That said, the PS2 has a much bettter output, especially if you were running the PSX on RF or composite to an old TV, and now you run the PS2 on component out to a nice TV.

As a matter of fact, many PS2 games run in 320x240 mode. You'll find patches out there for PS2 games to FORCE them into hires mode to make them look better. When I bought an RGB cable to hook my PS2 to a computer monitor, it came with a disc you booted, then swapped for the game, that would force many games into hires mode.

quzar
April 3rd, 2009, 03:37
Can you describe a place where it "lags" so that others can check this? "Lag" doesn't really describe the problem well enough to say what is the issue. I haven't seen any "lag" on my PS2.

Also, the PS2 runs the PSX discs in the SAME resolution as the PSX. If the PSX games was 320x240, the PS2 will be running in 320x240. That said, the PS2 has a much bettter output, especially if you were running the PSX on RF or composite to an old TV, and now you run the PS2 on component out to a nice TV.

As a matter of fact, many PS2 games run in 320x240 mode. You'll find patches out there for PS2 games to FORCE them into hires mode to make them look better. When I bought an RGB cable to hook my PS2 to a computer monitor, it came with a disc you booted, then swapped for the game, that would force many games into hires mode.

I could have sworn that there was a bios option for exactly that. Sorry for the disinformation I guess.

Accordion
April 3rd, 2009, 22:32
Boot up without a disc in.
Hit the triangle button for version infromation.
Select "PlayStation Driver"
Press triangle again.
you can now change the disc speed standard to fast, and change the texture mapping from standard to smooth.

Unfortunatley the Ps2 has no way of saving your options so you need to do this every time you turn on the console. [at least not on my launch day unit]

I have never noticed any detrimental lagging when laying my PS1 games myself.

MrTeressaBond
April 4th, 2009, 00:50
i get specific lagging from when playing Gran Turismo 2, nothing was wrong with the disc etc. played fine on an original PSX console, plus i always change the bios setting, but i think its abit of a cheap gimmick to keep people happy.

and i used to play the PS2 on an RF cable, and besides seeing picture quality difference, they both was the same in the render output.

but when u talk about HiRes mode, what filtering does it do?

JLF65
April 4th, 2009, 03:46
Boot up without a disc in.
Hit the triangle button for version infromation.
Select "PlayStation Driver"
Press triangle again.
you can now change the disc speed standard to fast, and change the texture mapping from standard to smooth.

Unfortunatley the Ps2 has no way of saving your options so you need to do this every time you turn on the console. [at least not on my launch day unit]


Yeah, it never save that on mine either (30K1 model). From what I understand, the texture mapping just simply toggles filtering on/off - it doesn't change the resolution. For people not familiar with the term, it means that when a texture is being stetched larger as it's drawn, the pixels will be interpolated to smooth them out, and when the texture is being drawn smaller, the pixels will be averaged together, again making it looker smoother.