HD Emulation Mod Makes 'Mode 7' SNES Games Look Like New (arstechnica.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Gamers of a certain age probably remember being wowed by the quick, smooth scaling and rotation effects of the Super Nintendo's much-ballyhooed "Mode 7" graphics. Looking back, though, those gamers might also notice how chunky and pixelated those background transformations could end up looking, especially when viewed on today's high-end screens. Emulation to the rescue. A modder going by the handle DerKoun has released an "HD Mode 7" patch for the accuracy-focused SNES emulator bsnes. In their own words, the patch "performs Mode 7 transformations... at up to 4 times the horizontal and vertical resolution" of the original hardware.
The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.
The results, as you can see in the above gallery and the below YouTube video, are practically miraculous. Pieces of Mode 7 maps that used to be boxy smears of color far in the distance are now sharp, straight lines with distinct borders and distinguishable features. It's like looking at a brand-new game. Perhaps the most impressive thing about these effects is that they take place on original SNES ROM and graphics files; DerKoun has said that "no artwork has been modified" in the games since the project was just a proof of concept a month ago. That makes this project different from upscaling emulation efforts for the N64 and other retro consoles, which often require hand-drawn HD texture packs to make old art look good at higher resolutions.
Been done before (Score:2)
ZSNES has the option to do something like that, although not as high-res. (And by modern standards it is a very inaccurate emulator.)
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IIRC, older versions of snes9x had it too. But as you say not nearly as high-res nor AFAIK with all the efforts to potentially correct for 3D distortion. If you've got some actual screenshot comparisons, though, I'd love to see them. Also note that this is being developed for bsnes. So, it's very much the polar opposites of accuracy.
ZSNES did this as well (Score:2)
ZSNES was one of the first good SNES emulators along with snes9x. ZSNES had a high resolution mode 7 setting as well nearly 20 years ago in v0.915
https://zsnes.zophar.net/shrin... [zophar.net]
Cool project (Score:1)
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Video (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re:Video (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind, those artists worked with old TVs and coaxial cable in mind. Their intention was not the sharp pixels we see in emulators, but this. [warosu.org]
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Keep in mind, those artists worked with old TVs and coaxial cable in mind. Their intention was not the sharp pixels we see in emulators, but this. [warosu.org]
That makes sense. Looking at the video above I didn't remember things looking that bad, but I've seen so many "lo-fi indie" games that I've probably forgotten what things really looked like. Has anyone come up with a mod that also emulates the display characteristics of 80s-era TVs?
What about Low DPI mode? (Score:5, Informative)
One thing I saw when I upgraded my Amstrad CPC 1512 to a 486 with a SVGA Display 320x200 16 color games just didn't look as good any more. Mainly the high resolution high DPI monitor made these pixel nice little squares. Where the Amstrad had a low DPI where each pixel were a bit rounded and a little grainy. This made dithered 16 color graphics look much more realistic, when the EGA dithered the colors, it felt like a 128 color display.
So now with 4k displays, We should be able to emulated the old low DPI displays and see the games much closer to to how we use to see them.
Re:What about Low DPI mode? (Score:4, Informative)
Can confirm the fake CRT effect looks good on 4k.
This is an impressive hack. The effect being enhanced is actually a hack on the SNES. Mode 7 only does rotation and scaling, to get the ground plane effect you have to adjust the parameters on a scanline by scanline basis using CPU interrupts.
So for the emulator to do this it must be more than just hacking the mode 7 code. It must interpolate the parameters between scanlines too.
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I assume you're the original AC here, mode 7 only supports linear 2D matrix transformations so on its own it can't do perspective.
To show perspective effects in mode 7 the SNES uses its HDMA to modify the matrix transform every scanline to create a psudo-3D effect [youtube.com].
That HDMA corresponds to the ~224 emulated SNES scanlines, not highres PC scanlines. So while the rotation and scaling is trivial to upscale, the "perspective" would still have a stepped appearance without using some extra tricks.
Mode 7 was really impressive at that time! (Score:5, Informative)
It was done elsewhere (Score:2)
With clever programming, the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive does not need extra processing power to pull off these effects. Here is someone pulling off the same effects as F-Zero on the Genesis.
G-Zero: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
The road on the SNES uses mode 7 to add perspective to a bitmap plane and shift/rotate it to simulate a road. The effect is replicated on the Genesis/Mega Drive in software.
Other games like Mega Turrican, Gunstar Heroes, and Red Zone demonstrate these effects in actual gameplay.
The S
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Very impressive considering the Genesis is much earlier hardware with no specific acceleration for such tasks. Whether it was done 30 years later or not has nothing to do with whether it's possible on the raw hardware.
But this road-like effect isn't the only thing mode 7 was used for, it was used to scale and rotate objects such as characters in the game like in Mario World. In the other games I pointed out you see the Genesis pulling this off smoothly on multiple objects at a time, something the SNES could
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The CPU doesn't do it on the SNES - the graphics chip itself can do rotate/zoom effects on a single tilemap layer. It can't do it on sprites. Super Mario World (ab)uses it in boss fights by making the boss a tilemap layer so the bosses can do backflips and appear to move towards/away from the screen.
The MegaCD rotate/zoom works differently. You have to do it on individual tiles and then upload them to the VDP, which is fairly expensive. The bandwidth constraints mean you can't upload enough tiles for a
F-Zero is BEATIFUL! (Score:2)
Oh yea, this is great.
I'm absolutely pumped to play F-Zero with this mod. Good grief that Mute City is so pretty! This stuff looks like a lost generation of games now.
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Old news, everyone in the emulation scene already knows that those games are meant to be played on CRT with a correct aspect ratio. Since these CRTs aren't really being produced anymore, these filters are meant to try making them look good on LCDs and filter out the moire that's more likely to impact artisitc vision compared to the CRT blur.
Also, you don't speak for the authors of said works.
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There have been several lawsuits against emulators and they always fail.
Now distributing ROMs that's another thing.
Remarkable Achiement. (Score:1)