Hey Mr.Welbig659, I am SamB, the developer who created and added Area Sampling. You have no idea how happy seeing this video makes me. I worked pretty hard with another developer to make sure that all of the resampling options were high quality and implemented correctly. Area Sampling was the one I created, which is in my humble opinion, the best way to upscale and downscale video. I was kinda bummed after adding it because it seemed like nobody was talking about it, but this video made my day. Thank You! The attention you brought to my feature makes me so happy. I have a suggestion for you to try, based on what you were saying about the textures and polygons not mixing. Try using B-Spline with 8x SSAA at native resolution. I have a feeling you _might_ enjoy it. Also if you are struggling with stuttering, try switching to "Hybrid Ubershaders," and if that doesn't work, try using VBI Skip in the hacks menu. Both of those should eliminate stuttering. Once again, I'm super happy you posted this. It means a lot that this feature helps you enjoy more games. Thanks!
Total game changer of a feature man!! Seeing the kind of video console modders were getting out of original Wiis and custom firmware was giving me MAD fomo. I was honestly shocked as well that the resampling wasn't getting any attention, as I noticed it also assists in reflection resolution too from what I read on the original update page. Thank you for those suggestions, I'll totally give them a try! The work you, and other emulator developers do, does more for the preservation and accessibility of retro games than most AAA publishers. Thank you so much for all you do in the emulation scene!
I wonder if it’s possible to implement sparse grid supersampling? It’s like SSAA except it’s a full scene anti aliasing solution that’s only available (by accident) on nvidia cards. Historically it’s only been for dx9 games.
Dolphin is my favourite controller test app, I haven't played a game on Dolphin in a while but I always install it on every computer just to have a way of troubleshooting controller quirks
As someone who basically shares the same opinion as this video, can confirm. TAA is... not a bad anti-aliasing method, but gosh do I personally hate the look. Smeary as hell.
Important to note that a lot of assets for PS1/PS2/N64/Gamecube, etc. where designed to be viewed with the native resolution in mind and sometimes scaling the image actually breaks the art and leaves a bad first impression for those playing it for the first time this way. Perfect example of this is Waverace on the N64 where upscaling the image breaks the illusion of the displacement deformation of the waves directly around your jet ski blending with a 2d texture animation on a flat ground plane further away. Upscaling sharpens the deliberate blur at the transition line. Because at the time, polygons were sort of an extention of pixel art, but in 3d. Since a lot of the lighting was baked in. The 2d pixels on a texture map are designed to blend with the matching resolution of the pixels that make up the polygons so you are 100% correct about the pixel mismatch in resolution. Especially for PS1 3d models which is why upscaling a lot of PS1 games looks like shit.
I get not wanting to play in HD since it makes low res textures and UI more apparent, but I'd at least enable super sampling. I'm not nostalgic for jaggies at all, I hated them at the time and still do. Super sampling is perfect for games like Resident Evil Remake because the CGI-like quality makes the characters actually look like part of the same world as the mansion, not just drawn on top of it. Anisotropic filtering is also fantastic. The Gamecube and Wii's texture filtering was alright for the time but without AF textures become extremely blurry from a distance or at a sharp angle. Even with no other enhancements, 16xAF will make you think you've installed a texture pack, but it's really just doing a better job at mapping the original 2D textures into 3D. Playing the Prime Trilogy on Wii and again on Dolphin made me realise how much detail was in those textures that I never saw unless I'd put the camera as close to them as possible.
Sonic Colors, Sonic Unwiished, and even the Xbox 360/PS3 Sonic Unleashed have surprisingly high quality textures, but you can barely tell due to the mediocre (and in the HD Unleashed's case, awful) Anisotropic Filtering.
Prime's lava looks noticeably _worse_ at high resolutions because it's using higher-resolution mipmaps making lava look too dark and rocky, whereas the original game used low res textures and a lower-res mipmap at an angle, making lava look smoother.
@@2fernandoc1 PS2 Unleashed can legit freeze in the credits screen, I don't know why they felt the need to make a PS2 version at all but it sure exists in this world now
I'm one of the those people who plays their games on Dolphin at 8k, a widescreen hack, 60fps hack if the game has it, and a texture pack if it has one. That's simply my preferred way to play these games. Instead of waiting for a remaster, I effectively get to have my own personal remaster for whatever GameCube or Wii game I want because of this emulator. I can respect and understand why you want to experience you games the way you do though. This is still a great feature of Dolphin for those who wish to get sharper pixels at native resolution.
I love how emulation allows us to all experience games the way we want, it's pretty great. Even aside from visual experience, mods and cheats to fix little annoyances with games is also so awesome. Replaying Xenoblade 3 recently and there were basically 3 issues I had with the game that were just annoying and didn't ruin the game, but oh my god it still feels so good to make the game just perfect for me
And they allow you to replay games that you may have lost from your childhood or if you already have 100% on one save file, but you only have one save file to use without deleting it (like with Super Smash Bros. Brawl), and so you don’t have to get rid of your hard-earned progress that you may have taken *years* to accomplish and be proud of, and then you can experience the joys of that progression all over again! It also allows you to be able to play games that were maybe only released in one area, like Japan or France, and with English patches (or a patch for whatever language you speak fluently in, if the patches for that language exists), you’d be able to get past the region lock and not have to spend potentially hundreds of dollars on a console for that particular region, only for you to not be able to fully enjoy the game on the actual console, due to not understanding the language! And being able to play some games with a controller that can connect with the PC, laptop, or phone that you use that simulates playing on the actual hardware can feel REALLY authentic!
Dolphin has been a very, very reliable emulator for years. I remember emulating 100% accurate Melee and Brawl on a Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM and NVidia 8500 GT in 2009, it wasn't even that good of a PC back then. The compatibility was just that good.
I used to emulate Resident Evil 4 on a baseline 2015 Macbook Pro (it doesn't even have a dedicated graphics card) and it ran surprisingly well at a stable 30fps framerate. Dolphin is so well optimised ♡
Running the game as close to original as possible is the best way to play. It's why I play Gran Turismo 2 on Duckstation at only 2x, just enough to compensate for how close I am to the screen... ...and with the GT2+ mod.. ..with widescreen cheat obviously.. ...and a 60fps cheat running with overclock.. ..and metric system codes, except I deleted the lines for torque because I find it easier to understand in imperial.. and using dev mode 4x ram hack and cheat to use it for increased draw distance plus full detail LODs for AI cars in every distance including in HUD mirror, with a code to enable it in third person.. ..and a code to fix an endurance event that should be time based but was still a bit off in how it worked, plus fixing a track that was replaced in the track list by a 2-player simplified version of another one in random track events.. ...I guess maybe I don't actually play it that close to the original. Maybe like if it had been a cross-generation release with an improved PS2 version?
Great video! I'm personally one to crank up my resolution to max and install an HD texture pack if available, but I'm glad there's a new option for folks who want a crisp and authentic experience. Btw, regarding your issue at 7:13 , you should be able to edit per-game configs using the GameINI file within each game's properties. I did that for what felt like almost every GC game for a 4K GameCube PC I built years ago. Cheers!
Hey thanks! There's no accounting for taste, but it's always nice to have options. I chose not to mention fan texture packs as, respectfully, I don't like most of them. Yeah several have mentioned editing the GameINI file which I genuinely didn't know about so I may give that a look. Take care!
Besides preserving gaming history and allowing players to bypass the insane prices on the second hand market; the beauty of emulation is the ability to tune the games to look and play the way you prefer. Emulators are amazing and they should be protected at all cost.
As much as I adore my Swissed, ODE-ed Cube, the resampled Dolphin footage at 4:4:4 color resolution feels like a way bigger upgrade to the original system's 4:2:2 output than internal resolution upgrades ever could. No more bleeding reds in some of my favorite games is really enticing me into diving into Dolphin more, especially since I have a 1440p monitor and thus can get a 3x horizontal scale, no interpolation needed :)
I’ve been trying to set up my now perfected reshade crt shader with dolphin, and not being able to display the sharp pixels hurt the result a lot. Thank you for making me aware of this update!!!
Actually it covers 3, since it comes bundled with mGBA. You can boot actual GBA roms in Dolphin. And that's without talking about Virtual Consoles games (which are still technically Wii games)
@@avasam06 Honestly, please tell me more. I was curious (and figured) there had to be Gameboy Player emulation... that's mGBA, correct? & how do you go about channels in Dolphin? I've hacked a few Wii in my time, installed channels and custom injected ROMs, but I've never experimented through Dolphin or knew if it was possible
per game controller config support is abysmal, having to edit a notepad file and look at their wiki is ridiculous. The UI could use a TON of work, when you compare it to the features yuzu, ryujinx, rpcs3 and pcsx2 have it feels lackluster and at times extremely frustrating. Per game controller configs are important and vital for wii and gamecube
@@kylespevak6781 i wrote two detailed answers, one with link and one w/o. Now I can't see any 🤔 But basically you're correct about GBA, and I don't remember the details on how to get channels.
2:04 Sharp pixels have never been part of the OG experience, this is an illusion that just brings you fake nostalgia that never existed in the first place.
Exactly! I was confused by that as well. The GameCube was meant for displays which worked in terms of lines, not pixels. If anything, the blurrier, fuzzier image is more 'accurate' as it is philosophically closer to the phosphor blending you'd get on a CRT.
@@RusticRonnie personally if a game is designed around 30 fps then i see very little reason not to play at that fps, its like when people play movies at 60 fps, it just feels wrong for most people because your not actually getting anything out of it and are just making the experience worse for yourself
I had all my Gamecube games rendering at 1440 and I couldn’t help but to notice the seams on character models, outdated textures, and UI elements remaining in a lower resolution. It leaves only the gameplay to carry the experience and some of these older titles don’t hold up that well. Then I switched on Area Sampling and dropped the resolution back down to native and everything just clicked into place. I’m no longer distracted by any disjointed visuals and can appreciate what the artists working on these games had to offer. They were limited by the technology of their time and everything needed to be incredibly readable no matter the distance from the camera. They had to sell you a feeling and everything kind of comes out painterly and I’m so down for the “less is more” vibes. It’s actually making me enjoy these older games even more and it’s no longer nostalgia bringing me back. I’ve started my first playthrough of Metroid Prime and am thoroughly enjoying the experience despite the outdated control scheme because everything else works. Full disclosure, I do have the widescreen hacks on because, to me, it only adds to older titles. Courtesy of NGC Widescreen Project by Warped Polygon on YT.
I'm, sure you already know about this, but do note that you can install custom texture packs for a lot of games that up-res the UI textures. I've really enjoyed using the Animal Crossing pack in particular.
I actually really agree with your visual taste. When I’m playing older games, I tend to upscale the graphics to 4K, and apply a pixelated filter using reshade, which gives surprisingly really clean and unified graphics. I myself hate blurry ui elements mixed with sharp graphics, this is my preferred method.
As someone who grew up with the N64, GCN, & Wii, mimicking original hardware alongside running everything on a rather low spec macbook was a *top* priority for me. As a matter of fact, Dolphin was so well optimized that I was able to play Brawl's various mods in highschool during lunch or afterschool while waiting to be picked up. Now, several years later, it remains a very nostalgic emulator ironically enough because it was how I played some of the games I've always seen and wanted but could never afford, even though at first it was just my way of playing games I already had but didn't know where my old consoles were. It's very validating to hear others who have my preferences regarding uncanny performance but understands the difference in tastes and just is boasting the pure fun that is running Dolphin on a potato to play some classic video games.
Dolphin in phone is my only option, but for some reason, the framerate is reduced to 30 FPS, and for some reason, I can only customize the internal resolution, and I've searched DEEP into the settings, even messing up my gameplay, but there's only that one setting. And according to someone, Dolphin for mobile only supports correctly Metroid Prime, and although I'm not stuck with only that one game, I of course will never have a good experience because of that problem
@@justaadhdgamerwesley6244That explains a lot of questions, thanks. The only problem is that I already have many items in Metroid Prime, and I don't want to start over, does the new version recognize all the files from the old version? If so, that would be so nice!
@@apotatoman4862 GameCube, my phone isn't powerful enough to run Metroid Prime Trilogy. But anyways, thanks, in any case, I'm not that far in the game, it wouldn't be so stressful to get to where I was.
I render my emulated 6th-gen and Wii games (and PC games meant for 480 lines) at 4K and use Reshade CRT-Royale with a scanline setting of 4 to effectively downsample them to 480p within a high-detail CRT mask. This way everything looks pristine with no aliasing to speak of, but it also doesn't reveal the flaws. I also do the same thing with PPSSPP but with a scanline width of 7 instead. dgvoodoo2 paired with Reshade CRT-Royale can also be used this way, due to its ability to scale output of extremely old 4:3 PC games to a 4K 16:9 window, adding black bars so you can have that extra resolution to play around with CRT-Royale within, adding curvature and whatnot
Anybody who was there, *knows* that it was actually Dolphin 3.0 that brought it from a curiosity to an actual emulator. It was still pretty rough, but you could actually play it. Prior versions would glitch and crash so often that it was unplayable. Also, computers just weren't fast enough, and around 2011 was the time when computers finally caught up.
Dolphin is so good, it make me sad to use emulators for other consoles and not have all of its features. T^T The Dolphin devs sure spoil us. Just a headsup, you can grab USB Sensor Bars for very cheap anywhere in the world. I got mine in Brazil, works just like the Wii Sensor Bar, except it has a USB connector to plug to the computer. Never had any problems.
Yeah I ended up nabbing a USB sensor bar. I read they may not be as accurate from having fewer LEDs in them, but I sit pretty close to the TV so I don't think it's much of an issue. There wasn't any problems using it for the footage here. If anything i'm thinking of shelfing my Wii and Wii U sensor bars just to have less clutter in my setup. Not sure how long the USB bar will last since I think it's always on when plugged in which may burn out the LEDs faster, but i'm not entirely sure.
I got myself the actual MayFlash DolphinBar which, while it was $50.00, it was worth every penny and I even bought one of those for my friend considering, well, I wanted them to get a much better sensor bar than the cheaper ones under $20.00 and such. And while it doesn't have any future firmware updates, if the firmware does go open source, I'd love to see updates that actually improve accuracy and connection and such.
In defense of emulation enhancements: If we're talking about Nintendo (or just a lot of games out there)... yeah uh, good luck waiting for re-releases and official remasters lmao. I emulated Jet Set Radio Future recently, that game isn't EVER getting a re-release due to the legal hell the game is stuck in. So upping the resolution and other nice tweaks like that are good to have.
Ive always found it kind of an interesting thought that most of the Nintendo emulators seem to be much more stable compared to other consoles. The only solid console "emulator" ive seen even for the 360 was the pcie dev emulation board, which at that point is just another 360 electrically speaking.
Xenia took a while to really pick up pace, but it finally feels like it's getting somewhere. PS3 emulators have improved a lot in recent years, too. But yeah, the Nintendo fandom is just insane with the speed at which it develops things.
El proceso de dolphin realmente ha sido muy bueno, juegos que antes iban relentizados o simplemente no corrían, ahora van más fluidos y los que no corrían, corren, lento pero corren, llegando incluso a poder subir la resolución a los que van perfecto (tengo cpu y gpu integrada.
Re the early line of "having a beefy enough pc" it surprisingly doesn't need anything all that beefy by modern standards. I know Mac, but I have an M1 MacBook Air, basically the cheapest laptop Apple sells, and I was able to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 with no issues this past summer, even rendered at 3x native. I mostly don't use emulators either as I too have a nice retro games setup, but Dolphin gave me the ability to do Switch-like Galaxy controls playing Galaxy 2, and I had a surprisingly pleasant experience for having a low-end computer.
Personally, I hate pixellation with a passion. Give me softer pixels or higher resolution. Old school 2d games were never meant to have sharp pixels either.
hear me out: you still don't get the sharpest possible native image using this method, because the aspect ratio correction in dolphin isn't lossless, it uses some kind of soft interpolation when correcting aspect ratio (which is the case for almost every game on the GC/WII) so to achieve the opposite of this softening you have to find out what internal res your game is running at by taking an internal raw uncorrected aspect screenshot, then make it as a custom res in your control panel if it isn't a common res. now you have to actually switch manually between them for each game with integer scaling enabled from your Gpu's control panel. now when it comes to dolphin configs, you MUST choose stretch to window aspect ratio, don't choose 4:3 or auto because this will apply aspect correction and break the sharpness of the original image, even if the native res of your game is 640x480, you must choose the stretch to window option. ofc you gotta choose native internal res and it dont matter much as far as i can tell which output resample option you will choose, default and area sampling kinda look the same in this case but i still keep it at area sampling.
the only other way around is to increase the internal res of the game x3 or x4 and downsample by choosing 640x480 integer res from control panel, then you MUST choose the default output resample option to get the sharpest result, otherwise any other option will result in some kind of blurring, especially for the text. but still this method doesn't give an organic result as the first one, i just felt something was off with this one
This was my general excitement when Dolphin added Sharp Bilinear Filtering as one of their filter options, adding a nice sharp look to native res games that need to be at native res on lower end systems.
I know other emulators let you create shortcuts in order to launch games with specific settings. Maybe dolphin does this as well. So for example: make a shortcut on your desktop for the emulator, then add a command to that shortcut to launch the game you want, then add commands on top of that to that to pick your settings! After that, repeat these steps for each game! That way you can dial everything in just right using those commands then doulble click one shortcut to jump right into the game. Doing this removes the need to tinker with Dolphin itself, just let the commands in your shortcut do it for you. There are even entire programs that can manage these shortcuts like launch box, playnite, and steam. That's one way around making your own "profiles" - although I do think dolphin offers native profile support as well .... I think
Dolphin allows you to set per-game configs from the game properties (accessed from the context menu in the main window game list). Unfortunately the game-specific configs do have to be edited with a text editor instead of the normal GUI.
it defiantly is down to user preference and user needs, everyone has a different itch when it comes to how they want to play their games. i pretty much sit in the middle, basically i like using emulators to get the most out of my games through the special enhancements, but there is always a itch to go back to original hardware. for example if i want the rawest purest vanilla gameplay i can get i will go to the original console, but lets give an example like with the WiiU with GC games. sometimes i like to play on original hardware, but with the few enhancements. in which the WiiU with Nintendo actually does offer a widescreen hack, i think its mostly cause of how the WiiU handles things in vWii mode differently compared to how the Wii handles GC games, allowing to change how things are rendered. like its the best way to play sonic heroes in my opinion if you want to play on a console to have the benefit of what the console port offers while having widescreen and having a much better view of everything like how you can do on with the PC version with a 16:9 monitor. overall still down to user preference and needs, just saying that i sit in the middle and like to balance all of it
@@eapleitez Oh I actually didn't know that thanks! It would be helpful if that was integrated into the gui though. Not sure if that's possible, but it would be nice.
how the hell are you having any sort of issue with dolphin..? everytime i've used it, anywhere i've used it, it's a 1:1 perfect fullspeed emulation with no stutters or any inconvenience at all lmao
Finally, i can make my NGC games look like they ran on the 3DS's screen I dont see the appeal, but happy it's pleasing someone out there. Then again, i also apply AA to SNES games. Gimmie them smooth pixels!
Yeah, I’m with you. I honestly don’t get it. To me, his footage doesn’t look like how the games did back in the day on CRTs. It looks WORSE. Odd, but if someone wants to make an onion, bell pepper, and peanut butter sandwich, I suppose he has that right. lol
About the need for making configs for every game I think the Dolphin team should try making profile settings for each game that way you can always have a specific setting for a game PCSX2 allows you to do that
You can actually make per game profiles, they can be found in the games Properties > Game Config > Editor > User Config section. The catch is that the process to make a profile currently isn't intuitive and it requires you to search for specific internal names for options and put them into a GameINI file. For example you would put "OutputResampling = 5" under the [Video_Enhancements] section to set the output resampling option for a game to sharp bilinear like the video creator wants or to 6 for "Area Sampling" interpolation. The GameINI is also the place to put controller profiles.
On the original CRT displays/TV's, though, the pixels wouldn't have looked "sharp," right? Wasn't one of the criticisms of early LCD displays the fact that they made the pixels stand out with sharp edges instead of being blended by the display technology? It changed the look of the original games to play them that way. Just wondering how that plays into all of this.
10:13 I feel like modding original hardware to put out RGB for a sharper image is basically jumping through a lot of hoops to have original hardware look like emulation. With a lot of games the intended visual pipeline entirely breaks apart when you use RGB instead of composite. Everyone should enjoy games like they please, but using authentic parts to re-create a inaccurate and anachronistic experience seems like a lot of wasted money, hardware and time to me.
This is so weird man, i get it that some people like to have the games look like native hardware, even being objectively inferior in most cases, because a lot of games run at sub native resolution, ps3 for example, most games look like ass, and obviously crt era games look better on a crt tv, but to say you preffer to wait on remasters is so absurd to me.
Super interesting! I definitely agree with wanting to make the games look as close to how it was intended to look, whilst increasing it's quality. Best is when you get the sharpness but then use CRT filters to smooth out the edges more organically. I don't love crisp pixels in 2d games - but 3d for sure. It matches the lower resolution texture output.
I love the thumbnail because the before looks a thousand times better than the after, lmfao! Same for the gameplay, it's absolutely wild to me that someone could actually prefer the immense shimmering and coarseness of those perfectly sharp pixels! 🤯 Perfect pixels just don't look good at that resolution. Also, funny you did mention having to tinker with different settings for every game. Damn, I would hate that! 🤣 I love PC gaming and I love Nintendo consoles, but as an IT specialist, I'm really happy when I come home from work and I can just turn it on and start gaming without a hitch, after a long day of troubleshooting. That's where consoles, especially retro consoles, *really* shine. Their simplicity and standardization makes them ultra reliable. Doesn't seem like Dolphin can even begin to emulate that!
Great video. As a fellow retro gamer, I love your dedication to the original style. In that sense, perhaps there's an idea for a video for you. What do you think about these new "pixel art" games cropping up now? How are the bad ones failing to see the charm in 2d pixel art graphics? What are the good ones doing right? Why are people seeing the charm now in something so dated? What's your take? What's your experience with good and bad pixel art both from the past and the future? Anyways, just a thought. Take care and keep on gamin.
Holy Capibara... I've never knew I needed this resampler. So much better than upping internal resolution, because. 4k feels just like those "HQ"/"HD" versions of Final Fantasy and others games...
7:55 Wow, Galaxy looks beautiful in pseudo-4K. I've got one'a them fancy HDR UHDTVs that make images pop almost like they have 3D, and Galaxy has never ever looked better to me. Thank you for presenting this! Also, I have learned that Dolphin natively supports the DualSense controller on PC, and DualSense's gyro maps nearly-perfectly as a Wiimote. That's awesome for me.
For me what made Project 64 finally usable is when GlideN64 became the default video plugin and Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo finally became playable. Those were some of the last major holdouts for the console and really the key to cracking the code. The same happened for Gamecube as Dolphin finally got Rebel Strike playable only in recent times and with the best CPUs, but playable nonetheless.
You can do per profile for games. You need to edit a .ini file, which is a pain. I wish they copied or gotten inspiration PCXS2 and Duckstation, so profile per game can be less pain in the ass. With a UI update, it will be perfect.
7:31 Dolphin has per-game settings... has had it for a long time. Right click a game > Properties, then you can override your defaults. For more advanced settings there's also the per-game user config, but those are ini files, not a gui. Still available though. I personally have never felt the need for it, most of the defaults work perfectly for all of the big hit gamecube games I've played on Dolphin. There are obviously exceptions, and for those exceptions I use the per-game configs, but I'm not going to the wiki often to find these things.
The only thing better on native hardware is the input lag, everything else is much better on emulators, it's good to play some old games without slowdowns and without being a blurry mess.
I really do not agree with the idea that some people have that razor sharp pixels is the "pure" experience the way it was intended. That is just not true at all. These games were never meant to be displayed with razor sharp pixels, they were made to be displayed on CRT TV's and that TV technology was not good at displaying crisp pixels. In fact, many retro games take advantage of the "imperfections" of the CRT to such a degree that it's turned into a "pro" (Dithering for example). Sprites were carefully crafted to take advantage of the color bleed of the CRT and use it as a feature. When we were transitioning over to LCD we also started to see a bigger push in anti-aliasing research and texture filtering to deal with all the flaws that a "better" display technology would reveal. Because it turns out that people are not big fans of "jaggies". To me the idea that pixels are cool and desirable (especially in 3D games) seems like some hipster idea that was born with younger people who think that the 80's and 90's was all about pixels for pixels sake. And while I do agree that HUD assets and such looks off when upscaling a game, I do think that it's a minor tradeoff compared to having the razor sharp jaggies feeling like a saw in my retina. And if you can't stand it, throw in a HD texture pack to deal with it. I grew up in the 90's with CRT's and I definitely do not remember games being pixelated while playing on CRT's. Sure I can appreciate good pixel art, but in the 90's people used pixels because that was the only way, not because it was cool. For a pure experience, buy the console and a CRT TV. Or if you wanna use dolphin and get a somewhat authentic experience then Retroarch with CRT shaders. (best if you have a beefy PC with a 4K HDR display since the best CRT shaders takes advantage HDR and 4K to simulate the CRT at an almost microscopic level)
For anyone that’s wondering you don’t need a beefy pc to play most dolphin games. I got a dell optiplex 3070 sff i5 9500 cpu with 16gb ddr4 ram and a rx 6400 gpu and play everything it has to offer. This pc can play up to ps2 and Wii U never tried switch cause I have one. It spent 140 on the pc and 140 on the gpu for about 300 usd you can have access to thousands of games.
I have tried of Xbox works pretty good runs games at oh Xbox native resolution and some rpcs3 but it struggles with that system so don’t really play that. But anything else backwards runs great. Happy gaming dudes hope this small post helped someone who’s thinking of gettting into retro emulation. Btw I bought my pc from eBay and the gpu from Newegg.
The only thing I dislike about emulation to this degree is being hunched over a computer rather than being on a couch like how I would see playing video games for example. Because unless you are playing on the original hardware you would need to play on pc hardware to do any graphical enhancements. There needs to be a merge between home console and emulation like a dolphin home console.
I mean it's really hard to beat a softmodded Wii U for playing GameCube, Wii, and Wii U games. The fact that all three are essentially hardware supported with no need for emulation is wild. (And helps me justify keeping the poor thing hooked up.
Dolphin managed time and time again to surpass expectations I didn't even know I had. I remember all the way back to the days of playing Wind Waker on my potato at 10 FPS.
To note, when it comes to emulation, the Wii Virtual Console emulation was so good that it was the premiere way to play certain N64 games - even over proper N64 emulation. In particular, Pokemon Puzzle League and Kirby 64 had some hiccups that the "inaccurate" emulation of the Wii Virtual Console made playing cleanly possible for a good time. I'm not aware of what's the case nowadays for Puzzle League, but K64 is pretty close to OG now, but before that, Dolphin was a better N64 emulator than the actual N64 emulation projects in niche cases.
Hey, got another sub! Gota like that YT algorithm (sometimes). I have an HDMI modded Wii with the AV kit you showed, an HDMI modded GameCube and a Wii U. I'd say just stick with the Wii U to save a buck, the Wii HDMI mod for fun (have a replacement shell handy, I like my smoke clear with the white buttons and tray slot from the original white case). Now I've only tested using a 4K TV so far but I plan to test on an older 1080 TV (but having fun with my new Analogue Pocket for now). GC and Wii both use GCVideo as the HDMI adapter so the quality is the same. I find that the scanlines feature works nice on the Wii. You're still pushing 480p regardless so you will not get hard pixels when the TV upscales from 480p to 4k. There is of course the RetroTink 4k but that is a little pricey. I have tested using an mClassic but it converts the signal to 1440p and my 4k TV just doesn't work well with 1440p (Samsung Q60). It also ruines the scanline feature of the GC Video. The Wii U gives the best quality output. GC with widescreen hacks is awesome. No need to demand an F-Zero GX remaster. I'm sure that all systems might look best on a 1080p TV or maybe a 4K with a good built-in upscaler. The RetroTink 4K is a bit pricey and I hope that they make an HDMI only version but probably not likely. Pixel FX is supposedly going to release an HDMI upscaler device but the projected price is about $500. I also recommend using adapters by Mayflash that adapt GC controllers, including WaveBirds, to connect to the Wiimotes. I haven't totally tested latency vs. the wired USB adapter but I bet that is the better way to go. BTW, the Mayflash USB Dolphin bar on PC actually works great with Dolphin and I totally recommend it. I didn't have to go through the whole button mapping process, Wiimote sync using the bar w/o issues and classic controllers work great.
Dolphin is the gold standard for emulation as far as I'm concerned. The shear amount of options available to make any experience exactly how you'd like is incredible, but even more so is how good the defaults are if you just want to pick up and play. Personally, I enjoy tinkering with software more than hardware, so setting up my physical Wii and searching for the right disk is more of a hassle compared to configuring Dolphin for a specific game and launching it. It also allows me to do really stupid stuff that the developers never would've considered, like playing Mario Galaxy with WASD. Seeing just how far you can pervert an experience and still have it be enjoyable is so much fun in its own right.
I tried Dolphin very early in its life and i was shocked on how well it performed and how excellent it was overall. I know its not the same, but i wish the guys behind Dolphin would asisst the teams in Xenia and RPCS3 so that we can finally have Dolphin like level of performance and compatibility for the XBOX, X360 and PS3 Consoles. Dolphin has been the gold standard for decades now.
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey Mr.Welbig659, I am SamB, the developer who created and added Area Sampling. You have no idea how happy seeing this video makes me. I worked pretty hard with another developer to make sure that all of the resampling options were high quality and implemented correctly. Area Sampling was the one I created, which is in my humble opinion, the best way to upscale and downscale video. I was kinda bummed after adding it because it seemed like nobody was talking about it, but this video made my day. Thank You! The attention you brought to my feature makes me so happy.
I have a suggestion for you to try, based on what you were saying about the textures and polygons not mixing. Try using B-Spline with 8x SSAA at native resolution. I have a feeling you _might_ enjoy it.
Also if you are struggling with stuttering, try switching to "Hybrid Ubershaders," and if that doesn't work, try using VBI Skip in the hacks menu. Both of those should eliminate stuttering.
Once again, I'm super happy you posted this. It means a lot that this feature helps you enjoy more games. Thanks!
Total game changer of a feature man!! Seeing the kind of video console modders were getting out of original Wiis and custom firmware was giving me MAD fomo.
I was honestly shocked as well that the resampling wasn't getting any attention, as I noticed it also assists in reflection resolution too from what I read on the original update page.
Thank you for those suggestions, I'll totally give them a try! The work you, and other emulator developers do, does more for the preservation and accessibility of retro games than most AAA publishers. Thank you so much for all you do in the emulation scene!
Hey thank you for your contributions, this video made me want to play me some dolphin now after many years out of the loop.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
My dude, thank you.
You helped me play games without texture shimmering.
I wonder if it’s possible to implement sparse grid supersampling? It’s like SSAA except it’s a full scene anti aliasing solution that’s only available (by accident) on nvidia cards. Historically it’s only been for dx9 games.
dolphin is one of the great inventions of humanity just because of the input configuration
gamecube what made dolphin, even a thing so nintendo help made the dolphin in some way
THIS
Even supports Xbox One controller's trigger vibrations that even most Xbox One games didn't even support
Dolphin is my favourite controller test app, I haven't played a game on Dolphin in a while but I always install it on every computer just to have a way of troubleshooting controller quirks
I wish dolphin worked with my Wii remotes but it only seems to work with the original ones
If Dolphin's old output was noticeably worse for you, I can't imagine how little of a fan you are of modern game's TAA blurring lol
I'm fine with Dolphin's old output (I didn't even know there was a difference), but yeah I absolutely despise TAA blur.
Dolphin used TAA!?
@@BBWahooAs far as I know, Dolphin never did. They have MSAA and SSAA, and even a FXAA shader, but I don't think they ever had TAA in any form.
As someone who basically shares the same opinion as this video, can confirm. TAA is... not a bad anti-aliasing method, but gosh do I personally hate the look. Smeary as hell.
Yeah todays TAA Standard is a mess. Especially forced TAA gaming on PC.
I really enjoyed this Video! Wish you a wonderful Christmas time
Important to note that a lot of assets for PS1/PS2/N64/Gamecube, etc. where designed to be viewed with the native resolution in mind and sometimes scaling the image actually breaks the art and leaves a bad first impression for those playing it for the first time this way. Perfect example of this is Waverace on the N64 where upscaling the image breaks the illusion of the displacement deformation of the waves directly around your jet ski blending with a 2d texture animation on a flat ground plane further away. Upscaling sharpens the deliberate blur at the transition line.
Because at the time, polygons were sort of an extention of pixel art, but in 3d. Since a lot of the lighting was baked in. The 2d pixels on a texture map are designed to blend with the matching resolution of the pixels that make up the polygons so you are 100% correct about the pixel mismatch in resolution. Especially for PS1 3d models which is why upscaling a lot of PS1 games looks like shit.
This is why I like avoiding upscaling altogether and simply opt for best hookup methods to a CRT or my regular flat TV with CRT filters.
This is why I usually just upscale most PS2/GameCube games to 720p, it looks a lot sharper than 480p but it doesn't completely break the art.
@@TruTraeUpscaling makes it look bad though!
Yeah, playing halo 2 in 1080p is like a kick in the balls
Super Mario 64 literally used photos for many textures, what the fuck are you talking about?
I get not wanting to play in HD since it makes low res textures and UI more apparent, but I'd at least enable super sampling. I'm not nostalgic for jaggies at all, I hated them at the time and still do. Super sampling is perfect for games like Resident Evil Remake because the CGI-like quality makes the characters actually look like part of the same world as the mansion, not just drawn on top of it.
Anisotropic filtering is also fantastic. The Gamecube and Wii's texture filtering was alright for the time but without AF textures become extremely blurry from a distance or at a sharp angle. Even with no other enhancements, 16xAF will make you think you've installed a texture pack, but it's really just doing a better job at mapping the original 2D textures into 3D.
Playing the Prime Trilogy on Wii and again on Dolphin made me realise how much detail was in those textures that I never saw unless I'd put the camera as close to them as possible.
Sonic Colors, Sonic Unwiished, and even the Xbox 360/PS3 Sonic Unleashed have surprisingly high quality textures, but you can barely tell due to the mediocre (and in the HD Unleashed's case, awful) Anisotropic Filtering.
Prime's lava looks noticeably _worse_ at high resolutions because it's using higher-resolution mipmaps making lava look too dark and rocky, whereas the original game used low res textures and a lower-res mipmap at an angle, making lava look smoother.
@@2fernandoc1 gotta love how Unwiished has become a valid term to refer to Unleashed Wii by now lol
@@Josuh It's funnier where you find out there's somehow a PS2 version that looks like a PS2 game that's still in development from 1999.
@@2fernandoc1 PS2 Unleashed can legit freeze in the credits screen, I don't know why they felt the need to make a PS2 version at all but it sure exists in this world now
I'm one of the those people who plays their games on Dolphin at 8k, a widescreen hack, 60fps hack if the game has it, and a texture pack if it has one. That's simply my preferred way to play these games. Instead of waiting for a remaster, I effectively get to have my own personal remaster for whatever GameCube or Wii game I want because of this emulator.
I can respect and understand why you want to experience you games the way you do though. This is still a great feature of Dolphin for those who wish to get sharper pixels at native resolution.
I love how emulation allows us to all experience games the way we want, it's pretty great. Even aside from visual experience, mods and cheats to fix little annoyances with games is also so awesome. Replaying Xenoblade 3 recently and there were basically 3 issues I had with the game that were just annoying and didn't ruin the game, but oh my god it still feels so good to make the game just perfect for me
And they allow you to replay games that you may have lost from your childhood or if you already have 100% on one save file, but you only have one save file to use without deleting it (like with Super Smash Bros. Brawl), and so you don’t have to get rid of your hard-earned progress that you may have taken *years* to accomplish and be proud of, and then you can experience the joys of that progression all over again! It also allows you to be able to play games that were maybe only released in one area, like Japan or France, and with English patches (or a patch for whatever language you speak fluently in, if the patches for that language exists), you’d be able to get past the region lock and not have to spend potentially hundreds of dollars on a console for that particular region, only for you to not be able to fully enjoy the game on the actual console, due to not understanding the language! And being able to play some games with a controller that can connect with the PC, laptop, or phone that you use that simulates playing on the actual hardware can feel REALLY authentic!
DITTO!
Sorry I'm just stuck on "20 years of active development."
I start thinking, the Gamecube hasn't even been out that long... wait....
Oh my god
I was born after gamecube and thats still tripping me up wtf
time only looks long when you look at it in retrospect
@@shyguy85same 😵💫
Dolphin has been a very, very reliable emulator for years. I remember emulating 100% accurate Melee and Brawl on a Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM and NVidia 8500 GT in 2009, it wasn't even that good of a PC back then. The compatibility was just that good.
Dolphin is by far, the best emulator of the 3d era.
@@leonardomatheus1888PPSSPP is a comparable emulator from the same time.
I used to emulate Resident Evil 4 on a baseline 2015 Macbook Pro (it doesn't even have a dedicated graphics card) and it ran surprisingly well at a stable 30fps framerate. Dolphin is so well optimised ♡
Running the game as close to original as possible is the best way to play. It's why I play Gran Turismo 2 on Duckstation at only 2x, just enough to compensate for how close I am to the screen...
...and with the GT2+ mod..
..with widescreen cheat obviously.. ...and a 60fps cheat running with overclock.. ..and metric system codes, except I deleted the lines for torque because I find it easier to understand in imperial.. and using dev mode 4x ram hack and cheat to use it for increased draw distance plus full detail LODs for AI cars in every distance including in HUD mirror, with a code to enable it in third person.. ..and a code to fix an endurance event that should be time based but was still a bit off in how it worked, plus fixing a track that was replaced in the track list by a 2-player simplified version of another one in random track events..
...I guess maybe I don't actually play it that close to the original.
Maybe like if it had been a cross-generation release with an improved PS2 version?
Great video! I'm personally one to crank up my resolution to max and install an HD texture pack if available, but I'm glad there's a new option for folks who want a crisp and authentic experience.
Btw, regarding your issue at 7:13 , you should be able to edit per-game configs using the GameINI file within each game's properties. I did that for what felt like almost every GC game for a 4K GameCube PC I built years ago. Cheers!
Hey thanks!
There's no accounting for taste, but it's always nice to have options.
I chose not to mention fan texture packs as, respectfully, I don't like most of them.
Yeah several have mentioned editing the GameINI file which I genuinely didn't know about so I may give that a look.
Take care!
for me, i'd rather just put the resolution on native with no texture pack, for me its just the FPS
@@Piano_Board How old is your PC that it can't handle resolution increase in Dolphin of all things?
@@mechadeka You missed the whole video you're commenting on
I think the resampling mode looks very charming. Good video.
Besides preserving gaming history and allowing players to bypass the insane prices on the second hand market; the beauty of emulation is the ability to tune the games to look and play the way you prefer.
Emulators are amazing and they should be protected at all cost.
As much as I adore my Swissed, ODE-ed Cube, the resampled Dolphin footage at 4:4:4 color resolution feels like a way bigger upgrade to the original system's 4:2:2 output than internal resolution upgrades ever could. No more bleeding reds in some of my favorite games is really enticing me into diving into Dolphin more, especially since I have a 1440p monitor and thus can get a 3x horizontal scale, no interpolation needed :)
I’ve been trying to set up my now perfected reshade crt shader with dolphin, and not being able to display the sharp pixels hurt the result a lot. Thank you for making me aware of this update!!!
Dolphin covers two systems, has great UI, and works on pretty low specs
Actually it covers 3, since it comes bundled with mGBA. You can boot actual GBA roms in Dolphin. And that's without talking about Virtual Consoles games (which are still technically Wii games)
@@avasam06 Honestly, please tell me more. I was curious (and figured) there had to be Gameboy Player emulation... that's mGBA, correct?
& how do you go about channels in Dolphin? I've hacked a few Wii in my time, installed channels and custom injected ROMs, but I've never experimented through Dolphin or knew if it was possible
per game controller config support is abysmal, having to edit a notepad file and look at their wiki is ridiculous. The UI could use a TON of work, when you compare it to the features yuzu, ryujinx, rpcs3 and pcsx2 have it feels lackluster and at times extremely frustrating. Per game controller configs are important and vital for wii and gamecube
Having been here in 2014, hearing Dolphin works on low specs is the most hilarious and unbelievable shit
@@kylespevak6781 i wrote two detailed answers, one with link and one w/o. Now I can't see any 🤔 But basically you're correct about GBA, and I don't remember the details on how to get channels.
2:04 Sharp pixels have never been part of the OG experience, this is an illusion that just brings you fake nostalgia that never existed in the first place.
Exactly! I was confused by that as well. The GameCube was meant for displays which worked in terms of lines, not pixels. If anything, the blurrier, fuzzier image is more 'accurate' as it is philosophically closer to the phosphor blending you'd get on a CRT.
@@Anthestudioscomposite cables also made the image blurry especially on HDTVs
My personal favorite way to play Gamecube and Wii is to play on a VGA CRT at 480p. Looks incredible
I’ve never seen someone say they prefer 30fps over 60fps in a game lol that’s insanity
People use to say you couldn’t see over 30fps back in the 360 days. Also in some older games 60fps cause glitches such as broken movement
@@RusticRonnie personally if a game is designed around 30 fps then i see very little reason not to play at that fps, its like when people play movies at 60 fps, it just feels wrong for most people because your not actually getting anything out of it and are just making the experience worse for yourself
Nah you are just dumb
I had all my Gamecube games rendering at 1440 and I couldn’t help but to notice the seams on character models, outdated textures, and UI elements remaining in a lower resolution. It leaves only the gameplay to carry the experience and some of these older titles don’t hold up that well. Then I switched on Area Sampling and dropped the resolution back down to native and everything just clicked into place. I’m no longer distracted by any disjointed visuals and can appreciate what the artists working on these games had to offer. They were limited by the technology of their time and everything needed to be incredibly readable no matter the distance from the camera. They had to sell you a feeling and everything kind of comes out painterly and I’m so down for the “less is more” vibes. It’s actually making me enjoy these older games even more and it’s no longer nostalgia bringing me back. I’ve started my first playthrough of Metroid Prime and am thoroughly enjoying the experience despite the outdated control scheme because everything else works. Full disclosure, I do have the widescreen hacks on because, to me, it only adds to older titles. Courtesy of NGC Widescreen Project by Warped Polygon on YT.
I'm, sure you already know about this, but do note that you can install custom texture packs for a lot of games that up-res the UI textures. I've really enjoyed using the Animal Crossing pack in particular.
The thing about the DolphinBar is that you connect the Wiimotes to it, not the PC. If you connect your Wiimote to the PC, the DolphinBar won't turn on
I remember using candles instead of a wii bar
I actually really agree with your visual taste. When I’m playing older games, I tend to upscale the graphics to 4K, and apply a pixelated filter using reshade, which gives surprisingly really clean and unified graphics. I myself hate blurry ui elements mixed with sharp graphics, this is my preferred method.
Damn, same
I wonder how this will look on Steam Deck... I'm intrigued
Dolphin needs retroarchivments
_cough cough_
well well well
No
As someone who grew up with the N64, GCN, & Wii, mimicking original hardware alongside running everything on a rather low spec macbook was a *top* priority for me. As a matter of fact, Dolphin was so well optimized that I was able to play Brawl's various mods in highschool during lunch or afterschool while waiting to be picked up.
Now, several years later, it remains a very nostalgic emulator ironically enough because it was how I played some of the games I've always seen and wanted but could never afford, even though at first it was just my way of playing games I already had but didn't know where my old consoles were. It's very validating to hear others who have my preferences regarding uncanny performance but understands the difference in tastes and just is boasting the pure fun that is running Dolphin on a potato to play some classic video games.
Dolphin in phone is my only option, but for some reason, the framerate is reduced to 30 FPS, and for some reason, I can only customize the internal resolution, and I've searched DEEP into the settings, even messing up my gameplay, but there's only that one setting. And according to someone, Dolphin for mobile only supports correctly Metroid Prime, and although I'm not stuck with only that one game, I of course will never have a good experience because of that problem
Are you using the google play version or the apk from the dolphin website?
@@justaadhdgamerwesley6244That explains a lot of questions, thanks. The only problem is that I already have many items in Metroid Prime, and I don't want to start over, does the new version recognize all the files from the old version? If so, that would be so nice!
@@Davian2073 i assume it would since theyre both the wii save files unless you have savestates or smth
@@apotatoman4862 GameCube, my phone isn't powerful enough to run Metroid Prime Trilogy. But anyways, thanks, in any case, I'm not that far in the game, it wouldn't be so stressful to get to where I was.
I render my emulated 6th-gen and Wii games (and PC games meant for 480 lines) at 4K and use Reshade CRT-Royale with a scanline setting of 4 to effectively downsample them to 480p within a high-detail CRT mask. This way everything looks pristine with no aliasing to speak of, but it also doesn't reveal the flaws. I also do the same thing with PPSSPP but with a scanline width of 7 instead.
dgvoodoo2 paired with Reshade CRT-Royale can also be used this way, due to its ability to scale output of extremely old 4:3 PC games to a 4K 16:9 window, adding black bars so you can have that extra resolution to play around with CRT-Royale within, adding curvature and whatnot
Anybody who was there, *knows* that it was actually Dolphin 3.0 that brought it from a curiosity to an actual emulator. It was still pretty rough, but you could actually play it. Prior versions would glitch and crash so often that it was unplayable. Also, computers just weren't fast enough, and around 2011 was the time when computers finally caught up.
My 2011 pc cant run the dolphin/ super mario bros wii at 60fps even though it should have the specs (no vulkan tho)
I always assumed Dolphin had per-game configs. I mean, that’s why there’s a bunch of INI files with (I assume to be) game ID names, right?
Dolphin is so good, it make me sad to use emulators for other consoles and not have all of its features. T^T
The Dolphin devs sure spoil us.
Just a headsup, you can grab USB Sensor Bars for very cheap anywhere in the world. I got mine in Brazil, works just like the Wii Sensor Bar, except it has a USB connector to plug to the computer. Never had any problems.
Yeah I ended up nabbing a USB sensor bar. I read they may not be as accurate from having fewer LEDs in them, but I sit pretty close to the TV so I don't think it's much of an issue. There wasn't any problems using it for the footage here. If anything i'm thinking of shelfing my Wii and Wii U sensor bars just to have less clutter in my setup. Not sure how long the USB bar will last since I think it's always on when plugged in which may burn out the LEDs faster, but i'm not entirely sure.
@@Mr.Welbig If you didnt knew: You can also use candles as they emit infrared light. Cool trick I showed others back then when there sensor bar broke.
@@mgz4670he said that in the video
Pcsx2 is pretty good too
I got myself the actual MayFlash DolphinBar which, while it was $50.00, it was worth every penny and I even bought one of those for my friend considering, well, I wanted them to get a much better sensor bar than the cheaper ones under $20.00 and such. And while it doesn't have any future firmware updates, if the firmware does go open source, I'd love to see updates that actually improve accuracy and connection and such.
In defense of emulation enhancements: If we're talking about Nintendo (or just a lot of games out there)... yeah uh, good luck waiting for re-releases and official remasters lmao.
I emulated Jet Set Radio Future recently, that game isn't EVER getting a re-release due to the legal hell the game is stuck in. So upping the resolution and other nice tweaks like that are good to have.
Ive always found it kind of an interesting thought that most of the Nintendo emulators seem to be much more stable compared to other consoles. The only solid console "emulator" ive seen even for the 360 was the pcie dev emulation board, which at that point is just another 360 electrically speaking.
Xenia took a while to really pick up pace, but it finally feels like it's getting somewhere. PS3 emulators have improved a lot in recent years, too. But yeah, the Nintendo fandom is just insane with the speed at which it develops things.
I didn't realize how much I liked those visuals.
El proceso de dolphin realmente ha sido muy bueno, juegos que antes iban relentizados o simplemente no corrían, ahora van más fluidos y los que no corrían, corren, lento pero corren, llegando incluso a poder subir la resolución a los que van perfecto (tengo cpu y gpu integrada.
Re the early line of "having a beefy enough pc" it surprisingly doesn't need anything all that beefy by modern standards. I know Mac, but I have an M1 MacBook Air, basically the cheapest laptop Apple sells, and I was able to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 with no issues this past summer, even rendered at 3x native.
I mostly don't use emulators either as I too have a nice retro games setup, but Dolphin gave me the ability to do Switch-like Galaxy controls playing Galaxy 2, and I had a surprisingly pleasant experience for having a low-end computer.
6:00 "Wireless MY ASS!" that caught me off guard because I said the exact same thing when I heard you and saw that picture hahahah
Personally, I hate pixellation with a passion. Give me softer pixels or higher resolution. Old school 2d games were never meant to have sharp pixels either.
hear me out: you still don't get the sharpest possible native image using this method, because the aspect ratio correction in dolphin isn't lossless, it uses some kind of soft interpolation when correcting aspect ratio (which is the case for almost every game on the GC/WII)
so to achieve the opposite of this softening you have to find out what internal res your game is running at by taking an internal raw uncorrected aspect screenshot, then make it as a custom res in your control panel if it isn't a common res. now you have to actually switch manually between them for each game with integer scaling enabled from your Gpu's control panel.
now when it comes to dolphin configs, you MUST choose stretch to window aspect ratio, don't choose 4:3 or auto because this will apply aspect correction and break the sharpness of the original image, even if the native res of your game is 640x480, you must choose the stretch to window option.
ofc you gotta choose native internal res and it dont matter much as far as i can tell which output resample option you will choose, default and area sampling kinda look the same in this case but i still keep it at area sampling.
the only other way around is to increase the internal res of the game x3 or x4 and downsample by choosing 640x480 integer res from control panel, then you MUST choose the default output resample option to get the sharpest result, otherwise any other option will result in some kind of blurring, especially for the text.
but still this method doesn't give an organic result as the first one, i just felt something was off with this one
This was my general excitement when Dolphin added Sharp Bilinear Filtering as one of their filter options, adding a nice sharp look to native res games that need to be at native res on lower end systems.
I know other emulators let you create shortcuts in order to launch games with specific settings. Maybe dolphin does this as well. So for example: make a shortcut on your desktop for the emulator, then add a command to that shortcut to launch the game you want, then add commands on top of that to that to pick your settings! After that, repeat these steps for each game! That way you can dial everything in just right using those commands then doulble click one shortcut to jump right into the game.
Doing this removes the need to tinker with Dolphin itself, just let the commands in your shortcut do it for you. There are even entire programs that can manage these shortcuts like launch box, playnite, and steam.
That's one way around making your own "profiles" - although I do think dolphin offers native profile support as well .... I think
Dolphin allows you to set per-game configs from the game properties (accessed from the context menu in the main window game list). Unfortunately the game-specific configs do have to be edited with a text editor instead of the normal GUI.
it defiantly is down to user preference and user needs, everyone has a different itch when it comes to how they want to play their games.
i pretty much sit in the middle, basically i like using emulators to get the most out of my games through the special enhancements, but there is always a itch to go back to original hardware. for example if i want the rawest purest vanilla gameplay i can get i will go to the original console, but lets give an example like with the WiiU with GC games. sometimes i like to play on original hardware, but with the few enhancements. in which the WiiU with Nintendo actually does offer a widescreen hack, i think its mostly cause of how the WiiU handles things in vWii mode differently compared to how the Wii handles GC games, allowing to change how things are rendered. like its the best way to play sonic heroes in my opinion if you want to play on a console to have the benefit of what the console port offers while having widescreen and having a much better view of everything like how you can do on with the PC version with a 16:9 monitor.
overall still down to user preference and needs, just saying that i sit in the middle and like to balance all of it
The frogger music was so instantly nostalgic. Been way to long since I played that game.
Dolphin is hella impressive, but it's still weird how they haven't included the option to have custom configurations for each game
It does have per game customization. You'll need to edit the game .ini file
@@eapleitez Oh I actually didn't know that thanks! It would be helpful if that was integrated into the gui though. Not sure if that's possible, but it would be nice.
"Now Dolphin is the best enulator" - Always has been
how the hell are you having any sort of issue with dolphin..? everytime i've used it, anywhere i've used it, it's a 1:1 perfect fullspeed emulation with no stutters or any inconvenience at all lmao
Try playing any of the two Rogue Squadron games.
@@MalabarTheGreat no, i'm not going to do that because i am too lazy
Everytime I play I always get microstutters. It seems to happen on 60fps games more, but even at just 720p or 1080p, I still get them.
Finally, i can make my NGC games look like they ran on the 3DS's screen
I dont see the appeal, but happy it's pleasing someone out there. Then again, i also apply AA to SNES games. Gimmie them smooth pixels!
Yeah, I’m with you. I honestly don’t get it. To me, his footage doesn’t look like how the games did back in the day on CRTs. It looks WORSE.
Odd, but if someone wants to make an onion, bell pepper, and peanut butter sandwich, I suppose he has that right. lol
About the need for making configs for every game I think the Dolphin team should try making profile settings for each game that way you can always have a specific setting for a game PCSX2 allows you to do that
You can actually make per game profiles, they can be found in the games Properties > Game Config > Editor > User Config section. The catch is that the process to make a profile currently isn't intuitive and it requires you to search for specific internal names for options and put them into a GameINI file. For example you would put "OutputResampling = 5" under the [Video_Enhancements] section to set the output resampling option for a game to sharp bilinear like the video creator wants or to 6 for "Area Sampling" interpolation. The GameINI is also the place to put controller profiles.
Dolphin does not need a beefy PC lol
Yeah. I have an used thinkpad that just cost £177, and it ran the majority of my wii games almost flawlessly.
12:48 I heard that ring and you won't get away with it
having A option is better than NO option
On the original CRT displays/TV's, though, the pixels wouldn't have looked "sharp," right?
Wasn't one of the criticisms of early LCD displays the fact that they made the pixels stand out with sharp edges instead of being blended by the display technology?
It changed the look of the original games to play them that way.
Just wondering how that plays into all of this.
Yea, his statements doesn't even make sense, i doubt he played on a progressive scan tv being pixel perfect back in the day.
10:13 I feel like modding original hardware to put out RGB for a sharper image is basically jumping through a lot of hoops to have original hardware look like emulation.
With a lot of games the intended visual pipeline entirely breaks apart when you use RGB instead of composite.
Everyone should enjoy games like they please, but using authentic parts to re-create a inaccurate and anachronistic experience seems like a lot of wasted money, hardware and time to me.
feels like the pro piracy and/or emulation stance is getting rarer and rarer these days, Thanks for the video!
This is so weird man, i get it that some people like to have the games look like native hardware, even being objectively inferior in most cases, because a lot of games run at sub native resolution, ps3 for example, most games look like ass, and obviously crt era games look better on a crt tv, but to say you preffer to wait on remasters is so absurd to me.
Mario sunshine with 4k texture, 60fps, widescreen is amazing on dolphin.
Have you tried the "Color Correction" feature? An emulated gamma of ~2.35 should make the experience closer to CRT TVs.
Super interesting! I definitely agree with wanting to make the games look as close to how it was intended to look, whilst increasing it's quality. Best is when you get the sharpness but then use CRT filters to smooth out the edges more organically. I don't love crisp pixels in 2d games - but 3d for sure. It matches the lower resolution texture output.
I love the thumbnail because the before looks a thousand times better than the after, lmfao!
Same for the gameplay, it's absolutely wild to me that someone could actually prefer the immense shimmering and coarseness of those perfectly sharp pixels! 🤯
Perfect pixels just don't look good at that resolution.
Also, funny you did mention having to tinker with different settings for every game. Damn, I would hate that! 🤣 I love PC gaming and I love Nintendo consoles, but as an IT specialist, I'm really happy when I come home from work and I can just turn it on and start gaming without a hitch, after a long day of troubleshooting. That's where consoles, especially retro consoles, *really* shine. Their simplicity and standardization makes them ultra reliable. Doesn't seem like Dolphin can even begin to emulate that!
Great video. As a fellow retro gamer, I love your dedication to the original style.
In that sense, perhaps there's an idea for a video for you. What do you think about these new "pixel art" games cropping up now? How are the bad ones failing to see the charm in 2d pixel art graphics? What are the good ones doing right? Why are people seeing the charm now in something so dated? What's your take? What's your experience with good and bad pixel art both from the past and the future? Anyways, just a thought. Take care and keep on gamin.
☝️🤓
You: 🤓
nostalgia blinds a man
Holy Capibara... I've never knew I needed this resampler. So much better than upping internal resolution, because. 4k feels just like those "HQ"/"HD" versions of Final Fantasy and others games...
That's why I also use the 480p signal on VGA CRT and it looks crazy sharp
7:55 Wow, Galaxy looks beautiful in pseudo-4K. I've got one'a them fancy HDR UHDTVs that make images pop almost like they have 3D, and Galaxy has never ever looked better to me. Thank you for presenting this!
Also, I have learned that Dolphin natively supports the DualSense controller on PC, and DualSense's gyro maps nearly-perfectly as a Wiimote. That's awesome for me.
this is borderline psycho how can u be so picky with such tiny little pixels on an old ass gamecube game what are ur hobbies bro 💀
The fact that Dolphin is 20 years made me feel really old.
Recently started using it on my phone and love it!
3min into the video and you havent talked about anything interesting
He's a completely nostalgia blinded.
“Beefy enough PC” Dolphin Runs full speed on a phone now
Is there any chance you could run through your set up? I find it tricky to get everything set up for easy access and would love to see your approach!
You should try running Dolphin in 480p on an early 2000s Trinitron or Diamondtron, it looks incredible
For me what made Project 64 finally usable is when GlideN64 became the default video plugin and Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo finally became playable. Those were some of the last major holdouts for the console and really the key to cracking the code. The same happened for Gamecube as Dolphin finally got Rebel Strike playable only in recent times and with the best CPUs, but playable nonetheless.
You can do per profile for games. You need to edit a .ini file, which is a pain. I wish they copied or gotten inspiration PCXS2 and Duckstation, so profile per game can be less pain in the ass. With a UI update, it will be perfect.
7:31 Dolphin has per-game settings... has had it for a long time. Right click a game > Properties, then you can override your defaults. For more advanced settings there's also the per-game user config, but those are ini files, not a gui. Still available though.
I personally have never felt the need for it, most of the defaults work perfectly for all of the big hit gamecube games I've played on Dolphin. There are obviously exceptions, and for those exceptions I use the per-game configs, but I'm not going to the wiki often to find these things.
oh no guys, the "i prefer playing on official hardware" people are infiltrating emulation. nostalgia-driven emulation
The only thing better on native hardware is the input lag, everything else is much better on emulators, it's good to play some old games without slowdowns and without being a blurry mess.
I´m happy to know that this update was big news to all the retro pixel lovers.
Take a shot everytime this guy says don't get me wrong
I really do not agree with the idea that some people have that razor sharp pixels is the "pure" experience the way it was intended.
That is just not true at all. These games were never meant to be displayed with razor sharp pixels, they were made to be displayed on CRT TV's and that TV technology was not good at displaying crisp pixels. In fact, many retro games take advantage of the "imperfections" of the CRT to such a degree that it's turned into a "pro" (Dithering for example).
Sprites were carefully crafted to take advantage of the color bleed of the CRT and use it as a feature.
When we were transitioning over to LCD we also started to see a bigger push in anti-aliasing research and texture filtering to deal with all the flaws that a "better" display technology would reveal.
Because it turns out that people are not big fans of "jaggies".
To me the idea that pixels are cool and desirable (especially in 3D games) seems like some hipster idea that was born with younger people who think that the 80's and 90's was all about pixels for pixels sake. And while I do agree that HUD assets and such looks off when upscaling a game, I do think that it's a minor tradeoff compared to having the razor sharp jaggies feeling like a saw in my retina. And if you can't stand it, throw in a HD texture pack to deal with it.
I grew up in the 90's with CRT's and I definitely do not remember games being pixelated while playing on CRT's. Sure I can appreciate good pixel art, but in the 90's people used pixels because that was the only way, not because it was cool.
For a pure experience, buy the console and a CRT TV. Or if you wanna use dolphin and get a somewhat authentic experience then Retroarch with CRT shaders. (best if you have a beefy PC with a 4K HDR display since the best CRT shaders takes advantage HDR and 4K to simulate the CRT at an almost microscopic level)
For anyone that’s wondering you don’t need a beefy pc to play most dolphin games. I got a dell optiplex 3070 sff i5 9500 cpu with 16gb ddr4 ram and a rx 6400 gpu and play everything it has to offer. This pc can play up to ps2 and Wii U never tried switch cause I have one. It spent 140 on the pc and 140 on the gpu for about 300 usd you can have access to thousands of games.
I have tried of Xbox works pretty good runs games at oh Xbox native resolution and some rpcs3 but it struggles with that system so don’t really play that. But anything else backwards runs great. Happy gaming dudes hope this small post helped someone who’s thinking of gettting into retro emulation. Btw I bought my pc from eBay and the gpu from Newegg.
What Mario game is that at the beginning? I don't remember that 1.
Same question here!
Its Smash Melee's story mode.
The only thing I dislike about emulation to this degree is being hunched over a computer rather than being on a couch like how I would see playing video games for example. Because unless you are playing on the original hardware you would need to play on pc hardware to do any graphical enhancements. There needs to be a merge between home console and emulation like a dolphin home console.
Not having control over every setting, is extremely liberating.
Great perspective, thank you for sharing this video
Dolphin and PCSX2 Nightly are fighting for the spot of greatest emulator ever made
I mean it's really hard to beat a softmodded Wii U for playing GameCube, Wii, and Wii U games. The fact that all three are essentially hardware supported with no need for emulation is wild. (And helps me justify keeping the poor thing hooked up.
Your setup looks awesome! I'd love to see a living room tour!
Great video! You have far better diction and delivery than a lot of similarly-styled videos. Nice work
What is your outro music? I love it.
Dolphin managed time and time again to surpass expectations I didn't even know I had. I remember all the way back to the days of playing Wind Waker on my potato at 10 FPS.
You're exactly like me, playing games as vanilla and "as intended" as possible.
But I can't deny, the resampler thing looks great
To note, when it comes to emulation, the Wii Virtual Console emulation was so good that it was the premiere way to play certain N64 games - even over proper N64 emulation. In particular, Pokemon Puzzle League and Kirby 64 had some hiccups that the "inaccurate" emulation of the Wii Virtual Console made playing cleanly possible for a good time. I'm not aware of what's the case nowadays for Puzzle League, but K64 is pretty close to OG now, but before that, Dolphin was a better N64 emulator than the actual N64 emulation projects in niche cases.
Hey, got another sub! Gota like that YT algorithm (sometimes). I have an HDMI modded Wii with the AV kit you showed, an HDMI modded GameCube and a Wii U. I'd say just stick with the Wii U to save a buck, the Wii HDMI mod for fun (have a replacement shell handy, I like my smoke clear with the white buttons and tray slot from the original white case). Now I've only tested using a 4K TV so far but I plan to test on an older 1080 TV (but having fun with my new Analogue Pocket for now). GC and Wii both use GCVideo as the HDMI adapter so the quality is the same. I find that the scanlines feature works nice on the Wii. You're still pushing 480p regardless so you will not get hard pixels when the TV upscales from 480p to 4k. There is of course the RetroTink 4k but that is a little pricey. I have tested using an mClassic but it converts the signal to 1440p and my 4k TV just doesn't work well with 1440p (Samsung Q60). It also ruines the scanline feature of the GC Video. The Wii U gives the best quality output. GC with widescreen hacks is awesome. No need to demand an F-Zero GX remaster. I'm sure that all systems might look best on a 1080p TV or maybe a 4K with a good built-in upscaler. The RetroTink 4K is a bit pricey and I hope that they make an HDMI only version but probably not likely. Pixel FX is supposedly going to release an HDMI upscaler device but the projected price is about $500. I also recommend using adapters by Mayflash that adapt GC controllers, including WaveBirds, to connect to the Wiimotes. I haven't totally tested latency vs. the wired USB adapter but I bet that is the better way to go.
BTW, the Mayflash USB Dolphin bar on PC actually works great with Dolphin and I totally recommend it. I didn't have to go through the whole button mapping process, Wiimote sync using the bar w/o issues and classic controllers work great.
Dolphin is the gold standard for emulation as far as I'm concerned. The shear amount of options available to make any experience exactly how you'd like is incredible, but even more so is how good the defaults are if you just want to pick up and play. Personally, I enjoy tinkering with software more than hardware, so setting up my physical Wii and searching for the right disk is more of a hassle compared to configuring Dolphin for a specific game and launching it. It also allows me to do really stupid stuff that the developers never would've considered, like playing Mario Galaxy with WASD. Seeing just how far you can pervert an experience and still have it be enjoyable is so much fun in its own right.
Thanks for the news! Looks pretty cool!
not sure if this is praise on dolphin or
some sorta confession for liking lowres
I'm also an avid chunky pixels and no AA Nintendo-style visuals enjoyer. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
fellow chomnky pixel enjoyer logged in
Dolphin rekindled my F-Zero GX high again an exceptionally long few months like I was a kid again imagining races.
i've used tea lights for the wii remote on dolphin before! it works really well, just be careful not to start a fire..
Wait i thought that bug in metroid prime trilogy was just my graphics card
What did you do to fix it?
I tried Dolphin very early in its life and i was shocked on how well it performed and how excellent it was overall. I know its not the same, but i wish the guys behind Dolphin would asisst the teams in Xenia and RPCS3 so that we can finally have Dolphin like level of performance and compatibility for the XBOX, X360 and PS3 Consoles. Dolphin has been the gold standard for decades now.
3:00 man turned into chris griffin for 5 seconds