Trying to get SSAA with downsampling to native PSP resolution on PC

[clapclapclap]

Hello!

Is it possible to get the SSAA effect to work the render resolution (like dolphin) and not the display resolution? It seems like the post processing SSAA effect does the latter. I'd like to run some games with the render resolution x2 or x4 etc but then downsampled back to the original psp res of 480x272, the reason being that some games like Chinatown Wars really don't look too nice with the sprites looking all rough and low res but everything else looking nice when it's all in high res. I'd rather play them in the original psp resolution with SSAA for a nice smoothing effect.

On the android PPSSPP this is possible manually too, cause you can set the display res to match psp but then set the render resolution to x2 or x4 or whatever you desire to get SSAA. On pc you can't set the display res of PPSSPP.

Is there any way to do this? I've tried custom resolution utility to add custom resolutions but windows completely ignores any configurations I make there so booting ppsspp with a custom res with display changer isn't an option.

Is there any way to get what I want to work on PC?

Thank you very much for any help or response!

[qwer4321]

Pixelation shader.

[LunaMoo]

SSAA is supersampling antialiasing, maybe you're confusing it with SMAA or some other form of AA, since when downsampling to extremely low res then streatching it up to display res you don't gain anything from supersampling.

Even if you speak about sprites being broken by higher rendering resolution(since increased render res does introduce glitches in many games) they would still be broken by supersampling even if the output was set to low resolution you will see that by simply running the game with SSAA in x1 window, glitches will still be there even if they can be harder to see in small window.

What you probably want is any antialiasing which does NOT work by supersampling, but AA will NOT increase the resolution of 3D graphics, it will just blurr/smooth things out. Also don't use pixelate shaders either, that's dumb, there's absolutely NO point in using increased rendering resolution at any point in time if you want to output to low res then stretch it or pixelate it to simulate similar results afterwards, both things would KILL the rendering resolution making it pointless and needlessly heavy, it's like taking out the supersampling word from supersampling antialiasing and SSAA actually uses very poor smoothing effect since it doesn't need any compex math or detection thanks to rendering at much higher res. All supersampling shaders(which means just one example shader in official PPSSPP) use a supersampling flag which is a multiplier, it can be used to set much higher render res(than the options provided in the emulator), but it can also be disabled or removed to disable supersampling and make it a standard smoothing effect which doesn't change your render resolution and would do what you want, but again that's not what you want, it will not make anything pretty, you're just confusing things probably based on results from Wii emulator.

Wii should not be compared to PSP in any way, especially with textures since it doesn't suffer from such extremely low resolution and it's graphics typically scale much better to higher res displays, but even there best results are archieved by texture replacement which is a feature also existing in PPSSPP.

Best solution is to just use texture replacement(requires tons of manual work, but the results can be shared by community so if game is popular sooner or later someone might create a texture pack for it) or at least abuse texture scaling(poor, and doesn't scale everything and might look bad, but at least it's automatic) to increase the resolution and level of detail of the sprites.

If by sprites looking bad you mean some effects, you might try "lower resolution for effects" hack instead, this keeps some effects rendered at x1 res making them look properly without affecting other graphics, however it's just a very simple hack and cannot detect everything, it was made mostly for bloom which some popular PSP games create in similar way.

[qwer4321]

You wright a ton of text. You scare pure kid. He'll never return.
(just bringing the problem what this forum is bloated with thousands of theme with zero answers).

[Dukatti]

clapclapclap,
1. Use all kinds of AA you want to use
2. In ppsspp settings set Upscale Level to x4
3. Change desktop resolution to 480x272. In case of Windows firstly create it. Remember that by default Windows changing resolution with built-in filters. You can at any time make desired resolution sharper with two additional extra levels of settings.

---

LunaMoo,+1,
since times of your old work in Custom PPSSPP Shaders topic, I prefer to configure emulator\game in its native resolution - to make sure that every shader effects that existed in game itself renders properly.

It's possible to make graphics better even with 1x resolution by using different driver settings, ReShade, and in case of ppsspp it can be ultimately combined with ppsspp's own shaders.

I suggest to say that there are people who like effects & pixels. Some other prefer smooth lines with slightly blurred picture. And there is people who like simplified ultra-high-resolution graphics free of effects as well.

[clapclapclap]

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys!

I didn't expect to get so much help so quick! Sorry for disappearing. I will try different things. I'd already tried upscaling the sprites manually using an xbrz tool but it messed up the character and npc sprites in strange ways. I used it successfully to manually upscale some fonts for Vice City Stories to get rid of artifacts, but I guess the edges of the character sprites in CTW are very precise or summat that causes them to be very delicate.

In terms of the smoothing effect of super sample anti aliasing, yeah, I know it is very basic, I know it's not sharp or high resolution, but it looks very nice for Gamecube and Wii in native resolution with like 4x SS for me so I thought maybe it would look decent for PSP as well even though its resolution is a bit lower, I'm aware that it might not look good because of it. I'm willing to give it a shot anyway. I'm not mistaking it for SMAA.

(11-25-2018 04:49 PM)Dukatti Wrote:  3. Change desktop resolution to 480x272

I'd tried adding custom resolutions using custom resolution utility but they failed to appear in my display settings, I think resolutions below like 640 x 480 didn't appear but above that did.

Anyway, it isn't a big deal really. But I will try some of the things you guys suggested that I maybe haven't tried yet.

Thanks for all the help!

[Dukatti]

clapclapclap,
to access resolutions below 640x480:

1. Choose & apply 640x480
2. Recheck available resolutions in standard Windows screen settings.
[maybe they firstly should be created before applying instruction steps?]

And there is also an alternative method in case if you are able to change resolution through AMD/Nvidia/Intel control panel:
1. Create desired resolution using Control Panel
[maybe resolution should be deleted from another tools before creating?]
2. Change to it in that Control Panel as well

If everything fails - you can create any 480p resolution, like 848x480 and so on.

anyway - good luck in your experiments!

[qwer4321]

(12-11-2018 02:30 AM)Dukatti Wrote:  clapclapclap,
change resolution through AMD/Nvidia/Intel control panel:

"PowerStrip" - if you videocard is VESA 3.0 compatible (Geforce4 for example).
Otherwise you can use builtin custom resolution. (know only about nVidia).

BTW:
I played MassEffect 2 at 256*192 resoultion (just was curious how it would look on NDS). Playble, but I wanted some antialiasing or xBRz postprocessing. Text unreadable of course (it was hardly readable in ME3 on 720p res).