How can I get the best graphics possibe for FFIX/PS1?

[narp]

The only option I enabled that seemed to do anything was ‘enable enhanced resolution’. That made it a lot sharper. Other than that, nothing seemed to do anything. Should I enable the enhanced resolution speed hack? I tried enabling a filter, and had it set to shader 0 n/a, nearest, and 5x, but that didnt seem to do anything (maybe because it said n/a, but I have no idea how to get anything other than that). I’ve also set video_smooth=1 per the advice of a youtuber. Additionally, I’ve heard of shaders helping but have no idea where to get them or anything. Thanks a lot.

Bonus: how can I enable enhanced resolution for all psx titles by default?

[dankcushions]

the pcsx-reArmed emulator supplied with retropie is a fairly ‘pure’ experience, and doesn’t let you do too much with the graphics. other than the ‘enhanced resolution’ setting you’ve already found. i found that option alone added sound distortion, so you might find performance hitches with it turned on. also, it didn’t appear to make any improvement to games which already run in the PS1’s “high” resolution mode (eg, Tekken 3). i suppose it just forces that mode on games that don’t use it?

for filters, there’s so many that it’s difficult to recommend one. almost all of them will crush your framerate. i use the ‘dotmask’ filter, but it’s a very subtle effect, more about authenticity than anything else. you might want a scanline overlay (see the various threads of this), but again, more of authenticity thing.

to save your settings: Frontend Settings > Configuration Settings > Save Config on exit to ON (this saves to the config when we exit the game – might want to turn this off later, in case you mess anything up later by accident)

[narp]

Wow, thanks for the reply, and you weren’t kidding…the shaders absolutely destroyed the frame rate and didn’t seem to do much as far as improving image quality. I missed the shaders the first time around because I didnt know you have to select them, I was trying to scroll l/r through them heh. So far I’ve heard no distortion with the enable enhanced resolution settings, but I’ll be sure to keep an ear out.

I wonder if any of the shaders actually do improve graphics but not mess up the frame rate; I didn’t get a lot of time to test them. I’ll test out the speed hack as well, but that seemed to make no difference as far as I could tell for the short amount of time I had it enabled.

I also have my TV upscaling the image. I couldnt tell a difference when I had it natively output 1080p vs just having it upscaled, so I dunno. Thanks for the ideas!

[Floob]

Not sure if its what you are after, but here are some overlays on PSX, I quite like the effect, but you may prefer another way of doing it.

[patrickm]

[quote=102043]Wow, thanks for the reply, and you weren’t kidding…the shaders absolutely destroyed the frame rate and didn’t seem to do much as far as improving image quality. I missed the shaders the first time around because I didnt know you have to select them, I was trying to scroll l/r through them heh. So far I’ve heard no distortion with the enable enhanced resolution settings, but I’ll be sure to keep an ear out.

I wonder if any of the shaders actually do improve graphics but not mess up the frame rate; I didn’t get a lot of time to test them. I’ll test out the speed hack as well, but that seemed to make no difference as far as I could tell for the short amount of time I had it enabled.

I also have my TV upscaling the image. I couldnt tell a difference when I had it natively output 1080p vs just having it upscaled, so I dunno. Thanks for the ideas!

[/quote]

Shaders will cause a performance drop on the raspberry pi when running at 1080p. This applies to the pi 2 as well.

The disadvantages of upscaling are that it introduces artifacts into the picture and it will introduce input lag. Ideally, you want no scaling at all for maximum performance and image quality.

[narp]

Oh that’s interesting, thanks! So would it be better to have the TV upscale or to have it render and output at the resolution I want?

[patrickm]

[quote=102052]Oh that’s interesting, thanks! So would it be better to have the TV upscale or to have it render and output at the resolution I want?

[/quote]

Render and output resolution should be set to your tv’s native resolution. By default, retroarch is set to render at 640×480 and output at your monitor’s native resolution, so all you need to edit is “retroarch render resolution” which should be set to “use video output”

If you set your TV to render at a different resolution than its native resolution, this too will cause input lag and artifacts.

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