[osscboy]

OOooooh, and the new version features two outputs side by side, composite on top of the regular VGA output? Or is it composite compatible over VGA?

• This reply was modified 5 days, 4 hours ago by osscboy.

[osscboy]

2) Playstation 1 and I believe some Saturn games also, use different resolutions. For example they switch from 240p ingame content to 480i menus or title screens seemlessly. But it’s not really feasable or immersive to switch via remote everytime manually. So I was contemplating if the ossc could possible recognice the switch in rendering resolution and thus alter its output resolution accordingly.

3) Yeah, first try didn’t work at all. Cable gets sent back. =P

Since declaring everything is great the last time, I managed to switch from 1280×960 back to native 1x 480p rendering resolutions in Retroarch, which looked horrible before. What did it was turning on CRT switchres which I didn’t try before because I read it was only working for AMD cards. Turns out that’s not true anymore and switching to 2560×480 superresolution undid all the pixelwarping and bluriness. I also learned that “nearest neigbour” scaling in the OSSC settings, isn’t producing a sharper image as much, as pixels are actually often misaligned, especially noticable with 2d elements in 480i. So lanczos or GS scaling looks better actually, with GS more like a real ps2, which I have set up to compare.

Getting the scaling right in windows is also really fickle, like on top of the settings in the NVIDIA app, I had to go into the advanced compatibility settings of the retroarch.exe to get it to scale correctly on my screen.

[osscboy]

Hey, after a week of more tinkering and trial and error, my setup seems to be finally working quite well. So I wanted to give some feedback.

– not duplicating my screen on two monitors but projecting just to the CRT fixed the perceived heavy slowdown and unsmooth frame pacing.

– disabling GPU and monitor scaling in the NVIDIA app fixed so many issues. For some emulators like Xemu, it was also neccessary to check “override the scaling mode set by games and programms”

– on the topic of scaling, what I perceived as vertical tearing lines across the whole width of the screen had nothing to do with differing refresh rates in the end. In Retroarch “integer scaling” had to be disabled also.

– in the beginning, I had problems fitting the content on my CRT screen. Sides would be cut off whatever the resolution, whether it’d be 640×480, 720×480, 1280×960 or 1290×1080. Adjusting the advanced timings only helped some, switching the aspect ratios wasn’t met with success really also. Experimenting with “crop bounding box” settings didn’t help either. So in the end, I found out that 720×480 is neither considered 4:3 nor 16:9, but PAR 1:1!!! So switching to PAR on the OSSC and Retroarch finally fit my 1280×960 image perfectly. I havn’t tried 1440×960 yet, which would be more correct theoretically, but for whatever reason, it’s already looking good as it is. And CRU looked a bit unwieldy on my first look.

So after all this, I’m pretty happy it’s finally coming together. A few questions tho remain:

1. When the PC switches Apps, the OSSC or CRT tries to readjust resolutions which let’s the screen flicker for a bit. Is that normal or could it damage the CRT in the long run?
2. I think this is not supported through the OSSC Pro, but is it possible to automate 240p/480i switching by core, by input res, by emulator? Is that even possible technically and could be a future feature? Or can it be mapped to my remote so I don’t have to maneuver through the OSD every time? Some PSX games also switch resolutions, like for example 480i for the title or menu screens, am I out of luck here?
3. For some SNES/Megadrive and also some PSX games, mainly those with prerendered backgrounds and lots of FMVs, I couldn’t yet find a shader in Retroarch that satisfyingly replicated the look, blur of composite video. So I was thinking why not use the real thing, a composite cable. The OSSC isn’t outputting CVBS, but could it be done with an adapter like this:

 

VGA->Composite/S-Video adapter

or

https://www.syscomtec.com/de/cyp-europe-scanconverter-vga-auf-y-c-fbas-sy-pt385a.html

Edit: I also just found this https://videogameperfection.com/products/koryuu-transcoder/ on VGP.

AND if the OSSC could be upgraded to supported CVBS with such hardware, maybe a switch board could be of use if I don’t want to unplug and switch cables each time. My TV got two Scart inputs, one could be used with a composite to Scart adapter. I guess, it never ends, every solved problems makes way for more ideas. 😉

Well, well this turned out to be a bit of  a wall of text, but in the end I also wanted to leave big thanks to you two for your very helpful suggestions. I the beginning I really thought this would go nowhere.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by osscboy.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by osscboy.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by osscboy.
• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by osscboy.

[osscboy]

Ah thanks for the link, I’ll look into it.

Make sure you have your GPU settings set to scale on the display, not on the GPU

What do you mean by that? I think I tried “integer”, “aspect ratio” and “fullscreen” in the Nvidia settings. Do you mean disable GPU scaling alltogether? Yes, that’s conveniently the only settings I didn’t try haha.

I would use progressive output modes rather than interlace.

Well, I’m using a CRT TV, 480i is all there is. If you mean the signal I’m feeding into the OSSC Pro then yes, that’s progressive.

Tearing suggests some sort of frame rate miss-match, you have frame lock on yes?

Yes, frame lock was on by default and I left it at that. The OSD also always correctly reported the same refresh rate as my PC.

While watching MarcoRetro’s “Downscaling Chronicles” review of the OSSC Pro again, I noticed how 480i WS supposedly switches the image to 4:3 and 480i to widescreen, just the opposite from what it says. So maybe that’s what was happening, I’ll have to try that out.

Still so much to do, didn’t even update yet because I forgot to order the sd card adapter. Gotta get my old Macbook Pro from the attic now and see if the sd card slot still works.

 

• This reply was modified 3 months ago by osscboy.
• This reply was modified 3 months ago by osscboy.

[osscboy]

Urks, should have typed out my reply elsewhere, it just vanished after clicking submit.

So firstly, sorry I’m replying this late but I didn’t get to fiddle some more with the OSSC till now.

Actually what did it, is exactly what you suggested, Bucko. I had to set it from “Auto” to “Extra AV Out” in the expansion settings and then switch to “RGBCS/RGBS”

Now I finally get a picture and sound, but with that different issues arose.

Firstly scaling, I set Retroarch to output at 640×480 and everything is centered perfectly on the 4:3 screen, nothing cut off at the edges. But when I run a standalone emu like Xemu and have Windows 11 set to 1440×960, a 4:3 res, the OSSC Pro scales it inside 1920x1080p oder 1200p, so I get black bars all around the picture. I already tried to set the aspect ratio manually, but for example, if set to 4:3 or Auto, it cuts off the edges or squishes it vertically. So my question, is there an option to manually set the HDMI input aspect ration to 4:3?

The second problem is with the refresh rate I presume. The games feel very sluggish, have tearing even when emu and windows it set to 60Hz. Did I get that wrong because maybe interlacing uses 60Hz for each line seperately, so it adds up to 120Hz? How do you decide between 60Hz and 59.95Hz?

Thirdly, I get constant vertical tearing all over the screen, most noticably when the camera is panning horizontally. Googling around, people seem to suggest it has something to do with getting the sync settings correct? Backporch is being mentioned a lot? So I found that setting but didn’t dare to change it yet, not knowing if I could also make it worse potentially. Do you know what to look for with the sync settings?

Oh, and one last question, in the scaling settings, there are listed several different algos like Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear (Sharp/Soft), Lanczos. Are these settings relevant for downscaling also or just for upscaling from AV to digital?

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