How is the PS3 upscaling?

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inotocracy

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I made the mistake of buying the 40gb PS3, as most of you may know the 40gb does not support PS2 games-- I didn't. So, I have a PS2, but I realize the PS3 has support to upscale PS2 games. How well does it work? My PS2 looks pretty craptacular on my big screen, would it make a difference?
 
There is a "smoothing option" on mine that I think makes the games look better. I have never used it as I also have the 40GB, but the DVD upscaling is very nice.
 
Old thread from last year, it's nice to have. Although, definitely not a dealbreaker IMHO. If I were to re-purchase the PS3 again, I wouldn't mind acquiring the 80gig. The wow factor quickly faded for me since I had little interest re-playing my old PS2 games.
 
^ The issue I have is my PS2 looks like complete ass on my HDTV (as does most SDTV), so if upscaling makes it a lot clearer I'd consider selling my current PS3 and buying an 80gb.
 
I don't believe there's any amount of upscaling that will make a game/dvd look crazy good. Not when they were designed for 480i/p to begin with. Stretching, smoothing and enhancing is good to maybe the next higher conversion, not to fill a 65" 1080p monitor. Even the best progressive scan DVD players have this trouble. Not saying they don't work as described, they just don't work as expected. On occasion, I've come across tolerable upscaled media, but it's rare.
 
Why can't Sony actually force the game to render at a higher resolution? Is there just something extremely complex behind PS2 emulation that prevents it?
 
Well, a lot of problems are resolved. The game's graphics aren't going to look any better from a technical standpoint, although if you have a crappy scaler in your TV (the usual case), it will look better. FFXII looked significantly better on my HDTV upscaled on PS3. Also, since PS3 can only display a progressive signal over HDMI, if you have that setup, all games basically have progressive scan. Which is nice.
 
I don't think the PS2 game scaling does much. Might help LCD's a little bit but it still looks horrible. I usually end up turning off the smoothing as it just makes it blurry. Its not intelligent or anything it just makes the entire screen "smooth" or to me blurry. I've been trying to play GoW2 and MGS3, but I ended up just us playing it on a projection HDTV as it handles low resolution better then my LCD. I really don't think your missing out on much. Its just nice to have 1 system and wireless controllers, but the graphics are not any better.

redavenab said:
Why can't Sony actually force the game to render at a higher resolution? Is there just something extremely complex behind PS2 emulation that prevents it?
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Well they are still working on getting 720p PS3 games to scale to 1080i...
On a serious note I wish they could too, but sometimes when you have an emulator that lets you bump up the resolution everything just gets smaller versus a higher pixel count like in PC games. It would be sweet if Sony or MS could do it.
 
redavenab said:
Why can't Sony actually force the game to render at a higher resolution? Is there just something extremely complex behind PS2 emulation that prevents it?
Click to expand...

Um, the games aren't really emulated. That's why. With the 60GB / 20GB versions, the whole PS2 console is basically stuck under the hood of the PS3. With the 80GB version, only the PS2's GPU is actually in the console; it software emulates the CPU. Because of this, you can't increase resolution without severe slowdowns because there's still basically a PS2 in there. Microsoft software emulates everything with Xbox games on 360, and thus can increase the resolution to 720p at the rendering level with many games as the performance with software emulation can reach levels higher than the original hardware.
 
I actually think the upscaled PS2 games DO look better on an HDTV than simply plugging in a PS2 and running them @ 480i or 480p.
If you hunt through the various threads about the Wii, you'll notice a lot of people complaining about how blurry/fuzzy it can be while running at 480p on a 1080p native TV over a certain size. Some have even gone as far as to purchase upscalers for this purpose only. I know I certainly have my receiver set to upscale it to 720p and would do 1080p if I could.
The PS3 essentially takes care of this for you. It doesn't make the games look better than they would on an SDTV, but it makes it actually makes the games run at your native res and look as though they were being played on an SDTV.
 
I'm playing Rogue Galaxy on my PS3 and it looks great. Nothing is blurry or strecthed out. I used to run my PS2 on my 42" HDTV and the games looked like ass at 480P. The PS3 upscaler is very good.
 
I wonder though, my xbox can scale my dvds the total width and length whereas my PS3 does not. Funny thing too, I know I made a comments about upscaling but my son was watching some movie with Jim Cary (forgot name but he's after some kids fortune) and it looked pretty damn good. I actually asked my kid, when did you guys pay for this? We only rent (on demand) HD so I thought it was HD.

Sometimes they scale damn good and other, well you know ;).
 
Pkirk618 said:
I wonder though, my xbox can scale my dvds the total width and length whereas my PS3 does not.
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It shouldn't though...

Maybe I am not really getting what you are saying, but upscaling should not change the amount of screen a movie takes up. If it does, then it is cutting off some of the picture (zooming).

Some movies are made at 16:9 ratio, so those would fit fine. But the majority are actually wider than that, so there would be black bars along the top and bottom. Upscaling does not change that. It only changes the resolution, not the aspect ratio.
 
Pkirk618 said:
I wonder though, my xbox can scale my dvds the total width and length whereas my PS3 does not. Funny thing too, I know I made a comments about upscaling but my son was watching some movie with Jim Cary (forgot name but he's after some kids fortune) and it looked pretty damn good. I actually asked my kid, when did you guys pay for this? We only rent (on demand) HD so I thought it was HD.

Sometimes they scale damn good and other, well you know ;).
Click to expand...

Are you saying it gets rid of the black bars on the top and bottom? I'm not sure exactly what you're saying? Because the 360 does indeed stretch the aspect ratio by default and you have to set it for original AR for it to keep everything the same. But an incorrect AR is just horrible. I don't even know why MS put that feature in in the first place (PS3 can do this as well, though, but it's not default).
 
That's what I meant. I worded it wrong. And I do like my screen filled but more importantly, the XBOX seems to do it better. I misused upscaling for stretch. I know what I meant to say but my hands were jerking each other off :)
 
I had 360 HD player and now have PS3. They both work the same on my HD LCD Projector. Using letterbox, widescreen, anamorphic, and real resolution is a function I set in the projectors memory and not the 360 or PS3. If you set widescreen movies to anamorphic they will always play at their original aspect ratio, same with widescreen mode and real res mode. Only letterbox forces the image to take up the whole screen and cuts off some of the image to achieve it. Only thing you should need to set on your 360 or PS3 is the resolution you want it to use, 720 or 1080.
 
Pkirk618 said:
I don't believe there's any amount of upscaling that will make a game/dvd look crazy good. Not when they were designed for 480i/p to begin with. Stretching, smoothing and enhancing is good to maybe the next higher conversion, not to fill a 65" 1080p monitor. Even the best progressive scan DVD players have this trouble. Not saying they don't work as described, they just don't work as expected. On occasion, I've come across tolerable upscaled media, but it's rare.
Click to expand...

Upscaled 480p DVD's look good on my HD projector. Not as good as HD movies of course but still very acceptable quality. There is even variation in quality of HD movies too as it also depends on the quality of the film stock and camera lenses they used to shoot the movie with. My remastered 480p version of Planet of the Apes looks surprisingly good upscaled considering the age of the movie. The main reason for that is because they used good quality film and the cameraman was very good at what he does, also, they did a good job re-mastering it.
 
PS3 upscaling is fairly good, but it won't do you any good for a timing type game like Marvel vs Capcom or SF3. It adds a bit more "input" lag in which what you press displays on screen slightly later.

Even with that said though games like DMC3 are playable and RPG's look and play fine, actually rather prefer to play FF12 on my PS3 than my PS2. Both are hooked up to the same TV and the difference is incredible.
 
PWMK2 said:
Um, the games aren't really emulated. That's why. With the 60GB / 20GB versions, the whole PS2 console is basically stuck under the hood of the PS3. With the 80GB version, only the PS2's GPU is actually in the console; it software emulates the CPU. Because of this, you can't increase resolution without severe slowdowns because there's still basically a PS2 in there. Microsoft software emulates everything with Xbox games on 360, and thus can increase the resolution to 720p at the rendering level with many games as the performance with software emulation can reach levels higher than the original hardware.
Click to expand...
Well how about PS1 games, then? That's all being emulated by the PS3, so they should be able to actually render the game at a higher resolution which would make it much more enjoyable to watch and play =\.
 
redavenab said:
Well how about PS1 games, then? That's all being emulated by the PS3, so they should be able to actually render the game at a higher resolution which would make it much more enjoyable to watch and play =\.
Click to expand...

Sigh...the PS1 games are not emulated on the versions that include the Emotion Engine chip. The versions that came with the EE chip run the PS1 and PS2 games off of it. The PS3 though is completely different architecture.

Emulation is also almost always slower (at first) than the actual hardware so it takes much more power and the PS3 architecture just might not be efficient enough to do it at double the normal resolution because it is so radically different. Emulation isn't even 100% compatible with PS1/PS2 libraries at this point.

Upscaling still looks horrible because they just apply smoothing and blending filters and the original PS1/PS2 games have no antialiasing (not to mention most PS3 games don't even have antialiasing or are already even pretty crappy at 780). Upping the resolution would be a good idea but I guess nobody thought of that at Sony.

The moral of the story is that everybody should break out BLEEM!
250px-Bleem!_Windows_Screenshot.png
 
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