Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

User avatar
FaSMaN
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2020 4:52 pm
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by FaSMaN »

I havent been on here too long and when I joined I thought it would be a good place to discuss new features and make a request or two that will help the greater community, but it appears that some users believe this practice to be irrelevant and we should all game the same, this thread is completely derailed now , what started off as a good conversation with photos, use cases etc... has turned into a * flinging match with some basing their opinion on no logical ground other than their own feelings and desires, to somehow grasp at power and control.

Features can be disabled and enabled, if you don't like one simply don't enable it, rather than shooting people down who request it :)
Just a small random youtuber from a South Africa.
User avatar
Threepwood
Posts: 133
Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 9:14 am
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 23 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by Threepwood »

lomdar67 wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2020 6:24 am So you shouldn't request anything. You can ask or suggest features and that's it.
"to ask for" is literally the meaning of "to request", see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/request

lomdar67 wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2020 6:24 am Sometimes these "suggestion" sound so demanding and for my taste this is not right and annoying! Sorry, but that's the way I see it.
Outside of obvious slurs there is no "sound" to text, which makes it so easy to misunderstand. In communication there is a sender who tries to word a message with a certain meaning and context in mind and a recipient who has to interpret the message according to their understanding of the words and within their own context. When the intonation of a voice and visual cues (body language) are missing, then it is the recipient who fills in the gaps with the context they are having in mind. In other words: It can be the recipient who in their own mind adds negativity or hostility to a message that contained none to begin with. It gets worse with language barriers on international forums, because then subtext and connotation are even less reliable than among native speakers.


I can only speak for myself now:

I am never angry or put any hostility in my messages and would want them to be read with a soft, warm and benevolent voice in mind. For example, some people probably read my message from earlier "Do we really need to throw so much "crap" around here?" with an angry and shouting voice in their mind. Try reading it again with a warm and benevolent voice and you will see that there isn't any inherent hostility even is such, text only, words that are void of intonation.


In general, from my own community experience that I can offer:

A good code of conduct in discussions would be to always assume the best intention, but if something comes across in a negative way, then this mindset requires a simple request for clarification, in the way of "this came across like ..., was that your intention?". It is a benevolent mindset of discussion culture that makes debating the most enjoyable.

Likewise, intentions need to be made clear and cannot be assumed by other, third parties. Fruitful discussion requires a to and forth of stating and offering viewpoints that differ and it is only natural to start with a position of disagreement. Claiming disagreement is not claiming the other person to be wrong, but stating that the viewpoints differ. What then happens is an exchange of facts, cases and descriptions of reasons to fully try to explain there differing viewpoints. Viewpoints and opinions can change or can be revealed to not actually disagree to begin with.

There was no statement of rejection to implement such a feature, this discussion here never reached such a point. If there were such a clear statement of "I do not want to do it" that would simply be respected by all parties involved and there would be no hard feelings. Such a statement must come from the people actually involved in that discussion, though and cannot be made on behalf that person by third parties (this is usually refered to as white knighting). Nobody demanded anything, like nobody is required to do anything.

Discussions go a certain way and people behave in certain ways. This is individuality. Together with the emotional void that is the nature of simple text, of course it happens that we: 1) Dislike how a discussion is evolving after getting involved or 2) dislike the topic or mode of a discussion before getting involved. Keeping in mind that nobody is obligated to post, the sensible option is to either stop replying or, if there was no involvement in the discussion yet, to not get involved in the first place. Doing so otherwise quickly leads to derailing the topic, because there is nothing constructive added. Such posts are "off topic". Naturally it may happen that users who are not very aware of this try to steer the discussion culture of a thread to what they deem is the best form of conduct and they do so with the best of intentions. Literal users-level individuals are equals though and if one tries to impose their preferred way onto others, that is usually called "bullying" or "backseat moderating".


Again only speaking for myself:

After 1,5 years of using MiSTer I do a lot of user support here - something I always did and Sorgelig happened to request in his disclaimer recently -, because it is inherent to this aforementioned spirit of a benevolent approach to help each other. There is experience gathered over time and such experience shared makes a community stronger and more pleasant, as well as ultimately the product the community revolves around better. Helping newcomers to overcome initial hurdles helps a community to grow and as a side effect to again add more diverse opinions and viewpoints. In discussions these diverse opinions allow to find better solutions again. More individuals > more viewpoints > more ideas to pick and choose from. This was such a thread of exchaning ideas and viewpoints.

This discussion here is indeed entirely derailed now, but I would be glad to pick it up again, because the different views on our very niche hobby can only make the product better not worse and image representation on screen according to different TV standards appears to be a woefully neglected topic. :)

Thus: Let's go back to a constructive on-topic talk.
antibolo
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:49 pm
Been thanked: 15 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by antibolo »

I used to own a SMS (sold it because a Genesis with Everdrive can replace almost all of it) and I remember the composite out being particularly terrible and weird as hell, definitely not like what the Genesis composite looks like (which is still ugly because composite is composite, but otherwise pretty good quality). For that reason I don't believe it's accurate to claim that the Genesis filters should just be copied over to the SMS core, as both systems' composite outputs are actually quite different on the real hardware.

(Meanwhile the RGB out was super clean and absolutely gorgeous. Personally I'm in the Sorgelig camp on this debate, I don't see why people want to deliberately destroy their picture quality for some dubious argument about composite output being the "correct" way to render those graphics (it's not), but to each his own...)
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

antibolo wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2020 6:46 pm (Meanwhile the RGB out was super clean and absolutely gorgeous. Personally I'm in the Sorgelig camp on this debate, I don't see why people want to deliberately destroy their picture quality for some dubious argument about composite output being the "correct" way to render those graphics (it's not), but to each his own...)
Could not possibly disagree more. The pursuit of fidelity in this case (pixel accuracy) is actually harming accuracy. 80s and 90s developers *ABSOLUTELY* understood how composite dithering could be exploited to increase color palette, and used it to advantage. This is no secret - it's been talked about in *many* contemporary interviews at the time. If you are looking at (nearly all systems' at that time) pure RGB output, you are _not_ looking at what the artist *intended*, whatever your own preferences.

The same is absolutely true of 4:3. *NO* video chip from that era produced square pixels, yet that's how they were drawn - artists had to actually take that into account and compensate for it by drawing art stretched 'thin' so it would appear properly on a 4:3 CRT. "Pixel perfect" (or 1:! square pixels), in retro terms, is *inherently wrong*.

>soapbox> (If you are a wilting flower, the rest is almost certainly going to insult you, so tread carefully!)

I find it interesting that nobody is arguing against a distorted (from a 'pure pixels' standpoint) stretching of output to 4:3, even though it's imperfect by design. Nobody's arguing against the feature to allow stereo mixing on Minimig, despite the fact that it is completely inaccurate (as the system never supported such a thing and output harshly separated audio). There's countless examples, in many cores, of where video and audio output is deliberately "muddied" to achieve either a higher degree of contemporary accuracy and/or player convenience, but somehow only composite blend is controversial. I genuinely don't get it.

For those who seem put off by end users asking for features they find desirable or usable: Please don't code open source. Just code for yourself, use it yourself, enjoy it yourself. I've been doing this for a LONG time, and I assure you that you will quickly tire of this and move on to another shiny, because in reality it's almost certainly people you don't like and has nothing to do with technology. People are the lifeblood of open-source - developers AND users. One has no purpose without the other.

Sorry for being this harsh, but it's getting rather ridiculous. The current spate of devs don't want to implement it, and that's fine - I have no issue with that. But if people want to discuss relevance, and are not just being criticized - but *judged* - for pointing out that _yes, that's really how it was, no matter how much you wish it were otherwise_, I just don't know what to say other than you clearly weren't around to experience it when it was actually happening the first time around. Please take the memories of us old-timers with a little less salt...we sometimes actually know whereof we speak. :)

I'm also no stranger to coding - I was doing OSS before it was cool (or called that), and I've got a pretty sizable list of very public credits to my name. Rest assured, were I motivated to learn Verilog, I'd *absolutely* do this myself...but I'm not, and I'm older and more tired, and so I'm going to conclude now and hope someone, someday, listens to reason.

</soapbox>
User avatar
Sigismond0
Posts: 339
Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 2:21 am
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 66 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by Sigismond0 »

rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 2:52 pmThe same is absolutely true of 4:3. *NO* video chip from that era produced square pixels, yet that's how they were drawn - artists had to actually take that into account and compensate for it by drawing art stretched 'thin' so it would appear properly on a 4:3 CRT. "Pixel perfect" (or 1:! square pixels), in retro terms, is *inherently wrong*.
Well, sometimes. There are plenty of examples of SNES games where square pixels in the native 8:7 aspect ratio produce true circles, while a 4:3 stretch of that makes ovals. That feature very obviously varies by developer, so you can't just blanket state that one or the other is truly correct.
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

Sigismond0 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:15 pm
rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 2:52 pmThe same is absolutely true of 4:3. *NO* video chip from that era produced square pixels, yet that's how they were drawn - artists had to actually take that into account and compensate for it by drawing art stretched 'thin' so it would appear properly on a 4:3 CRT. "Pixel perfect" (or 1:! square pixels), in retro terms, is *inherently wrong*.
Well, sometimes. There are plenty of examples of SNES games where square pixels in the native 8:7 aspect ratio produce true circles, while a 4:3 stretch of that makes ovals. That feature very obviously varies by developer, so you can't just blanket state that one or the other is truly correct.
Of course I can. The target display of an SNES *does not show square pixels*. This is demonstrably obvious.

It's certainly correct that some developers didn't follow Nintendo's style guide and couldn't be arsed to actually scale graphics properly (*particularly* with NTSC->PAL conversions in the vertical dimension), but that doesn't suddenly make televisions have square pixels - it makes lazy developers under impossible time constraints. None of this is news, and it doesn't make square pixels 'correct'...or composite blending wrong.
dshadoff
Core Developer
Posts: 534
Joined: Sun May 24, 2020 9:30 pm
Has thanked: 19 times
Been thanked: 141 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by dshadoff »

rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 2:52 pm Sorry for being this harsh, but it's getting rather ridiculous. The current spate of devs don't want to implement it, and that's fine - I have no issue with that. But if people want to discuss relevance, and are not just being criticized - but *judged* - for pointing out that _yes, that's really how it was, no matter how much you wish it were otherwise_, I just don't know what to say other than you clearly weren't around to experience it when it was actually happening the first time around. Please take the memories of us old-timers with a little less salt...we sometimes actually know whereof we speak. :)

I'm also no stranger to coding - I was doing OSS before it was cool (or called that), and I've got a pretty sizable list of very public credits to my name. Rest assured, were I motivated to learn Verilog, I'd *absolutely* do this myself...but I'm not, and I'm older and more tired, and so I'm going to conclude now and hope someone, someday, listens to reason.

</soapbox>
Not sure what you're talking about. I don't recall seeing anybody say, "that's not how it was", or "that feature has no value".

What I have seen in this thread (and others) is that when developers state that their priorities lie elsewhere (because there are so many things to do, and they need to be prioritized in terms of value versus effort), the thread doubles down to try to persuade them to do it. Now. Because somehow, they feel that if they ask often enough, it will change peoples' priorities. Or that somehow because the feature has relevance to somebody, that it must be implemented by somebody. On their schedule.

Trust me, the developers are thinking about things like composite output and how it differs from RGB. And how some colour shifts from RGB to YUV were not merely translational from colour space to colour space. And how the original developers made use of artifacting. And how NTSC sets were so adjustable that "standard composite" is not easy to define.

But most of all, we are thinking about how much effort it is to implement such a thing, and for what amount of payback, when there are still so many legitimate game-breaking bugs in cores, distorted audio, important cores which aren't ported, poorly-understood hardware, etc. also needing to be done.

Many of the responses to the developers' comments of "acknowledged but not a priority, stop asking" are perceived as "your suggestion has no value", when in fact it is, "your suggestion has already been thought of some time ago, and many other things are more important right now".

So this is the point where, as a developer, I come back to the time-honoured: "If it's so important to you - and especially if you're familiar with open source development - please go ahead and be our guest and implement it yourself". Nobody said such a solution would be rejected.

So. It's somewhere on the list, but not at the top.
Ideally, it would be nice to have a universal solution, but that's a hard problem.
In the meantime, there are filters, please check them out. We know that they don't do 100% of what you want, but chances are - given composite's variability in its history - that any solution would be 'wrong' from some group of the population...
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm
rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 2:52 pm Sorry for being this harsh, but it's getting rather ridiculous. The current spate of devs don't want to implement it, and that's fine - I have no issue with that. But if people want to discuss relevance, and are not just being criticized - but *judged* - for pointing out that _yes, that's really how it was, no matter how much you wish it were otherwise_, I just don't know what to say other than you clearly weren't around to experience it when it was actually happening the first time around. Please take the memories of us old-timers with a little less salt...we sometimes actually know whereof we speak. :)

I'm also no stranger to coding - I was doing OSS before it was cool (or called that), and I've got a pretty sizable list of very public credits to my name. Rest assured, were I motivated to learn Verilog, I'd *absolutely* do this myself...but I'm not, and I'm older and more tired, and so I'm going to conclude now and hope someone, someday, listens to reason.

</soapbox>
Not sure what you're talking about. I don't recall seeing anybody say, "that's not how it was", or "that feature has no value".
They are right here in this thread, but I'm not going to be more specific because I'm not looking to directly insult anyone or call anyone out. In fact, it was my vitriol over it becoming personal that compelled me to speak out.
dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm What I have seen in this thread (and others) is that when developers state that their priorities lie elsewhere (because there are so many things to do, and they need to be prioritized in terms of value versus effort), the thread doubles down to try to persuade them to do it. Now. Because somehow, they feel that if they ask often enough, it will change peoples' priorities. Or that somehow because the feature has relevance to somebody, that it must be implemented by somebody. On their schedule.
That's not what I'm talking about either - I agree, all of those things are entirely reasonable. When I see a request being called "stupid" or the intention as "crap", that's just not OK, and (with all due respect) speaks to apparent willful ignorance.

It's not my project, and I have no say - I just feel a line was crossed.
dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm Trust me, the developers are thinking about things like composite output and how it differs from RGB. And how some colour shifts from RGB to YUV were not merely translational from colour space to colour space. And how the original developers made use of artifacting. And how NTSC sets were so adjustable that "standard composite" is not easy to define.
Perhaps *you* are, but not all - some have been quite clear that either a) that composite blending used to achieve dithering didn't actually exist (of course it did), or b) well even if it did they don't give a crap (and fine, as long as we aren't talking around the point).
dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm But most of all, we are thinking about how much effort it is to implement such a thing, and for what amount of payback, when there are still so many legitimate game-breaking bugs in cores, distorted audio, important cores which aren't ported, poorly-understood hardware, etc. also needing to be done.
Were that the case, this topic wouldn't exist, because it would never have been implemented for Genesis. To be frank, more effort has been invested (and wasted) in this thread alone than it likely would have taken to port the required code into the SMS core (said from a position of near-total ignorance, but I'm willing to bet I'm not far off at all).
dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm So this is the point where, as a developer, I come back to the time-honoured: "If it's so important to you - and especially if you're familiar with open source development - please go ahead and be our guest and implement it yourself". Nobody said such a solution would be rejected.
In my experience, most who suggest that do so comfortably because they lack the skill set to do it themselves, but that's just my own observations of 30 years in software development talking.
dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm In the meantime, there are filters, please check them out. We know that they don't do 100% of what you want, but chances are - given composite's variability in its history - that any solution would be 'wrong' from some group of the population...
As described before, simple filters can't achieve color blending, which is what's been specifically requested (and repeated ad nauseam) here.

My diatribe wasn't a "me too" - it was a combination of a) hey, can we please not rewrite technology history because some people prefer pixel "perfection" and b) let's bring it back over the line from personal attacks to a discussion of the merits of historical accuracy, if nothing else.

It's a forum. Nobody HAS to read this thread. Nobody HAS to respond to this thread. And if developers truly have better things to do, I'm going to take it as read that they are off doing them versus telling others they shouldn't be having a discussion.
akeley
Top Contributor
Posts: 1303
Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 7:54 pm
Has thanked: 416 times
Been thanked: 399 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by akeley »

dshadoff wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm What I have seen in this thread (and others) is that when developers state that their priorities lie elsewhere (because there are so many things to do, and they need to be prioritized in terms of value versus effort), the thread doubles down to try to persuade them to do it. Now. Because somehow, they feel that if they ask often enough, it will change peoples' priorities. Or that somehow because the feature has relevance to somebody, that it must be implemented by somebody. On their schedule.
Would you care to post examples of the behaviour you're talking about from this thread?
User avatar
Sigismond0
Posts: 339
Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 2:21 am
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 66 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by Sigismond0 »

rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:24 pm
Sigismond0 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:15 pm
rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 2:52 pmThe same is absolutely true of 4:3. *NO* video chip from that era produced square pixels, yet that's how they were drawn - artists had to actually take that into account and compensate for it by drawing art stretched 'thin' so it would appear properly on a 4:3 CRT. "Pixel perfect" (or 1:! square pixels), in retro terms, is *inherently wrong*.
Well, sometimes. There are plenty of examples of SNES games where square pixels in the native 8:7 aspect ratio produce true circles, while a 4:3 stretch of that makes ovals. That feature very obviously varies by developer, so you can't just blanket state that one or the other is truly correct.
Of course I can. The target display of an SNES *does not show square pixels*. This is demonstrably obvious.

It's certainly correct that some developers didn't follow Nintendo's style guide and couldn't be arsed to actually scale graphics properly (*particularly* with NTSC->PAL conversions in the vertical dimension), but that doesn't suddenly make televisions have square pixels - it makes lazy developers under impossible time constraints. None of this is news, and it doesn't make square pixels 'correct'...or composite blending wrong.
Now you're trying to have it both ways. It's disingenuous to argue that "artists worked hard to make their art in a way that it would display properly in 4:3, so the correct way to view that art is 4:3" and then in the next comment say "artists that made their work with a 1:1 ratio were just lazy and you should still stretch their work". You're trying to both argue for and against an artist's intent in the same breath. If you want to make the technical argument that "4:3 is correct because that's what the final product would be seen on", that's fine. If you want to make an artistic argument that that "viewing the art in an aspect ratio that matches the artistic intent is correct", that's fine, too. But you can't have both, because those two statements are in direct conflict.

And just to be clear, many of these examples of designs that clearly used square pixels were done by Nintendo themselves. We're not just talking lazy third party devs here, we're talking massive tentpole first-party releases like Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and more. Nintendo is the one setting the example of making art for square pixels, and not accounting for the final 4:3 output. If you have an actual style guide that Nintendo published for SNES developers, that would be a very interesting read. But just looking at their own biggest titles, it looks like that may not actually exist.
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

Sigismond0 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 5:40 pm
rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:24 pm
Sigismond0 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:15 pm

Well, sometimes. There are plenty of examples of SNES games where square pixels in the native 8:7 aspect ratio produce true circles, while a 4:3 stretch of that makes ovals. That feature very obviously varies by developer, so you can't just blanket state that one or the other is truly correct.
Of course I can. The target display of an SNES *does not show square pixels*. This is demonstrably obvious.

It's certainly correct that some developers didn't follow Nintendo's style guide and couldn't be arsed to actually scale graphics properly (*particularly* with NTSC->PAL conversions in the vertical dimension), but that doesn't suddenly make televisions have square pixels - it makes lazy developers under impossible time constraints. None of this is news, and it doesn't make square pixels 'correct'...or composite blending wrong.
Now you're trying to have it both ways. It's disingenuous to argue that "artists worked hard to make their art in a way that it would display properly in 4:3, so the correct way to view that art is 4:3" and then in the next comment say "artists that made their work with a 1:1 ratio were just lazy and you should still stretch their work". You're trying to both argue for and against an artist's intent in the same breath. If you want to make the technical argument that "4:3 is correct because that's what the final product would be seen on", that's fine. If you want to make an artistic argument that that "viewing the art in an aspect ratio that matches the artistic intent is correct", that's fine, too. But you can't have both, because those two statements are in direct conflict.

And just to be clear, many of these examples of designs that clearly used square pixels were done by Nintendo themselves. We're not just talking lazy third party devs here, we're talking massive tentpole first-party releases like Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and more. Nintendo is the one setting the example of making art for square pixels, and not accounting for the final 4:3 output. If you have an actual style guide that Nintendo published for SNES developers, that would be a very interesting read. But just looking at their own biggest titles, it looks like that may not actually exist.
The reason is largely that tooling to give the artists true end-state WYSIWYG simply didn't exist then. Pixel artists were *entirely* cognizant that the target display would show their work distorted, and they simply didn't have time (or inclination, in many cases) to care.

I'm hardly "having it both ways". If the artist drew a perfect 1:1 circle, the TV would show an oval, and everyone was on the same page with that. If they drew two single-pixel vertical lines side by side of complimentary colors side-by-side, they'd get a third apparent color from composite blending that didn't *actually* exist in the GPU. Neither are these are in any sort of conflict.

I'll see what I can find re: a formalized Nintendo style guide. I can quote the relevant text (about the identical problem) for the Amiga if you like.

(And for the record, it's this sort of thing that I was referring to when I referred to 'reinventing technological history'.)
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

Speaking of, forgot to mention this - it's a very worthy read (even if you think you know it all! :):

https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=38
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

rhester72 wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:05 pm I'll see what I can find re: a formalized Nintendo style guide. I can quote the relevant text (about the identical problem) for the Amiga if you like.
OK - I (lightly) scanned through all my old contemporary doc scans (and papers) and couldn't find anything specific re: Nintendo aspect ratio concerns - whether that's because formal documentation from them didn't exist (entirely possible) or my Kanji search skills aren't up to par (FAR more likely) is anyone's guess. (There was certainly published material specifically acknowledging AR design concerns for other contemporary platforms by 1986!) However, I think suggesting that early 80s Japanese developers and testers were blissfully unaware of 4:3 output stretching would defy imagination. Surely we can agree that the problem was very well known (if not very well addressed) even then. Things certainly got (a lot) better in this regard by the age of Genesis, as the images on my screen right now readily attest to (I've been doing Genesis testing for days for something entirely unrelated).
antibolo
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:49 pm
Been thanked: 15 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by antibolo »

Holy hell rhester72, what part of “but to each his own” do you not understand?
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

antibolo wrote: Thu Jun 25, 2020 11:38 pm Holy hell rhester72, what part of “but to each his own” do you not understand?
Ironic you should say that, given that's precisely what I (and many others) were advocating. What part of it confuses you?
antibolo
Posts: 99
Joined: Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:49 pm
Been thanked: 15 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by antibolo »

rhester72 wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2020 1:28 pm
antibolo wrote: Thu Jun 25, 2020 11:38 pm Holy hell rhester72, what part of “but to each his own” do you not understand?
Ironic you should say that, given that's precisely what I (and many others) were advocating. What part of it confuses you?
It's not irony if I am already on your side. It's fine to have opinions, but don't act all persecuted if people disagree with you, and then start making ridiculous claims that they shouldn't develop open source software because they have the gall to disagree with a random person on the Internet (gasp!).

Anyway, I'm done here, enjoy your thread derail about aspect ratios or whatever.
rhester72
Top Contributor
Posts: 1107
Joined: Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:31 am
Has thanked: 13 times
Been thanked: 169 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by rhester72 »

I stand by what I said - open source is (quite by definition!) a people-oriented exercise, and one of sheer frustration for anyone that doesn't like interacting with people. I'm not speaking glibly, I'm talking from direct experience watching a considerable number of otherwise solid efforts flame out because they couldn't handle people reporting (often imagined or ignorant) problems and making (frequently ridiculous) feature requests. Love of creating things isn't enough.

I too was pretty much done with the thread - perhaps next time if you're looking strictly to criticize me directly, you can hit me up by PM? Thanks.
User avatar
eightbit
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2020 7:05 pm
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by eightbit »

composite.png
composite.png (181.32 KiB) Viewed 13403 times
gh221
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 3:23 pm
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by gh221 »

I'm new to this forum, but I really feel people are being mischaracterised in this thread. The original request and historic precedent were very clear, with videos demonstrating how these games originally looked. The first problematic post I see is from vanfanel, with quotes like "look as intended, at long last. It has been what, decades?" and "To the person who was smart enough to add the un-selective, complete composite blending to the Genesis core: THANK YOU". Those would certainly be insulting and abrasive to almost any emulation developer and could potentially have caused later antagonism (darksakul gave a well-reasoned response).

Also, a bit of antagonism from Threepwood, about the HV filters mentioned by Chris23235: "These filters are just blur filters that do not achieve a composite blend effect. They are no substitute for what the Composite Blend ON feature does."

Then Sorgelig pops in and is insulting and dismissive right from the start, saying people want to "render the video as complete crap without any benefits". Threepwood gave a considered reply and then Sorgelig retorts with "No idea about which improvement you are talking about." and "Wolf3D is originally very pixelated game. Talking about dithering on some walls in this game is meaningless". Again, completely dismissing the lived (and demonstrated in videos) experience of the original console. Again, Threepwood calmly disagrees.

Sorgelig again is dismissive, with "MiSTer emulates the console. Composite output is simply not a part of MiSTer, so you need to add it if you are fan of blurry videos." and "Basically scaling filter with blurriness already simulates bad quality of composite video". It's also demonstrably untrue from earlier screenshots, which show that Composite Blend is not a blur.

Then again, with "You call Sonic screen with composite blend (shown above) as normal? For me it looks like crap. It's like whole MiSTer project made in vain if I watch at that pic". People are asking for the emulation to accurately simulate what they had in childhood, which is probably more accurate to what game designers intended than sharp-edge pixel blocks.

And again, "Yeah, look at SFII screens. This is total crap. It's like "catch the flea but miss the elephant."" and "Generic dithering NEVER meant for composite blending."

Then lomdar67 starts chastising people with "Don't you think you have made your point?" and "...do it your self, it's all on Github!". But the problem is that people feel they haven't made their point, because they're being given insulting and dismissive responses and are clarifying as best they can.

Then dshadoff joins in with "Asking again and again won't position it any higher on a developer's priority list." and "Sorgelig has made it clear that he isn't interested in working on it", which isn't really accurate to the context. Sorgelig has been repeatedly dismissive with odd falsehoods, which people have been trying to correct.

Later, again, lomdar67 says "Sometimes these "suggestion" sound so demanding and for my taste this is not right and annoying! Sorry, but that's the way I see it". Again, this isn't what the thread is like, at all.

Antibolo joins in and says "I don't see why people want to deliberately destroy their picture quality for some dubious argument about composite output being the "correct" way to render those graphics (it's not), but to each his own", but saying "to each his own" doesn't excuse you from getting responses to antagonism like "deliberately destroy" and "dubious argument".

Later, dshadoff, in particular, says "Not sure what you're talking about. I don't recall seeing anybody say, "that's not how it was", or "that feature has no value"." - well, look at what I've quoted above. Sorgelig and Antibolo are clearly saying that. Also, dshadoff says "developers state that their priorities lie elsewhere", but not one developer in the thread has said anything like that. They've been dismissive and chastising, as though users shouldn't make requests and defend them from mistruths. Dshadoff characterises dev responses as "acknowledged but not a priority, stop asking", which again doesn't match what any developer has said in this thread. It's like dshadoff is replying to a different thread.

I don't know who is a core developer, but I would guess at Sorgelig, dshadoff, lomdar67, Antibolo, because they seem to be the ones pushing the narrative that they've been respectful and the users are being terrible, when that's clearly not the case, in this thread. I implore you to actually read this thread again and look at who was aggressive, dismissive and demanding. It wasn't those making the feature request, except perhaps vanfanel, briefly.

(I'm not arguing either for or against the feature request itself.)
dshadoff
Core Developer
Posts: 534
Joined: Sun May 24, 2020 9:30 pm
Has thanked: 19 times
Been thanked: 141 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by dshadoff »

Not sure why you're necro-ing this thread after nearly a year. It appears antagonistic by the way you're selectively choosing areas of contention in an already contentious thread, and glossing over areas where people try to be conciliatory.

For the record, I kind of like the thought of composite blend being an option and recognize its potential value, but I have too many projects. So it's not high on my list of priorities for me to implement (yes, still). But I would be happy to see somebody else implement (yes, still).

I know there are other developers who are also on the side of thinking that this is useful, and there are many more developers in the scene today than a year ago... perhaps this will appeal to one (or some) of them. I haven't seen Sorgelig reject a well-thought-out submission; only refuse to work on something himself due to priorities (as many developers do).

So to repeat what I said in the past, it's on the list, but not at the top.
FoxbatStargazer
Top Contributor
Posts: 994
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2020 5:44 pm
Has thanked: 309 times
Been thanked: 228 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by FoxbatStargazer »

Its almost certainly a bot/AI whose main goal seems to be trolling. Just stuck quotes together with some adversarial words that don't really line up correctly in context. Reads like mad libs. Kind of surprised they would be doing anything other than advertising...

Just a note that there are some cool composite scaling filters available now, so if you're using scaled output you can have some neat effects on any core out there.
User avatar
Threepwood
Posts: 133
Joined: Mon May 25, 2020 9:14 am
Has thanked: 4 times
Been thanked: 23 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by Threepwood »

FoxbatStargazer wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 11:33 am Just a note that there are some cool composite scaling filters available now, so if you're using scaled output you can have some neat effects on any core out there.
If you are refering to the filters in the subfolder "Composite Blend", then those may be named "Composite Blend", but sadly do not achieve a composite blend effect (I just tested the latest version of those filters from mid April this year, again).

To compare, here a photo of an IPS screen showing Sonic 2. The stripes that make up the leaves are supposed to blend into each other and create a transparency effect with a uniform green layer. "Composite Blend: ON", without an additional filter, achieves this:
Comp Blend ON - No Filter.jpg
Comp Blend ON - No Filter.jpg (105.39 KiB) Viewed 11210 times
In contrast, the strongest of the filters you refered to that includes scanlines, "Comp_Blend_HV_075", does not achieve this effect while rendering the image quite blurry. The blurryness can be a desired effect of course, but it is not composite blend:
Comp Blend OFF - Comp_Blend_HV_075.jpg
Comp Blend OFF - Comp_Blend_HV_075.jpg (82.61 KiB) Viewed 11210 times

If you are refering to a different set of filters, that are not distributed via the MiSTer Updater Script, then please be so kind and post a link to them :)
FoxbatStargazer
Top Contributor
Posts: 994
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2020 5:44 pm
Has thanked: 309 times
Been thanked: 228 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by FoxbatStargazer »

No I just didn't look at them so closely. I kind of like how 25%+scanlines looks but its not so strong an effect as to erase dithering or create transparencies. So if you want that then the search continues.
matijaerceg
Posts: 54
Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2022 2:11 am
Has thanked: 49 times
Been thanked: 25 times

Re: Any chance for composite blend like in Genesis?

Unread post by matijaerceg »

Sorgelig wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:12 am Even if sonic gets some benefit from blending in very particular screens, it's not worths to enable it if it cannot detect the places where it has to be applied.
This is subjective. I play all Genesis games with full blend. It's how they games looked via composite, and that was the experience millions of people had, which is fact. I'm one of those people, and to me, Genesis doesn't look pleasing without such a filter.

I hope the full (non-adaptive) composite blend gets added to all cores.

This holds especially true when using analog board without scaler/scandoubler, as the video filters are unavailable there.
Post Reply