Can I Improve my N64 Visuals?
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On my Retropie, I have my current N64 emulator set to "lr-mupen64plus." I find it runs many of the games I like a little faster with less lag than the default emulator installed. However, I'm noticing a lot of jaggedness in the polygons when playing on my normal HDTVs (more so than I'd expect from this time period of gaming).
Like in this pic for example (took this on my phone, so ignore the poor quality, just referring to the area in the red circle):
Right now I have all my settings for "lr-mupen64plus" left at default. Is there anything I can tweak or plugins I can change that would help improve this overall? Or is this just the current state of N64 emulation on a Pie at the moment?
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@AlphaBetaPie normally a quick way is this: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Shaders-and-Smoothing/#video-smoothing
however i can see you're running a shader, which will override this setting. you should either disable the shader then enable smoothing, or alternatively if you want to keep the shader you can adjust shader settings to add bilinear filtering. i believe this is done within the menu shown here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Shaders-and-Smoothing/#installation - the part that says 'shader #0 filter - linear' - adjust this to 'bilinear' and it should add some smoothing.
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@dankcushions said in Can I Improve my N64 Visuals?:
@AlphaBetaPie normally a quick way is this: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Shaders-and-Smoothing/#video-smoothing
you can adjust shader settings to add bilinear filtering. i believe this is done within the menu shown here:
Thanks for the info. However, I was under the impression that using a zfast shaders already included some bilinear filtering for pixels. So would including that there kind of being doubling up (which I'm not opposed to)? Or did I hear wrong about that?
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@AlphaBetaPie now that you've clarified the shader you're using, i can check, and actually it does: https://github.com/RetroPie/common-shaders/blob/rpi/zfast_crt_standard.glslp#L3
however i would still confirm it is doing that via the menu i showed, because it don't really look like it looking at the screenshot. but i can't be sure how the shader interacts with the setting - you should try the setting on via my first link, and then disabling the shader - maybe you'll prefer the effect.
technically i believe the n64 always ultimately output 640 pixels wide, so forcing 'native' ~320x240 resolutions like we do in gliden64/-next is a little clunky, but performance is also a big concern. there's probably something in the core options that mitigates this, i forget...
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If you haven't already you can make sure the core option is set for 2x native resolution. It should be under the video plug in section.
This alone usually gets rid of a lot of the worst jagedness from taking 320x240 and blowing it up to high def size.
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@YFZdude you can do this but performance will be worse and you should definitely disable the CRT shader because scan lines look bad at higher res, as well a being impossible in the real world.
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@YFZdude said in Can I Improve my N64 Visuals?:
If you haven't already you can make sure the core option is set for 2x native resolution. It should be under the video plug in section.
I have looked and I don't find this exact option you're referring to. Can you be more specific?
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@AlphaBetaPie it's a core option in lr-mupen64plus-next called 'native resolution factor'
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@dankcushions said in Can I Improve my N64 Visuals?:
@AlphaBetaPie it's a core option in lr-mupen64plus-next called 'native resolution factor'
As it turns out, I'm currently using lr-mupen64plus as my default (better compatibility on some of the games I like). Is there an equivalent option in that emulator?
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@AlphaBetaPie if i recall you can set the resolution within the core options but i would never recommend/support the use of that emulator, as it was abandoned years ago: https://github.com/libretro/mupen64plus-libretro
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