P H A N T O M C R A S H
So Iām torn.
I love my CRTs, but with the 480p+ support of most Xbox games, I would imagine playing on a flatscreen is the best way to go in a lot of peopleās mind.
Do you all think about playing Xbox in 480i? Is it a straight downgrade?
Original on my 480p EDTV looks quite good. Although Its 4:3 and quite a few games support 16:9.
If I needed something bigger, Iād love to see what it looks like on a 848x480 plasma.
The biggest upgrade you can go for at this point with a digital display, even this lowly 20" philips, is using the hdmi mod, 480p digital all the way directly to the panel.
Of course a high end modern oled and the upcoming retrotink 4k will blow it out of the water when upscaled and with some added CRT filter and scanlines to take the harshness off the low resolution source material, but at that point youāre throwing thousands of dollars/euros at the problem.
It depends on the display. Of course, 480p on a CRT is the best but thatās not an option for most CRTs.
To me, if youāre deciding to run Xbox, GCN, DC, PS2 or Wii at 480i vs upscaling a 480p image on a modern display itās entirely dependent the quality of the crt at 480i in question.
Some of them (like sharper PVMs) will look more noisy at 480i. And the trade off may not be worth it.
But others (like most consumer sets) almost look the same at 480i as 480p on other CRTs since you canāt really distinguish between the even and odd lines of resolution. Thereās some added noise, but not enough to make it impact the image in a truly negative way.
Heck, I remember being blown away seeing Ninja Gaiden on Xbox via Composite back in the day on my 19ā bedroom set. It was completely face melting and I didnāt notice anything was worse with the interlaced image compared to older consoles that had 240p.
Personally, I think most people were still using CRTs that generation so unless you find the interlaced image to be objectionable, Iād stick with that.
Remember, youāre not losing actual detail at 480i vs 480p, just some stability in the image.
My main set is a 27" flat trinitron, and I mostly play all my consoles on there, 360-or-older. Honestly I love playing Xbox that way, and it is what I grew up doing (on a 20" Sanyo, no less!). I just wanted to make sure I wasnāt missing anything.
Another question: Iāve thought about buying an Xbox 1 just for playing OG Xbox games with the enhancements. Anyone think this is worth it? Between PC and Playstation, I never had the urge to get a XB1 during its lifecycle.
No EDTV or Plasma, unfortunately! I do have a few CRT PC monitors, but those run a little small. 4:3 is fine by me, it is a part of the charm of older content imo.
Though the 5X has tempted me, and the 4K is undoubtedly going to be great, I just really love CRTs so I never invested in a scaler. Iām happy with what I have, but I do still search for an elusive multiscan PVM or monitor. Thatās my grail.
Never had an Xbox one, but enhanced og xbox games on Series X have been pretty cool but with some occasional drawbacks.
The actual in-engine graphics look perfect a lot of the times. But things fall apart when watching CGI movies in a lot of titles. The upscaling makes cinematics look very low res. A lot of the in engine graphics can look super angular when blown up to 4k too.
Sone games look perfect and seem made to be played at high res though (like anything by team ninja or Panzer Dragoon Orta). Others look pretty terrible and the higher resolution exposed problems in the artwork (like psychonaughts, Morrowind, or Otogi).
Overall game coverage is spotty too with some notable omissions (lacking JSRF on BC should be considered a crime at this point).
Overall, I think the games do look pretty great but I wouldnāt say that they justify a new hardware purchase unless you grab a console for cheap. If you want to play modern games plus Xbox 360 enhanced titles on it too, then it starts to make more sense.
The BC games run well though and donāt have hitching. Things have improved massively since the og Xbox to Xbox 360 BC days.
Thank you for the in-depth response. Sounds like its a nice perk, but not enough to make me pay the price for a XB1. I still have the OG and CRTs, after all!
I was playing around with some of my favourite OG XBOX games on the Series X, last night, and I noticed a couple of quirks I didnāt see documented anywhere (granted I may have just missed it).
Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate is often reported to be one of the most impressive back-compat OG titles and it surely is, but it seems to me that - at least on the Series X - the āhazeā effect some stages (the disco hall for example) cast on the characters is entirely missing.
Similarly, during the intro of DoA4 (XBOX 360), the blurring/heat on the helicoptersā wheels at the very beginning doesnāt look to be rendered properly.
I noticed those errors on the DOA games too. I think being rendered in a higher resolution is breaking the effects, a bit like you see on PCSX2 when doing the same. When I first bought the Series X I spent the first month or so playing BC games and it was very rare that there wasnāt an effect or texture that was dispalyed incorrectly somewhere in the playthrough, imho the quality of the emulation isnāt quite as good as it is made out to be.
It works and often performs better than original hardware. But it was never focused on precisely reproducing the original experience.
Dialing up resolutions, textures, frame rates, injecting HDR, and even touching up assets at times - all while using bespoke emulation - means that the BC campaign was very much a manual effort where they couldnāt necessarily be bothered to ensure the end result was 100% authentic to the original experience.
Heck, I donāt even think original third party developers were very involved. All the heavy lifting was āin-sourcedā by one department within Microsoft charged with getting these games running better than ever intended with locked specs on their original platforms.
When you consider that, and how few bugs there are relative to the end product, I donāt mind cutting them some slack that some minor effects get broken here or there. Theyāre literally pushing these games beyond their limits after all.
I will still prefer og hardware, but BC is a neat way to check out how some games can get a glow up without a dedicated team remastering it as a native port.
And sometimes, the results are even better than some poor remasters weāve seen, with less stuff broken in the process.
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I agree and having support for these older titles is still very welcome, especially if you didnāt have the chance to play them first time around. However having heard such praise for the quality then experiencing bugs which in some instances were quite distracting was still a little disappointing.
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I agree, even though I take real advantage of back compatibility only when itās hardware based and just works pretty much 100% (as in, nowadays, I use my PS2s as original PlayStation consoles).
Speaking of MS, I still fire up my original XBOX and XBOX 360 to play on a regular basis, and only do it on the Series X when I can experience actual improvements (Gears 2 and 3 for example).
GunCon 2 and Logitech Wheel support for Xbox!
https://twitter.com/sonik_br/status/1760484487102632349 (video of GunCon shown)
Working on a Guncon to Xbox adapter. HoTD3 already detects it
Also working on a logitech racing wheel to Xbox adapter. Really want to play RallySports Challenge 2 with a G27 wheel!
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