Don’t worry about it I don’t blame you for “ruining” anything for me. I agree that it’s definitely something people should know specially when they care about getting the best quality out of their old games. Still it’s a little surprising that people don’t make more of a fuss over this considering how noticeable it is for some games. Then again I didn’t notice it till you brought it up so I guess it’s not that hard to believe lol
Guessing it’s less obvious than jailbars on older consoles like the NES and Mega Drive, but I think the problem like you say is a GPU one. If it’s only interference (which would let modders be able to fix it), then the lines would be moving all the time I think.
Have you tried changing the display output size/position/etc with GSM?
There seem to be sub-pixel differences between the two images you posted and I wonder if that’s something to do with it.
I’ll dig my Rage Racer out later and have a look on my projector, 480p LCD, and PVM.
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Ive never noticed this either. Will check it out sometime soon. But I can’t imagine it will bother me enough to hook up a PS1.
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So I can’t find my Rage Racer disc, but I took a short video in the game I’m currently playing “Kero Kero King” because it has a free roaming camera that I can move around to look at different things.
I’m not seeing the lines that are so obvious in the Rage Racer screens above?
The closest thing I can see is vertical dotted lines that are a produced by the dithering pattern of the PS1 GPU. The dithering is pattern based and will always be axis aligned - it kind of looks like an overlay rather than being part of the scene.
Sorry it’s a photo rather than a direct screen grab. That’s all I can do for now.
TV is a Philips 20PF4121/05 with a native resolution of 640x480, progressive scan, DVI-I (digital and analog) so I can use adapters to feed it HDMI, Component and VGA. Superb little thing.
Video
Aside: there are cheat codes and patches to disable dithering on a per-game basis, I’ll look into those soon.
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Aha! I think I’ve got it @ResidentDante
Spot the difference (view full size)
Texture Smoothing ON = lines
vs
Texture Smoothing OFF = no lines
You can change this setting in the PS2 “Browser” main menu, or using a button combo when playing the game through POPS (select+L1+R2=on, select+R1+L2=off)
Thanks for testing, but I never use that smoothing feature on PS2 as I always found it horrible.
OK, I’ll try to find my Rage Racer. I do have Rally de Europe to hand. Do you see the lines in that?
The good news is, if it’s a side effect of the dithering it can be switched off with cheat codes.
I switched off dithering in Kero Kero King and it looks much better, less distracting, and in fact the game runs much better as a result (no more slowdown on conveyor belts)
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OK, no vertical lines for me in Rally de Europe with or without texture smoothing.
Any thoughts as to why the lines are not present on my setup? @ResidentDante
What resolution are you running your PS2 at? You say RGB on a CRT so that’s interlaced?
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You are using a special cheat disc or something for disabling dithering? That screenshot is with the cheat activated?
No, that Rally de Europe screenshot is just standard, no changes at all. I’m running at 480p.
To disable dithering you need to find or generate the cheat code for that specific game. I’ve only done that for the game I’m currently playing, Kero Kero King.
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I have Rage Racer and a couple PS1’s and PS2’s. I’ve been meaning to test them out but haven’t had time yet. 
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I had some time to test out Rage Racer tonight. In my testing, the vertical line aliasing is an issue on ps2/pstwo’s for Rage Racer. I found it to be more noticeable in dark backgrounds (tunnels, shadows, etc) in my brief testing. I tested all combinations of the following setups.
Display:
Sony PVM-1954Q
Consoles:
PSX: SCPH-1001
PSOne: SCPH-101 / 94015
PS2 phat: SCPH-35001
PSTwo Slim: SCPH-79001
Cables:
Composite: OEM Sony PS1 and PS2
S-Video: OEM Sony PS1 and PS2
RGB: Retro Access (sync on luma)
Two quick phone pics via RGB below. I apologize in that they’re not in the same location. The lines aren’t as bad in RGB as in S-Video, S-Video lines were darker. Composite isn’t too bad mostly due to composite being so blurry in general.
PSTwo Slim, SCPH-79001 via RGB:
OG PSX, SCPH-1001 via RGB:
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It’s seems more clear in those photos that this is dithering as the lines are dotted and to a specific pattern.
Do you have the means to deactivate dithering? Regardless, I’ll try later on.
No, l don’t have a setup to deactivate dithering right now. I need to look into that though.
a couple more:
pstwo via S-video:
pstwo via composite:
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Ive heard that the dither pattern PS2 produces for PS1 games is different so it is certainly possible that you’re seeing artifacts related to that difference.
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Very interesting. I am away from my PS2 so I cannot grab comparable screenshots from the live game.
Here are two screenshots of Rage Racer (PAL) using no$psx emulator, original size x3:
dithering on
dithering off
As you can see dithering appears extensively due to the palette the game uses, especially in tunnels.
It could be that the PS2 uses a different dither pattern, as @poptart says.
It could also be that the PS2 is squeezing the screen size horizontally, meaning that the dithering is compressed every x pixels and these vertical lines are the result.
PS: the cheat code to disable dithering for Rage Racer (PAL) is 30066A35 0000
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Dug up some confirmation/information that dithering can be different even across PS1.
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Great research guys! It looks like I’ll be sticking to my PS1 for now, other dark gaems like Dino Crisis also show those lines up quite apparent. Nonetheless they aren’t so intrusive you can’t play the games on a PS2!
Can anyone try Chrono Cross to see if they notice a similar issue on PS2? I’m about to start a play through of it but am willing to dig out/hook up my PS1 if it’s going to create these artifacts.