Great video! Many of the differences are subtle, but it's nice to compare them. It's also neat that we can eliminate texture wobbling, increase performance and customize controls as we like, using emulators too. Like you, I find it amazing how games from the time can look so appealing. Some designers just have a good sense of art direction and know how to use limitations wisely. Some PS2 games look so good when upscaled as well, it's hard to believe! So many iconic games, I think they shine more and more as time goes by.
I'm finally back watching your stuff (life kept me busy). Smoother is definitely looking better than the rough look. Like you said though, the rough look is noticeably higher in better in terms of details.
It is interesting because I personally am not a fan of the smooth look on PS1 games, the rough look is more appealing to me & I love sharp graphics for a retro look :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial No mater how good a less-rough look for these games could be, it's for sure not the same as the retro look. Better graphics can turn a classic, nostalgic game into something that looks kind of modern with gameplay that's possibly (depends on individual point of view) inferior to a good modern game. It's quite a paradox. I guess, leave classic games classic?
No matter what you enjoy, you can always make the games look how you please regardless of their age :) I enjoy the idea that everyone will play their games with a different look applied to them :)
Texture smoothing for Ps1 games was something interesting to tinker with, as some game really benefited from the smoother look than others. Also, i was disappointed the Ps3 didn´t have texture smoothing, only full screen blurring for Ps1 games and no option to render at higher res neither. I think the Ps2 smooth texture filter only works with polygons´ textures, it doesn´t work with 2d sprite primitives, unless the game is actually using polygons instead of sprites for 2d imagery. Also, Heart of Darkness runs enterely on the Ps1´s MDEC movie decoder so i don´t thing the smoothing will work there neither, as the game doesn´t use the Ps1 or Ps2 emulated Ps1 GPU at all.
It goes to show there's no perfect way to play the games, only a method, shaders or effects to add to the image & then the cable type if using analog means :) We are lucky to live in a world where we can decide exactly how we want our retro games to look on any method we choose to play :) Still these bonus elements make for an interesting comparison 😊
For textures based on downscaled assets like photos and scanned-in art, bilinear filtering can look nice but it destroys pixel art and pixel art-based textures. It also doesn't account for the texture coordinates, resulting in seams along textured quads (Tomb Raider II ground & walls, Tekken 3 ground, environments in the Crash and Spyro games) and seams on certain textures with transparent edges (Everything with transparency in Silent Hill, Gran Turismo 2 skydome & trees, Destruction Derby position markers & text, TOCA World Touring Cars HUD edges)
This is why when it is used you have to decide whether or not you like the results :) Some games as you mentioned do not play well with the feature so you cannot expect good results in every game :)
If there is something i learn with the N64 is that applying blur filters to textures doesnt look great if they are in a very low resolution. Thats why i never had a problem with bilinear filter applied on PS2, but on N64 and PS1 (emulator). Only very few games on PS1 doesnt look too bad with smooth filter due to using high res textures, such as Crash Bandicoot, though i still rather play in nearest imo.
I'm the same, PS2 era graphics can benefit from bilinear filtering but not so much the 32 bit era games although there are exceptions :) Ultimately it'll be up to the users to decide whether or not they want to apply such filters to their games :)
They HAD to do this at the time, (coz BleemCast made PSX games playable on Dreamcast HI-REZ with 3DFX effects), and i'm glad they did. But the other feature; "faster loading", simply does not work, causing broken graphics. PS2 is worth owning to play PSone library.
I'm not a fan of the filter outside of certain games but choices are there & I understand why they did include it :) Ah I never touched it, that feature is better on emulation or flash storage based systems (Such as PSP) :]
The "fast Disc Speed" option seems to apply a little overclock on the Ps1 CPU, i have heard, from normal 33Mhz to 35Mhz, It would be interesting to test with many games to see if some got smoother fps or actually faster loading times. I remember with Final Fantasy VIII, sometimes, the game could crash with the fast option activated but other times it just worked fine. Also Chorno Cross got the audio-video desynched in the FMVs and some graphical glitches in the battles.
@@jsr734 That feature does not work! For example, when i tried Speed Freaks/Punks, then huge sections of each tracks had completedly disappeared. -Poorest feature ever.
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial -And on Dreamcast on Tekken 3, GT2 and MGS. PS2s lack of Anti -Aliasing and that resolution was the same, as well as PSX CPU speed, made it look worse. But at least, it is there, and it's not really emulated, so you can trust it works. It may not be much on solf LCD, but on good CRT, it looked close to 90's PC with feature turned on.
I much prefer smoothing off but the feature is better done on PS2 than PS3 for PS1 titles :) Agreed, I used to own the 3DO original, the PS1 version is not quite as good!
Texture smoothing mode on PS2 Better than that one on PS3 because PS3 Texture smoothing makes everything in the screen looks wash out with no sharpness at all 😂
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial Yeah that's right and weird in the same time! Textures smoothing on PS3 is not good like the PS2! This is weird thing if you thinking 🤷♂️
i HAVE. Actually, i used to play Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII in my Ps2 and CRT with texture smoothing and the effect was more noticeable in big areas such as the overworld map in Final Fantasy or when the camera got zoomed in near characters and the Summons also got benefited. In Chorno Cross the real time battles looked better, more noticeable on the floor or wall textures or when the camera did a close up to the characters. But sometimes i prefered the sharper pixelated look anyway, as a crt already make Ps1 games look sharp and smooth with the scanlines and low TVL playing and important factor.
I've used it on my 19 inch Sony Trinitron CRT but it's hard to tell the difference on most games. I think one reason is because at 19 inches the texture smoothing doesn't have as large of an effect. Playing Capcom vs SNK Pro (PS1 game) with texture smoothing actually causes a weird graphical glitch where you can slightly see the hit boxes on the characters. Really bizarre when I first saw it. I might try it with more games to see if I notice a difference. Long live the PS1 and PS2.
I think the smoothing only worked with polygons, not sprites. But if the game is using polygons instead of sprites then they will get the smoothing applyed too.
I used Sony's Official RGB SCART Cable with my OSSC at line 5x mode for the 240p/288p games & 576i passthrough mode when using PS1 Hi-Res games :) All games were PAL versions since I'm from the UK :)
Vey likely they were more interested to have higher compatibility with most of the Ps1 game library and tried to avoid too intrusive hacks that could brake many games. That is why the "texture smoothing" and "fast disc" options were optional.
These games are already running at 240p last thing needed is to blur them, texture mapping works great if say i'm playing RE2 on 1280x960 otherwise it takes you out of the experience graphics become too washed out
The problem is not necessarily the 240p picture, but that even with texture smoothing on, there is still dithering applied, making more difficult to spot the differences. For example, look at Siltent Hill, if you put attention you will notice the character´s texture look smoother but there is A TON of dithering eveywere making very difficult to notice the "improvement".
But also notice in Silent Hill tress & other background graphics had a strange white texture all around them when smoothing was applied, causing distraction to the player :) Not recommended for Silent Hill for this reason :o
I used the Silm model for this video, but I also own the Fat model too :) I did notice the PlayStation driver version number was different between the two :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial slim also has different revisions. It's only the first slim 7000x, that has 100% backwards compatibility with ps1 games on a hardware level. I asume that also plays a role, when it comes down to filter textures
I have this particular Silm, the best silm model :) There's a possibility, although I'd have to test the two back to back to see if this is true or not :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial also sir, please do a video about reading speed options of ps1 on ps2 next, would be cool! You know just as an idea for the next video
Now that some people have mentioned it, I would be happy to try it :) I will need to buy a few more games first, just to add variety for testing purposes 😊
Here's another video with more PlayStation goodness! Hope you enjoyed the video showing off the Texture Mapping feature when playing PS1 games on PS2!
Great video! Many of the differences are subtle, but it's nice to compare them.
It's also neat that we can eliminate texture wobbling, increase performance and customize controls as we like, using emulators too.
Like you, I find it amazing how games from the time can look so appealing. Some designers just have a good sense of art direction and know how to use limitations wisely. Some PS2 games look so good when upscaled as well, it's hard to believe!
So many iconic games, I think they shine more and more as time goes by.
Thank you 😊
I couldn't agree more with your comment & for me, retro gaming is in a fantastic position to thrive for many more years to come :)
I loved messing with this as a kid! It really did wonders on a crt, and I loved using the smoothing on the tony hawk games
Ah that is cool, I prefer it off but I know it can be beneficial in some circumstances 😊
I'm still prefer the rough pixelated texture for some reason, especially when combined along with CRT filter on duck station
I prefer it because it has better clarity & I like a sharper rather than a smoother look to older game graphics :)
I'm finally back watching your stuff (life kept me busy). Smoother is definitely looking better than the rough look. Like you said though, the rough look is noticeably higher in better in terms of details.
It is interesting because I personally am not a fan of the smooth look on PS1 games, the rough look is more appealing to me & I love sharp graphics for a retro look :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial No mater how good a less-rough look for these games could be, it's for sure not the same as the retro look. Better graphics can turn a classic, nostalgic game into something that looks kind of modern with gameplay that's possibly (depends on individual point of view) inferior to a good modern game. It's quite a paradox. I guess, leave classic games classic?
No matter what you enjoy, you can always make the games look how you please regardless of their age :) I enjoy the idea that everyone will play their games with a different look applied to them :)
I forgot. Congratulations for using Ace Combat music!, it really put a smile on my face! 🤩😊
I appreciate this, I love the Ace Combat soundtrack and the one from 5 is quite underrated :)
Texture smoothing for Ps1 games was something interesting to tinker with, as some game really benefited from the smoother look than others. Also, i was disappointed the Ps3 didn´t have texture smoothing, only full screen blurring for Ps1 games and no option to render at higher res neither.
I think the Ps2 smooth texture filter only works with polygons´ textures, it doesn´t work with 2d sprite primitives, unless the game is actually using polygons instead of sprites for 2d imagery. Also, Heart of Darkness runs enterely on the Ps1´s MDEC movie decoder so i don´t thing the smoothing will work there neither, as the game doesn´t use the Ps1 or Ps2 emulated Ps1 GPU at all.
It goes to show there's no perfect way to play the games, only a method, shaders or effects to add to the image & then the cable type if using analog means :)
We are lucky to live in a world where we can decide exactly how we want our retro games to look on any method we choose to play :)
Still these bonus elements make for an interesting comparison 😊
For textures based on downscaled assets like photos and scanned-in art, bilinear filtering can look nice but it destroys pixel art and pixel art-based textures. It also doesn't account for the texture coordinates, resulting in seams along textured quads (Tomb Raider II ground & walls, Tekken 3 ground, environments in the Crash and Spyro games) and seams on certain textures with transparent edges (Everything with transparency in Silent Hill, Gran Turismo 2 skydome & trees, Destruction Derby position markers & text, TOCA World Touring Cars HUD edges)
This is why when it is used you have to decide whether or not you like the results :)
Some games as you mentioned do not play well with the feature so you cannot expect good results in every game :)
If there is something i learn with the N64 is that applying blur filters to textures doesnt look great if they are in a very low resolution. Thats why i never had a problem with bilinear filter applied on PS2, but on N64 and PS1 (emulator). Only very few games on PS1 doesnt look too bad with smooth filter due to using high res textures, such as Crash Bandicoot, though i still rather play in nearest imo.
I'm the same, PS2 era graphics can benefit from bilinear filtering but not so much the 32 bit era games although there are exceptions :)
Ultimately it'll be up to the users to decide whether or not they want to apply such filters to their games :)
It made FFIX look incredible tbh
I sadly don't own the game, so I cannot test it myself, but if you liked it, keep the look :)
They HAD to do this at the time, (coz BleemCast made PSX games playable on Dreamcast HI-REZ with 3DFX effects), and i'm glad they did.
But the other feature; "faster loading", simply does not work, causing broken graphics.
PS2 is worth owning to play PSone library.
I'm not a fan of the filter outside of certain games but choices are there & I understand why they did include it :)
Ah I never touched it, that feature is better on emulation or flash storage based systems (Such as PSP) :]
The "fast Disc Speed" option seems to apply a little overclock on the Ps1 CPU, i have heard, from normal 33Mhz to 35Mhz, It would be interesting to test with many games to see if some got smoother fps or actually faster loading times. I remember with Final Fantasy VIII, sometimes, the game could crash with the fast option activated but other times it just worked fine. Also Chorno Cross got the audio-video desynched in the FMVs and some graphical glitches in the battles.
@@jsr734 That feature does not work! For example, when i tried Speed Freaks/Punks, then huge sections of each tracks had completedly disappeared. -Poorest feature ever.
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial -And on Dreamcast on Tekken 3, GT2 and MGS. PS2s lack of Anti -Aliasing and that resolution was the same, as well as PSX CPU speed, made it look worse. But at least, it is there, and it's not really emulated, so you can trust it works. It may not be much on solf LCD, but on good CRT, it looked close to 90's PC with feature turned on.
@M1XART PS2 doesn't lack anti-aliasing, it is fully capable to do so. AA was rarely used on both, the ps2 and Dreamcast.
What’s the soundtrack used over the video? It sounds so familiar!
It is from Ace Combat 5 😊
I always liked PS2 smoothing much more than PS3... Feels more natural... But no smoothing can make PS1 Road Rash as good as on 3DO (^_^)
I much prefer smoothing off but the feature is better done on PS2 than PS3 for PS1 titles :)
Agreed, I used to own the 3DO original, the PS1 version is not quite as good!
I like the new AI voice over 😅
Yes, it's super advanced! Did it all myself xD
4:46 "Kensee: Scared Fist"? Whoops
Yeah I always had trouble with the name xD Can never seem to pronounce it correctly 😊😊
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial I know that feeling haha
I'll get it next time, maybe xD
Texture smoothing mode on PS2 Better than that one on PS3 because PS3 Texture smoothing makes everything in the screen looks wash out with no sharpness at all 😂
I'll have to test it out but I do remember not liking the smoothing option on PS3 compared to the PS2!
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial Yeah that's right and weird in the same time! Textures smoothing on PS3 is not good like the PS2! This is weird thing if you thinking 🤷♂️
Ironically though the feature works well with PS2 games on PS3, sad since most PS3's aren't backwards compatible with Disk based PS2 games :o
I like the smoother look. I'm wondering what will it look like on a real crt tv.
I would be interesting if someone would test it for us :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial not many people have crt these days. It's gonna be hard
i HAVE. Actually, i used to play Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII in my Ps2 and CRT with texture smoothing and the effect was more noticeable in big areas such as the overworld map in Final Fantasy or when the camera got zoomed in near characters and the Summons also got benefited. In Chorno Cross the real time battles looked better, more noticeable on the floor or wall textures or when the camera did a close up to the characters. But sometimes i prefered the sharper pixelated look anyway, as a crt already make Ps1 games look sharp and smooth with the scanlines and low TVL playing and important factor.
I've used it on my 19 inch Sony Trinitron CRT but it's hard to tell the difference on most games. I think one reason is because at 19 inches the texture smoothing doesn't have as large of an effect. Playing Capcom vs SNK Pro (PS1 game) with texture smoothing actually causes a weird graphical glitch where you can slightly see the hit boxes on the characters. Really bizarre when I first saw it. I might try it with more games to see if I notice a difference. Long live the PS1 and PS2.
Just don't use it on 2D games with sprites, it's terrible.
I wouldn't say it's terrible, but I certainly agree that I wouldn't try to blur 2D graphics :)
I would rather have it off altogether :)
I think the smoothing only worked with polygons, not sprites. But if the game is using polygons instead of sprites then they will get the smoothing applyed too.
is your ps2 rgb or component and what scaler did u use?
I used Sony's Official RGB SCART Cable with my OSSC at line 5x mode for the 240p/288p games & 576i passthrough mode when using PS1 Hi-Res games :)
All games were PAL versions since I'm from the UK :)
Sony went soft on the enhanced PS1 game graphics mode.
I wouldn't call it enhanced, more an alternative mode :)
It is good it wasn't overdone, subtle is best with filtering in my opinion :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial Agreed.
Vey likely they were more interested to have higher compatibility with most of the Ps1 game library and tried to avoid too intrusive hacks that could brake many games. That is why the "texture smoothing" and "fast disc" options were optional.
These games are already running at 240p last thing needed is to blur them, texture mapping works great if say i'm playing RE2 on 1280x960 otherwise it takes you out of the experience graphics become too washed out
It is all personal preference & I agree I'd leave it off myself but, there are cases for it if one wishes to try it :)
The problem is not necessarily the 240p picture, but that even with texture smoothing on, there is still dithering applied, making more difficult to spot the differences. For example, look at Siltent Hill, if you put attention you will notice the character´s texture look smoother but there is A TON of dithering eveywere making very difficult to notice the "improvement".
But also notice in Silent Hill tress & other background graphics had a strange white texture all around them when smoothing was applied, causing distraction to the player :)
Not recommended for Silent Hill for this reason :o
Tomb raider 2 looks much better with on
I prefer it in normal mode but if you did find it looking better, the option is there to use it :)
Bleemcast! Was better
To be honest I'd rather have this turned off & use emulation if you want to add a filter to PS1 graphics :)
In what world was Bleemcast better? 😂 It only supported three games.
Bilinear filtering? I like using jinc2 filter on duckstation, is way better
I mean this is a basic filter whereas the Duckstation one is much more newer & advanced 😊
What's your ps2 model? I think it plays a role...
I used the Silm model for this video, but I also own the Fat model too :)
I did notice the PlayStation driver version number was different between the two :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial slim also has different revisions. It's only the first slim 7000x, that has 100% backwards compatibility with ps1 games on a hardware level. I asume that also plays a role, when it comes down to filter textures
I have this particular Silm, the best silm model :)
There's a possibility, although I'd have to test the two back to back to see if this is true or not :)
@@AffrosCuriositiesOfficial also sir, please do a video about reading speed options of ps1 on ps2 next, would be cool! You know just as an idea for the next video
Now that some people have mentioned it, I would be happy to try it :)
I will need to buy a few more games first, just to add variety for testing purposes 😊