Why do “childhood games” often have bad graphics? Here is the answer for you

Old games when playing on the screen today are often blurred, not clear … and all have causes.

For some of you who are nostalgic, often play old games, or when you plug an old console into today’s 4K TV to review your childhood, the image is blurred, not very eye-catching.

The cause comes from the upscale algorithm

One of the reasons was that consoles at the time, like the SNES, could only output images with a resolution of 256 x 224. Meanwhile, today’s 4K TVs have resolutions up to 3840 x 2160. This means that if your 4K TV renders SNES games at the console’s native resolution, it will only show up… a tiny pinch in the middle of the screen. At that time, you have to get very close to the screen to play the game, sometimes it’s always crossed.

Quality of popular upscale algorithms

Instead, your 4K TV upscales the game’s frame so that it covers most or all of the pixels on the TV screen. To do this, TV manufacturers must choose one of several upscale algorithms available on the market. The most popular algorithms are Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic, and Lanczos. In which, Nearest Neighbor is the simplest and fastest way to handle, and Lanczos is the longest and most complex.

However, for modern hardware, it can easily handle the above algorithms in “real time” always (with a delay of 16ms or less to be exact) so you don’t have to worry. Particularly for the more advanced upscale algorithms, using artificial intelligence of all kinds, it can create a significant delay. For the time being, let’s just assume that the 4 algorithms above are all capable of real-time processing, so which one will help the image look the best after upscaling?

According to the above comparison, Nearest Neighbor gives the most “sharp” and clear looking graphics. The other types will generally “blend” the pixels together, causing the image to become blurry. So the upscale algorithm on your 4K TV is most likely using something like Bicubic or Lanczos. So the question is, why did TV companies choose a complex algorithm that takes a long time to produce blurry images, while Nearest Neighbor is less complicated, processes faster, and produces clear images. sharper?

The Nearest Neighbor algorithm makes retro games look better, but other content is… pretty bad

The reason here is because although Nearest Neighbor gives a clear in-game image, especially old games with pixel art or retro styles, when applied to most other visual content, it it’s not very effective. Your TV can’t know you’re plugging in an old console to play games, and for regular live-action movies, Bicubic and Lanczos will upscale the image better than Nearest Neighbor.

The real world is not made of pixels, so when we upscale the image, the result should not be “pixelated” (roughly translated: “broken” image). In contrast, games like Mario 2D are made from pixels, so when we upscale this plumber guy, the image is “pixelated” is obvious.

In case you want old game images to look clear on today’s TV screens, the good news is that there are many solutions to this problem on the market. Some devices can be mentioned such as RetroTINK 2X-Classic, FrameMeister, Open Source Scan Converter. However, it is also important to note that you should carefully consult the products before buying to know what the results you are about to receive will be.

Better upscale solutions when using retro gaming emulators

If you play old games through emulators, there are even more choices. Emulators like RetroArch even have a better image upscale algorithm than the above 4 types, called sharp-bilinear. It will use Nearest Neighbor to process the image first, then use Bilinear to “trim” to make it beautiful. This algorithm allows you to rotate the image so that straight lines are less ‘aliased’. Besides, there are dozens of other upscale algorithms for you to freely combine together to create the final image quality that is most similar to your wishes.

Hope the above information will help you discover new things about the world of technology. If you have any suggestions or additions, please share them with us in the comments section below. Thank you for your interest in this article.

Source Techquickie compiled GVN360