The stretch is clearly taken into account for the final image, you can see that circular or square items are elongated once you return them to the original output. Unfortunate as it does look a lot clearer, but it is what it is.
Agreed. Non-square pixels were very common in early digital video before HD became widespread. Pretty much everything was 720x480, or 720x576 in PAL regions, which would then get stretched or squished to 4:3 or 16:9 as desired. I don't think it's a problem either, because these days we're all using (U)HD displays, so you'd have to scale it to the display's native res anyway. No scaling is perfect apart from integer scaling which wouldn't fill the whole screen from 480p, so you're probably never getting a pixel perfect experience on a modern screen. Might as well use the inteded aspect ratio. I suppose a tv's built-in scaler might be better than the Wii's scaler though, so you could use framebuffer video width and then let the tv stretch the image if supported
One more extreme example is with the CPS-2 arcade system which uses 384×224 internally (very close to 16:9) but is used with 4:3 displays! You can see this a lot with the console ports of CPS-2 games, where the original pixel art has uses more pixels in the character sprites and look extra wide before being squished horizontally, but provide more detail when it's displayed on screen. Whereas sprites for the console ports simply have fewer pixels to compensate.
@@ccricers I think non-square pixels were even more common up until the early 90's. CGA and EGA also support resolutions like 640x200 or 160x200, yet it was all designed around 4:3
@@SterkeYerke5555 And Nintendo's first two consoles both stretched a nearly-square screen out to 4:3. And Commodore was even weirder, featuring different aspect ratios depending on which region you were in.
I will say I did think it was odd when I first launched the Wii emulator that the image doesn't fill the screen. Didn't know it was because the system natively stretched video output.
I would also like to mention that you should turn on the 480p pixel patch for even better clarity (mostly in text), especially if you have an earlier model Wii.
@@MrDiana1706it fixes a programming error in the Wii's graphics API that affected all 480p output. The error is one reason why the GameCube had better 480p output than the Wii.
Removing the blur seems to bring up the same problems retro games designed to be displayed on CRTs have where the developer anticipated a certain level of blurriness and so they didn’t add any sort of anti-aliasing to their games.
@@ledbolcan someone run this test on monster hunter 3 I swear it has eccessive blur beyond what couldve been anticipated and used stylistically like your talking about
Hi GVG do you know any way I can make my copy of Twilight Princesss even MORE blurred and stretched? Would love a follow up episode so I can play it at it's most optimal aesthetic!!
One easy solution is too ask someone who wears glasses if you can borrow them for a while, not only will twilight princess look more blurry, but everything else will too!
One thing to keep in mind is that if you own a Retrotink or Ossc you can use them to correct the aspect ratio without making it as blurry as the framebuffer does.
In Mario Kart Wii with the framebuffer aspect ratio, it kind of makes stuff look skinnier. Mario looks slimmer than he should be and the item slot gui icon looks noticeably less square. I think you're definitely right and the intent differs from game to game, but personally I'd probably leave the stretch on for this reason.
@@dickerzanti he explicitly said that re4 has the separate problem of being a zoomed in 4:3 game, that's where the stretched picture comes from when framebuffer is on, not the wii's default stretched image
@@acecryptor every game he showed with the “fixed” aspect ratio looked incorrect. less blurry, sure. proportions were off though. link was super skinny and tracks on mario kart were way too narrow. the games were designed to be stretched to an artificial widescreen.
HUD elements will undeniably be the most affected as unlike models, they are just flat textures overlayed on the screen, which is the thing that most developers accounted for. Everything else is just more skinny because that's just how you personally perceive it as you grew up with it, but that's how the game is rendered internally. I believe playing the game through Dolphin would result in a similar unstretched aspect ratio with the right settings. Outside of HUD elements, I think I prefer the unstretched image for a clearer pixel count.
I mean the Wii does have an option to be played in 4:3 as well as 16:9 in the standard menu, it was released at a weird time where CRTs were still in use everywhere but widescreen HD TVs were becoming more popular, I think towards the end of the Wii's life those games were definitely developed with the stretching in mind because widescreen TVs had become more commonplace by then
That’s why, for example, Skyward Sword (a late Wii game) can only be played in 16:9. If your Wii is set to 4:3, it’ll just add black borders at the top and bottom of the screen. That’s how I played SS back in the day, on an old 14” CRT with a composite cable in 4:3. And I still enjoyed it.
@@TitusSc same for the Wii U, it has a 4:3 option that you can only use in 480p/i and Wii U games will have those black bars. Although i still enjoyed MK8 and Splatoon on a CRT. (If you're curious, if you go to the Wii menu on Wii U with 4:3 enabled, the menu will actually be in 4:3, no bars on top/bottom, same for 4:3 games, although sadly i didn't test a 16:9 only game like Zelda)
With this, just as with the SNES, I am in the camp of "the output resolution is more correct than the internal resolution", as devs *should* have taken the stretch into account and that's what the games were viewed at at the time.
@@PieroBertoni-h7r Crash Bandicoot runs at 512x240 (the game stretches the screen vertically to display correctly on the TV), Tekken 3 runs at 384x480 (in this case the screen is stretched horizontally)
While this may be the case with the SNES where a few pixels makes all the difference, the Wii is a different beast. These games are in full 3D and simply do not look better with stretched resolution. There may be *some* examples that look a bit weirder with the character not being stretched out, but a 640p to 720p stretch isn't really a big enough difference with 3D models to matter and the visual quality improvement is well worth whatever tiny sacrifices you make. But it's your choice. I'm just glad we have the option to choose for ourselves. I personally think designing the Wii like this shows Nintendo (and many game publishers all over the industry) have some really ass-backwards logic on what is acceptable. I've always thought the Wii looked kind of terrible and now I'm realizing it could have looked miles better in its own generation without waiting for a 10-year graphical resolution bump.
Except that most devs DIDN'T take the stretching into account, as looking at the graphics and assets will tell you. Their proportions are much better without stretching.
I wouldn't recommend the framebuffer setting personally, because the games were made with that bit of horizontal stretch in mind. Removing the stretching leaves you with an image that appears squashed a bit, and characters and such are noticeably skinnier looking.
Pretty sure with a good upscaler you likely have the option to stretch and move the image around after the analog-to-digital conversion. It's better to change the aspect ratio at a higher resolution than at a lower one, you'll lose a lot less image fidelity.
@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 My comment's not about image fidelity, but accuracy. If you squash or stretch the image at all, other than the aspect ratio it was designed to be presented at, you end up with an inaccurate image, short of actual modifications to the game code to account for it.
@@OrionXIXI Yes, I meant let the Wii output the framebuffer raw, and at an incorrect aspect ratio, and then correct it after the fact with an upscaler, replicating the same stretching the Wii would've done for that game, but at a higher resolution, where you'd have more pixels to work with. Then you'd have better image fidelity and the same, correct final aspect ratio. CRTs, and common retro upscalers like the RetroTink and OSSC can all do this. As a bonus, due to CRT displays' analog nature, and complete lack of a locked pixel grid, they can shift and stretch the image physically, without any interpolation blur whatsoever. Bonus fun fact: There's a software mod that can trick the Wii's RVL-AVE video encoder chip into outputting VGA. It's RVLoader, a massive firmware replacement pack designed for use in homemade portable Wiis. It's the best output you can get out of the Wii without an FPGA modchip like the AVE-HDMI.
I think that the de-flicker filter being able to be shut off is a massive game-changer for Wii video quality on digital displays, especially with something like a RetroTink5x being able to sharp scale it to either 960p or 1440p. The stretching I could see being more divisive. It reminds me of SNES/Genesis games being either 256p or 320p wide, with circles being squished for those wider games in 4:3 mode. The Wii was a console made during the switch from CRTs to Digital displays, so I've always thought of 16:9 as being the aspect ratio that Nintendo always meant for it. I think it has to be done on a case by case basis if they meant for it to be stretched or not, and even then it's more of a personal preference.
@@excadrillo99 Scale or upscale? What do you mean? Does it give great results? So this is just hardware accessory for Wii, one can buy it and put the Wii cable in it?
I was always a bit miffed on the image quality of Wii games, as I knew it wasn't really completely an issue with the system itself as Gamecube games still looked great on it, so I didn't know what the deal was
We can see that RE4 take the stretch in consideration, the scope is not a circle anymore, same for the health counter on the HUD, and I kinda think it is too for MK Wii, because the box for items on the top left is now a rectangle with framebuffer, the box is taller, or, thiner depending on how you see your cup half filled or half empty x).
Every game takes it in consideration, it's very easily seen on circular or square hud elements. Non-square pixels were pretty much the default before digital screens became mainstream. "fixing" the aspect ratio is akin to forcing the SNES in a square pixel mode. While the SNES runs natively ~15% stretched. You just get a bad emulator image, rather than accuracy.
@@relo999 Exactly, GVG seems to have forgotten that devs tested their games on actual Wii's. So even if they completely ignored the documentation they would've noticed their artwork being stretched and corrected for it. The problem is that the Wii uses an old school upscaler todo the stretching which warps the image, so you need to output to a PC or upscaler box and apply a more modern upscaling algorithm to stretch the image.
@@relo999 with how many titles the wii has, I dont think every dev thought about the wii natively stretching video. Honestly wished there was a way to just map the system to swap between depending on the game.
I can see one reason, why Nintendo introduce the filter (even I don't agree with that decision). The dithering is strong with this one... Twilight Princess and especially RE4 have really strong dither pattern. And I know, that some people are really allergic to it. Speaking of, is there some option in loader, which is trying to mitigate it like in Swiss on GC?
Even the Gamecube version of RE4 forces the deflicker filter on in 480p mode--GC games were usually better about this than Wii. I'm 100% sure Capcom did it because they thought the dithering was too intense--in darker scenes it's pretty hard to ignore.
@@saricubra2867 Pretty much every video game console starting with the Dreamcast has a deflicker filter for 480i modes, and trust me; if your TV is sharp and large enough *you don't want to disable it* lol. If it's the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess, I'm guessing it'll fare better. Most Gamecube games seem to use a fairly light version of the deflicker filter in my testing (seems equivalent to "Low" in USB Loader GX). Wii games seem like they default to "High" most of the time so they're blurrier.
These don't really feel like fixes at all to me. It DOES make things sharper, but at the cost of exposing imperfections the Wii had to work with. Both Twilight Princess at 1:10 and RE4 at 3:44 show dithering patterns that are way more ugly to me than being a bit blurry (which honestly looks pretty normal for 480p games if you're used to CRTs). Also RE4 renders in a letterboxed mode in 4:3, while widescreen mode just zooms it in. The game is not meant to be viewed in a full 4:3 screen like that, it's just stretched and not correct proportionally. In fact, most of these examples look like the stretch was taken into account beforehand. Turning these options on just makes the games look dramatically more aged in my opinion, but of course this is still subjective.
@@spht9ng Especially RE4. Almost dropped the Wii version in favor of the GameCube version until some individuals found a way to disable the deflickering filter.
Yep, enabling Framebuffer is very impractical. It will output the sharpest display in exchange for improper aspect ratios, resulting in squished / stretched images.
you're right, I was watching the video thinking the same thing. sure it's clearer, but does that make it better? link in 4:3 without framebuffer looks waaaay to pixelated, pointy and skinny.
I could tell you literally anything about the Wii and I was not aware of this. Thanks so much, the Wii is my favorite console ever and now it will look even better!
Wow I took the advice of this video and got my Wii to look much sharper than it was before. I used the Homebrew channel method to obtain the software needed. I was playing MGS the Twin Snakes (from GameCube) on my Wii and noticed something was not right when playing. After I made the adjustments on this video I do notice a difference. Not as blurry as before and image is much sharper. Also not as dark as some areas were hard to see. I can clearly say this fix works for playing GameCube games on the Wii (if your Wii supports GC discs). Thanks GVG from a 40 year old gaming veteran!
Thanks for this video! Priiloader also has an option to disable the deflicker in the home menu too, which will make your homebrew menu appear nice and sharp. Now my Wii looks great on my HDTV!
I’m glad other people have mentioned the 480p pixel patch too! In games like Mario Kart Wii (that I always thought was suuuuper soft) it makes a huge difference. And if you have Priiloader you can turn it on in the Wii Menu too, it makes a huge difference there too haha
While there's an argument that disabling stretching for games that don't properly implement Anamorphic Widescreen is a good idea, for most games it isn't, unlike the SNES where it has the same issue but most games didn't account for the 8:7 to 4:3 stretching so it worked out very well with some exceptions. Also Wii mode doesn't fill the whole widescreen area, same with GameCube, you can see this by just forcing the TV to not modify the picture zoom (sometimes the full option still zooms in a bit)
Man, you really make me wanna hook up my Wii again (truth to be told, I was going to do that anyway) but this is amazing. I have component cables for it so I wonder how it makes difference on my TV.
Video width might show what the console is actually rendering, showing a more crisp image, but the games were designed with 16:9 in mind, at least some of them, so the game is squashed. I'm playing Sin and Punishment 2 and I only have to look at any circle or square, they look wrong. Anyway, just the removal of the deflicker is already an improvement, so this is nice to know.
4:03 but if you look at the shape of the RE4 HUD and the shape of the scope, they're oval instead of round on 4:3. If you look at the HUD bottom right element you'll see that it's round on the widescreen version (3:41). I think they're supposed to be round, therefore they did make some changes to the game regaring 'widescreen', since I don't think that the original (GC/PS2) version of RE4 has it's round elements be oval.
My Wii is still hooked up to a 4:3 CRT TV, so I don't know how much this applies to me lol. 0:10 Also, Galaxy 2 there still looks quite nice even without these improvements, really says a lot to just how well done the visuals of the Galaxy games were for a Wii game and how much they can still hold up.
I first learned about this from Mega Man X Collection: for whatever reason, the GameCube version had Deflicker enabled on that _SNES and SP1 content!_ On another note, Smash Melee & Brawl actually handed the user an official toggle for the Deflicker filter right there in the settings! Brawl even has an aspect ratio toggle despite that already being covered by the Wii settings themselves!
@@VexAcer Yes it is. If it weren't for the deflicker filter, it would be the best way to play the X games on a CRT. I bought the game hoping my low quality CRT TV would hide the blur, but the deflicker filter is really noticeable. Thankfully (Not thankfully for me since I don't own a ps2) the PS2 version doesn't have this filter, and in fact, looks better than the original SNES hardware thanks to cleaner video output from the PS2. (I have a 2 chip SNES)
Never thought I'd see the day where my launch Wii could output emulator-level pixel clarity without modding! Some games that were blurry as hell (bloom filter used to be so trendy) or overly stretched to fill 16:9 look better than ever. I wonder if Electron Shepherd's new HDMI board also bypasses the flicker filter.
I mean is it really emulator level pixel clarity.... Upscaling to 4K with a widescreenhack and if available (for many popular games it is!) an HD texture pack makes wii games look like better switch games. All this does is make wii a little less blurry but with no anti aliasing so extremely blocky edges.
@@rex2100 I think if you just want to be true to the Wii's resolution and capabilities it's a better "pure" experience, without needing any extra bells and whistles. An HDMI mod is still a no-brainer if you want the absolute best clarity though.
This explains so much about the wii's video resolution, not only the components within the analog port made cheap, but also the deflicker or bob deinterlacing that you mentioned in this video.
While I definitely prefer the image without the deflicker, I can't help but feel Nintendo didn't make it an option because they liked the way it hid how low-res the screen output was. The second you turn it off, while you can see WAY more detail, the staircase effect and overall aliasing can be a bit grating. It seemed to fit the purpose of something akin to FXAA; a post-processing filter than doesn't impact performance.
Brilliant my guy!! Instantly so much better!! I've been hard into loading up all my favorites lately so this video found me at a perfect time for my wii u modding! Lol
The filter improves these low res games, but the stretch doesn't on certain games. I would like to think that the developers for any Wii game took what tv their core audience would be using into account.
I heard that's what developers did with the NES, since that console stretched its almost-but-not-exactly square resolution to 4:3. History repeats itself, so it's possible.
sorry to break it to you, but this is a non-issue. wii (and gc) games automatically deactivate the deflicker filter as long as you have your wii set to progressive video (or tell them to use progressive video when they ask at boot in the case of gc games). some even have the setting to disable it manually like smash melee and brawl. but i believe some were bugged or didn't implement the automatic deactivation of the deflicker filter properly, the european version of zelda tp is among them iirc. the "stretch" is intended for aspect ratio purposes. the ps2 did the same thing with many games rendering at resolutions other than 640x480 (512x448 being the most common) and getting stretched to fill the screen. and last but not least, the wii u has a filter of its own, so not the best idea to use it for demonstration purposes.
I believe the reasoning for the stretch had to do with how the Wii handled 16:9 to begin with the Wii itself still outputs in 4:3 but when you select the 16:9 option in the settings you then have to force your display to stretch the 4:3 image to 16:9 of course on Wii U this stretching nonsense isn't a thing in Wii Mode but it still follows the same principles and I bet tons of games in the Wii library had to account for that
While that does make sense, other consoles like the PS2 don't exhibit this issue. You can play a game that released on both PS2 and Wii, set them both to 16:9 widescreen and 480p, and the Wii version will still look stretched compared to the PS2 version. I remember this being an issue with the Guitar Hero games.
@JSR It did. It was just slightly stretched compared to the PS2 version. It wouldn't make much sense for a PS2 game to support widescreen and the Wii version of the same game to not do so considering the Wii is a much newer and more powerful console.
I don't know, I think it gives it a charismatic anti-aliasing type quality. A lot of compute power is used to remove those same jaggy edges these days!
1:29 but isn't 720x480 typically used by consoles and DVD players of the generation used to compress games to a narrower size for GPU frame buffers? Typically if a game's 4:3 it'll be 640x480, if a game's widescreen it renders with a wider view or changes the FOV and then squashes the image into a 720x480 space and let's the TV stretch it back out to 16:9. These games aren't 16:9 but rather closer to... Ok, so 800x480 would be 5:3 aspect ratio. Wider than 16:1O.
If you are playing on a CRT, I’d leave the default settings. But using component over composite makes a big difference. Its a cleaner image with these changes no doubt but adds more jaggies. Developers were aware of the de flicker and stretch. Its an option, I don’t think its universally better unless you only play on an HDTV.
Mclassic or similar for AA would help with these settings on. The pixel shimmer is almost as annoying as the blur they applied and Mclassic would help with that.
Had to comment again after trying out a few games for a few days. It’s wonderful. Just the corrected aspect ratio is fantastic enough, but the deblurring really just makes it something wonderful. Thanks again! Perfect timing too, since I had already been in a huge Wii phase before I saw your video.
There might be a few games where the developers didn’t know what they were doing, but for 99% of games (including every game he showed in the video), the original stretched aspect ratio is the correct one. (Notice how squished the circles look with the FB ratio). 720x480 is always meant to be stretched to 4:3 or 16:9
@@SirSethery Kirby's Epic Yarn was definitely meant to be stretched, there were square elements that turned into rectangles the moment it was switched to framebuffer. Just like more retro consoles, some developers took it in mind.
Uhh john using brawl was a bad example because that game let you turn off deflicker without modding anyway, its in the games options, I'm also pretty sure some games don't use it at all since tomb raider underworld looks very sharp playing on my unmodified wii u.
That deflicker option is also available on wiiflow and holy crap dude that option alone makes the games look so much better. The blurrines was driving me crazy lol.
not to defend this weird blurry stuff, but i remember back in the day the blurry look and combined lighting of Twilight princess (especially early on in the dark twilight sections) was such a nostalgic and dreamlike experience when i was a kid. that look made everything so mysterious allowing my mind to fill in the blanks of what could be out there beyond those hills and open fields that i was exploring for the first time. an entire world could have been out there for all i knew.
I'm all for pixel perfect modes, but in general for NES/SNES, I only use pixel for games where they look "correct" in pixel perfect. Ironically, most internally developed NES and SNES games don't take the 4:3 stretch into account at all, so they look more "correct" in pixel perfect (squares are squares, circles are circles). Whereas a lot of third parties, including Rare with the DKC Trilogy, took stretch into account, so DKC actually looks wrong in pixel perfect; they intended their game to be stretched. In the Wii's case, it looks like most of the first-party Nintendo games do account for stretch. So while I'll definitely do the deflicker thing, the framebuffer will probably stay on
3:15 The problem is the developer themselves already put the extra stretched pixel in 16:9 mode that if we use framebuffer mod, it'll look not an exact circle (if there's a rendered circular object), but slightly oval. It's better to leave Video Width Auto and disable Deflicker Filter (Off Extended) to remove blurring instead.
I do also remember that SSBB also has an option in game for blur, I only learned about it last time I was running the game on an emulator and damn, I didn't realize how detailed most those textures actually were. Honestly think some looked better than on the newer smash games.
A standard consumer grade CRT TV is still hard to beat for the Wii, especially since emulating older games on the Wii is pretty good and the analogue output is good enough.
I’ve been playing my Wii on a 2006 Panasonic Plasma that has native 720x480p resolution. These were called EDTV I believe (enhanced definition). This is as pixel-perfect as you can get a Wii image. The picture is truly outstanding.
I didn't know it went quite this far. Very informative. I'd only seen a while back that Mario Kart did a lot of things such as bloomeffects to try and hide the bad graphics and in my opinion made the game look worse. Didn't know it was doing all this sort of stuff
I personally set the Deflicker Filter to either "On (Low)" or "Off (Safe)", depending on the whether the game is PAL or NTSC, along with forcing games to display in 480p where I can. I use a Wii2HDMI dongle from Electron Shepherd and I've noticed that if I have the Deflicker Filter set to "Off (Extended)" the flicker effect starts to screw with the colors of the image on screen. Same thing happened with my component cables, so I'm chalking it up to my Australian PAL Wii being as old as it is. Great video, by the way. It's lovely to see that the Wii can be made to look less blurry on modern displays.
3:15 to my eyes, the will menus look normal with the stretched image, and so do Mario Kart and Twilight Princess. if i remember correctly, there was a similar issue with the SNES, some devs took it into account and others didn't. Weird!
Ironically it was mostly Nintendo themselves who didn't account for the SNES stretch. Generally, in Nintendo-developed games, circles and squares look more "correct" if you have the NSO app set to pixel perfect. But Rare games like the DKC trilogy look more correct with pixel perfect off, because they took stretching into account
You also have the flip side of the coin which says that WITHOUT the deflickering filter, the pixels look very jaggedy. I mean like you get really serious jaggies. Just pause at 2:54 and see how disgusting the right looks compared to the left. Yeah you're missing the mark on the objectivity aspect here. It does make Twilight Princess look significantly better though, but I would not want deflickering removed from Brawl.
idk, I kinda perfer the original look as with the filter turned off it really shows how the games have no anti-aliasing leaving these really ugly sharp edges on everything and flicker on distant objects so much more noticable to the point where its distracting. look at the stairs at 1:15
I'm speechless. Why didn't Nintendo fix this ever themselves? The picture is immensely clearer now! Long time USB Loader GX user but haven't ever thought to look if there has been any update on it recently, yet alone in 2023! Thanks!
personally i think it looks better with the stretch and deflicker on, the deflicker option probably wasnt just for crts and most of the games were built for the 16:9 deflicker output so some games may appear too bright and hurt your eyes
I think Brawl has a native option to turn off the deflicker filter, right? To this day I never really understood what it was for, just that it made everything blurrier than I'd like...
It's definitely a preference, if you like the blur that's perfectly fine (But do note that the "Deflicker" filter doesn't actually prevent any flickering in 480p, it only prevents those horizontal lines you might see in 480i output like DVDs)
@@jsr734 Interlaced content updates one group of pixels at a time (Like [Row 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9], and then it updates the other lines on the next frame, so [Row 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10]), so when something's moving horizontally it has a "comb" like effect, it's hard to explain in text so I recommend you look at the Wikipedia article for Interlaced Video
If you have a TV with upscalling capability, or an mCable product for upscalling, removing the blur will help the upscalling process, which increases resolution and applies better anti-aliasing. If you do that without removing the blur, it will look bad, so this is a good thing for those using it on a tv with upscalling or with an mcable product
In monster Hunter tri it made a huge difference, there is usually a huge blur, and now everything is sharp, the textures are very sharp. I'm playing now and testing... and it works well on widescreen hd tvs and also on crt tvs, I tested it on both
Feels so weird to see people who LIKE seeing the pixels. People who aren't me, anyway. I could swear back then the more you smeared and blurred and antialiased an image the more people would like it. They WANTED their console power to go towards post-processing the HELL out of the image, and if they saw bare pixels they would scream "JAGGIES! JAGGIES! 1 OUT OF 10 JAGGIES!"
As a Wii enthoushiast for like most of my life, I wish I knew about this sooner. I will go see if I can get an implementation of this running on the system without having to boot any app first. I wanna see if I can get this to just run globally, on the entire wii.
Awesome! I've used the De-flicker for a few years now, and it does wonders! However re4 was still a mess, but it looks like the framebuffer will fix that! Also, Brawl is only 8 pixels wider in its 16:9 mode over the 4:3 mode. I saw that becase I'm was one of the loonies that purchased a Wii Dual HDMI mod for my Wii. Anyway thanks for sharing! :D
Thanks so much for this video! I thought I was pretty adept with USB Loader GX, but I didn’t even know there was a never version past 2020 or anything about this video options. Very excited to try it out.
HDand ED CRTs with 480p support came out right around the turn of the century and were not common in the mid 90s but rather early 2000s. In the mid 90s 480i/240p was still the standard and EDTVs were pretty rare
@@crestofhonor2349 HD, yes. ED, no. More high end Micro's supported, like the Amiga and had CRT's (TV's, not monitors) that supported it. PALPlus was also set up in 89 and became mainstream in 95 in most of western europe, Japan's Clearvision existed since 89. PALPlus and Clearvision both being ED systems. So yea, ED TV's were pretty common since the mid 90's. Granted I don't know about the US, I don't think they had adopted ED. They tended to lag far behind when it came to adopting improvements in CRT's around that time.
idk. Seems like developers accounted for both. Removing the deflicker looks like artifacts get added but I'd guess developers added them to account for the blur. And the aspect ratio makes stuff look non circular.
There would be overclocking left to do, but it's definitely out of the realm of software modification, if it's even possible to modify the hardware to do it. Closest thing we got is using a Wii U at it's full clock speed.
@@Rayjacker Didn't know that was even possible, just did a quick search on it. From what I can tell it only helps improve homebrew apps, primarily emulation? Still neat that it exists, I was interested to try it out on actual Wii games but from what I gather it breaks compatibility?
@@Rayjacker On the hardware side, they could try and finagle with getting motion control sensitivity adjusted for certain games where it’s really easy to screw yourself over
I mean, arguably the way these games "were meant to be seen" is on a CRT with the default settings. This is neat and all, but if I was going to do this I'd rather emulate and upscale instead. I have my Wii on a 16:9 CRT and that seems like the best way to look at these to me, followed by maybe some judicious 2x upscaling on a PC.
Kinda agree. Unless youre internally upressing on an emulator it looks wrong now. Kinda like using SCART cables on old consoles and transparency effects because the image is too sharp and clear and wasnt meant to be seen that way.
@@Granadico Hah. I was a nerd in a SCART territory. Games have always looked like that to me. Those dither patterns were ultra sharp all the way back in the 90s and we bragged about it, spent money on fully wired, shielded cables to get there on purpose. Like PAL slowdown we didn't even know that wasn't the point. Still, that's arguably why the Wii looks like that. It's meant to output to a CRT with an RBG signal by default, so the softness gets built in.
The stretch may be actually accounted for in some games, so it can be important to leave on if you want accurate shapes. Also, Smash Brawl might be the only Wii game to actually have a deflicker setting where you can turn it off if you wish. I haven't seen any others that give that option.
That would actually work super well with something like the mClassic Upscaler, since it adds antialiasing to the image. That would make the image look totally great on an 1080p IPS Monitor, that is not too big
I did usb loading for a little bit but preferred to just burn my games and they load from the disc channel. I didn’t know USBLGX used discs as well, I remember the icon but payed no attention to it. Gonna have to update it and try it out!
I don't know, for some reason i get the feeling that the DE-FLICKER filter has a purpose. EDIT: It would appear as though the de-flicker works like a crude FXAA antialiasing scheme. I observed in your footage that textures plotted at extreme angles from the camera tended to 'flicker' because it was sampling wildly which pixel to draw from(aka aliasing). The aliasing present may have been considered unpleasant, and thus an FXAA solution was used. A more modern solution would be mipmapping, but this would be rather expensive on both the ROM and RAM of the game, since you would be storing almost twice the image per texture, and both of these would have been limited.
I can't believe how much better the Wii looks via component now on a CRT @ 576p, on my Panasonic SR Acuity 60hz EDTV CRT it's actually as nice as the Gamecube is via component, something I didn't know was possible.
I'd like to make the argument that Kirby's Epic Yarn actual benefited from this blur. It definitely added to the fuzzy look of everything, and it especially explains why Extra Epic Yarn wasn't very successful on the 3DS.
thank you:) I'll definitely do this when I take out my wii next time. Last year I bought some component cables and the difference was massive for me after years of looking at its composite output, so this must be a total gamechanger irl
With the MCables and rebranded ones, the deflicker option turned off makes the games so nice looking ! It will be great with the mclassic too ! You just have to reduce the sharpness of your TV to reduce over sharpening. There is a strange thing. In fact Twilight Princess seems to have a native anisotropic filtering. The far textures look sharp and the textures looked from the side too. This is the game that benefite the most from it. I think what I said, it is a clear : "Thank you !" I didn't knew why Twilight Princess where so blurry but you gave me the answer ! 😀
My wii is hooked to the TV with an HDMI dongle (not a crap one from aliexpress) followed by an Mclassic, and it does look amazing! It goes from being an aliased blurry pixel vomit to almost looking like 720p content.
@@Dash120z I don't have a capture card, and you wouldn't see that much difference with my shitty phone camera. But in person, it looks great. If you have a 100 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, I'd say go for it. It definitely gets rid of a lot of jaggies.
I can't wait to try this, i dragged my old wii out after buying an Oculus. Wired up to a cheap 720p lcd projector and it's loads of fun. This should make make my old tiger woods games look so much better.
Thing is, everything is MEANT to be stretched, and on a CRT that supports 480p, there's no broken shimmer effect. It changes the shape of the pixels just fine because, well, CRTs don't actually have fixed pixels at all. It's pretty clear from the images that 16:9 is the intended aspect ratio for the art design. I mean just look at Mario's head up there! So, this is a nice added trick, but I'd keep the stretch in place and try to find a good CRT.
I get disabling the deflicker filter but outputting the framebuffer aspect ration looks terrible. Every single Wii game took the stretching into account after all they were testing them on actual Wii's (well devkits but you get it) which stretched the image. The framebuffer mode clearly stretches the image vertically and isn't worth it, honestly I'm surprised you can't see it it's really obvious. The ideal solution would be to find a way to use a more modern scaling algorithm to stretch the image, maybe outputting the framebuffer to a PC and using FSR or something to upscale to the intended resolution. Maybe there's a way of using the WII U's additional horsepower todo that all on one device but I'm not sure if you can access the WII U's horsepower whilst in Wii Mode. Whatever solution you choose is gonna be pretty complicated so you might as well use an emulator, I understand Dolphin isn't 100% accurate to the original experience but neither is outputting the framebuffer so it's swings and roundabouts in the end.
RE4 looks like it's anamorphic, i.e 16:9 packed into 4:3 intended to be stretched back out to 16:9 to look correct. Circular things like the scope or the bottom right of the hud look oval in the 4:3.
So you have to go through USB loader GX each time? It's a bit of a deal breaker to me, as I've installed all of my backups on the Wii U menu and it's really convenient to launch those games directly from there, without having to launch the homebrew channel or even the wii menu.
I don't have Wii U experience, but I imagine you can make forwarders to launch games through ULGX for the Wii menu, and further make a Wii U forwarder for that. If not, someone could probably make it if it doesn't exist already.
@@mundieafterlife6290 vWii support has been drafted and in active development since December 10, 2022. Test versions made with Pull request 317 on the Priiloader GitHub no longer brick and can boot on vWii succesfully, but yeah, it's really not there yet, and if you download the regular latest version of Priiloader now (as of writing this comment), it won't work. I think the Priiloader installer checks for vWii nowadays and doesn't let you go through with the installation anyway. But, if everything goes well, chances are you won't have to wait very long to be able to use Priiloader on vWii. And even if you did brick vWii in any cirsumstance, being able to run native Wii U homebrew means you can easily recover the vWii from the Wii U mode anyway. Bricking vWii on a Wii U isn't as bad as it used to be.
important note: which might be theory to my OSSC that got some issue, Excite Truck didn't showed any signal. If this might be the case in any form. There's a way that you can set up in any single games you want to load. just when you open the game on the menu, there's a setting that you can turn the defilter automatically. so you dont need to set off the general setting when you turn the defilter off. if this might be the case maybe only on OSSC or maybe also on TV.
The stretch is clearly taken into account for the final image, you can see that circular or square items are elongated once you return them to the original output. Unfortunate as it does look a lot clearer, but it is what it is.
Agreed. Non-square pixels were very common in early digital video before HD became widespread. Pretty much everything was 720x480, or 720x576 in PAL regions, which would then get stretched or squished to 4:3 or 16:9 as desired. I don't think it's a problem either, because these days we're all using (U)HD displays, so you'd have to scale it to the display's native res anyway. No scaling is perfect apart from integer scaling which wouldn't fill the whole screen from 480p, so you're probably never getting a pixel perfect experience on a modern screen. Might as well use the inteded aspect ratio. I suppose a tv's built-in scaler might be better than the Wii's scaler though, so you could use framebuffer video width and then let the tv stretch the image if supported
One more extreme example is with the CPS-2 arcade system which uses 384×224 internally (very close to 16:9) but is used with 4:3 displays! You can see this a lot with the console ports of CPS-2 games, where the original pixel art has uses more pixels in the character sprites and look extra wide before being squished horizontally, but provide more detail when it's displayed on screen. Whereas sprites for the console ports simply have fewer pixels to compensate.
@@ccricers I think non-square pixels were even more common up until the early 90's. CGA and EGA also support resolutions like 640x200 or 160x200, yet it was all designed around 4:3
@@SterkeYerke5555 And Nintendo's first two consoles both stretched a nearly-square screen out to 4:3. And Commodore was even weirder, featuring different aspect ratios depending on which region you were in.
I will say I did think it was odd when I first launched the Wii emulator that the image doesn't fill the screen. Didn't know it was because the system natively stretched video output.
I would also like to mention that you should turn on the 480p pixel patch for even better clarity (mostly in text), especially if you have an earlier model Wii.
How would one do that? Is it also in USB Loader GX settings?
@@Matojeje There should be a setting called 480 pixel patch
what does it do?
@@MrDiana1706it fixes a programming error in the Wii's graphics API that affected all 480p output. The error is one reason why the GameCube had better 480p output than the Wii.
@@Garbagehead5 Is it present in vWii? (WiiU backwards compatibility)
Removing the blur seems to bring up the same problems retro games designed to be displayed on CRTs have where the developer anticipated a certain level of blurriness and so they didn’t add any sort of anti-aliasing to their games.
Maybe the hardware could not handle it.
Or they didn't want another n64 problem...
So true
@@haloharry97 I just don’t think they would bother if the screen is already blurred. Fxaa basically is just a full screen blur effect
Agree. Fixed old games lose their unique vibe.
@@ledbolcan someone run this test on monster hunter 3
I swear it has eccessive blur beyond what couldve been anticipated and used stylistically like your talking about
Hi GVG do you know any way I can make my copy of Twilight Princesss even MORE blurred and stretched? Would love a follow up episode so I can play it at it's most optimal aesthetic!!
One easy solution is too ask someone who wears glasses if you can borrow them for a while, not only will twilight princess look more blurry, but everything else will too!
You don't want to stretch anything, of doesn't really replicate old crts
you could play on an old projection screen tv :)
He mentions the RetroTink. I think you can use the RetroTink5X to downscale the image to 240p.
480i 4:3, stretch to fit. and slightly zoomed in as to slightly cutoff edges, but still enough to see all hud elements. You're welcome.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you own a Retrotink or Ossc you can use them to correct the aspect ratio without making it as blurry as the framebuffer does.
Good to know. I have a Tink 5x, and I just softmodded my Wii, so I’ll look into making those corrections.
In Mario Kart Wii with the framebuffer aspect ratio, it kind of makes stuff look skinnier. Mario looks slimmer than he should be and the item slot gui icon looks noticeably less square. I think you're definitely right and the intent differs from game to game, but personally I'd probably leave the stretch on for this reason.
the stretch is meant to be on for sure. it was most obvious during the clip of re4, the scope was an oval.
@@dickerzanti he explicitly said that re4 has the separate problem of being a zoomed in 4:3 game, that's where the stretched picture comes from when framebuffer is on, not the wii's default stretched image
@@acecryptor every game he showed with the “fixed” aspect ratio looked incorrect. less blurry, sure. proportions were off though. link was super skinny and tracks on mario kart were way too narrow. the games were designed to be stretched to an artificial widescreen.
@@dickerzanti yeah i agree most games were probably made already taking that stretch into account
HUD elements will undeniably be the most affected as unlike models, they are just flat textures overlayed on the screen, which is the thing that most developers accounted for. Everything else is just more skinny because that's just how you personally perceive it as you grew up with it, but that's how the game is rendered internally.
I believe playing the game through Dolphin would result in a similar unstretched aspect ratio with the right settings.
Outside of HUD elements, I think I prefer the unstretched image for a clearer pixel count.
I mean the Wii does have an option to be played in 4:3 as well as 16:9 in the standard menu, it was released at a weird time where CRTs were still in use everywhere but widescreen HD TVs were becoming more popular, I think towards the end of the Wii's life those games were definitely developed with the stretching in mind because widescreen TVs had become more commonplace by then
4:3 is stretched as well, the Wii just doesn't output square pixels. Same with GameCube.
That’s why, for example, Skyward Sword (a late Wii game) can only be played in 16:9. If your Wii is set to 4:3, it’ll just add black borders at the top and bottom of the screen.
That’s how I played SS back in the day, on an old 14” CRT with a composite cable in 4:3. And I still enjoyed it.
@@kebm1388 no it's squished 720x480 is a resolution meant to be either squished to 640x480 or stretched to 854x480
@@TitusSc same for the Wii U, it has a 4:3 option that you can only use in 480p/i and Wii U games will have those black bars. Although i still enjoyed MK8 and Splatoon on a CRT. (If you're curious, if you go to the Wii menu on Wii U with 4:3 enabled, the menu will actually be in 4:3, no bars on top/bottom, same for 4:3 games, although sadly i didn't test a 16:9 only game like Zelda)
@@wiiztec so is 640x480 the 4:3 output? and 854x480 the 16:9 output?
With this, just as with the SNES, I am in the camp of "the output resolution is more correct than the internal resolution", as devs *should* have taken the stretch into account and that's what the games were viewed at at the time.
never play crash bandicoot or tekken 3 on an emulator running at the game's internal resolution, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
@@BlameCez Whats the internal resolution on these games?
@@PieroBertoni-h7r Crash Bandicoot runs at 512x240 (the game stretches the screen vertically to display correctly on the TV), Tekken 3 runs at 384x480 (in this case the screen is stretched horizontally)
While this may be the case with the SNES where a few pixels makes all the difference, the Wii is a different beast. These games are in full 3D and simply do not look better with stretched resolution.
There may be *some* examples that look a bit weirder with the character not being stretched out, but a 640p to 720p stretch isn't really a big enough difference with 3D models to matter and the visual quality improvement is well worth whatever tiny sacrifices you make.
But it's your choice. I'm just glad we have the option to choose for ourselves. I personally think designing the Wii like this shows Nintendo (and many game publishers all over the industry) have some really ass-backwards logic on what is acceptable. I've always thought the Wii looked kind of terrible and now I'm realizing it could have looked miles better in its own generation without waiting for a 10-year graphical resolution bump.
Except that most devs DIDN'T take the stretching into account, as looking at the graphics and assets will tell you. Their proportions are much better without stretching.
I wouldn't recommend the framebuffer setting personally, because the games were made with that bit of horizontal stretch in mind. Removing the stretching leaves you with an image that appears squashed a bit, and characters and such are noticeably skinnier looking.
Pretty sure with a good upscaler you likely have the option to stretch and move the image around after the analog-to-digital conversion. It's better to change the aspect ratio at a higher resolution than at a lower one, you'll lose a lot less image fidelity.
@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 My comment's not about image fidelity, but accuracy. If you squash or stretch the image at all, other than the aspect ratio it was designed to be presented at, you end up with an inaccurate image, short of actual modifications to the game code to account for it.
@@OrionXIXI Yes, I meant let the Wii output the framebuffer raw, and at an incorrect aspect ratio, and then correct it after the fact with an upscaler, replicating the same stretching the Wii would've done for that game, but at a higher resolution, where you'd have more pixels to work with. Then you'd have better image fidelity and the same, correct final aspect ratio.
CRTs, and common retro upscalers like the RetroTink and OSSC can all do this. As a bonus, due to CRT displays' analog nature, and complete lack of a locked pixel grid, they can shift and stretch the image physically, without any interpolation blur whatsoever.
Bonus fun fact: There's a software mod that can trick the Wii's RVL-AVE video encoder chip into outputting VGA. It's RVLoader, a massive firmware replacement pack designed for use in homemade portable Wiis. It's the best output you can get out of the Wii without an FPGA modchip like the AVE-HDMI.
I agree. I don't know much about this stuff. I just modded my wiiu and I just use deflicker on safe. Any other recommendations for casuals? Thanks
I think that the de-flicker filter being able to be shut off is a massive game-changer for Wii video quality on digital displays, especially with something like a RetroTink5x being able to sharp scale it to either 960p or 1440p.
The stretching I could see being more divisive. It reminds me of SNES/Genesis games being either 256p or 320p wide, with circles being squished for those wider games in 4:3 mode. The Wii was a console made during the switch from CRTs to Digital displays, so I've always thought of 16:9 as being the aspect ratio that Nintendo always meant for it. I think it has to be done on a case by case basis if they meant for it to be stretched or not, and even then it's more of a personal preference.
It's made so the aspect ratio is correct whether you choose 4:3 or 16:9 that's what the anamorphic 720x480 resolution is for
What is Retrothinkx5? Emulator. Wii software?
@@ps4games164 It's a scaler. You put console video signals into it and it scales it to a higher resolution. For the Wii 480p -> 1080p
@@excadrillo99
Scale or upscale? What do you mean? Does it give great results? So this is just hardware accessory for Wii, one can buy it and put the Wii cable in it?
@@ps4games164 You can use it with any console
I was always a bit miffed on the image quality of Wii games, as I knew it wasn't really completely an issue with the system itself as Gamecube games still looked great on it, so I didn't know what the deal was
We can see that RE4 take the stretch in consideration, the scope is not a circle anymore, same for the health counter on the HUD, and I kinda think it is too for MK Wii, because the box for items on the top left is now a rectangle with framebuffer, the box is taller, or, thiner depending on how you see your cup half filled or half empty x).
Every game takes it in consideration, it's very easily seen on circular or square hud elements. Non-square pixels were pretty much the default before digital screens became mainstream.
"fixing" the aspect ratio is akin to forcing the SNES in a square pixel mode. While the SNES runs natively ~15% stretched. You just get a bad emulator image, rather than accuracy.
@@relo999 Exactly, GVG seems to have forgotten that devs tested their games on actual Wii's. So even if they completely ignored the documentation they would've noticed their artwork being stretched and corrected for it.
The problem is that the Wii uses an old school upscaler todo the stretching which warps the image, so you need to output to a PC or upscaler box and apply a more modern upscaling algorithm to stretch the image.
@@relo999 with how many titles the wii has, I dont think every dev thought about the wii natively stretching video. Honestly wished there was a way to just map the system to swap between depending on the game.
I can see one reason, why Nintendo introduce the filter (even I don't agree with that decision). The dithering is strong with this one... Twilight Princess and especially RE4 have really strong dither pattern. And I know, that some people are really allergic to it. Speaking of, is there some option in loader, which is trying to mitigate it like in Swiss on GC?
Even the Gamecube version of RE4 forces the deflicker filter on in 480p mode--GC games were usually better about this than Wii. I'm 100% sure Capcom did it because they thought the dithering was too intense--in darker scenes it's pretty hard to ignore.
Twilight Princess looks sharp on my 4:3 Sony Trinitron CRT TV, i didn't know that the Wii has a filter.
@@saricubra2867 Pretty much every video game console starting with the Dreamcast has a deflicker filter for 480i modes, and trust me; if your TV is sharp and large enough *you don't want to disable it* lol.
If it's the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess, I'm guessing it'll fare better. Most Gamecube games seem to use a fairly light version of the deflicker filter in my testing (seems equivalent to "Low" in USB Loader GX). Wii games seem like they default to "High" most of the time so they're blurrier.
These don't really feel like fixes at all to me. It DOES make things sharper, but at the cost of exposing imperfections the Wii had to work with. Both Twilight Princess at 1:10 and RE4 at 3:44 show dithering patterns that are way more ugly to me than being a bit blurry (which honestly looks pretty normal for 480p games if you're used to CRTs). Also RE4 renders in a letterboxed mode in 4:3, while widescreen mode just zooms it in. The game is not meant to be viewed in a full 4:3 screen like that, it's just stretched and not correct proportionally. In fact, most of these examples look like the stretch was taken into account beforehand. Turning these options on just makes the games look dramatically more aged in my opinion, but of course this is still subjective.
Imo the raw dithered pixels look better than the smudged blur.
@@spht9ng Especially RE4.
Almost dropped the Wii version in favor of the GameCube version until some individuals found a way to disable the deflickering filter.
Yep, enabling Framebuffer is very impractical. It will output the sharpest display in exchange for improper aspect ratios, resulting in squished / stretched images.
in my opinion the best fix. is MCLASSIC + HDMI.
you're right, I was watching the video thinking the same thing. sure it's clearer, but does that make it better? link in 4:3 without framebuffer looks waaaay to pixelated, pointy and skinny.
I could tell you literally anything about the Wii and I was not aware of this. Thanks so much, the Wii is my favorite console ever and now it will look even better!
I have a love and hate relationship with the Wii.
Wait a second I know this voice....
It's Count Dooku from the Star Wars prequels.
@@scoutisabelle a man if culture 🫱🏼🫲🏽
Wow, I had no idea the Wii's image was stretched. Very informative video Jon. Thanks!! ^^
The pixels are stretched, but it’s by design from the time. All of the games look off when forced to square pixels
its not stretched its anamorphic
Wow I took the advice of this video and got my Wii to look much sharper than it was before. I used the Homebrew channel method to obtain the software needed. I was playing MGS the Twin Snakes (from GameCube) on my Wii and noticed something was not right when playing. After I made the adjustments on this video I do notice a difference. Not as blurry as before and image is much sharper. Also not as dark as some areas were hard to see. I can clearly say this fix works for playing GameCube games on the Wii (if your Wii supports GC discs). Thanks GVG from a 40 year old gaming veteran!
Thanks for mentioning whether or not it affects GC games, very cool!
Thanks for this video! Priiloader also has an option to disable the deflicker in the home menu too, which will make your homebrew menu appear nice and sharp. Now my Wii looks great on my HDTV!
I’m glad other people have mentioned the 480p pixel patch too! In games like Mario Kart Wii (that I always thought was suuuuper soft) it makes a huge difference. And if you have Priiloader you can turn it on in the Wii Menu too, it makes a huge difference there too haha
Also, Mario Kart Wii in particular has a fairly strong bloom effect that I personally dislike. There's several Gecko codes for disabling it as well.
While there's an argument that disabling stretching for games that don't properly implement Anamorphic Widescreen is a good idea, for most games it isn't, unlike the SNES where it has the same issue but most games didn't account for the 8:7 to 4:3 stretching so it worked out very well with some exceptions. Also Wii mode doesn't fill the whole widescreen area, same with GameCube, you can see this by just forcing the TV to not modify the picture zoom (sometimes the full option still zooms in a bit)
Man, you really make me wanna hook up my Wii again (truth to be told, I was going to do that anyway) but this is amazing.
I have component cables for it so I wonder how it makes difference on my TV.
Video width might show what the console is actually rendering, showing a more crisp image, but the games were designed with 16:9 in mind, at least some of them, so the game is squashed. I'm playing Sin and Punishment 2 and I only have to look at any circle or square, they look wrong. Anyway, just the removal of the deflicker is already an improvement, so this is nice to know.
4:03 but if you look at the shape of the RE4 HUD and the shape of the scope, they're oval instead of round on 4:3. If you look at the HUD bottom right element you'll see that it's round on the widescreen version (3:41). I think they're supposed to be round, therefore they did make some changes to the game regaring 'widescreen', since I don't think that the original (GC/PS2) version of RE4 has it's round elements be oval.
My Wii is still hooked up to a 4:3 CRT TV, so I don't know how much this applies to me lol.
0:10 Also, Galaxy 2 there still looks quite nice even without these improvements, really says a lot to just how well done the visuals of the Galaxy games were for a Wii game and how much they can still hold up.
I’m the same way with my Wii but it would be interesting to see on the big screen
Mi wii is hooked up to a 16:9 CRT TV, you should apply deflicker, you will get flicker on the image but much better image
@@sos.gamers mine is a 4:3 but I will give it a shot
I also use my wii hooked up to a CRT although it's via component and 480i as well. Works great as an emulation station for 240p stuff
Same for me.
I first learned about this from Mega Man X Collection: for whatever reason, the GameCube version had Deflicker enabled on that _SNES and SP1 content!_
On another note, Smash Melee & Brawl actually handed the user an official toggle for the Deflicker filter right there in the settings! Brawl even has an aspect ratio toggle despite that already being covered by the Wii settings themselves!
X Collection is supposed to be one of the few 240p GC games isn't it? I know it was 240p on PS2 at least.
@@VexAcer idk, but it sure has the blur filter on regardless
@@VexAcer Yes it is. If it weren't for the deflicker filter, it would be the best way to play the X games on a CRT. I bought the game hoping my low quality CRT TV would hide the blur, but the deflicker filter is really noticeable. Thankfully (Not thankfully for me since I don't own a ps2) the PS2 version doesn't have this filter, and in fact, looks better than the original SNES hardware thanks to cleaner video output from the PS2. (I have a 2 chip SNES)
Melee had it too
Never thought I'd see the day where my launch Wii could output emulator-level pixel clarity without modding! Some games that were blurry as hell (bloom filter used to be so trendy) or overly stretched to fill 16:9 look better than ever.
I wonder if Electron Shepherd's new HDMI board also bypasses the flicker filter.
I mean is it really emulator level pixel clarity.... Upscaling to 4K with a widescreenhack and if available (for many popular games it is!) an HD texture pack makes wii games look like better switch games. All this does is make wii a little less blurry but with no anti aliasing so extremely blocky edges.
@@rex2100 I think if you just want to be true to the Wii's resolution and capabilities it's a better "pure" experience, without needing any extra bells and whistles. An HDMI mod is still a no-brainer if you want the absolute best clarity though.
@@opal817honestly electrons wii2hdmi or even the mayflash adapter is best for most people compared to ease of use and price
This explains so much about the wii's video resolution, not only the components within the analog port made cheap, but also the deflicker or bob deinterlacing that you mentioned in this video.
While I definitely prefer the image without the deflicker, I can't help but feel Nintendo didn't make it an option because they liked the way it hid how low-res the screen output was. The second you turn it off, while you can see WAY more detail, the staircase effect and overall aliasing can be a bit grating. It seemed to fit the purpose of something akin to FXAA; a post-processing filter than doesn't impact performance.
Brilliant my guy!! Instantly so much better!! I've been hard into loading up all my favorites lately so this video found me at a perfect time for my wii u modding! Lol
The filter improves these low res games, but the stretch doesn't on certain games. I would like to think that the developers for any Wii game took what tv their core audience would be using into account.
I heard that's what developers did with the NES, since that console stretched its almost-but-not-exactly square resolution to 4:3. History repeats itself, so it's possible.
sorry to break it to you, but this is a non-issue. wii (and gc) games automatically deactivate the deflicker filter as long as you have your wii set to progressive video (or tell them to use progressive video when they ask at boot in the case of gc games).
some even have the setting to disable it manually like smash melee and brawl. but i believe some were bugged or didn't implement the automatic deactivation of the deflicker filter properly, the european version of zelda tp is among them iirc.
the "stretch" is intended for aspect ratio purposes. the ps2 did the same thing with many games rendering at resolutions other than 640x480 (512x448 being the most common) and getting stretched to fill the screen.
and last but not least, the wii u has a filter of its own, so not the best idea to use it for demonstration purposes.
This is great! I haven't delved much into wii homebrew, just did enough for project plus & CTGP, definitely gonna do this myself
Brawl has a deflicker toggle in the options menu btw.
I believe the reasoning for the stretch had to do with how the Wii handled 16:9 to begin with
the Wii itself still outputs in 4:3 but when you select the 16:9 option in the settings you then have to force your display to stretch the 4:3 image to 16:9
of course on Wii U this stretching nonsense isn't a thing in Wii Mode but it still follows the same principles and I bet tons of games in the Wii library had to account for that
While that does make sense, other consoles like the PS2 don't exhibit this issue. You can play a game that released on both PS2 and Wii, set them both to 16:9 widescreen and 480p, and the Wii version will still look stretched compared to the PS2 version. I remember this being an issue with the Guitar Hero games.
@@mazda9624 May be the Wii version didn´t support widescreen at all.
@JSR It did. It was just slightly stretched compared to the PS2 version. It wouldn't make much sense for a PS2 game to support widescreen and the Wii version of the same game to not do so considering the Wii is a much newer and more powerful console.
@@mazda9624 the Wii specifically uses anamorphic widescreen not actual widescreen
@@Bro3256 Same with the PS2, except most PS2 games look correct if you set them to widescreen.
I don't know, I think it gives it a charismatic anti-aliasing type quality. A lot of compute power is used to remove those same jaggy edges these days!
This is awesome. I never knew that USB Loader GX features could be applied to playing disk games. I'm checking this out straight away.
I've been playing Wii wrong the last two decades, thanks so much for this video & consider me subscribed.
1:29 but isn't 720x480 typically used by consoles and DVD players of the generation used to compress games to a narrower size for GPU frame buffers? Typically if a game's 4:3 it'll be 640x480, if a game's widescreen it renders with a wider view or changes the FOV and then squashes the image into a 720x480 space and let's the TV stretch it back out to 16:9. These games aren't 16:9 but rather closer to... Ok, so 800x480 would be 5:3 aspect ratio. Wider than 16:1O.
If you are playing on a CRT, I’d leave the default settings. But using component over composite makes a big difference. Its a cleaner image with these changes no doubt but adds more jaggies. Developers were aware of the de flicker and stretch. Its an option, I don’t think its universally better unless you only play on an HDTV.
Mclassic or similar for AA would help with these settings on. The pixel shimmer is almost as annoying as the blur they applied and Mclassic would help with that.
@@markwebster4996 mClassic is up to personal choice whether you like it or not
I used composite for the Wii and Melee looked the same to me as on the gamecube.
@@saricubra2867 Because the GameCube is unaffected to the deflicker filter built-in the Wii; most games has it's own one. (e.g RE4, Melee, etc,.)
@@ndnixlon9548 I also have a CRT connected to the Wii and Gamecube.
Had to comment again after trying out a few games for a few days. It’s wonderful. Just the corrected aspect ratio is fantastic enough, but the deblurring really just makes it something wonderful. Thanks again! Perfect timing too, since I had already been in a huge Wii phase before I saw your video.
There might be a few games where the developers didn’t know what they were doing, but for 99% of games (including every game he showed in the video), the original stretched aspect ratio is the correct one. (Notice how squished the circles look with the FB ratio). 720x480 is always meant to be stretched to 4:3 or 16:9
@@SirSethery I’ll have to compare some more, but for the most part, non-stretched has looks better.
@@SirSethery Kirby's Epic Yarn was definitely meant to be stretched, there were square elements that turned into rectangles the moment it was switched to framebuffer. Just like more retro consoles, some developers took it in mind.
Uhh john using brawl was a bad example because that game let you turn off deflicker without modding anyway, its in the games options, I'm also pretty sure some games don't use it at all since tomb raider underworld looks very sharp playing on my unmodified wii u.
I currently still use a Wii on a 4:3 CRT, but I know that's not an option for most people. The results of this homebrew looks amazing.
Turning off the deflicker will help on a CRT as well
@@ohajohaha Image quality by default on the Wii is exactly the same as my Gamecube when i run Melee on both
That deflicker option is also available on wiiflow and holy crap dude that option alone makes the games look so much better. The blurrines was driving me crazy lol.
not to defend this weird blurry stuff, but i remember back in the day the blurry look and combined lighting of Twilight princess (especially early on in the dark twilight sections) was such a nostalgic and dreamlike experience when i was a kid. that look made everything so mysterious allowing my mind to fill in the blanks of what could be out there beyond those hills and open fields that i was exploring for the first time. an entire world could have been out there for all i knew.
For Anyone wondering what Background sound(music) is playing is WORDS DONT COME EASY- by an 80’s artist… correct me if I’m wrong…
I'm all for pixel perfect modes, but in general for NES/SNES, I only use pixel for games where they look "correct" in pixel perfect. Ironically, most internally developed NES and SNES games don't take the 4:3 stretch into account at all, so they look more "correct" in pixel perfect (squares are squares, circles are circles). Whereas a lot of third parties, including Rare with the DKC Trilogy, took stretch into account, so DKC actually looks wrong in pixel perfect; they intended their game to be stretched.
In the Wii's case, it looks like most of the first-party Nintendo games do account for stretch. So while I'll definitely do the deflicker thing, the framebuffer will probably stay on
3:15
The problem is the developer themselves already put the extra stretched pixel in 16:9 mode that if we use framebuffer mod, it'll look not an exact circle (if there's a rendered circular object), but slightly oval. It's better to leave Video Width Auto and disable Deflicker Filter (Off Extended) to remove blurring instead.
Thanks for this, got composite cables and even then the deflicker filter blur is strong.
that’s just because you used composite cables
@@sunspot5 Nope.
I didn't know what happen to Jon in Nintendo life,but I recognize his voice in a second
I do also remember that SSBB also has an option in game for blur, I only learned about it last time I was running the game on an emulator and damn, I didn't realize how detailed most those textures actually were. Honestly think some looked better than on the newer smash games.
Booted a Wii disc game up today using USB loader. What an improvement in picture quality. Great video, thanks!
A standard consumer grade CRT TV is still hard to beat for the Wii, especially since emulating older games on the Wii is pretty good and the analogue output is good enough.
yup
I’ve been playing my Wii on a 2006 Panasonic Plasma that has native 720x480p resolution. These were called EDTV I believe (enhanced definition). This is as pixel-perfect as you can get a Wii image. The picture is truly outstanding.
I didn't know it went quite this far. Very informative. I'd only seen a while back that Mario Kart did a lot of things such as bloomeffects to try and hide the bad graphics and in my opinion made the game look worse. Didn't know it was doing all this sort of stuff
I personally set the Deflicker Filter to either "On (Low)" or "Off (Safe)", depending on the whether the game is PAL or NTSC, along with forcing games to display in 480p where I can. I use a Wii2HDMI dongle from Electron Shepherd and I've noticed that if I have the Deflicker Filter set to "Off (Extended)" the flicker effect starts to screw with the colors of the image on screen. Same thing happened with my component cables, so I'm chalking it up to my Australian PAL Wii being as old as it is.
Great video, by the way. It's lovely to see that the Wii can be made to look less blurry on modern displays.
if you set a pal wii to 480p its output acts like an ntsc wii
@@gamecubeplayer - That makes sense, and could explain my aforementioned issue.
3:15
to my eyes, the will menus look normal with the stretched image, and so do Mario Kart and Twilight Princess.
if i remember correctly, there was a similar issue with the SNES, some devs took it into account and others didn't. Weird!
Ironically it was mostly Nintendo themselves who didn't account for the SNES stretch. Generally, in Nintendo-developed games, circles and squares look more "correct" if you have the NSO app set to pixel perfect. But Rare games like the DKC trilogy look more correct with pixel perfect off, because they took stretching into account
Can't belive 2023 was only 5 years ago.
You also have the flip side of the coin which says that WITHOUT the deflickering filter, the pixels look very jaggedy. I mean like you get really serious jaggies. Just pause at 2:54 and see how disgusting the right looks compared to the left. Yeah you're missing the mark on the objectivity aspect here. It does make Twilight Princess look significantly better though, but I would not want deflickering removed from Brawl.
woah. i’m so happy i found you!!! ibe been looking for wii fans for a while
idk, I kinda perfer the original look as with the filter turned off it really shows how the games have no anti-aliasing leaving these really ugly sharp edges on everything and flicker on distant objects so much more noticable to the point where its distracting. look at the stairs at 1:15
A CRT TV connected to a Wii doesn't have those problems.
I'm speechless. Why didn't Nintendo fix this ever themselves? The picture is immensely clearer now!
Long time USB Loader GX user but haven't ever thought to look if there has been any update on it recently, yet alone in 2023! Thanks!
the deflicker was a standard feature in games that generation (all 3 consoles) because most of the time they were outputting an interlaced image.
personally i think it looks better with the stretch and deflicker on, the deflicker option probably wasnt just for crts and most of the games were built for the 16:9 deflicker output so some games may appear too bright and hurt your eyes
I think Brawl has a native option to turn off the deflicker filter, right?
To this day I never really understood what it was for, just that it made everything blurrier than I'd like...
Post processing like blurring actually makes the image look better to me. My brain can't stand flickering or aliasing.
It's definitely a preference, if you like the blur that's perfectly fine (But do note that the "Deflicker" filter doesn't actually prevent any flickering in 480p, it only prevents those horizontal lines you might see in 480i output like DVDs)
@@ToaderTheToad What do you mean by horizontal lines on DVDs?
@@jsr734 Interlaced content updates one group of pixels at a time (Like [Row 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9], and then it updates the other lines on the next frame, so [Row 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10]), so when something's moving horizontally it has a "comb" like effect, it's hard to explain in text so I recommend you look at the Wikipedia article for Interlaced Video
@@jsr734not sure what they meant but it's for old CRT tvs
If you have a TV with upscalling capability, or an mCable product for upscalling, removing the blur will help the upscalling process, which increases resolution and applies better anti-aliasing. If you do that without removing the blur, it will look bad, so this is a good thing for those using it on a tv with upscalling or with an mcable product
In monster Hunter tri it made a huge difference, there is usually a huge blur, and now everything is sharp, the textures are very sharp. I'm playing now and testing... and it works well on widescreen hd tvs and also on crt tvs, I tested it on both
I can't find these 2 settings and my USBLoaderGX tells me it's updated
Feels so weird to see people who LIKE seeing the pixels. People who aren't me, anyway. I could swear back then the more you smeared and blurred and antialiased an image the more people would like it. They WANTED their console power to go towards post-processing the HELL out of the image, and if they saw bare pixels they would scream "JAGGIES! JAGGIES! 1 OUT OF 10 JAGGIES!"
As a Wii enthoushiast for like most of my life, I wish I knew about this sooner. I will go see if I can get an implementation of this running on the system without having to boot any app first. I wanna see if I can get this to just run globally, on the entire wii.
Did you find a way?
I just set up my Wii again and this is a huge help. Nice work!
Awesome! I've used the De-flicker for a few years now, and it does wonders! However re4 was still a mess, but it looks like the framebuffer will fix that! Also, Brawl is only 8 pixels wider in its 16:9 mode over the 4:3 mode. I saw that becase I'm was one of the loonies that purchased a Wii Dual HDMI mod for my Wii.
Anyway thanks for sharing! :D
Thanks so much for this video! I thought I was pretty adept with USB Loader GX, but I didn’t even know there was a never version past 2020 or anything about this video options. Very excited to try it out.
mkwii seems to be designed with the stretch in mind (projection matrix is probably hard-coded to be for 16:9)
Every non-budget TV when the Wii came out could do 480p and was pretty common since the mid 90's one CRT's.
HDand ED CRTs with 480p support came out right around the turn of the century and were not common in the mid 90s but rather early 2000s. In the mid 90s 480i/240p was still the standard and EDTVs were pretty rare
@@crestofhonor2349 HD, yes. ED, no. More high end Micro's supported, like the Amiga and had CRT's (TV's, not monitors) that supported it. PALPlus was also set up in 89 and became mainstream in 95 in most of western europe, Japan's Clearvision existed since 89. PALPlus and Clearvision both being ED systems. So yea, ED TV's were pretty common since the mid 90's.
Granted I don't know about the US, I don't think they had adopted ED. They tended to lag far behind when it came to adopting improvements in CRT's around that time.
idk. Seems like developers accounted for both. Removing the deflicker looks like artifacts get added but I'd guess developers added them to account for the blur. And the aspect ratio makes stuff look non circular.
Those armored hedgehog things from twilight princess give me nostalgia like you wouldn't believe
Didn't know there was anything left for the Wii modding community to do, this is an amazing upgrade. Looking forward to booting it up this weekend.
There would be overclocking left to do, but it's definitely out of the realm of software modification, if it's even possible to modify the hardware to do it. Closest thing we got is using a Wii U at it's full clock speed.
@@Rayjacker Didn't know that was even possible, just did a quick search on it. From what I can tell it only helps improve homebrew apps, primarily emulation? Still neat that it exists, I was interested to try it out on actual Wii games but from what I gather it breaks compatibility?
@@Rayjacker
On the hardware side, they could try and finagle with getting motion control sensitivity adjusted for certain games where it’s really easy to screw yourself over
I mean, arguably the way these games "were meant to be seen" is on a CRT with the default settings.
This is neat and all, but if I was going to do this I'd rather emulate and upscale instead. I have my Wii on a 16:9 CRT and that seems like the best way to look at these to me, followed by maybe some judicious 2x upscaling on a PC.
I don't like how this vertically stretches the image, and removing the blur makes the edges more jagged, which sucks
Kinda agree. Unless youre internally upressing on an emulator it looks wrong now. Kinda like using SCART cables on old consoles and transparency effects because the image is too sharp and clear and wasnt meant to be seen that way.
@@Granadico Hah. I was a nerd in a SCART territory. Games have always looked like that to me. Those dither patterns were ultra sharp all the way back in the 90s and we bragged about it, spent money on fully wired, shielded cables to get there on purpose. Like PAL slowdown we didn't even know that wasn't the point.
Still, that's arguably why the Wii looks like that. It's meant to output to a CRT with an RBG signal by default, so the softness gets built in.
DUDE THANK YOU omg i was wondering why my games seemed a bit blurry compared to when i was younger lol. thanks a bunch!
The stretch may be actually accounted for in some games, so it can be important to leave on if you want accurate shapes.
Also, Smash Brawl might be the only Wii game to actually have a deflicker setting where you can turn it off if you wish. I haven't seen any others that give that option.
For whatever reason this video incessantly buffers, it's the only video I've ever played on UA-cam that does this. Thought you'd like to know
That would actually work super well with something like the mClassic Upscaler, since it adds antialiasing to the image. That would make the image look totally great on an 1080p IPS Monitor, that is not too big
I can confirm it does! Totally worth the 100 dollars of the mClassic.
Love that you cover stuff like this.
I did usb loading for a little bit but preferred to just burn my games and they load from the disc channel. I didn’t know USBLGX used discs as well, I remember the icon but payed no attention to it. Gonna have to update it and try it out!
Thankyou so much for this tutorial! I can absolutely see a difference and it makes me love my childhood console so much more now
I don't know, for some reason i get the feeling that the DE-FLICKER filter has a purpose.
EDIT: It would appear as though the de-flicker works like a crude FXAA antialiasing scheme. I observed in your footage that textures plotted at extreme angles from the camera tended to 'flicker' because it was sampling wildly which pixel to draw from(aka aliasing). The aliasing present may have been considered unpleasant, and thus an FXAA solution was used. A more modern solution would be mipmapping, but this would be rather expensive on both the ROM and RAM of the game, since you would be storing almost twice the image per texture, and both of these would have been limited.
I can't believe how much better the Wii looks via component now on a CRT @ 576p, on my Panasonic SR Acuity 60hz EDTV CRT it's actually as nice as the Gamecube is via component, something I didn't know was possible.
I'd like to make the argument that Kirby's Epic Yarn actual benefited from this blur. It definitely added to the fuzzy look of everything, and it especially explains why Extra Epic Yarn wasn't very successful on the 3DS.
i don't think that was the reason,
i think it was because it released while the 3ds was breathing its last breath
*actually (adverb)
actual = adjective
@@alvallac2171 its not that deep let it go
thank you:) I'll definitely do this when I take out my wii next time. Last year I bought some component cables and the difference was massive for me after years of looking at its composite output, so this must be a total gamechanger irl
With the MCables and rebranded ones, the deflicker option turned off makes the games so nice looking ! It will be great with the mclassic too ! You just have to reduce the sharpness of your TV to reduce over sharpening.
There is a strange thing. In fact Twilight Princess seems to have a native anisotropic filtering. The far textures look sharp and the textures looked from the side too. This is the game that benefite the most from it.
I think what I said, it is a clear : "Thank you !" I didn't knew why Twilight Princess where so blurry but you gave me the answer ! 😀
My wii is hooked to the TV with an HDMI dongle (not a crap one from aliexpress) followed by an Mclassic, and it does look amazing! It goes from being an aliased blurry pixel vomit to almost looking like 720p content.
@@kmash2932 could you please film some footage, I would like to see some near native 720p Wii gameplay
@@Dash120z I don't have a capture card, and you wouldn't see that much difference with my shitty phone camera. But in person, it looks great. If you have a 100 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, I'd say go for it. It definitely gets rid of a lot of jaggies.
I can't wait to try this, i dragged my old wii out after buying an Oculus. Wired up to a cheap 720p lcd projector and it's loads of fun. This should make make my old tiger woods games look so much better.
Thing is, everything is MEANT to be stretched, and on a CRT that supports 480p, there's no broken shimmer effect. It changes the shape of the pixels just fine because, well, CRTs don't actually have fixed pixels at all. It's pretty clear from the images that 16:9 is the intended aspect ratio for the art design. I mean just look at Mario's head up there! So, this is a nice added trick, but I'd keep the stretch in place and try to find a good CRT.
Yup the wii was designed with CRTs in mind just like the 6th gen consoles
3:10 they are supposed to be stretched, you can see the circles are too narrow when you take the stretching off
I get disabling the deflicker filter but outputting the framebuffer aspect ration looks terrible. Every single Wii game took the stretching into account after all they were testing them on actual Wii's (well devkits but you get it) which stretched the image. The framebuffer mode clearly stretches the image vertically and isn't worth it, honestly I'm surprised you can't see it it's really obvious.
The ideal solution would be to find a way to use a more modern scaling algorithm to stretch the image, maybe outputting the framebuffer to a PC and using FSR or something to upscale to the intended resolution. Maybe there's a way of using the WII U's additional horsepower todo that all on one device but I'm not sure if you can access the WII U's horsepower whilst in Wii Mode. Whatever solution you choose is gonna be pretty complicated so you might as well use an emulator, I understand Dolphin isn't 100% accurate to the original experience but neither is outputting the framebuffer so it's swings and roundabouts in the end.
That's so cool am a big wii fan myself and i was wondering how to make the games look better thank you for sharing.
RE4 looks like it's anamorphic, i.e 16:9 packed into 4:3 intended to be stretched back out to 16:9 to look correct. Circular things like the scope or the bottom right of the hud look oval in the 4:3.
exactly. when in widescreen mode, the wii smooshes everything together so that your tv can stretch it back out giving you the correct aspect ratios.
I dunno how to explain it but you're like the Gordon Ramsay of deep voice, it's very satisfying
So you have to go through USB loader GX each time? It's a bit of a deal breaker to me, as I've installed all of my backups on the Wii U menu and it's really convenient to launch those games directly from there, without having to launch the homebrew channel or even the wii menu.
I don't have Wii U experience, but I imagine you can make forwarders to launch games through ULGX for the Wii menu, and further make a Wii U forwarder for that. If not, someone could probably make it if it doesn't exist already.
Same! I wish there was another option to turn off the deflicker
With Priiloader you can make the Wii boot straight to USB Loader GX, effectively replacing the stock system menu.
Don't install Priiloader on Wii U, you will brick your vWii.
@@mundieafterlife6290 vWii support has been drafted and in active development since December 10, 2022. Test versions made with Pull request 317 on the Priiloader GitHub no longer brick and can boot on vWii succesfully, but yeah, it's really not there yet, and if you download the regular latest version of Priiloader now (as of writing this comment), it won't work. I think the Priiloader installer checks for vWii nowadays and doesn't let you go through with the installation anyway.
But, if everything goes well, chances are you won't have to wait very long to be able to use Priiloader on vWii.
And even if you did brick vWii in any cirsumstance, being able to run native Wii U homebrew means you can easily recover the vWii from the Wii U mode anyway. Bricking vWii on a Wii U isn't as bad as it used to be.
important note: which might be theory to my OSSC that got some issue, Excite Truck didn't showed any signal. If this might be the case in any form. There's a way that you can set up in any single games you want to load. just when you open the game on the menu, there's a setting that you can turn the defilter automatically. so you dont need to set off the general setting when you turn the defilter off. if this might be the case maybe only on OSSC or maybe also on TV.
Thanks for the tips. Changing my settings now 👍