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by kode54 at 8:09 PM EDT on June 10, 2018
Calm your tits, man. Do you actually nitpick the pixels while they're in motion? Is this so bad that you can't even enjoy the games?

* goes back to upscaled games on his 5120x2880 monitor *

Oh, and I came to this topic expecting Pro Action Replay codes. I was sorely disappointed.

edited 8:10 PM EDT June 10, 2018
by MoldyPond at 9:33 AM EDT on June 11, 2018
I think everyone who's come to this thread has been disappointed.
by AnonRunzes at 11:10 AM EDT on June 11, 2018
so, anti-aliasing graphics or just pixel-perfect(as in no aliasing, just natural pixels) graphics?
by SmartOne at 11:31 PM EDT on June 11, 2018
That's the tragedy, kode54. Due to developer negligence, we have to wait until not only everyone has super-high resolution displays, but also for games to be able to output at these resolutions in order to render (pun) the unnecessarily decreased signal-to-noise ratio as imperceptible.

Man achieves super high resolution. Man effectively realizes an arbitrarily lesser resolution.

Woman inherits the Earth.

Compared to dinosaurs, this is pretty darn bad.

The bug is actually worse in motion. So there will be no calming of my tits any time soon. (And they do want to be calm. Believe me. I've asked them.)

If on the off-chance anyone knows some reverse-engineering Direct3D 9 API-fu, I'm all ears. And tits.

Relevant:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb147229(v=vs.85).aspx

I found a nice analogy in this unrelated article:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/truman-show-anniversary-jim-carrey-peter-weir-laura-linney

'“The Truman Show was made before video came out—when movies were still made on film,” explained Linney. “Now you can do a million takes and, because it doesn’t cost as much and isn’t as precious, there’s a casualness now on sets, which isn’t bad . . . just different. During that period of time, film was very valuable. So, when the camera was rolling, everybody became very quiet and everybody leaned in. Everybody, the crew, nobody could move, nobody could speak, nobody could whisper, no one could look at a phone—because we didn’t have them. It was a very different atmosphere on a set, and it’s one that I miss, actually, because people really had to listen. I look back on it as pure filmmaking, in a way, that just doesn’t happen anymore.”'

Except they're too soft (which always sounds better, right?). When the product suffers, it's not only just different. It's also just wrong.

edited 12:42 AM EDT June 12, 2018
by SmartOne at 12:58 AM EDT on June 23, 2018
Related, though at a larger scale (pun) than texture alignment:

http://tanalin.com/en/articles/lossless-scaling
by SmartOne at 2:45 PM EDT on July 21, 2018
Sonic Mania does it correctly by default on PC in windowed mode. I'm pleasantly surprised. None of that secret "pixWidth=1" hidden INI setting garbage is needed, unless your goal is 4:3 instead of the default 16:9.

Sonic Mania is natively 424x240, technically taller than Genesis Sonic games and Sonic CD which output 224 pixels, but I'm not complaining. More on-screen content at the design expense of zoomed out Sonic. I think it was a smart choice to target half the standard 480p resolution. This enables the human-made (read: not algorithmic-ly sampled and thus "alias"-free) pixel art while also enhancing the vertical field of view as compared with the previous games.

The 424x240 resolution isn't exactly 16:9, but only a fraction of a pixel less wide. This is a perfect choice, because integer scaling is intended to display the viewport, often with black framing boxes.

The interesting consequence of this is that the pixel art for the sprites had to be completely redone. If Sonic were the exact sprite from the old games, he'd be too skinny without the theoretical CRT to plump him up (stretch or "horizontally distort intentionally" AKA Aspect Ratio subjective "Correction" for you pedants).

The wrong way to do this would have been to put each sprite/tile into an image editor and stretch. The right way would have been for an artist to manually re-create the sprites by hand for the new 16:9 aspect ratio.

Luckily Sonic Mania chose the right way.

However, Sonic Mania's PC fullscreen modes are broken. They apply scaling similar to the Sonic CD 2012 garbage. So we're stuck with non-graphics-card-exclusive windowed mode for correct integer scaling.

I'm willing to bet the console versions do the same garbage scaling, possibly with the exception of PS4 Pro 4K mode?

The last I heard, Windows' windowed/non-exclusive modes have improved to the point where they are just as jitter and input lag-free as exclusive fullscreen, but who knows.
by Kurausukun at 6:31 AM EDT on July 22, 2018
So integer scaling is only applied if you use non-exclusive fullscreen? I never tried using it, I pretty much always played in either fullscreen or windowed, which I couldn't really compare since the image size is so different. I tried comparing the two after reading this, but either the game doesn't actually use borderless fullscreen when you turn off borders or I just can't tell the difference.
by SmartOne at 6:58 PM EDT on July 22, 2018
Sonic Mania has no way to get integer scaling in either type of fullscreen, unless maybe if your monitor's width is an exact multiple of 424 and is wider than tall. Unlikely. The exception is PS4 Pro 4K mode, which is apparently aligned "exactly" to the integer-scaled pixel grid.

Non-exclusive, "borderless window" fullscreen is only available in the INI. "exclusiveFS=n"
by SmartOne at 9:21 PM EDT on August 7, 2018
I had the opportunity to try Sonic Mania on a PS4 Pro with a 4k display. Digital Foundry got it wrong: There absolutely is non-integer scaling in 4K mode. If there wasn't, there would be pillarboxing, because 3840 / 424 is not an integer.

"But the pixel perfect mode is our favorite here and it also highlights the first console advantage - amazingly, Sonic Mania supports PS4 Pro. It outputs at native 2160p, enabling razor sharp pixels that line up perfectly with the pixel grid on a 4K TV. No blurring, no upscaling, no filtering."

Yeah, okay. What part of "line up perfectly with the pixel grid" and "no blurring, no upscaling, no filtering" don't you understand, technical gaming journalist? Maybe take off your nerd-colored, rose glasses first next time?

In other news, I've been detecting some jerkiness in Sonic Mania on both PC and PS4 Pro. I believe that it boils down to a difference in camera motion compared to the old Sonic games. Stand on a flat surface and jump while watching the camera move up and down.

I hope the issue is isolated to just the camera panning. Interesting post:

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/sonic-mania-ot-dreams-come-true.1419116/page-144#post-247306702

edited 9:37 PM EDT August 7, 2018
by Kurausukun at 10:18 PM EDT on August 7, 2018
I can't really agree with him that the game is unstable, I've never had it crash outside of testing mods that I can remember.

I also don't quite see the issue of jerkiness that you mentioned; I'll look harder next time I play, but the framerate seemed perfect to me.

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