I bought my second copy

[xEik]

This weekend I was in Geneva visiting a friend and while we were in a Supermarket I just checked the games shelf, the usual routine. To my surprise, I found two brand new copies of Wip3out for 29 swiss francs each. After doubting a while I said to myself that I would buy it for link mode's sake, although I have neither second PSX nor link cable. The other copy is still there...

Now I'm in France with no Playstation, no TV but one of the greatest games ever which I cannot play because ePSXe crashes as soon as I cross the start line.

Who cares, though!

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[xEik]

I finally got it to work with ePSXe! I had been trying to choose the right graphic and sound plug-in but the problem was with the CD-ROM plug-in. :oops:

My ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 displays quite smooth in-game graphics. I guess it must be sweet to fly Wip3out with a PS2. The keyboard stills feel weird, although I'm one of the D-Pad pilots.
I'd be glad to participate in Techno's contest but obviously the differences between emulators and real PSX are huge so no luck for me :P

At least I can calm my WipEaddiction a bit and keep practising into my way to perfection.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Lance]

.
i'm a D-padder too, and keyboard control still feels awkward to me, but i haven't spent the many hours using it that i've spent with standard console controllers. controlling pitch is something i've not got the hang of yet.

i should see if i can get ePSXe to work with my integrated Intel AGP board. but since i can't use either the PC woxl or the console WO3 played on the computer to get valid contest times, my incentive to do it is not very great. but, the PC woxl looks great. i'm curious about what wo3 would look like on the comp
.

[xEik]

The weirdest thing is using my right hand for direction controlling. I'm not used to it. It doesn't feel natural.

It looks really good with a decent 3D card, a filter activated (not too many), and high-res textures. I suppose that a 1400x1050 LCD screen helps as well. ;) Screenshots look really smooth.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Wiseman]

I guess it must be sweet to fly Wip3out with a PS2.Unless you have an S-Video (or composite) cable hooked up to a HDTV, nope, it doesn't look anywhere near as good. Better than the PSX, yes, better than emulated, no.

Playing it on my GeForce 3 makes the game look totally sweet, and Wipeout XL/2097 looks equal, if not better, than the PC version.

The increased texture clarity is really what helps make the difference, I mean, Stanza Inter actually looks interesting on the PC for crying out loud, instead of the boring, drab looking mess it appears to be when playing on the PSX.

[zargz]

stanza is a good track. who cares'bout the colors ?? :o
there's no bright spot @korodera either but it's stil amongst my favorites.
4me hi-fumi is the equivalent of korodera on wo3/se - dark'n indutrial

xeik : 'Screenshots look really smooth. '
make a link to 1 - I'd wanna c it!
SOMEbody mUst have a psx wherever u r staying @the moment so that's a bad bAd Xcuse! :P

[Wiseman]

No, Stanza Inter is not a good track (to me). The ugliness of it is just one of it's many problems... I could rant all day about all the bad things about Stanza Inter.


Anyway, I have screenshots on my hard drive (of Wipeout on ePSXe) but I have to find a place to upload them.

Maybe xeik has a place already where he can upload some, if not, I'll try to find a place.

[Mano]

You can also use your psx pads on pc, if you cant get those nice usb psx pads adaptors, theres a little proggie called dpadpro that acts as an interface on directinput, allowing you to use the pads on the pc....tho it doesnt work on win xp, there r other proggies out there as well that do. only catch is that you have to make an adaptor for this wich is very easy to do and the diagrams r on the same dpadpro50.zip that i was talking about.

I have already made like 3 psx pad adaptors and 5 snes pads adaptors.

this is the page:

http://www.arcadecontrols.com/Mirrors/www.ziplabel.com/dpadpro/

edit: forgot to mention the homemade adaptors use the serial port, the one your printer attaches to.

[xEik]

Well, those wanting to see them prepare for a huge download (in image download terms). Im saving them as looseless compressed TIFFs (PC kind, not MAC kind). Making it with JPEG would screw the details in the image and that's why people want to see them. There will be a JPEG version in order to preview the image and if you think it's worth you may start the download.

They have been done flying Auricom at Porto Kora at Vector class. I did them in 5 minutes for the post so don't expect amazing photographic angles. The 3D part looks good. I have to mess a bit with the bitmap settings 'cause the hud doesn't show very well. Those from NTSC land will be able to see contrails (moisture lines produced by wingtips).

TIFF images are 800x600, as I said looselessly compressed. Size is around 350 and 400 kB (not bad for an image :P)

Check them here (http://casal.upc.es/~xeik23/archives/index.html) (if you got problems downloading, click the image with the right mouse button and choose save target as... I know you all knew :P)

Requests are accepted on new images concerning other tracks and ships. ;)

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Lance]

.
xeik, next time you could try PNG format and use PaintShop Pro 7.xx to control the compression level. you may like the results

i couldn't connect to the server you linked yet, but i'll try again later
.

[xEik]

I just don't like lossy compression for images where detail is to be judged. Not having the original you never know if some flaw is due to compression or due to the generation process for the original image (in this case the emulator).

I use Photoshop and I know that most people wouldn't notice the difference between original and lossy compressed even using a compression that allows you to get a file about 10 times smaller. However, this applies to the image in a whole not to details like edges.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Lance]

.
one of the good things about PNG format is that it gives nice clean edges without those bubblyjelloworm artifacts of JPG that destroy detail and alter colour. however, i was more concerned about being able to contact the server. now i can see the pics. :)

they look very smooth and good. one effect of this is that one can see more clearly the striated appearance of the sky, which usually only shows up that much on Terminal when you use the console to play. i'm not sure that the emulation actually has more detail, but it gives that impression because the dotting of the image caused by the relatively coarse shadow mask of an ordinary television is just not seen. they look good; i'd like to play the game that way. the images look awfully dark, and rather less colourful then i see them on my tv, though.
in that picture of the start/finish straight, the first of the two cranes on the left seems to be suffering a lot from pop-down, instead of pop-up. pieces are missing. ;)

thanks for the images, xeik. love the smooth texture on the ships

.

[xEik]

Interlaced images is what severely downgrades TV quality. Every frame that the TV set displays has only even or odd lines. It causes an slightly annoying effect. You'll notice it clearly in a monitor if you check an interlaced setup for your display.

About the images being dark I suppose it's the emulator's setup fault. Less colorful? Maybe it has to do with PAL format. What I can grant you is that us European get more horizontal lines than you Americans. ;) Appart from contrails, did you see them? What do tou think of them?

The improvements can come from some filters that are applied to the images that require a 3D processing power that our old PSX doesn't have. And being wip3out high-res (I think it was 640x480) I think it's generating a bit more information than what the TV can really display (the real number of lines a PAL TV can display barely reaches 600 because some of the 625 said lines are used to let the electron beam go upwards when a frame is finished). However, 640x480 will always be better than 320x240. I'm sure a PSX game developper like Nick can talk more wisely about this than me, a mere amateur.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[zargz]

xeik, try rapier so we can get some REAL contrails! :D
I didnt c any ..
just testing some colors .. :P

[xEik]

I didnt c any ..
Then you must be blind.8) Almost every image has them but they are very weak except for the 'tunnel' image. In there the contrails are almost getting out of the screen.
Vector was easier to get average trajectories while trying to be getting decent snapshosts. I may do some Rapier, though. Guess Megamall with Feissar could be next. :)

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[zargz]

:o

AH! nOw i saw them! look much better in 'reallity' 8)

[Mano]

you should try taking screenshots with the emu on 1024x768 res, 4xsai smoothing and anisotropic filtering, image is great.

btw. i tried to see the pics again, but the page is apparently down :(

[xEik]

AH! nOw i saw them! look much better in 'reallity' 8)
In a game everything looks better when moving. Specially at high framerates.
Sorry for the site being down. :( It's some space that a university club in Barcelona lets me and the server is maintained by some students there, so it's useful, free, quite fast but not reliable. :-?

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Nick Burcombe]

(JFYI - I'm not a programmer at all, I'm a game designer)

Not really been following this thread, but I've got Andy to answer some questions for you as simply as possible.

I believe Wipeout3 was not 640x480, but 512 x 480 or 512 x 386 not sure of the height. Something to do with PSX memory pages being 256 pixels wide or something like that.
The texture filtering will always improve things on a monitor and you shouldn't get much in the way of shearing polygons (bending textures) in the foreground either. Depends on whether it's a straight foreword emulator or whether someone has bothered to write a correction for the error in the PSX chipset.