FF IX - flickering/wobbling game characters

[Samhayne]

Hi !
I just made FF9 to run with lordkane's config.
Everything's just fine but many of the character's polygons wobble and flicker which looks really odd. (Zidane's hair goes up and down ... some character's eyes get bigger and smaller, arms flicker ... some have a hole in their head ... ugh.)

Anyone here with a solution for this annoying problem ?

Regards,

Sam


edit:
I'm using epsxe 1.52 with pete's open gl and lordkane's config
gfx-card: Nvidia Geforce 4 TI

[Kane]

In short: no

Originally Posted by [url="http://www.lordkane.co.uk"

My Website[/url]]Q. The polygons move all jittery! How can I fix this?
A. The PSX lacks 'sub pixel accuracy'. This means that when you put the resoloution up, the coordinates of the polygons are still in 320x240, or whatever resoloution the PSX is using. There is no real fix for this. Your best bet is to run in 640x480 and enable Full Screen Anti Aliasing.
Q. The textures look warped, is there a fix for this?
A. The PSX doesn't have a Z-buffer, so Perspective correction (which would fix this) isn't avaliable.

[Samhayne]

Hi Kane !

Thx for the answer.
Seems I have to get used to the wobbling and jittering ... oh my.

btw. - I already reduced the resolution to 640x480 as I expected something like this being the prob - didn't look much better if you ask me. Though i didn't try the 320x240 resolution which should be the only one without this effect, as you said.

Again thx.

Sam

[hushypushy]

try Pete's OGL2. you cant use shaders, but you can at least use one of the "very high" reslutions (put it on High X and Very High Y), that will get rid of it a bit.

[Phoenix Flame]

The PSX's native resolution is 320x240, so setting your resolution to 320x240 should in theory obliterate all the snapping vertices. However in practise this is a phenomenon which is present even on the actual PSX console. The higher your resolution, the more you'll notice it. Generally you're going to have to learn to live with it.

[jettokisora]

I'm having this same problem, but there's a catch.

Before I upgraded my PC, there wasn't a trace of this problem in FF9, with either ePSX 1.5.2 or 1.6.0. I tried every resolution, and didn't notice any problem whatsoever, even at 1280x1024, etc.

My old GFX card was GeForce 2 MX 32mb.
My new card is GeForce FX 5900 Pro.

I've tried every combination of GPU plug-in and settings I can imagine, and messed with my GFX card settings till my face turned blue. No change.

Does it have something to do with next gen GPU instructions or something? Possibly? I can't stand to play with this problem, it's so distracting. Lowering resolution doesn't fix it, and the graphics were so beautiful on my old GPU. :(

Jettoki Sora

[I-Chan]

Hushy, with an nvidia card he can put both to very high. Those with the problem, you can try hushy's suggestion (but with both to very high if you own an nvidia chipset )

[jettokisora]

Tried putting them both to very high, and it seems to help a bit, but it's still quite distracting. Also, the character polygons only get jumpy when they stand still or perform idle animations. While running, they are perfectly fine.

Can anyone think why this wouldn't happen on second gen video cards, but only affect third gen? I really don't feel like rebuilding an entire box just so I can play FFIX. (don't have a TV anymore)

[Kane]

>Also, the character polygons only get jumpy when they stand still or perform idle animations. While running, they are perfectly fine.

This is because the characters are still in the gap between pixels in the original resoloution, thus they jup to and from each state seemingly randomly, and it's fairly obvious that you won't notice this effect too much if the polys in question are already in motion.

>Can anyone think why this wouldn't happen on second gen video cards, but only affect third gen? I really don't feel like rebuilding an entire box just so I can play FFIX. (don't have a TV anymore)

Guess? Maybe the fact that the image quality output from an NV3x card is that much above the NV1x cards that you didn't notice it back then.
I take it you tried identical configs?
Have you tried the fullscreed filter, or any of the GLSlang shader programs?

[hushypushy]

Originally Posted by I-Chan

Hushy, with an nvidia card he can put both to very high. Those with the problem, you can try hushy's suggestion (but with both to very high if you own an nvidia chipset )

dude, you do know that i wrote that a long time ago, before very high X could be done (wasnt enabled with nvidia's drivers until the 5x.xx)...this is a pretty old thread

[jettokisora]

Originally Posted by Kane-Sama

Guess? Maybe the fact that the image quality output from an NV3x card is that much above the NV1x cards that you didn't notice it back then.
I take it you tried identical configs?
Have you tried the fullscreed filter, or any of the GLSlang shader programs?

I pushed my old card to its limits and ran with ultra-high resolutions. The flickering just *wasn't* there; it's completely confined to the 5900 Pro. I've not only tried identical configs, I've tried over 50 combinations of configs on the new card, and I must have tried at least that on the old card, trying to get it to look the way I wanted.

Since I'm using Pete's OGL2, I've tried every full screen shader/filter available with the plug-in. It makes the game look great, but the flickering doesn't vanish or even become less noticeable.

The only answer I have is that maybe nVidia's new drivers don't like the game. If that's the case, then even re-installing my old card won't fix it.

I guess I'm mostly curious as to whether there are people out there with 5900s who don't have this problem with FFIX. Are they using nVidia's Dets?

[I-Chan]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

dude, you do know that i wrote that a long time ago, before very high X could be done (wasnt enabled with nvidia's drivers until the 5x.xx)...this is a pretty old thread

Ups how could i not notice? My apologies pal

[hushypushy]

don't worry about it, it's not a big deal

[manias]

i also found it's less noticable if u play on yer tv.. :P So if u have a tvout try that lol
the tv seems to blur/filter things out a bit..

[hushypushy]

yeah dude..of course. your TV is only 320x240. so it will be exactly like on the PSX...low res. the reason the pixels jump is because you increase the res 2 or 3 fold and when it has to move just 1 pixel it actually is moving several, hence the jittery look.

[manias]

no no duh :P I mean tv-out mode @ 768x576
I put on dual view once and on the monitor it looked more edgy and jittery than on the tv (similar to the full screen blurring or whatever)

[Black Sheep]

Well, i have the same problem with ff9, and basically with all other 3d psx games. I also tried 320x240 mode, and the wagging is still there.

I wonder if everyone experiences this bug ... like on every video card, and every game.
Correct me: even the native psx connected to the TV screen still has it ...

I also wonder if this could do with the tv screen interlacing? I mean the TV "pixels" are more like hexagons ... you do not just have the odd and even lines commuting, its also that the even pixels are shifted a half pixel's way ... In this case this would be an emulation problem, since there are really many "deinterlacing" methods, like "dropping every second frame" or bop(?), weave(?), stuff like you get on your pc dvd player ....

[Kane]

>I wonder if everyone experiences this bug ... like on every video card, and every game.
Correct me: even the native psx connected to the TV screen still has it ...

Yes, yes, yes (well any 3d game), and yes

>I also wonder if this could do with the tv screen interlacing?

Nothing to do with it. The reason TVs don't exibit this effect so much is because they produce a far more blurry image.
The reason the problem happens in the first place is the PSX's lack of sub-pixel accuracy (3d models wobbling as there is a sudden jump between 2 places on the screen rather than the smooth transition of PC games), and a Perspective Correction (warped and crawling textures). Without HLE there isn't really a way to deal with these problems, and HLE produces an entire extra load of problems on the PSX as most of the good games were coded 'into the metal', IIRC.

>I mean the TV "pixels" are more like hexagons

....I don't really see where you get that from.

[Black Sheep]

Does this also apply on:

- ps2 games?
- psx games played on ps2?

[I-Chan]

- ps2 has a z buffer, it's much more accurate on poly positioning. So no.
- psx games ain't programmed with z axis info, so it will happen even if you play in your toaster.