The Wii Is Gorgeous In High Definition

@Valnen: HD fanboy much?

So wait, would this be any different than my receiver up scaling to 1080i?

I guess I need to go throw Galaxy in and take a look at it.

Gregory Mercurio

I just don't see what looks so great? Are you telling me the graphics on the Wii look worse than that image?

Krutch

Meh, HD is a fad.

where can i get this emulator thing?

mocax

@raffleking: So the Wii is a lie?

@FightingChance: This. I can't understand this crap. Games like Galaxy, De Blob and even Corruption are absolutely gorgeous, and I'd take Galaxy looks over many HD titles. Yet I pop in other made for Wii games and they're freakin cartoons, looking very Nintendo 64.

I got the Conduit and as I expected, the environment textures are incredibly lame. You can tell they spent worthless time implementing bump mapping and shader stuff on the character models, but the game is still ugly. There is no reason for my Wii games to look PS2. I don't want HD, I just want every game to have the detail that Brawl does.

burnblue

Can we get a side by side?

@jonycob:

yea man, read the article. The wii RENDERS at 480p at best.

@m4ximusprim3:

Judging on Ac1d's comments, we haven't really lost a top notch commenter.

@Stubtify: the problem is that most of that detail isn't there in the source at all. this will give you non-jagged edges, and that's it. you don't get any extra detail at all. to get extra detail, the game would have needed to be made with a higher poly count, and higher resolution textures.

@GrossGreg: That error is direct consequence of contraction abuse and poor phonetics.

Contractions are evil... DO NOT use them, everyone should speak like well educated robots with British accent as I do.

@Yacjuman: No it doesn't. Jaggies everywhere. It's unbearable, just like any other wii game on an HDTV. The fact that you need to own an ancient TV just to enjoy a console is horrible.

@Les Mikesell: This isn't upscaling. And no, they don't.

@Digitallysick: Almost? It is.

@Mat1cs is a Gentleman and a Scholar.: That was awesome!

@september11th: 720p is not about graphics. It's about having a display setting that's actually acceptable to watch on modern TV's. Not obsolete TV's they don't even sell anymore.

@KesMonkey: I think the point is that he's citing Nintendo's mantra of "fun over graphics" that they've had since the launch of the Wii.

You may know how to use sarcasm sir, but your detector surely fails!

Asherek

Mario Galaxy looked great on a HDTV anyway, I don't know what Giz is talking about. Certainly had better graphics than games like Perfect Dark Zero.

@trailingedge: What if it's sold as an addon? Unlikely but still possible.

Steven Olsen

@jonycob: You've got a really thick skull jonycob. RTFA, this is the emulator RENDERING at 720P. So it is true HD even though the in game textures and geometry are the same, you're getting a much cleaner rendering of them.

@yelraf: +1 for the +1. "Should of" makes my brain hurt.

Whoa what is this amazing new technology you speak of....video games in high definition?!?!??!

O wait, Sony and Microsoft have been doing this for years

ab3

@EndlessMike: With endless expensive peripherals.

ranwanimator

@sojrner:

This is taking the source code and rendering it with more precision. A very simplified way to think of that would be to plot a curve with 100 points versus plotting a curve with 50 points. You'd be able to draw a smoother curve, and also have more precision. You could then zoom in and not see jaggedness.

Upconverting takes the curve with 50 points and tries to estimate the extra 50 points, and then smooth things out. It won't get you any extra detail, but might give you a little more clarity than just zooming in on the original 50 points.

Another example would be character hair: If the Wii doesn't render strands of hair because 480p can't display them with enough clarity then the upconvertor won't make them magically appear. Re-rendering with higher resolution could do that though.

Stubtify

@raffleking: That's the whole point.

This isn't true 720p either. But for some reason gizmodo thinks it's news.

jonycob

Sigh, well it's still the same damned moustached mushroom-eating little italian and the same goddamn princess getting kidnapped over and over anyway. (Okay, actually I liked Super Mario Galaxy. To be honest, it was probably one of the only games for the Wii that I liked, too)

Don't sensible TV's do a decent job of upscaling on their own?

Les Mikesell

@enki: I don't get it either. Sorry. :/ I followed the links provided, but found no additional info as to what was really done here.

Care to explain?

@jonycob: hate to break it to you like everyone else here already has...but that wasn't 1080p. you've been living a lie.

raffleking

@chefgon: And where exactly is this method getting the additional data?

This seems to be upconverting/upscaling, which many good TVs and receivers do already. Could it simply be doing more image processing? If so, then it makes sense that this had to be done on a PC such that the additional processing power balances out the additional computations that would be required.

Feel free to enlighten me. :)

"Pumped through a Wii PC emulator, these images are just upscaled versions of the SMG's existing graphics-in other words, you're not even seeing what advanced hardware/graphics engines can do with additional texture or lighting."

Upscaling is not the word you are looking for, these are actually rendered at the given 720p resolution. This is like playing Quake at 720p resolution.

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: I don't want a large Farva! I want a fuckin literocola!

m4ximusprim3

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave:

"What is best in life?"

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

madog

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: No sound at work... hopefully this isn't awful...

+ Watch video

madog

@i_9: Get your eyes checked. They're going bad.

@FightingChance: Because Nintendo, unlike many third-party developers, actually takes the time to make the most of their games. But they have that luxury since their games actually sell.

EndlessMike

@XanderVincent: My friends and I find all of them 'fun consoles' for different games. Rabbid Rabbits, Wii Sports (soon wii sports resort) and Tiger Golf. Rock band 2 for xbox 360 and PS3 for Little Big Planet.

I play my new PS3 the most. I prefer it over the Xbox360 in all ways now.

Turael

@chefgon: I doubt they felt it would be worth the added cost. Every Nintendo console up to the Wii had expansion ports that were, at best, used by one peripheral. The design concept behind the Wii was to make a simple, cheap machine.

EndlessMike

@KesMonkey: *by my display*.

KesMonkey

@september11th: You're right you know. Why on earth would anybody want to play the exact same game with upgraded visuals? I can't think of a single reason. /sarcasm
If it's fun in 480p, it will also be fun in 720p, with the added benefit of not being jaggy as shit.

KesMonkey

@jonycob: The internet is impressed. No, really. The whole internet.

Too bad you still weren't "getting" it after reading the article.

enki

@Luke Michael Timothy: Who says they can't? I'm looking at Dolphin's graphics configuration menu right now, and it lists every resolution up to 1080p, which is the maximum supported my my display. I have no reason to doubt that support is limited by your graphics card and screen combination, rather than the emulator. Although, you would need a phenominally powerful PC to run it smoothly at extreme resolutions.

KesMonkey

@i_9: The real question here is, what isn't worth getting a boner over?

[tinyurl.com]

@jonycob: upconverting and full renders are different.

Grahmo

@chefgon: +1 for "should have" instead of "should of".

@Geph_knows_more: I don't understand why these PC emulators can't upscale to some proper manly resolutions, like 1920x1200.. or 2560x1600.

Luke Michael Timothy

@XanderVincent:
That might be a little harsh. I would never in a million years say that bad graphics are a good thing, but I think the Wii is pretty fun regardless. I have all three consoles and I definitely get the most play out of my 360, but the Wii has provided me with a heck of a lot of entertainment over the last couple years. Mario Galaxy and Metroid Corruption alone are worth owning the system for.

chefgon

@september11th: Lol, I would agree with that if it was actually fun. I sold my Wii 6 months ago for a 360. Best exchange I ever made, and I was first in line for my Wii on launch day.

Wewtaco

@Zach W. R. Mollett:
No. HD is just an output resolution. It does make low-res textures somewhat more obvious, but having hi-res textures is not an absolute requirement for an HD picture. The image will still look a hell of a lot sharper regardless.

chefgon

@tetzel1517:
Upconverting is totally different. It's trying to make an HD signal without enough data available to actually get anything worthwhile out of it. This method has all the data necessary to make a true HD picture that actually contains more detail.

chefgon

@Aaron Morrow:
Does 640i even exist? The Wii runs at 480P.

chefgon

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave:

I'll bow to you!

Amir Oulad

@rjizzle: Nevermind. Seems to be working now. Have fun!

rjizzle

@TheCrudMan: yeah, i'm pretty sure it's the dolphin emulator. Their official site seems down though.

rjizzle

@kevinl: I WANTZ THE WIIZ EMULATORZZZ.........

@[tinyurl.com]

This game is beautiful even in a 20" CRT TV.

GustavoSM

@TheCrudMan:
What they should have done is designed the original Wii hardware to be expandable to support the extra power needed for higher-res output, just like they did with the N64.

chefgon

Yes, 720 would make a huge difference, but almost certainly you're looking at a 720p image on a display that's even higher resolution, closer to 1080p, with a pixel density even higher, aka your computer monitor.

What I'm essentially looking at here is super mario galaxy at 1080p that's only taking up a third of my screen.

@i_9: Try Brawl? It really looks nice in 1080P...

Invisiblemoose

Sad when an emulator is almost better than the game system itself

@TheCrudMan: yeah, where?

@jonycob:

upconverting won't be as good as HD rendering, which is what these pics are ^^^

Aaron Morrow

I always hear "Who cares about HD, the Wii is about having fun." Maybe that is where Nintendo wanted to go with it, but now that the amount of people actually having fun with that attempt at a console, people are now trying to take a look at the Wii's 6 year old graphics as a selling point.

I own a Wii. It was played last November. Even my friends who come over for parties don't want to play the "party console" anymore, they want to play one of the fun ones.

I'm sorry Nintendo, but you broke my heart first.

XanderVincent

@Bongoes: Shenanigans, you say?

If anyone has anymore ideas for movie scenes that would be good for a comment response, feel free to PM me.

@Geph_knows_more:

ya, but 640i was soooo 6 years ago...

Aaron Morrow

@TheCrudMan:
Ya that's what I want to know. I used to do this w/ my N64 emulator, as well. Looked better on my computer because it was doing the same things as this.

Aaron Morrow

@unibrow4o9: Of course, the trolls, they never last...

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: Just wow. Words can not describe how I feel for this gif.

It's not "upconnversion" but native rendering of pixels.

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: These are seriously fantastic. Even better than the shenanigans one.

Bongoes

@32ndnote: I believe Gimp would be a suitable program for the job. Not the fanciest thing out there, but it's free. :)

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: He already had James Earl Jones on. And Conan began by thanking him for being in the movie that ruined his life.

@32ndnote: GIMP. I found a tutorial online. It's mostly making a multi-layered file, then setting the delay in the name of the layer. That's the tough part, getting the timing right. The bad part is that since photobucket allows you to get stats on your images, I have found people hotlinking my picts, taking my bandwidth, so I have to watermark them all now.

@unibrow4o9: No, thats when they'll have an online system thats not archaic, and get people to shut up about Nintendo being for kids.(Metroid Primal Strike: 5420Q SHDTV Spine Cracker Edition, ohhh, its coming. Eventually. Even though its unannounced, unplanned, and is a completely radical shift from where they are now.)

MDevonB

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: awesome. simply awesome!

TheCamaroKid

Wouldn't Nintendo have to overhaul each game with new textures to make it feasibly HD?

Zach W. R. Mollett

@ac1D: How say the Council?

GUILTY!

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: wow. amazing. simply amazing.

beamin445

@OMG! Ponies!: I'd be careful. The Tonight Show has a new special guest host:

@ganooch: What? What does a plug on the TV have to do with processing!? Your 5 year olds TV could handle HD just fine, if it had enough pixels/phosphur dots.

And I'll just say this to be an ass; They had HDTV's 5 years ago. If you add an HDMI port to an HDTV, you will have *drumroll here* an HDTV! With a non-functional HDMI port.

MDevonB

@tetzel1517: get a good receiver that upconverts.

jonycob

slow news day?

anyone with a decent receiver that upconverts everything can get better, even up to 1080p upconversion, but as you can see from the image above upconversion isn't that great. The picture isn't that crisp all around.

I was gaming on my wii day one at 1080p, but didn't consider it be to "news". unfortunately, I stopped gaming on the wii as soon as I finished mario galaxy (about 1 week before it was released and two days after "getting" it).

jonycob

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: You never cease to amaze me, sir. Also, what do you use to make a GIF like that?

what? why would anyone care about 720p? THE WII IS ALL ABOUT FUN, NOT GRAPHICS.

september11th

Resolution aside, it's bizarre how good Mario Galaxy looks and how bad the majority of other Wii titles look. I can think of no excuse to why a Wii game would not look as good as a Gamecube game from years past. I know direct comparison against PS3/360 titles will always cast Wii games in a harsh light, but even when that is dismissed, many Wii games still look muddy and jagged.

Wow, stunning. There's got to be a way to make this happen, right? Some sort of "upscaling box" that receives a signal from the Wii and upscales it before sending it to my TV?

Also, this post made me forget how fun that game is. I set it aside after getting stuck on a level but I think I'll take it up again.

tetzel1517

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: I love you!

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave:

Conan says to hell with Crom, lanky Irish comedians, and video game backdrops.

@typoink: Maybe they can produce a Sega 32x-like extra component that you can Voltron onto your Wii and give it more power. Wishful thinking...

Hello Mister Walrus

@TheCrudMan:
Ahh misread. Didn't know it had that output. Anyway I thought they were just saying this is what happens when you pump the SD rendered signal to an HD source...seemed reasonable to me because i'm not completely familiar with the Wii's graphics and I didn't look at the closeup pictures till after I posted.

TheCrudMan

I don't get it. I've done this myself at home and the difference is hardly worth getting a boner over. Even in all the screenshots across websites, they look the same.

i_9

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: What? That's amazing.

Hello Mister Walrus

@jayhawk11: Thank you. I did it the same time I did this one:

Feel free to use them if I'm not around.

@CameraShoe_GitEmSteveDave: Sweet Christ. That GIF may be among the most incredible things I've ever had the privilege to see on Giz in my nearly three years here. Tip of the hat to you, sir.

@TheCrudMan: Really? No extra processing? So then I can add an HDMI port to my kids' 5 year old TV and then I will have an HDTV, right? Wow. Just.... Wow.

ganooch

@TheCrudMan: No, it IS extra processing. The Wii renders games at roughly 640x480 (possibly 800x480, but I don't believe so). 720P HD is about 1280x720. That's a LOT more pixels to render, and would substantially decrease the framerate of Wii games.

The Wii DOES have an HD output (component, which supports 720p/1080i), but the Wii only passes an SD signal over it.

@ac1D: Banhammer incoming in 3...2...

I'm so put off of Nintendo's "planned obsolescent"

trailingedge

What I really want to know is how will this look in Hi-Def as the background to Conan?

@ac1D:

@TheCrudMan: Outputting at a higher resolution does require extra processing, and the Wii already has the physical means to output at 720p (Component).

@ac1D: Uh oh...

this would be all I need to turn my wii back on. It simply looks like trash unless you play it on a CRT display.

more reasons for me to sell off the Wii in preparations of a HD version. F**ken Nintendo!

trailingedge

@ac1D: i hope your that was worth it. BANHAMMER'D

beamin445

720P is so last year...

I was ready to laugh at the ignorance of using gorgeous and Wii in the same title... but if it does go HD I might have to consider it. Just don't tell my kids I said that.

wolfsingleton

Oh Christ. It must be Troll Feeding Day. Here we go....

Crenshaw13

I can get this Wii Emulator where?

TheCrudMan

Nintendo? In HD? Maybe in 2020

unibrow4o9

Very cool, given this I'm surprised they didn't just add HD-out right off the bat...it shouldn't have added too much to cost or manufacturing issues...given that it's just an output not extra processing, etc.

TheCrudMan

so want!

malaklaze

First!

It's awesome!

ac1D

@XanderVincent: The lack of HD is a minor gripe for me. What I have issues with is the fact that the Wii is obviously being strained by games that shouldn't be straining it. The conduit has framerate issues in multiplayer, and I've seen a bit of stuttering in zelda too.

Nick2

@Luke Michael Timothy: You can, but it isn't even close to feasable. I have a:

Core 2 Quad q9550
GTX 260 (Core 216)
6 GB DDR2 1066
Win7 64 Bit

It JUST barely runs the gamecube games reasonably at 720p. I tried running wii games, and it is like running Crysis on my old GeForce 8600. Possible, but not worth it.

I only run them at native res.

Nick2