Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

N64 with Retroarch - best video settings for 1080p


ckp

Recommended Posts

Hi,

I've been talked into using a lot of my older platforms with RA. It's going ok so far, except that I am clueless with RA how to improve resolution, graphics appearance, upscaling, and stuff like that.

I added my N64 to RA and looked at a few games.

When I run N64 games from my Project64 emulator, the resolution and game looks really good on my 1080p 32" TV with custom graphic plugin settings. 

But with out-of-box RA settings for N64, it doesn't look very good and the game window uses an extra small resolution.

I'm hoping someone can let me know which video settings I should change in RA (just for N64) to make it look better on 1080p. I'm not talking about shaders here.

Thank you!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The setting you want is in the N64 core options and not the video settings. With an N64 game loaded in the Mupen core open the  quick menu and go into core options. In there look for the resolution scaling, after bumping it up to what you want you will need to do a restart for the changes to take effect.

Personally I don't recommend using the Retroarch core, I use a mix of PJ64 and stand alone Mupen64plus on a game by game basis. N64 emulation is in a not so good state and needs a lot more work, a lot of individual tweaking per game with it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok here is the question do you want to render the games in their original aspect ratio or do you want to have them fill your whole screen? If you prefer the latter without any core loaded go into RetroArch's menu and press right then go down to the video option and press x then go down to Aspect Ratio Index and change it to 16:9 or play with the settings to find something you like. I personally use 16:9 for all of my games in RA.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't care so much about original aspect ratio if it looks good 16:9. But if going 16:9 makes it look bad, then I would leave it with black bars on the left and right side (4:3?).

16:9 is always my preference if it doesn't look weird/bad. So far I think I have most of my RA games in 4:3 size (whatever the default is because I just started with RA) with black borders because I just assumed these old games would look awful stretched to 16:9, but maybe I should try it.

And any settings that can make the old games appear smoother and sharper would interest me also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For N64 there aren't really any good shaders that I found to my liking. I just straight up use upscaling the resolution.

For 8 and 16 bit sprite based games I prefer a CRT shader over a smoothing type of shader, IMO the smoothing shaders only look somewhat decent in stylized art games like Mario World and Yoshis Island but games with a more "realistic" art style like Final Fantasay or Chrono Trigger they don't look so good. If you want a smoothing shader look into the sabr and xbr shaders and see what you can find.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found WIDE setting in the n64 core from quick menu which made the game full screen 16:9. oh boy that was terrible so i put it back to normal! haha.

I already set a global video setting "Windowed Scale" = 3.0x, so maybe that is what you mean by upscaling?

There is a Video Driver set to gl currently. Would another be better on Windows with nvidia card?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

With a game running, bring up the Retroarch menu with F1, go into the quick menu > options > resolution, set it to the resolution you want. Close Reatroarch and restart.

There is no 1920x1080 setting. Only odd resolutions that don't look 16:9 to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Windowed Scale = 3.0 is the size of the game screen when in windowed mode and that is in the general video settings. What I am talking about is in the core options. Most (not all) cores have extra options specifically available to that core which is in the quick menu when you have that core running.

You can try other video drivers but gl is all around the best driver, it's what I use and I have an Nvidia card.

There is no 1920 x 1080, there will only be multiples of the native resolution of the original hardware so the closest would be the 960 resolution. If you want 16:9 you will have to force it in the general video settings and like you said previously, it looks bad. Though some people really prefer it.

You can turn off integer scaling though and it will get rid of most, if not all of the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I set Windowed Scaled back to 1.0 since I saw the 3.0 setting make no difference. 

Anyway, I think I'm using Windowed Full Screen setting. I have no idea if that's best or not, but it seems ok.

Ok, I'll take your word for it on gl. I just don't have time to play around with so many settings in RA.

My entire effort is to get all these games up and running in LB without crashes and weird things and looking decent as quickly as I can so people can play them (including myself). And hopefully the controllers will work easily also. 

I'd love to spend more time fiddling more with specific emulators and even favorite games, but there just isn't time with work and family. I'm already getting beat up by my wife with the time I've put in so far xD.

Sure appreciate all the help from you and others on this forum!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The windowed scale is for pure windowed mode, it will have no effect on full screen or windowed full screen mode, it only determines how big the window will be when it loads in a window.

My honest opinion for the best option for N64 emulation if you just want one emulator is to use the stand alone Mupen64plus, PJ64 is also ok. Unfortunately right now N64 emulation is kind of in a shitty state, it needs work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...
  • 3 years later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...