File talk:BS SMUSA Mario and Friends.png

This image is a good example of the potential problem of a "exactly as rendered" policy - it was never intended to be shown with square pixels (which give an 8:7/1.143 aspect ratio, rather than the intended 4:3/1.333), meaning it's squished horizontally. [While the same problem technically occurs in many other cases, it's nowhere near as essential in the case of your average sprite-based screenshot since they're stylised either way]. - Reboot (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2016 (EDT)
 * Yeah. The goal should be to have good screenshots, not screenshots that are closest to the hardware output. I don't know why people push for 320x240 Super Mario 64 screenshots even though 640x480 is of higher quality.  22:42, 17 August 2016 (EDT)
 * There are many rendering problems within N64 emulation. Bigger doesn't mean better quality. That produces artifacting. It's better to go with a pixel-accurate screenshot. GCN/Wii emulation, I don't know why it looks excellent to take HD. Going pixel accurate is also very good for file size. All pixels are accounted for and no rendering issues occur. -- 01:13, 18 August 2016 (EDT)


 * Just to show the difference between native-resolution-with-square-pixels and intended-aspect-ratio (with 7:6 pixels). It's quite visible:


 * Please note, the reason the 4:3 image is so large is because there's no other way to do 7:6 pixels than enlarge the image by 700% horizonally & 600% vertically to make each "pixel" a block of 7x6 square pixels! (Similarly, I didn't reduce to <256 colours because of the way MediaWiki scales such images in thumbnails) - Reboot (talk) 01:00, 18 August 2016 (EDT)
 * I'll be honest here. Snes9x is not cycle accurate. That is what I used to take that screenshot. I don't know if the screenshot I submitted is what a real Satellaview would produce. I would try Higan/bsnes (cycle accurate), but the setup is genuinely confusing for Higan and I can't seem to get that emulation to work on the bsnes fork (black screen). I don't know if it is possible to do a sprite rip. -- 01:13, 18 August 2016 (EDT)
 * The problem here is very simple and is very unlikely to be emulator-related - it's the same as, say, N64 widescreen screencaps, which tend to look squished if you go "pixel accurate" (or that weird DK64 bootup I think you've commented on before). The only difference is that it's 8:7-intended-to-be-4:3 rather than 4:3-intended-to-be-16:9. The aspect ratio of the pixels themselves is not intended to be square* - no TV ever has been 8:7 AFAIK - but digital still formats generally have a square pixel ratio. Which means "pixel-accurate" is not accurate to what you would see on a TV.
 * * which is the case with a lot of TV stuff - hell, the active picture area excluding blanking of the "ideal" UK digital SD broadcast is 704x576, although channels often broadcast at 544x576 to save bandwidth [i.e., money]. For 576 tall, the 4:3 width with square pixels would be 768, for 16:9 it would be 1024) - Reboot (talk) 01:28, 18 August 2016 (EDT)
 * I don't know if the pixel-accurate plug-in is responding as a real N64 would or it could be experiencing bugs. I don't know for sure but many games render very well, such as Super Mario 64, Paper Mario, and Yoshi's Story. Some games I have experienced weirdness, such as Mario Tennis 64, Donkey Kong 64, and maybe the Mario Party (series). As for 8:7 to 4:3, I think some letterboxing is being added to the 8:7 image to keep it to scale. -- 01:36, 18 August 2016 (EDT)
 * Why are you primarily responding to the aside rather than the main point?
 * No, it wouldn't be letterboxed (strictly, pillarboxed). The 256x224 image is horizontally squished (just look at it!) because the pixels were intended to be stretched to a rectangular shape by the TV. It isn't even uncommon in the TV domain today, which is why I pointed out the UK transmission thing (or HD 1440x1080 pictures intended to be stretched to 16:9). - Reboot (talk) 06:48, 18 August 2016 (EDT)