Graphics capabilities of the Wii

Hi everyone, forums are looking good I'll make sure I follow them regularly and join in when I can.

There's something I've always wondered about the Wii; Is it capable of outputting at higher resolutions such as 720p or 1080i? I know that it wouldn't be capable of running games in HD, but what about things that don't really use much of the graphics capabilities, like homebrew apps.

Since the Wii can run games at 576p (PAL), is it that much of a stretch to 720p? Or even, because 576p is 576 lines per frame, would 1080i be possible, since 1080i is 540 lines per frame?

Of course all this is irrelevant if it's locked out via hardware, it's just something that I've wondered for quite some time.

Thanks

Did I ask a stupid question? :P

Possibly stupid in that everyone here is too stupid to answer, or just doesn't care enough because it would probably take way too much effort to actually accomplish.

But yeah I'm guessing that it's completely a hardware issue, not that its "locked out", but that the very hardware itself is absolutely not capable of transmitting the kind of signal through component output that 720p needs.
I wish I knew more about how video signals work...

I do remember that in the later years of the PS2, certain games appeared that supported higher video resolutions. From what I've read, the Gamecube was more powerful than the PS2 in terms of processing power and graphical capabilities. Gran Turismo 4 supports 1080i but not 720p, which is why I thought 720p must be more power hungry than 1080i.

Like you said, though, if the hardware isn't capable of transmitting a 1080i or 720p signal, then there's no way around that. It does seem odd that Sony didn't restrict the PS2 from outputting that kind of signal, whilst Nintendo may have restricted it for the Wii.

1080i is actually just barely more pixels per frame than 720p. (If I'm doing my math right)
Lets see... 1080i is 1920 * 1080 = 2073600 pixels, but its interlaced so thats only every other scan line per frame, so 2073600/2 = 1036800 pixels per frame. 720p is just 1280 * 720 = 921600. So roughly 100 thousand pixels per frame more for 1080i, I would've never thought that 1080i would be easier, but as we see it's really close. I never thought of that before.

Quote
rokujou
Since the Wii can run games at 576p (PAL),

Officially the Wii can only output 576i50 480i60 480p60.

So unless some Homebrew made a "PAL" Wii output 576p, it can't. Or at least we do not know.

My mistake, it's a long time since I actually set my Wii up :)

I think it's actually been covered elsewhere (and correct me if I'm wrong here, anyone who's actually dove deeper into the subject.) that the chip in the console responsible for producing a YPbPr signal (or RGB/SCART for those of you across the pond) has an upper frequency limit in hardware (read: Cannot be 'overclocked' in any way without some major hardware mods. And at that point you'd have to hope existing non-homebrew sections of the console still run and produce a 480p signal or find some way to hack the IOS to accomodate it. All of which is REALLY sketchy) so the top end of what resolution it can support is 480p. The chip does not have enough 'analog bandwidth' to output 720 progressive lines or more of resolution.

EDIT: Typo correction from 420p to 480p



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2008 09:44PM by cr08.

420p?

Is the framebuffer limited to 420 lines?

All I know is I do remember reading that the HARDWARE was limited to 480p because the chip responsible for producing the component/rgb signals had a limit of what frequency it can run at. Just like your own PC, the bandwidth of this chip is directly proportional to what frequency it's running at.

The framebuffer could probably be easily tweaked and hacked with homebrew at least to support more than 480p, but the big kicker is getting the resultant resolution to reach your display.

EDIT: Typo correction from 420p to 480p



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2008 09:43PM by cr08.

I've been thinking about it.
Did you mean 480p everytime you wrote 420?

Otherwise I am shocked, that they used a rendering surface with 420 lines.
Should provide some natural anti aliasing :D

Sorry. Yes. My bad. 480p is what I was talking about. Been a LONG day.

I don't think anyone knows the DAC chip's real capabilities. However, we only know how to configure the pixelclock to fixed values for 480i and 480p (and 576i). There has to be a PLL to create that clock, but we do not know whether it is configurable or not or how to configure it. On top of that, the video output hardware of the hollywood might have screen size limits. A whole bunch of things have to support 720p for it to work. The GX is capable of rendering higher resolutions though (in chunks), but if the video output hardware can't output it it isn't going to help you much.

Thanks for the reply, marcan. So, to re-iterate, we know that Wii could render higher resolutions IF we could configure a PLL and IF the hardware supported it. I guess nobody has really looked into playing around with the graphics hardware like this yet, everyone is too busy trying other things. Do you think this sort of information would become known over time as we delve deeper into the Wii, or would you say that someone would have to be specifically trying to do this in order to find out if it was possible?

Does anyone know if any Wii games have high resolution textures? I also wonder if any developers have thought of how their games will play on future generation consoles. Then again, they're probably not really bothered.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2008 04:31PM by rokujou.