A day with VGA

I'm in the beginnings of a Dreamcast renaisasnce and had the pleasure of playing my DC through the VGA box today, and I have to say I am mightily impressed by the results, it definetly shows the DC in a whole new light, especially with Shenmue 2, which still holds up against anything on any durrent gen machine.I am so impressed that I am going to have to pick up a couple of Limited edition Dreamcast's on my trip to Tokyo in May.

The pint of this thread being , what do you guy's think of the dreamcast in VGA mode and do you think that it holds up against current machines still, I must admit I am mightily impressed by the way it so effortlessly displays vibrant colours and Shenmue 2 is still a graphical masterpeice.I have said in the past that it didn't quite hold up to current stuff but you forget just how amazing the Sega in house software looks, especially through the RGB and VGA output.I think if Konami had chose to they may have been able to get metal gear Solid 2 running on the machine with a few less polygons here and there.The thing is the texture quality of the Dc is pretty damn fine and it's colour palette is so vibrant and varied, that if it had spanned several GD roms it may have looked better.I think the main problem of the DC era was storage space and developers not quite knowing how to use it, and when they di, there wasn't really enough of it with the Dc unless they wanted to put the game on several Gd rom's, which would have been a considerable business risk for anything but an established franchise like Biohazard.

It's funny but to me looking at Shenmue 2 today on my Vga monitor, I'm hard pressed to find a game that had as detailed textures on the characters till this very day with Biohazard 4.If you really take the time to explore the title and loook at the immense level of detail on the seemingly infinite NPC's and the immense details that went into every alley, building ,and boat, you truly have to salute and bow to Yu Suzuki san.

Post your opinions on the output and what you think shined most on it like I did with Shenmue 2. rayer:

 

I still have to go buy a VGA adapter. There's one at the local video game store for $20. I'll go pick it up on my next visit.

 

I might make one myself. I'm sourcing a VGA D-sub socket off a packard bell 486 motherboard (currently being hung up as a decoration, because that's about as useful as it is).

Looks at http://www.gamesx.com/grafx/dricas.gif

Err, do I really need those two ICs if I want to make VGA-only outputs (i.e. no comp/s-video)? I'll just manually swap it with composite if a game doesn't support it.

 

Pretty sure it's only one Ic with the name written in the middle. I could be wrong though

Heres the datasheet for the chip: http://www.ortodoxism.ro/datasheets/philips/74HC_HCT244_CNV_2.pdf

Perhaps someone who's better at electronics than me can tell what it actually does., apparently its a "Octal buffer/line driver; 3-state". Hmmm..

 

I think the DC in VGA is amazing. Looks better than a lot of PS2 games in low-res. Of course the 2D games don't look so hot, but playing something like Border Down, Ikaruga, or Shenmue... it's just beautiful. Been meaning to break Shenmue out one of these days, but just never did.

I did play a few rounds of Chaos Field the other day, and did think to myself "man, this is how it should be."

 

On the gamesx diagram, it appears it's used for auto-selection between VGA and comp./s-video. It looks like the H- and V-sync are just going through it. Though I may be wrong.

 

Dreamcast still looks incredible in VGA, but it looks rather dated when compared to the Gamecube or Xbox with VGA or component cables.

 

How can you get VGA from the Xbox? You need an upscan convertor?

 

It's not really true VGA like the Dreamcast, but rather is a converted component adapter, but it loosk just as good. www.x2vga.com makes a very good adapter.

 

That's pretty cool. If only it had optical out for Dolby Digital

 

lol, it does. gotta get me one now!

 

there at least two homebrew origin - i.e. relatively cheap - VGA adaptors specifically designed for Xbox.
Google for XVGA box for Xbox and those two will pop up. One is from X-Digital in Germany and the other one is homebrew origin...

both are true VGA box and only works with 480p/720p/1080i titles - so you won't get any picture with 480i Xbox titles...
they are basically specialised (i.e limited) YUV->VGA transcoder that doesn't cost arm and leg...

cheers

 

You're going to Tokyo mate? Damn nice :smt033

 

Dreamcast through VGA looks amazing even to this very day. Like Nintendomad said, everything just looks so vibrant. Textures look amazingly sharp showing detail that you'll never get on a TV even through a RGB Scart. VGA Shows what the Dreamcast can do. To think that it could do this when PS2 games of the time still looked like jaggy crap (still some do now) makes you wonder why it failed. Anyway, 2D stuff doesn't always look good or FMV come to mention it but 3D stuff looks amazing. Played Chaos Field in the Arcade last week then came home to play it on the DC through VGA which looked so much better :-D Then tried it on my TV through S-Video which looked shit in comparison.

Yakumo

 

Even better? That's amazing indeed - that is, I was blown away by the sharpness of Ikaruga in the arcade - actually being able to see the kanji on screen, for instance (not that I can read kanji, but what the heck) :smt043

 

I thought the monitors they used in the Naomi cabinets were pretty decent, too. Were they just normal 15kHz monitors, or did they use VGA? Though even if they did, the dot pitch on the screen looked like the normal big-ass TV-type rectangles. I played 18 Wheeler and Crazy Taxi in an arcade for pretty much a whole summer...

 

I think it's 31khz, doesnt the Naomi have VGA output?

 

afaik all Naomi cabs come with a 31khz VGA monitor.
Altough I think the Naomi can output regular 15khz as well but It doesnt work with all games.

 

It's a bit lower res than 640x480, but not by much. It's an off number from what I remember -- 588 x 411 or some shit. I had to get a downscan converter to record Virtua Fighter fights back when that game took over my life.

 

Oh hell I remember you in the arcade spending like 2000 yen in one go :smt042