OgXHD 720p 16:9 success stories

@Esppiral. Yeah, I actually spent all night trying to get GTA 3 working myself, even following your instructions at TIZ. Put the system to boot the game in NTSC-M, 720p only, starting it from inside of XBMC, but no matter what it wouldn't boot your shared XBE at all that you uploaded at the TIZ thread. I was using the PAL version of the game and everything, and the game title id was also 5454000e. I got to looking and saw the XBE was a completely different size to a previous time I tried to edit it, so after running the same settings you said for myself, I did finally get it to boot but it only showed the top right section of the screen zoomed in.

I got the NTSC-U version so I will try it again with that later to see if I have a better chance, but I was just unable to replicate your perfectly rendered 720p patched XBE.

 

If it only showed the top right section of the screen zoomed in, using OgXHD and only select "Window Mode". That should fix your problem, and then they only question will be whether or not the game crashes.

 

So no reason to select both Auto 720 and window? Maybe that is my issue. I will try it out.

Edit: Wow got it working now thanks for the tip cyrix! this really brings out the graphical enhancements exclusive to the Xbox that even the PC port never had. I would go so far as to say this is the definitive way to play it, since it has way better effects and models than PC, and I am a huge PC gamer.

 

Yup, what happened was your game was being rendered in 720p, but the xbox was only outputting 480p. I've had this happen with a few games I've tested, only for the game to crash when I try to load a level (like Battlefront).

Credit to Zaykho for this info. The situation I described looks like this:

 

That is exactly how it was rendering it. Btw, I saw a guy on the TIZ thread begging for somebody to help him run the game in 720p think he tried Esppirals XBE, but maybe he didn't try the same settings? I have tried different times, and settings and couldn't get it to even load at first for me. Looks like I am going to start trying other games.

 

I am sorry to boring you with my obscession but any chance for OR2 JP and OR2 2006 coast to caost please?

THX

 

Ok new information regarding gta 3, I decided to give it a crack to hex edit the xbe seeing that 720p was possible on widescreen without having a double screen. It turns out the ogxhd only edited the heigh resolution from 480 to 720 (on the widescreen section) and left the width resolution to either 640 or 720 without changing it to 1280 and after a few minutes hex editing the gta 3 xbe, 720p works perfectly on widescreen without double screen. The gta 3 xbe is the NTSC U version and the title id is 5454000E.

 

As I said before in the last page, I tried Outrun 2 and Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast in 720p and no matter what settings I tried, it'd get a black screen (both US and JP version OR2, only US on OR2006CtoC)

 

Ok, I got around to testing this out. It gives me a black screen when I use your XBE on the NTSC version of the game, on my NTSC system. Anything else you think I should know on how you are launching this? I renamed it default.xbe and tried launching it from inside Unleash with both widescreen enabled and disabled, with 480p disabled and only 720p on. I tried it in XBMC as well and got same results.

 

Enable 480p on whatever dashboard you use. Also I use xbmc for my dashboard.

Edit: I can add that if I disabled 480p on my dashboard, gta 3 would blackscreen with my xbe so that should be the only reason it's black screened for you. So just enable 480p and it will boot fine.

 

Ok NOW I got it working. Now it is true 720p. Night and day difference. Thanks for the share. Only issue is that AA X2 which is forced in the game is killing the FPS among other things. Would be a huge boost to the frames per second if that could be disabled. Also, I am thinking, taking the PC vehicles and porting them all over replacing the nicer ones on the Xbox would really go a long way in helping the framerate. It gets pretty unbearable and unplayable at times, dipping as low as 5fps. Xbox version came out in 2003, so a while after the PC one, which still used the PS2 type car models. Meaning no 3D vehicle engines under the hood and other stuff.

 

Yeah that forced AA kills the frame rate and also the 1.4ghz cpu doesn't make much of a difference as it still dips quite a bit. The only thing hex editors need to do is figure out how to remove the Anti Aliasing and also for my 1.4ghz cpu is to adjust the timing as my game still runs at double speed but the reduced frame rate makes the game playable for me 3/4 of the time at least.

I should also add something, this dude named zaykho on theisozone forums managed to make these discoveries on hex editing Otogi

Now I only knew how to edit the resolutions because it was set as 8002 in hex (640) or D002 (720 in hex) by E001 (480 in hex). If you or someone else can somehow contact him, that would be amazing as i'd love to get gta 3 running at 60fps possibly with AA disabled and getting other games running at 60fps would be great like Crash Nitro Kart running at 60fps in 720p as opposed to being at 30fps at 720p etc.

 

Very interesting discovery. Even leaving GTA 3 Xbox models in and disabling the AA should theoretically go a long way towards optimizing it for 720p even on stock hardware systems, let alone the boost you would get should be pretty noticeable on your CPU and RAM modded console. If this can't be achieved, then the next logical step would be to replace the vehicles and player models even if they were needed to achieve a smooth 30fps in 720p. Maybe leaving in the Xbox player models with separated finger models should work well, I mean it isn't a big tax on the system to render fingers I wouldn't think.

 

Another thing as opposed to just removing Anti Aliasing (which will help a fuck load) is to possibly edit the resolution instead of 1280 by 720, possibly do 960 by 720 (non widescreen 720p) and just stretch the screen to 1280 by 720 (widescreen 720p) like the 640 by 480 is being stretched to widescreen (something like 848 by 480, not sure) by the tv. I just wished there were more knowledgeable people around as I don't have a clue to do any of this.

 

Oh you mean like hybrid HD anamorphic widescreen? That could be done too.

Well I am a modder of the BF2 engine, so not completely dumb on modding. I helped create a total conversion 1950 Korean War mod for BF2, which you can see in my signature. That shit was a LOT of work and the project took 11 years, due to people leaving it dormant for a long time. My knowledge on GTA modding is limited to installing mods on the PC versions. I am a huge player of GTA V PC, and modded the fuck outta GTA IV and SA, as well as VC, but only ever a little on GTA 3. I originally only played GTA 3 on PS2 when it dropped in 2001, and the same with VC. So it was my surprise to see that the Xbox version has the best models and effects even than the PC release, due to the PC version coming out in 2002. Plus PC GPU's at the time didn't have console exclusive effects like the Xbox did.

As far as replacing the models, that should be easy, just rebuild the IMG files. There needs to maybe be some converting but it shouldn't be impossible. People mod VC and SA on Xbox a lot as it is, so I could speak to some people that work on those games to learn what needs to be done.

When it comes down to hex editing resolution and rendering options, I will leave that to more skilled people.

 

If you disable the trails effect in the main menu you will get a HUGE boost in framerate, I dont know if any of you have tried it yet.

 

That is the first thing I do when I play every version. I hate that effect. But I am still interested in trying to optimize it with PC vehicles. I think it will help out a ton.

Edit: Just a little update. Replacing the GTA3.IMG file from PC with Xbox one results in a dirty disc read error. Looks like it will have to be done the long way.

 

Yeah I have it disabled and it still runs shitty. If someone can somehow disable anti aliasing with hex editing, i'm certain it will run at least at a locked 30 fps for me at least.

 

Not sure if anybody else reported this on other sites, but Soul Calibur 2 patches perfectly for me to 16:9. Looks super beautiful this way. I used the Pal release of the game though, and only selected the 16:9 option in OgXHD.

On the spreadsheet it only shows it has native support, but not that anybody reported tried forcing it to 16:9 since the game is stuck with 4:3 @720p normally.

 

Who is OgXHD creator ? Can we contact him...maybe for improve this tools...what's must be change excatly in default.xbe, for the game dont run maybe the element must change is in another place...