u/DAJF

By no means a scientific benchmark or anything. I just wanted to show how not-so-far off of the mark from classic hardware the M64 actually is. It’s actually a lot closer in person.. My phone camera is obviously not the best tool for this job as taking authentic gamma repro photos of a CRT is a hobby all by itself. These shots are around 10% desaturated compared to viewing with bare eyeballs.

I usually sit just over one meter away from the PVM, and almost four meters away from the LG. To be a fair comparison I tried replicating the aperture grille on the M64 - but it just kills the brightness from where I’m sat. Masks are in an experimental state at the minute, so let’s return one day.

Hopefully I have more games by then. I’d love to take photos of Bangai-O. I never thought I’d be doing screen archery with OoT, but here we are. I wish I had more beautiful and dramatic shots, but I’m honestly a bit tired of scrutinising now while playing the intro twice, I just want to play further.

M64 settings: https://www.reddit.com/r/M64/comments/1vpdqxx/the_best_picture_settings_pt2_now_with_perfectly/

I’m basically using Reddit to publicly preserve these settings until hopefully things improve.

Going from my clean pixel look I folllowed the advice of a couple of Redditors to end up at a scanlined integer. I somehow managed to also take that a step further and produce the same results with integer+. Here are the settings.

Really, this config should be a toggle, with sliders for strength only. It shouldn’t be this much of a main quest trying to find scanlines which match the video render.

For the cleanest picture at 4K, I’d recommend leaving Scanline and Aperture Grille completely off for now.

At 4K, the difference between Integer and Integer+ scaling can be quite difficult to spot when genuine rendered CRT effects are not in play. Integer scaling becomes much more important when scanlines or masks are applied, as it completely prevents uneven patterns, banding and “jailbars.”

The problem is that the M64’s current scanlines and aperture grille are not integrated with the image-rendering/scaling stage. Their pattern doesn’t align consistently with the rendered pixel grid, so scanlines will cut through pixels rather than following them. This largely defeats one of the main advantages of integer scaling.

Until that alignment is fixed, I think the M64 actually looks best with the CRT effects disabled and a clean 4K image.

My current clean picture settings:
Scanlines: Off
Aperture Grille: Off
Sharpness: 3 and above all yield the same results.
Horizontal Bloom: Low / 1–2, 3 at a push.
Gamma Mode: Tube (modern darkens further)
Scaling: Integer or Integer+

Once the scanlines and masks are properly tied to the render layer, that’s where integer scaling, and the M64’s CRT options in general, should become much more interesting.

As someone who swears by CRT filters at all costs (especially for pixel art) it’s been quite interesting playing with raw pixels for a change.

Our Xibalba cart is getting scuffed up pretty bad on the inside of the shell surrounding the cart pins. We’ve only inserted and ejected it a handful of times so far. Nintendo cartridges have the steel buffer pads there to prevent this.

My concern is that this dust is going to gather inside and around the cart slot over time.

We opened up one of our controllers before doing anything else. :)

Primarily we wanted to change the gate, but while in there also wanted to check out the size of the d-pad traces in case the d-pad presented any false diagonal inputs for us (it does).

It seems that the d-pad traces are almost identical to those on the Switch Pro controller, in that they are somewhat oversized. Of course the Switch Pro also has the issue where false diagonals can also be a game breaker, which is certainly the case for Tetris and F-Zero 99.

I’m not sure if a membrane with a reduced footprint can counter-balance here. Or maybe even a d-pad with a post in the middle. In our experience carefully applying small squares of electrical tape to the inside regions of each trace will eliminate any unwanted diagonals - although I think an official solution would be better here.

Apparently H4ck3r Sprite comes with code and ‘glitch’ auras. Ice Sprite has frosty vapour.

Mainly Ghostmode, texture, and UI mods.