What\'s the big deal with Black Borders on PAL material?

Now I may be getting this all wrong but aren\'t the black borders just the additional lines the PAL tv\'s have over NTSC sets?

The resolution is the same, correct?

Yeah, you lose about an inch (GT3?) of diagonal size but it\'s not like detail or resolution is being cut.

Will the picture be squashed vertically?

Or do they actually remove lines to stop the picture looking squashed vertically?

Does a 60Hz mode remove the borders, how does it do this? Is the picture just stretched?

Please correct me if i\'m talking BS, thanks.

With a Pal picture games look a little squashed. if your\'e playing a car game that was converted from 60hz to 50
untouched, then you will noticed the cars \'squashed\' apperance. Most Pal games get a little treatment to
show the game in the proper perspective. With this process the programmers have to add more viewable
horizontal lines, this in turn eats up more processor time as more display lines have to be calculated, hence poorer speed in Pal games. Some pal conversions
(take Onimusha for example) haven\'t been touched and
the characters look slightly squashed and you loose 17.5% of the overall game speed. Also on top of that
you get 2-3 Inch borders at the top and bottom of your screen.

So put simply we loose out allround unless the game developer either places a 60hz option in games
to make it playable as supposed, or rewrite the Pal code to handle the extra workload from the addition
of extra viewable horizontal display lines. Also if the introduction videos are untouched we jet jumpy
intros, rather like SSX. If you see the SSX intro video, you will notice that it skips a couple of frames every
second or so. But on the NTSC clip this does not exist.
These are definate clues to a shoddy conversion and given minimal attention. Developers seem that they can
do whatever they want to the Pal community, We as a whole probably pay more for games than the USA and
Japan, so what\'s wrong in expecting the same or a better experience from a game than our american and japanese counterparts.


maybee they think were dumb, i dunno.

The borders don\'t really bother me the things that might are:

*The picture being squashed vertically

*The loss in speed


Do developers speed up the game logic so PAL versions run at the same \'physical\' speed albeit at 50 instead of 60fps?


Is the PAL GT3 \'physically\' slower than the NTSC version?

Or is it the same speed, just @ 50fps?


Now I wouldn\'t be too bothered if the game ran at the same speed just at 50fps instead of 60 but if they don\'t bother to alter the code then, yeah I agree with you, that is wrong.

One solution is to enter the setup menu of your tv and stretch the image vertically, you\'d have to change back for DVD\'d etc. though.

I have a button on my Sony Trinitron to squeeze the picture to 16:9 widescreen proportions, perhaps tv companies could include a button to stretch the image.
Bit of a pain going into the service menu everytime.


Thanks

When a game is original a PAL game (wipeout. WRC2001) should not they be way better than the NTSC version.

As Bossieman said, is there any games made for PAL, would NTSC need lines taken out for it to fit on their tv\'s, and wouldn\'t it run too fast?

I still would like to know if GT3 is physically slower or just at a reduced framerate.

Originally posted by StAnZo
With a Pal picture games look a little squashed. if your\'e playing a car game that was converted from 60hz to 50 untouched, then you will noticed the cars \'squashed\' apperance. Most Pal games get a little treatment to show the game in the proper perspective. With this process the programmers have to add more viewable horizontal lines, this in turn eats up more processor time as more display lines have to be calculated, hence poorer speed in Pal games.

Are you sure that\'s the reason that PAL games run a little slower?  Admittedly I\'m in the US and I\'m no expert on PAL, but I always figured that to convert an NTSC game designed for a 60hz display to a PAL version with a 50hz display, they just adjusted the "clockspeed" of the game.  This could either be done in software, or maybe the PAL-specific PS2s are already set with a slower clockspeed in hardware.  This would produce fewer frames per second, solving the display problem, but the game would also run slower, creating another problem.  Black bars would be the result of not enough image information for the higher resolution of the Pal display.  Do many games actually generate additional display lines to use the full PAL screen area, as you suggested?  Or are black bars more commonplace.

Sheesh, I agree Sony and the other manufacturers are screwing you guys in Europe.  I would buy a US or japanese model PS2 if I were you.

That isn\'t the only reason why Pal games run slower. i\'m no expert either but it may have something to do with our main electricity frequency but I may be totally wrong in this. but the extra addition of having to draw extra
vertical lines doesn\'t help that much and even if a developer doesnt add extra lines there still is a
performance hit. I suppose the only way around it is to up the speed of the game engine. The Pal version of
GT3 has proved that it can be done (Even just 10 days after USA release) apparently there is no 17.5% speed
decrease, also the borders are very small. Are there any techys on the board to give us any info?

No thats all wrong. Its just all down to resolution.

PAL games are ran at a higher resolution creating a smaller imagine, giving boarders but a chrisper imagine.

NTSC games are ran at a lower resolution.

Also the higher the resolution the less refresh rate you can have, thats why PAL games run at 50Hz rather than 60Hz. This is basically because TVs in europe aren\'t designed to do this resolution at 60Hz.

Try it with your monitor now if you like. My PC monitor can do high refresh rates at low resolutions. Up this resolution to 1027x768 (or whatever it is) and I can only select 60Hz (where before I can select a higher refresh rate).

Originally posted by RichGUK
No thats all wrong. Its just all down to resolution.

I don\'t think what you wrote contradicts what I wrote.

While higher resolutions are generally displayed at lower refresh rates for the reason you stated, it all depends on the quality of the components in the television.  PAL and NTSC are just minimum standards that every tv must meet, and some displays have electron guns that can move faster, so high refresh at high resolution is quite possible.  For example my projection television can run in ordinary 480i NTSC mode, displaying 60 interlaced fields per second, or it can run in progressive mode displaying 60 non-interlaced frames of the same resolution per second.  The electron gun is effectively moving at twice the speed.

Anyway this whole discussion doesn\'t explain why PAL games run slower.  I still think it\'s because the programmers reset the internal clockspeed to 10 cycles slower than the NTSC version.

Originally posted by Coredweller

Anyway this whole discussion doesn\'t explain why PAL games run slower.  I still think it\'s because the programmers reset the internal clockspeed to 10 cycles slower than the NTSC version.

I believe that you\'re right.

Isn\'t the reason PAL games are slower is because they are sync\'ed to the maximum refresh rate.

If the refresh rate is 60Hz the game will run at a pretty much constant rate of 60fps, and developers write the game physics around this.

For example if the game is a constant 60fps and the developer wants the car/person to move 1m in 1sec they would code for 1/60 of a meter per frame (or rather so many pixel per frame)

Now take the same code and limit the fps to 50 and the car/person will move only 5/6ths of a meter per second, which is slower.

They can code this way because the PS2 is a fixed platform, others wise if it were a pc, the faster comps would run/drive faster.

What they would have to do is change the amount the car/person moves per frame for the pal version (1/60m to 1/50m)



What I would like to know is if this is done, are PAL games physically slower? Or just at a lower fps.

This could be tested quite easily, 2 people, one with PAL and one with NTSC copy of the same game, for example could count how many times a light (streetlamp) flashes per minute.

I REALLY hope they compensated in GT3 for the speed loss.

MrWhiteUK, i can\'t answer your questions but i believe that Polyphony have compesated for the spped
loss in the Pal GT3. Apparently it runs exactly the same as it\'s NTSC counterpart.

If the developers coded the same way they do for the PC, using a simple timer function to calculate how long the user has held the button down and moving the character/car accordingly instead of a set amount per frame there wouldnt be problems with speed loss. I always code this way when using DX8, you have to on the PC otherwise games would run faster on faster comps.

Ok now I\'m confused, I have just checked DOA2 and the 50Hz has big borders but the 60Hz is full screen.

Why does the 60Hz mode have no boarders? Where do the extra lines come from? Do they just stretch the image, it doesn\'t look like they have added more lines just stretched it. Why is this so hard to do why don\'t all companies stretch the PAL signal to fil the screen, ok it going to take a little more processing power, a dedicated chip built into all PAL machines wouldve been an idea.

In DOA2 50Hz looks squished and has a little more flicker, why does the the 50Hz have boarders, surely you could still ahve a 50Hz signal and done whatever they did to the 60Hz mode to reduce the boarders.

I don\'t see the link between the refresh rate and the no. of used lines on the screen.

I\'m confused.

ACTUALLY the reason for slowdown is some PAL games is as follows:

In order to sync different processes (an enemy\'s AI with the commands being received thru the I/O, etc.) a game is written to perform a certain number of instructions for each frame. So say it takes a character 60 frames to swing his sword on screen. When this game is ported to PAL systems, often times the developer is too lazy to adjust the speed of things like this, so while the swing is still 60 frames, the PAL television displays the frames ~16.6% slower, and hence the slowdown. That is all...