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I think I found a funny way to improve Sonic Unleashed's framerate on PS3

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Cake The Cat, Aug 28, 2024.

  1. Cake The Cat

    Cake The Cat

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    So... recently I was wanting to re-play Sonic Unleashed, I have a Wii U where I can play the Wii version and an old PS2 too, but I wanted to re-play the HD version.

    Unfortunately I don't have the money to buy an Xbox Series S/X (consoles are kinda expansive here in Brazil), I tried to emulate it with RCPS3 but the framerate was horrible, on Xenia it ran better but unfortunately the game crashed several times during the Werehog stages leaving me frustrated, it was then that I decided to look for a used PS3 or Xbox 360. (I've played on an Xbox 360 and a PS3, but unfortunately I haven't had either console for many years)

    It was then that I discovered this video here which said that by reducing the console's resolution on the PS3 it actually improves the performance of Sonic Unleashed and reduces input lag because the console would not force an upscale in resolution:

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JZHs1hKe6HM?feature=share

    This was one of the reasons why I ended up choosing to get the PS3 instead of the Xbox 360 (the other reason was because the Xbox 360 store closed and the PS3 also has an easier unlocking method if I wanted to try it), but I found myself thinking... what would happen if I reduced the console's resolution even more like 480p or 576p?, that's when I decided to do the supreme test and put the PS3 on an old CRT TV. (or as we call it here in Brazil, TV tubão)

    To my first surprise, Sonic Unleashed on the PS3 actually has a 4:3 mode (which already reduces the weight on the GPU since it will not run in 16:9 and is less to render on the screen) the only downside is that the cutscenes and CGis now have a black bar, but with the game running at 480i and 4:3 this should definitely help... and it did!

    For example in Apotos (Windmill Isle), Shamar (Arid Sands) and Mazuri (Savannah Citadel) the game rarely goes below 30fps and even stays between 40fps ~ 50fps most of the time:

    https://x.com/i/status/1824535509043232809

    But what really caught me by surprise was Holoska (Cool Edge), the game practically runs at 60fps in all areas of this place:

    https://x.com/i/status/1824671635485364224

    The night-stages are still a bit of a trick, there has been an improvement but there are still drops in framerate when there are several enemies at the same time, but the reduction in input lag definitely made the experience much more satisfying, especially when doing combos and QTEs and Empire City's Hub World is still a mess, but otherwise I'm having a much better experience than I had the first time I played on the PS3 or Xbox 360.

    I don't need to say that it's definitely not better than playing on an Xbox Series S/X that runs at locked 60fps or on a powerful PC that can run RCPS3 or Xenia without any problems, but I think it's an interesting trick for those who want a cheap way to be able to play Sonic Unleashed HD more fluidly, I'm really having a good time and the PS3 only cost me R$ 300 ($54 in the current conversion) and Sonic Unleashed on physical media for the PS3 cost me R$ 30 ($6 in current conversion ) so I feel like it was really worth it.

    PS: If you have a jailbroken PS3 you can actually put a mod that reduces some graphical effects to improve the framerate and even put a mod for locked 30fps, I don't intend to do this with my console for now but I think it's interesting to mention that.

    PS2: Sorry for any English mistakes, I'm Brazilian.
     
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  2. Chimpo

    Chimpo

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    Sonic Unleashed HD (SD)
     
  3. Cake The Cat

    Cake The Cat

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    Sonic Unleashed if the Wii was powerful enough to run the Hedgehog Engine.
     
  4. Chimes

    Chimes

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    Finally, someone actually talks about Unleashed's CRT mode
    Used that mode basically all the time on 360. Remember noticing how laggy it was when I replayed it on a newer tv
    Also funny you mention the cutscenes. There's brief moments as the cutscenes fade out to black where the black bars go away and you get a brief glimpse of open matte Unleashed. Spooky stuff
     
  5. Cake The Cat

    Cake The Cat

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    Yeah, it surprises me that almost no one talks about how much better the framerate of Sonic Unleashed on PS3/X360 is on a CRT TV, I even looked for information about it before testing but I didn't find anything.

    The difference in stages like Cool Edge is incredible, it almost stays at 60fps all the time it's really smooth and even in areas where the framerate still drops noticeably it still feels better due to the reduction in delay/input lag.
     
  6. aria

    aria

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    This also explains why unleashed’s 360 demo ran so smoothly on my 360 on a 4:3 crt, but ran awfully on our 1080p tv on PS3. I just assumed it was that the 360 version ran way better which I think is true at the same time.
     
  7. Cake The Cat

    Cake The Cat

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    I'm not sure, but I read somewhere that the Xbox 360 demo version also has the framerate unlocked and can reach 60fps just like the PS3 version.

    So it should definitely benefit from running on a CRT TV as the game will run at 480i/4:3 rather than 720p/16:9. ( and the console will not waste resources trying to upscale to 1080 )
     
  8. BenoitRen

    BenoitRen

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    The PlayStation 3 has no dedicated scaling hardware, so the upscaling has to happen in software. This is why an output resolution of 1080p affects performance.

    The Xbox 360 does have scaling hardware.
     
  9. Forte

    Forte

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    I would love to try that on CRT, but I currently only own game in digital version on the Series X, so no easy way of connecting that…

    I also wonder how it would look like if You connect PS3 version to a HD/4K TV and let the TV do the upscaling (some of Sony Bravia TV’s are actually pretty decent at that) from 480p?
     
  10. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    I mean, that version has a good framerate by default, so you should have little reason to do this anyway.
     
  11. Forte

    Forte

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    yeah, I know - but it’s just fun to do a bit of tinkering and see it for yourself ;)
     
  12. Captain L

    Captain L

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    I believe the PS3 version of 06 is the same way, though in that case, it has the same unlocked frame rate as the 360, which ran better consistently, so you wouldn’t be gaining something fresh.

    I’m planning to get a Retrotink later this year, maybe I’ll experiment and see how the games look and feel.
     
  13. Childish

    Childish

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    I remember there being a massive debate when I was a kid about whether downloading games to the hard drive affected performance, I know it can shorten load times but I have no idea if it effects anything past that.
     
  14. BenoitRen

    BenoitRen

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    If your game loads a lot of assets during gameplay, having the game on your HDD definitely will affect performance. One game that benefits a lot from this is The Last Remnant.
     
  15. netscapenow

    netscapenow

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    Neat! How does Rooftop Run (day) act 2 run in this mode? I remember that level CHUGGING on PS3 for whatever reason.
     
  16. Cake The Cat

    Cake The Cat

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    I think changing the resolution to 480p even on an HD TV might help improve performance, but I don't think it would be as good as on a CRT TV because the game would still run in 16:9.

    As I said before, Sonic Unleashed has a native 480i 4:3 mode (it's actually one of the few games I tested on the PS3 that runs at 4:3, most maintain 16:9 and therefore have blackbars at the top and bottom , but this doesn't happen with Sonic Unleashed with the exception of cutscenes and CGi for obvious reasons) so as the game is in 4:3 on a CRT TV it ends up being less to re-render on the screen which alleviates the burden on the GPU in addition to running in a lower resolution.

    Also, I honestly don't know if the Xbox Series X can run in 4:3 at all to be honest, but it would be fun and pretty surprising to test it.

    I wanted to test it with Sonic 2006 but my PS3 is not jailbroken and it is actually a very difficult game to find for a good price here in Brazil so it will take a while.

    Anyway, apart from some areas Sonic 2006 runs with good performance on PS3/X360:





    I mean, it's not perfect, but it's a much better framerate than most games from that time and it's not like Sonic Unleashed which has serious problems maintaining the framerate on both consoles.

    I'm playing on physical media on the PS3, one thing I noticed is that whenever I play a stage for the first time at random moments some frame dips can happen (and I know it's from reading the disc because you can actually hear the disk reader when this occurs ), when I went to the stage again to get Rank S this frame dip no longer happened.

    I believe that the game should definitely benefit from running on an HDD.

    It would be interesting to test on an SSD since some PS3 games actually have considerably reduced loading times and a better texture streaming on an SSD.



    I can test it later and show the result here if you want.
    I recorded act 1 though.

    https://x.com/i/status/1828948958984524123
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2024
  17. BenoitRen

    BenoitRen

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    480p is 4:3 just like 480i, so it'll run in 4:3 with that setting as well.

    I tried the Xbox 360 version of Sonic Unleashed years ago to document 4:3 compatibility, and it worked fine. It even supports 1280x1024 (which is 5:4). I still need to go back someday to test 1024x768.
    An SSD will only considerably improve loading times if the game loads a lot of files, because seek time is drastically reduced. You can't really make use of the SSD's improved data reading speed because the console's data bus will be a bottleneck.
     
  18. aria

    aria

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    It’s also possible that I was just entirely misremembering lol
     
  19. Chimpo

    Chimpo

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    Well we can verify that easily by hopping on the 360 marketpl...

    IMG_20240828_190519.jpg
    ...oh
     
  20. Cake The Cat

    Cake The Cat

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    This makes me wonder for how long Sony intends to maintain the PS3 store/servers.

    I bought this PS3 less than a month ago and I still want to enjoy a lot of things on it.