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

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.

 

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

 

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.

 

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 )

 

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

 

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.