Why did the PlayStation 1 have so much Dithering? | MVG

Dithering is a technique to simulate an extra color by applying a combination pattern of two existing colors. The Sony PlayStation was capable of 24 bit color, or 16 million unique colors and yet displayed an abundance of dithering almost all the time. In this episode we dig into Dithering, how it works on the Sony PlayStation 1 and what can be done to prevent it.

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#PlayStation #Dithering #GPU

[refractionpcsx]

Vaguely related. We recently implemented dithering in to the hardware renderer in PCSX2, and we've had pretty much nothing but complaints from people wondering what all the noisy colours are 🤣

[GenericMcName]

When you think about it, this makes our eyes and the parts of our brain that process the input look so amazing. We're seeing and processing several million different colours every second of our waking lives like it's nothing special.

[superpe]

My gosh Spyro on a crt looks so freak'n magical, exactly like how I remembered it way back as a kid :D

[terriblecoughing]

Love these PS1 features. Can we have a video on the Atari Jaguar and why it was so difficult to program for in the future?

[marksnethkamp]

I love that you can tell N64 from PS1 just from how a game looks. Such unique vibes from those two consoles

[ayuchanayuko]

Dithering is also a technique used in printing through screening. We dont mix cmyk to create new colors on paper, we just place dots of each ink beside each other so they give the illusion of more colors

Therefore, you can say screening started before electronic displays, it started when lithographic plate printing started

Heck you can even say it started when we started using the dot technique for oil paintinga.

[roboris]

Dithering is something we have started noticing for some years. When we were kids playing PS1 titles, we weren't able to notice, both because of our intrinsic lack of attention to details and CRT monitors. I think dithering is a great engineering trick that, at the time, made possibile the (apparently) impossible.

[nitrax]

Great explanation. On the N64 the console applies a post-process filter to smooth out the dithering, making it less noticable but still can leave some artifacts if you know where to look. The same can actually be said for the original model 3Dfx Voodoo - it too applies a 4x1 anti-dither filter by default, making some textures look smeared horizontally (this can be disabled via an environment variable though, which does clean up the image at the expense of more noticable dithering).

[Conchobhar]

Finally, someone straight up saying they like the flaws of an older 3D system. We hold affection for sprite-based 2D games, why not early 3D's low-poly, low-res, dithered aesthetic? One of the reasons surely that I love the DS so much is that it combines the two—it's like a portable Saturn and PSX in one.

[zigmar]

Some people are misunderstanding dithering and what he's saying. When using a PS1 on a regular, average CRT with the composite cable (basically what regular people used back in the day) the dithering pattern is not visible. You're not supposed to see the dithering pattern. The devs used dithering as sort of a trick to emulate more colors.

Outright disabling dithering is not a solution, since it'd cause color banding which is not the intended look either. On an emulator, if you want to see the game as it was truly meant to be, set the internal color depth to 32-bit and then disable dithering. This would show the correct intended colors without banding or a visible pattern.

[teggor]

"4 shades of gray" ... sounds like a bestseller to me! :D

[jrb]

I worked at GameStop back in the early 2000's when the PSX was still somewhat relevant. We had to test every system that came in and you would occasionally see really an OG Playstation come in that had some of the color banding issues mentioned in the comments. We never understood the technical aspect (until now) but it makes sense. We honestly just thought people didn't take care of their system and/or the ports were dirty.

[FamilyTeamGaming]

Hey, don't think you were going to sneak Touhou music past me! Touhou 4 LLS's title screen music at the start of the video! Great taste!

[tenow]

Thank you! I really wanted to know why console with advertised 24 bit color had so much dithering. Great video and very thorough explanation.

[Astfgl]

Dithering is part of the PS1's charm and I wouldn't want it any other way. One thing that I did learn very recently is that early models of the PS1 (specifically the SCPH-100x models from 1995) had garish color banding *in addition* to the dithering as a result of some limitations in the GPU. A change of RAM type and a redesign of the GPU around 1996 fixed that. As it happens, I own one of those early SCPH-1002's and the banding really stood out for me when I played Soul Reaver through a Framemeister. Before that I had never really noticed it so much. Tomb Raider and Spyro also suffer quite a lot from it, though not as bad as Soul Reaver does. I guess it's just one of those quirks from the early days of 3D graphics.

[dan_loup]

The nintendo 64 had a filter to mask out the dithering as well that mostly worked, but made the picture a tad blurrier, specially on games that tried things such as screen tinting and caused a lot of dither (starfox 64/shadow man).
The 3Dfx cards also had a pretty good filter for their 15bit color output.

[zummone]

4:46 Small correction, the PS1 stores textures of varying bit depth, but will always use 15bit colors. 24bit CLUTs are unsupported in hardware. If a game stores textures inside the disc in 24bit depth (like MGS1), those colors need first be converted to 15bit space before being used.

[KeldonA]

The dithering was aesthetic IMO.

It was hard not to notice it on games like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo and Rollcage.

The N64 dithering was more subtle but had a muddy feel to it.

[shinkazama]

You summed it up perfectly mate, on a CRT via composite we never even noticed 'dithering' back then, it's only due to running a PS1 on a 'Modern Display' (which it wasn't natively designed for) is where we all notice the shortcomings.

[jasonthedrummer]

Here's a fun "what-if" question: What could a triple-A studio create now on a vintage console like the PS1? Is it locked with the hardware or would new techniques and faster rigs be able to produce something far beyond what they could over 20 years ago?