Hello fellow duders and dudettes, does anybody know what res do the PS2 games available on PSN output to? The reason im asking this is because I currently have my PS3 hooked up to my monitor and that won't recognize anything below 720p.

I'm fairly certain that the software emulation that stuff uses automatically uprezzes PS2 games to at least 720p level, among a few other minor enhancements. Don't hold me to it as I haven't purchased any PS2 games off of the PSN store, but at the very least, if the emulator that I presume they're using is more or less the same as the one packed in with certain early PS3 models (and I see no reason why it wouldn't be), then it should be capable of doing so, at least.

i think it comes in pretty clear. my friend has resident evil 4 and it looked almost like a ps3 game. see if something happens when you try.

@Stete said:

Hello fellow duders and dudettes, does anybody know what res do the PS2 games available on PSN output to? The reason im asking this is because I currently have my PS3 hooked up to my monitor and that won't recognize anything below 720p.

It should be uprezzed to 720p, but you'll have to fix stuff in the options mode (press the PS button when loading the game) in order to stretch the video to widescreen. The games with native progressive mode support won't actually work in 480p, by the way.

Excellent, thanx for your help duders, God Hand here I come! :D

@Pepsiman said:

I'm fairly certain that the software emulation that stuff uses automatically uprezzes PS2 games to at least 720p level, among a few other minor enhancements. Don't hold me to it as I haven't purchased any PS2 games off of the PSN store, but at the very least, if the emulator that I presume they're using is more or less the same as the one packed in with certain early PS3 models (and I see no reason why it wouldn't be), then it should be capable of doing so, at least.

That's a whole lot of assumptions going on. Whatever it's doing, it's not using "more or less the same [emulator] as the one packed in with certain early PS3 models" as those relied on hardware that's no longer in new PS3 models.

That said, a quick googling revealed someone with the opposite problem, not being able to display 720p on their older set and being screwed because the PSN God Hand forced 720p, so it sounds like you're golden. If it's not rendering at 720p, it's at the very least upscaling it like a DVD.

@onan: In retrospect, I should have specified that I was referring to the batch of PS3s that relied purely on software emulators to achieve their backwards compatibility, the ones that were made soon after the ones that came with proper PS2 hardware were discontinued but before Sony stopped PS2 support completely prior to the PSN stuff. It's still purely conjecture either way, but when I was assuming that emulation tech of some sort was being retained for the PSN stuff, that was what I was talking about. I know it's otherwise obviously physically impossible to reuse any of the previous methodologies the PS3 used for backwards compatibility.

@Pepsiman said:

@onan: In retrospect, I should have specified that I was referring to the batch of PS3s that relied purely on software emulators to achieve their backwards compatibility, the ones that were made soon after the ones that came with proper PS2 hardware were discontinued but before Sony stopped PS2 support completely prior to the PSN stuff. It's still purely conjecture either way, but when I was assuming that emulation tech of some sort was being retained for the PSN stuff, that was what I was talking about. I know it's otherwise obviously physically impossible to reuse any of the previous methodologies the PS3 used for backwards compatibility.

I know what you were referring to. The original models of PS3 included the same proprietary CPU and GPU the PS2 had, the "Emotion Engine" and "Graphics Synthesizer" that enabled backwards compatibility via the hardware, and effectively meant they were bundling a PS2 in the box with every single PS3. The 80gb models and later 60gb ones had the Emotion Engine removed in order to start saving money on parts, but still had the Graphics Synthesizer GPU. The emulation on these systems was to replace the EE, but playable games were limited a far smaller subset of the list of titles available for PS2. The latest model, the PS3 Slim, removes the Graphics Synthesizer chip as well, going back to square one as far as getting the new PS3 to work with PS2 titles.

With the new PS2 titles on PSN, one of two things are happening that make it possible:

1. They've rewritten the game code itself to take advantage of PS3 hardware.

2. Since they're releasing them one at a time, it's likely they're writing emulators specifically for each individual game, which is much easier than trying to virtualize the entire PS2 architecture in software, and then running the game through that while still retaining playable performance. (The difference in this case would be akin to the difference in between creating a software calculator that can correctly solve any math problem, and creating an application that only spits out multiples of 5 as needed because all you really need is an application to help you tally up nickels.)

I suspect it's the second option. It's what the 360 used when it went from the Xbox 1's Celeron processor and Nvidia GPU to the 360's PowerPC processor and ATI GPU. Periodically they'd release new emulator profiles that emulated the use of the original hardware in such a way that batches of games became playable at a time. The 360 does not have the horsepower to run a true Xbox 1 emulator.

@onan: Oh, okay, I wasn't aware that was how things went down on the hardware side at all for the PS3. I obviously misread something or missed something entirely when I was first reading up on the actual backwards compatibility stuff years ago. That being the case, then yeah, I would naturally agree that it's likely the case-by-case emulation scenario that's making the PSN releases work for the reasons you've already stated. You're clearly on the ball with this stuff a lot more than I am (not being sarcastic at all), so I'll happily bow down if it means I stop sounding dumb and learn something, which I have.