Random Ramble: Gens Rerecording, if it had 016:09 or 016:010 Widescreen

A few weeks ago, I was using Gens/GS Revision 07 and Gens Rerecording 011a to run another audio and graphics testing on my computer, and I had begun to start questioning something about the Gens series after I was done;


My question is, why haven't we gotten a properly running Gens Rerecording emulator that upconverts all Sega GS, 032X, and Sega CDX roms into 016:09 or 016:010 Widescreen HD?


The Sega consoles were capable of the 1080p upconversion since 1988, but we always had that old 04:03 or 05:03 Pan & Scan SD usable;


Even with the Genesis turning 025 next year, we still have no 016:09 or 016:010 convertible emulators and roms.


What I truly do wonder on the topic about a Gens Rerecording HD concept is this;


Would it be possible to create such an emulator, with every feature from previous Gens installments, the 016:09/016:010 upconversion for roms, MDP Plugin Setup from Gens/GS Revision 07, and room for new features in between?


It truly would be amazing to see such an upgrade for the Gens series.

 

I don't pretend to know about TV resolutions, or any of the deep hardware info to know the possibilites. But as I understand it, the SEGA Mega Drive's VDP itself has certain display resolutions (I've only used 1 resolution myself (340x224)), but wikipedia says:


"Images can be output at 256 pixels (32 tiles) or 320 pixels (40 tiles) across and 224 scanlines (28 tiles) or 240 scanlines (30 tiles) down. The 240-line resolutions are only used on 50 Hz (i.e. PAL) displays, as the extra lines end up in the overscan of a 60 Hz (NTSC) signal."


Which sorta adds up to what the hardware documents say. Which means the Mega Drive's VDP itself is not capable of widescreen, of course, I get this feeling you're talking about display of the actual TV itself, if so, then well, it's a Mega Drive emulator, not a TV emulator, though they do have certain features like blurring effects to give off the TV emulation feeling.


I could be wrong, but I think it's really down to the one who's writing the emulator, they decide how deep in features they should fill their emulators, and you're probably better off asking them. I myself though, don't find TV effects to be actual Mega Drive emulation features.

 

Isn't the plane redrawing essentially software? I didn't want to look too deep into that part of the code, but it looks to me the columns and rows are being redrawn not depending on what the vdp has to display, but rather on their coordinates and those of the camera.


In that case, even if the vdp emulation was being rewrote to increase the horizontal resolution, there's little to no chance for the columns in the previously hidden part to always be displayed properly.

 

I'd love to play classic Sonic in 16:9 HD


Would this be similar to the rerelease of Sonic CD? Would that be possible in an emulator?

 

With the Retrosonic engine, this is possible.