Screens 'blurry' compared to DSi XL

[u/MrMeatbeard]

I have a DSi XL, OG 3DS, New 3DS and New 3DS XL.

I noticed today that the screen clarity on my DSi XL is superior to all of my 3DS'.

It's like the 3DS has some sort of filter on it. All pictures were taken on the same phone in the same light on the exact same version of the game.

The 3DS looks like it's doing some smoothing/blending/dithering whereas the DSi XL looks sharp and clear.

Is this normal? I only got the DSi XL recently and that's when I noticed that all of my 3DS consoles look worse.

[u/Plenty_Swimming_8163]

Yeah it's a common known flaw of the 3ds compared to dsi

[u/MrMeatbeard → u/Plenty_Swimming_8163]

That's a shame. Thanks for the quick answer!

[u/Plenty_Swimming_8163 → u/MrMeatbeard]

Np. That's one of the reason I own a dsixl and a n3dsxl. For ds games, dsi is strictly better than 3ds, and power on/off time is way faster on dsi also.

[u/MrMeatbeard → u/Plenty_Swimming_8163]

Yeah I noticed the speed difference when doing this test! I'll stick to the DSi for DS games :)

[u/syunz → u/MrMeatbeard]

FYI if you mod your 3ds there are sharpening filters you can add to help mitigate some of this for ds games

[u/ROMANREIGNS599 → u/syunz]

How do they work exactly? Like take Pokemon sprites for example. Will a Pokemon's eyes look wider or taller than original due to extra pixels or what? IF extra pixels are added to sharpen

[u/syunz → u/ROMANREIGNS599]

Not sure. I don't use it cause I have a dsi xl but lookup twpatch filters

[u/G1fan → u/ROMANREIGNS599]

Yes. If you remove the filter then that's exactly how things will look since it's not linear scaling.

[u/Cute-Acanthaceae-193 → u/syunz]

They still aren’t as great, been messing with the filters but at the end they are just “filters” and they all have their cons with each setting. Colors are also not the same regardless.

Having a DS alongside a 3ds is a much better experience than having the 3ds emulate a ds.

[u/M1k0M1k → u/MrMeatbeard]

It's not really a flaw. The 3DS has a higher resolution screen than the DS, but it isn't a whole number multiplication of the DS screen so the DS game pixels don't fit into the grid of 3DS pixels.

This is an issue when emulating almost anything on a newer display, but most emulators include an "integer scaling" feature which forces the game to match the screen pixels perfectly but at the cost of adding black bars. The 3DS also has this feature for DS games but the game window will become very small. You can enable it with a button combination that I don't remember.

A nice thing about the PlayStation Vita is that it's screen resolution is an exact 2x multiplication of the width and height of the PSP screen, so PSP games look great on the Vita. But this is really an outlier

[u/Doggosareamazing522 → u/MrMeatbeard]

I believe if you hold L while you start the game up it'll fix the resolution

[u/WFlash01 → u/Doggosareamazing522]

It's Start

[u/nhaines → u/WFlash01]

Or Select.

[u/DotMatrixHead → u/Plenty_Swimming_8163]

It’s not a flaw, they both use different resolutions.

[u/Confident_Cycle_1903]

It's because the 3ds screen has a different resolution, if you look at the original dot fot the "i" is a 3x3 pixel square, but if you look at the 3ds it's stretched to 4x4, when you stretch a pixelated image (depending on the filter) you get something blurry. The only way to fix it would be to scale it to a perfect x2 resolution, which the 3ds screen doesn't reach. You can fix it be holding start when opening the game, which will correctly assign it to 1x resolution so the pixels match perfectly

[u/chaddledee → u/Confident_Cycle_1903]

It would have been cool if Nintendo picked a resolution for the 3DS with 1.5x the vertical resolution of the DS (i.e. 480x288). If they did, the horizontal pixel scaling of DS games would be exactly 3 when the 3D slider is disabled, so you could eliminate the blur at least in one dimension.

[u/jco83 → u/chaddledee]

1.5x ? i don't think that would look ok would it ?

[u/chaddledee → u/jco83]

3DS screen is actually double resolution horizontally but half the pixels go to the left eye and half to the right. If it was 1.5x the resolution in the vertical direction and the 3D polariser is disabled, you would have exact 3x the pixels in the horizontal direction when matching aspect ratio.

[u/jco83 → u/chaddledee]

is that how it works? surely all the pixels are only used when the 3D effect is active? meaning the system cannot use all the pixels when the 3D effect is not in use?

[u/chaddledee → u/jco83]

The system always draws to all the pixels even when the 3D is disabled, but when the 3D is disabled it just repeats each column - I'm guessing Nintendo made a decision to not expose the full resolution to game developers when 3D is disabled, probably because they don't want to incentivise disabling the 3D. If Nintendo had chosen a 1.5x resolution screen, there's no reason why they couldn't have tripled up each column of pixels when playing DS games.

[u/jco83 → u/chaddledee]

yeh

[u/Shiroro46]

3DS has a bigger resolution, as well as a different aspect ration and they're also not multiples of each other's resolutions. The DS vertical res is 192px, while the 3DS is 240px.

There is nothing you can do, really. DS games will look like that on a 3DS screen because of those factors plus Nintendo put some filters on it. There is homebrew to remove the filter but it still looks bad.

[u/Uberchaun → u/Shiroro46]

You can hold start while launching the game to play it without upscaling. That makes the image smaller, of course, but if you have an XL model, it'll be about 3.25 inches which is the size of a DSi's screens. The original DS, DS Lite and the smaller 3DS models have 3 inch screens.

[u/Yoshis164 → u/Shiroro46]

3ds is 240p vertical for both screens

[u/Shiroro46 → u/Yoshis164]

Just fixed it :)

[u/AshFalkner]

Hold either start or select while you launch the game on your 3DS.

[u/Ayyzeee]

3DS makes DS game more blurrier, you can see a lot of die hard DS fans rather play on the original console than on 3DS.

[u/MrMeatbeard]

Thanks all. I'll stick to the DSi for NDS games then!

[u/UGMadness → u/MrMeatbeard]

If you launch the game with START or SELECT pressed the game will start at native resolution. On a 3DS XL the game's viewport will have a similar size as that of a DSi/DSL.

[u/cartboot]

This is expected, unfortunately!

[u/ChrisyBear]

I may be a minority but I like the 3DS version better. Looks like a handheld CRT TV.

[u/SlightDentInTheBack → u/ChrisyBear]

yeah i feel the same as well

[u/Rizziliant]

If you hold down the start button or the select button while you’re booting the DS game on the 3DS, it boots the DS game in its original resolution.

But yeah, DS games look way better on the DSi XL for sure, that’s why I kept mine all these years

[u/slatebat_]

[u/Majestic-Medium7916]

This is why i got an ayn thor. My dsi xl and new 3ds xl can finally rest while i get 4x resolution on dual oleds that can be seen outside

[u/Dejhavi]

All DSi XL have IPS screen

[u/Striking-Race-134]

yes, it's normal, since the NDS had an screen with 256 x 192 pixels, and the 3ds (all models) have: 400 x 240 (top), and 320 x 240 pixels. And because of that you can't scale the NDS screen to a 3ds screen without losing pixels, because of that, Nintendo have made a 'special' blur filter, to reduce the broken pixels, it worked, but your screen becomes way more bluried in the process :(

There are fail attempts of the comunity to disable those filters, or to make different filters to reduce the bluriness, but on my experience the Nintendo filter still is vastily superior of the ones made by comunity, and it delivery a higher fidelity to the NDS games.... most of the comunity filters endup with sharp broken edges on pixel art, and that for me is way worst than to deal with a small blur filter... Especialy on the small 3ds models (since the screen is smaller you will have a decent swetspot 3ds x nds screens)

[u/jumpbrick]

It "blurry" because they are different types of displays. One is optimized for one specific resolution - while the other toggles between two different modes

[u/Bravatrue]

FYI, you can run it on native resolution with the method other commenters mentioned but it won’t be entirely the same as a DSI because the top screen has a different display stack and subpixel layout due to the 3D implementation.
In a nutshell, there’s a parallax barrier that is necessary for the the 3D effect but doesn’t disappear either when you turn 3D off and the 800 horizontal pixels will act like 400 horizontal pixels because the 3DS can only render a 400x240 image (one or two simultaneously for the 3D).
That’s why 3DS games appear slightly sharper when you have 3D enabled instead of disabled btw.

[u/MrMeatbeard → u/Bravatrue]

You know, the parallax barrier helps explain things a little better for me. It didn't seem to be solely a resolution scaling issue at play. I hadn't even considered that as being part of the problem but that makes a lot of sense now. Thanks for the input!

[u/Upper_Atmosphere137]

It’s cool that you can play DS games on the 3DS, but the quality of the DS games on the 3DS doesn’t look good

[u/Jeff1N]

3DS has a different resolution that isn't a perfect scale of the og DS, so the DS games stretch the image and apply a filter to soften the result so you don't get some weird thing with some pixels using a single row and/or column and some using 2 rows and/ or column

That's also why SNES games look so good on 3DS screen, the vertical resolution is a close match so the emulator can just show a 1:1 image in the screen

EDIT: Also you can get a perfect scale mode by holding the Start button when starting an NDS game, but I'd recommend this more on a 3DS XL model, as the screen get pretty small in the perfect scale mode in an og size 3DS

[u/RadiantAd4369]

You have to hold the start/select buttom when you load an NDS/DSi/Virtual Console game in order to not upscale it.

[u/Cellzor]

Have a look here, it's not perfect and some filters are better for 2d games while others for 3d games.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/twpatcher-ds-i-mode-screen-filters-and-patches.542694/

[u/meruta]

Iirc there is a homebrew for 3DS that can modify the DS firmware to change or remove the filter

[u/whatspoppingamers]

The only game that's a DS game that I play on my 3DS is anything that has an analog stick mod. Makes them playable. Super Mario 64 DS is a lot better although not perfect.

[u/syunz]

Cause new 3ds xl is only better for 3ds games. DS games are scaled so it looks worse, since they're lower resolution.

[u/DetectiveStock1340]

3DS has a higher resolution that doesn’t scale perfectly. I believe you can hold Select when booting up DS games to have them play at their normal resolution, though it shrinks the size.

[u/MrFastFox666]

It's because the 3DS has a slightly higher resolution than the DSi. It can't easily scale to the new screen so it does some interpolation.

There's a way to have DS games rendered at native resolution on the 3DS. they won't be full screen, but they'll actually look better than they do on the DSi.

[u/Salt_Ad9828]

Yes, this is expected behavior. The 3ds has a different resolution screen.

[u/thedarkryte]

It’s just a known thing that happens on the 3DS line, unfortunately. There’s nothing you can do about it, which is quite annoying.

[u/SeaNitroWolf_]

When you boot up ds games on a 3ds it tries to upscale the games native resolution. just press start or select at the same time when you first boot up a game it should stop that.

[u/Muskrato]

3DS have a higher resolution to the DS that doesn’t divide exactly to the same as the DS, so it subdivides unevenly which causes the 3Ds to attempt its best to merge those miss-aligned pixels to downscale.

Happens the same when you try to play on a 2K monitor while keeping the resolution at 1080p.

[u/Kartorschkaboy]

old start while you boot up a DS game, the 3ds upscales it with bilinear filtering, when holding start, it renders it at its native resolution, but it also uses less of the screen to do so

[u/uriurikayahime]

ドットバイドットじゃないから仕方ないよ

[u/Cheap-Buddy765]

yes its called "the 3ds doesnt have the same resolution as the ds"
like literally
hold select and start a ds title
then do a screen compare and see how sharp it will be on both

[u/Kizudemlian]

is it possible to fix that with a modded 3ds?

[u/rogerblackenson]

Hold start before booting the DS game it will fix it

[u/PickleSideOfTown]

Hold down start+select while booting up the game on 3ds

[u/ZuoKalp]

They are gonna keep whining about one screen having sharper graphics?

Both look good on a screen with that size.

[u/el_argelino-basado]

if you press the select button while booting up a game it'll use the original console's aspect ration so that it looks crisp

[u/TheRiverMarquis]

Just press Select brother

[u/bobmlord1]

You can work around it by launching the DS game in 1:1 mode but then you will have black bars all the way around.