PC As Graphical Upscaler?

Cwinget

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Jul 26, 2014
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This is mostly a hypothetical question, but now I'm curious if this is either

A) a real thing, or
B) even possible.

So when I play a game on my PC, sometimes it's just way too much for my GPU to handle at 1080p. So I turn it down to 720p, and up the anti aliasing to 8x, basically getting the same effect (though obviously not quite as crisp looking as true 1080p).

I know some TV's have this same effect, upscaling video to make it look like higher resolution, but it usually either lags or adds that "ghost frame" effect (things becoming a little motion blurred, as if the previous frame is still on screen but more transparent, or kinda like the mouse effect on Windows XP that was super cool ten years ago).

I'd like to achieve anti aliasing on my PS3 to make it look less... jagged and headache inducing. Since I know that's not actually possible to do with the console itself, I was wondering if there was any way I could use my computer (which has HDMI in, thanks to a capture card) to anti-alias the video and re export it to my TV. Does anything like this exist? After a few Googles I wasn't really able to find anything. If you have any input at all, I'd appreciate it. And I'm assuming people that want to play Uncharted 3 on their 1080p TV would appreciate it too.
 

caqde

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Depending on the capture software it is possible to output content like that but it will also most likely cause you to notice input lag due to the time it takes to process the effects especially given the 720p-1080p input from the console.

EDIT: As a note I once did something similar with a PS2 using Virtualdub on my PC but the input lag was a bit to much so I wasn't able to do much to improve the image (many years ago).
 

Cwinget

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Jul 26, 2014
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When I do it with games, I don't really get any lag. I figured it'd be about the same principle.
 

caqde

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Well not really in this case given when you do it in game the game is processing those effects and applying them making sure you don't receive lag. But here you are sending the video to your computer and it is processing it. Any time taken to process the image is added on to the time it takes to display on the TV creating a bit of lag between when you hit a button and what you see on the screen this could be anything between unnoticeable to very noticeable (less that a second to seconds).