Upscaling filter comparison[lotsa images]

[rusty_shackleford]

Using Divine Divinity as an example.

Native 1440p resolution:

After reading the manual, there does not appear to be a recommended resolution, only a minimum one. The game does not scale the graphics to the resolution(as is apparent from above), but merely lets you see more at higher resolutions.
The rest of the tests will be done at the resolution of 1280x720, close to the most common 1024x768 resolution at the time, but in the correct aspect ratio for my monitor.

And again with 'Smooth' off:

I didn't notice a difference, so I kept 'Smooth' turned off. Perhaps it means 'Smooth animation'?

Test: WINE_FULLSCREEN_INTEGER_SCALING=1

Again, I don't notice a difference. I assume it's already using integer scaling due to being a multiple of my monitor's resolution and would otherwise just enforce letterboxing?

The rest of the tests are done using cnc-ddraw: https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-ddraw

launch command is

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw=n" wine div.exe

to use the ddraw override

'bilinear'(not 'fast bilinear'):

It has visual artifacting(shadows lighter, tree in bottom right, ...) in the screenshot, but I actually saw the same artifacting earlier but it went away. I think this is actually an issue with the game itself, and not something caused by the wrapper.

'cubic':

'nearest neighbor':

'xbrz-lv2-noblend':

'xbrz-freescale':

'bicubic'(shader taken from libretro):

'sharp-bilinear-simple' libretro shader:

(forgot to open equipment and mouseover my bow):

tweaked 'sharp-bilinear-simple' libretro shader:

cnc-ddraw should work with most older(pre-directx8) games, btw.
It doesn't support multi-pass shaders(yet), so I can't try out some of the more interesting ones like nnedi3.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

'sharp-bilinear-simple':

'bicubic':

'xbrz-freescale':

'cubic':

 

[Wunderbar]

Which one is better? I'm blind.

 

[Nutmeg]

If you're not using CRT shaders to upscale (as much art as science) http://www.johncostella.com/magic/ is a good bet.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Which one is better? I'm blind.

Pick whichever you think looks best, I guess. I liked the bilinear-sharp, others made the text too blurry.

 

[passerby]

Only nearest neighbour / integer scalling, or AI scallers - everything else degrades details and will either look blurry, or cartoonish.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I am waiting for real time upscaling with specifically trained neural nets.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Pick whichever you think looks best, I guess. I liked the bilinear-sharp, others made the text too blurry.

You are focusing on the wrong part of the picture though. Yeah plywood look nice but that segment above the building - road, bush and tree? Blurry, weird and more pronounced because of higher res/detail everything else. All it achieved in my eyes is inconsistent look

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Pick whichever you think looks best, I guess. I liked the bilinear-sharp, others made the text too blurry.

You are focusing on the wrong part of the picture though. Yeah plywood look nice but that segment above the building - road, bush and tree? Blurry, weird and more pronounced because of higher res/detail everything else. All it achieved in my eyes is inconsistent look

It's a personal preference thing, you're not going to convince me.

 

[Norfleet]

I don't understand where you're going with this. Is there, or is there not, an actual gun involved? Does the gun mysteriously change handedness as a result of this upscaling? All I'm seeing is some out-of-focus hocus-pocus.

 

[Oropay]

Nvidia Image Scaling with low or no sharpening is probably the best option. Highest native asset res ---> your res

 

[Rincewind]

Can't see any difference for shit on the non-zoomed-in pics. Also, looking at zoomed in images doesn't matter as you're not playing zoomed in.

For low-res DOS games (320x200, 640x480, etc) my favourite is the "sharp" filter (default in DOSBox-Staging, for example). It's basically nearest-neighbour, BUT with a max 1-pixel wide interpolated range at the edges of the pixel. It's very nice, next best thing to 100% integer scaling when that is not possible.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Can't see any difference for shit on the non-zoomed-in pics. Also, looking at zoomed in images doesn't matter as you're not playing zoomed in.

For low-res DOS games (320x200, 640x480, etc) my favourite is the "sharp" filter (default in DOSBox-Staging, for example). It's basically nearest-neighbour, BUT with a max 1-pixel wide interpolated range at the edges of the pixel. It's very nice, next best thing to 100% integer scaling when that is not possible.

They're not zoomed in, just cropped

 

[Rincewind]

Can't see any difference for shit on the non-zoomed-in pics. Also, looking at zoomed in images doesn't matter as you're not playing zoomed in.

For low-res DOS games (320x200, 640x480, etc) my favourite is the "sharp" filter (default in DOSBox-Staging, for example). It's basically nearest-neighbour, BUT with a max 1-pixel wide interpolated range at the edges of the pixel. It's very nice, next best thing to 100% integer scaling when that is not possible.

They're not zoomed in, just cropped

Ah okay, i'm on 1920x1080. Well, bilinear sharp is cleary best then. I think that's similar to the sharp filter I mentioned.

 

[Duraframe300]

For the *HD* filters I only like xbrz. Until we have real time AI filters for that kind of stuff its the best option to blend pixels together. Depends on the game of course, though.

Otherwise I just use integer scaling.