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Upscaling filter comparison[lotsa images]

Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Using Divine Divinity as an example.

Native 1440p resolution:
10UQnzZ.png

fNlNGy2.png



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.
XtUGQ8p.png
BSjRx6u.png

U8Gb4H4.png


And again with 'Smooth' off:
d8pXCmA.png

uQhruci.png


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

Test: WINE_FULLSCREEN_INTEGER_SCALING=1
ek9rV0c.png

qEURjdg.png


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
piNJcYQ.png

8h1QrwJ.png


launch command is
Code:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw=n" wine div.exe
to use the ddraw override

'bilinear'(not 'fast bilinear'):
79Tx4h3.png

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.
c9vk0uf.png


'cubic':
X0ZjQhv.png

DoAoXGP.png


'nearest neighbor':
OrZcJuW.png

0LZdBDz.png



'xbrz-lv2-noblend':
yJBkDuF.png

YlcghPH.png


'xbrz-freescale':
yZDoE2C.png

i8sQBiM.png


'bicubic'(shader taken from libretro):
S0qthjx.png

obqllhX.png


'sharp-bilinear-simple' libretro shader:
HIGn5Yn.png

(forgot to open equipment and mouseover my bow):
HjlaTZw.png


tweaked 'sharp-bilinear-simple' libretro shader:
ZGKifJl.png

Jic7CER.png


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.
 
Last edited:

passerby

Arcane
Joined
Nov 16, 2016
Messages
2,788
Only nearest neighbour / integer scalling, or AI scallers - everything else degrades details and will either look blurry, or cartoonish.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Feb 3, 2014
Messages
514
Location
In a ship with cooked grenade
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
 
Joined
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut
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

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
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

Educated
Joined
May 26, 2021
Messages
73
Nvidia Image Scaling with low or no sharpening is probably the best option. Highest native asset res ---> your res
 

Rincewind

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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.
 
Joined
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Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
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

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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

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
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.
 

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