Question about the blurry screenshots...

bigdogchris

One thing that really stands out to me of all the new screenshots released so far is that the backgrounds seem blurry. I am referring specifically to ones that show new content. If you zoom in on the screenshots, the character models and UI remain clean looking, though pixelated, but the environment art starts getting blurry.

So my question is to anyone that can answer it, do these pictures have some type of post-processing added to them or do the backgrounds really get blurred when you zoom in, in the game?

Thanks.

Tanthalas

We're not exactly at liberty to talk about stuff like this I think.

Hopefully Overhaul will just release new screenshots to clarify this.

CurseYouAll

Maybe blur due to resolution upscaling?

Kristie83

Sylvus_Moonbow said:

The NDA prevents us from discussing all the great additions and new graphical areas to BG:EE. Sorry.

Argh! What a tease! lol

Luge

Sylvus_Moonbow said:

The NDA prevents us from discussing all the great additions and new graphical areas to BG:EE. Sorry.

Why is that, exactly?

I'm not being sarcastic; I'm genuinely interested. I'd have thought that advertising the amazing improvements in the run up to release would be a good thing?

L.

Kristie83

@Luge, I'm speculating here, but I think its probably because they need and want to control exactly what is said to the public. Advertising the improvements is probably great, but they don't want anyone to give out any misinformation by mistake. Also, perhaps some changes won't make it to the final release of the game and they don't want anyone to be disappointed which could cause bad publicity.

Jalily

@Luge The NDA's purpose is to give the developer control over what information gets released, how, and when. Overhaul's own marketing efforts and reputation could be damaged if beta testers promise improvements that end up getting cut or spoil new content that is meant to be a surprise. They need to be especially careful about this because they're required to get approval from the license holders before showing off anything.

trinit

@bigdogchris

i think i have read somewhere that blurriness is a side effect of format conversion. ingame graphic should be clear.

Luge

Hm.. Perhaps I asked the wrong question. I completely understand the purpose of the NDA for the beta testers, and I get your point about leaked information.

However, we're one month from release (again), and there's been very few screen shots released, and the ones that have been are probably very out of date. I haven't bought the game yet, and this isn't inspiring me to go and preorder.

L.

orosius

Its safe to say, the graphics will be the same as bg2 at upscaled resolutions. Remember, they refuse to do any HD sprites or remake anything.

Dee

@orosius "refuse"?

Wow, that's some exaggerated conspiracy-mongering...

Cheesebelly

@Luge : sadly it is something none of us members, beta testers or in fact, developers can decide freely, on when to show new content, as any news have to go through approval from Wizards of the Coast I believe (and/or Atari?)
Basically, unless the big guys give a green light to the developers, there can't be loads of news. Or that is as far as I could grasp on the given situations.

ryuken87

All the restraints on releasing information are unfortunate, but I do hope at least the the developers relay the concerns us customers have to the decision makers. Sadly though, I think this project is not large enough to warrent such attention and nothing will change. I expect maybe one more update before the release.

bigdogchris

The conversation has quickly turned into an NDA debate. I should of worded my question differently.Let's just focus on the screenshots, thanks.

Space_hamster

Can you link to a screenshot that you feel is made worse by the up scaling? Just curious....

Jaxsbudgie

Space_hamster said:

Can you link to a screenshot that you feel is made worse by the up scaling? Just curious....

I believe @bigdogchris is referring to the shots such as this one:

Specifically the mountains on either side are looking particularly blurry.

mch202

Regarding those older pictures:

PhillipDaigle said:

IkonNavros said:

Since many people seem to write that the screenshots are blurry... hopefully this will be fixed until the releasedate?

Those issues were largely jpeg resizing issues. New screenshots are on the way.

Bytebrain

I would encourage the OP to look at the latest released screenshots on the frontpage.
Not a blurry shot in sight there...

Zeckul

In my very personal and non-official subjective opinion as a regular person like you, and which should not be interpreted as a promise on the part of Overhaul in any way, you'll all be pretty happy with upscaling once the game ships. (I hope that was NDA-acceptable?)

mlnevese

@Zeckul I hope the Inquisition is not getting you for that

bigdogchris

The example of screenshot linked is what I'm talking about.

Also, this one and this one are blurry when you zoom in.

mch202 said:

Regarding those older pictures:

PhillipDaigle said:

IkonNavros said:

Since many people seem to write that the screenshots are blurry... hopefully this will be fixed until the releasedate?

Those issues were largely jpeg resizing issues. New screenshots are on the way.

Isn't that a someone old quote though as the screenshots he was refering to are very old. The ones I linked are the latest batch, which are still blurry.

Zeckul

bigdogchris said:

The example of screenshot linked is what I'm talking about.

Also, this one and this one are blurry when you zoom in.

What are you zooming in with? BG:EE will have its own scaling algorithm which isn't the same as your browser's or whatever. It's a Catmull-Rom resize which is a sharpening upscale.

Trent Oster: We've added the ability to play at much higher resolutions and added zooming support with Catmull-Rom Bicubic filtering to ensure the art still looks good as you zoom in and out. http://www.rpgfan.com/features/Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition_Interview/index.html

bigdogchris

Zeckul said:

bigdogchris said:

The example of screenshot linked is what I'm talking about.

Also, this one and this one are blurry when you zoom in.

What are you zooming in with? BG:EE will have its own scaling algorithm which isn't the same as your browser's or whatever. It's a Catmull-Rom resize which is a sharpening upscale.

Trent Oster: We've added the ability to play at much higher resolutions and added zooming support with Catmull-Rom Bicubic filtering to ensure the art still looks good as you zoom in and out. http://www.rpgfan.com/features/Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition_Interview/index.html

Even non-zoomed, many look blurry.

Would you agree with what Trent said, so that we have nothing to worry about?

sepotter

I'm not worried about any of this. I'm sure it will be great.

Zeckul

I'm afraid I can't tell you more about the new environments than you can see on the screenshots. Based on those, yes, I would say they look somewhat softer than the originals, perhaps simply because anti-aliasing might have been used in the rendering? If there's widespread concern about the new environments, it's something we could pester the devs with. I'm getting pretty good at pestering devs.

agris

Bytebrain said:

I would encourage the OP to look at the latest released screenshots on the frontpage.
Not a blurry shot in sight there...

I'm curious as to which screenshots you're referring to, because these were released recently and are the high quality progressive JPEGs, but there is a clear lack of fidelity present in the blue rocks.

Simply put, it looks like too low of a resolution texture was stretched over a large piece of map geometry.




Not convinced? Look at the blue rockwall to the immediate left of the mage highlighted in the first picture. All rock in the environment has an incredibly low fidelity texture painted on it.

For reference, these are two shots from IWD. Granted, the second has dithering issues but that's more an engine limitation. The map texture artists were using higher resolution images on their world geometry, look at the detail on the rocks / walls / cavern floor.

Space_hamster

Yes, it is clear there are some issues with resolution, perhaps a legacy of losing the original art assets. Perhaps they can just tweak some sharpening? It's a little too smooth for my taste in those early screenshots. Though to be honest, I'll still buy the game regardless for my iPad

Bytebrain

agris said:

Bytebrain said:

I would encourage the OP to look at the latest released screenshots on the frontpage.
Not a blurry shot in sight there...

I'm curious as to which screenshots you're referring to, because these were released recently and are the high quality progressive JPEGs, but there is a clear lack of fidelity present in the blue rocks.

Simply put, it looks like too low of a resolution texture was stretched over a large piece of map geometry.




Not convinced? Look at the blue rockwall to the immediate left of the mage highlighted in the first picture. All rock in the environment has an incredibly low fidelity texture painted on it.

For reference, these are two shots from IWD. Granted, the second has dithering issues but that's more an engine limitation. The map texture artists were using higher resolution images on their world geometry, look at the detail on the rocks / walls / cavern floor.

Well, your eye is more critical than mine...
If I'm looking really, really hard I can see what you mean, but I must say, it's not that big an issue for me..
Granted, I'm using an iPad to zoom in the screenies, maybe it's worse if you're using a big screen.

Nevertheless, I'm not worried, as been stated above, the game will be using a different zoom engine than what were using to zoom on static pictures. Everything I've read from the Devs promises clear and sharp visuals, even when zoomed in. :-)

jolly_bb

I'm also not overly worried, although it is pretty clear for me looking at the screenshots, that new locations were rendered partially (e.g. floors, walls, not e.g. cages or smaller elements) using insufficient resolution textures. It's very clear, not much to debate IMHO...

I wonder if someone simply overlooked that or it's on purpose due to cost

agris

It's one of those things that is hard to appreciate looking at the resized images- looking at the full size screenshots makes it more clear. The reformatted (i.e. smaller) images in the forum have a psuedo-sharpening effect.

bigdogchris

@Space_hamster

Space_hamster said:

Yes, it is clear there are some issues with resolution, perhaps a legacy of losing the original art assets. Perhaps they can just tweak some sharpening? It's a little too smooth for my taste in those early screenshots. Though to be honest, I'll still buy the game regardless for my iPad

My question is not about original content, it's about the new content where they do have the original art, as they created it. I think it's fair to bring up the blurriness as it's obvious, so there's no point in beating around the bush about it.