Skip to content

Why does Linear Scaling only affect creatures and spells?

kynnigekynnige Member Posts: 2
The "linear scaling" feature on the EE only works on sprites, backgrounds always use nearest neighbor. Seeing how jagged the background looked when zoomed-in, I thought it was a bug but the description in the menu says linear scaling is only for "creatures and spells". So that's intentional for some reason. It also says that "nearest neighbor scaling is what the original game used". But I'm pretty sure that's false, there is no zoom feature or resolution options in the original, so any scaling is done by the gpu/display, not the game.

My only problem with the original game with the widescreen mod is having to choose between the native resolution of my display (1920x1080), which makes everything too small, or a lower resolution (like 1366x768), which ends up slightly blurry when scaled by the gpu. I was really hyped about the enhanced edition, but the linear scaling not working on backgrounds makes the zoom feature look even worse than running the original at a low resolution. And even if did work on backgrounds, why linear scaling??? It's the lowest quality algorithm, the same blurry garbage used by cheap displays. Why not cubic/lanczos/spline? At least as an option.
Post edited by kynnige on

Comments

  • cmk24cmk24 Member Posts: 605
    kynnige said:

    It also says that "nearest neighbor scaling is what the original game used". But I'm pretty sure that's false, there is no zoom feature or resolution options in the original, so any scaling is done by the gpu/display, not the game.

    Like you said, for the original game your *gpu* was doing the scaling, not the game. So the statement that the original *game* used nearest neighbor is true (it just presented the gpu with the smaller image and said "you figure out how to make it bigger"). You can still force your gpu to do the scaling if you set your desktop resolution to a lower value before starting the game (not ideal but it would work).

    That being said, I think it would be nice if "game world scaling" could be offered as an option.
  • AndreaColomboAndreaColombo Member Posts: 5,530
    edited April 2017
    As an experiment, try using the compatibility renderer. In the BG games it seems to have retained the Catmull-Rom Bicubic algo for backgrounds; might behave the same in PST:EE.
  • kynnigekynnige Member Posts: 2
    edited April 2017
    cmk24 said:


    Like you said, for the original game your *gpu* was doing the scaling, not the game. So the statement that the original *game* used nearest neighbor is true (it just presented the gpu with the smaller image and said "you figure out how to make it bigger").

    Except GPUs don't use nearest neighbor but bilinear or bicubic, and using your gpu for scaling is not the default behavior in drivers, the display usually does the job. LCD screens have always looked blurry outside the native resolution, so they don't use nearest neighbor either. CRT displays don't need scaling. So I still think the statement is false, the original game simply doesn't do any scaling.

    How you want it scaled today is a matter of personal preference. It's great that Beamdog is giving nearest neighbor as an option for those that like the pixelated look, but it's not closer to the original, PS:T is not pixel art. Modern hardware can handle high quality algorithms in real time, so it would be nice if something better than bilinear were an option.

    As an experiment, try using the compatibility renderer. In the BG games it seems to have retained the Catmull-Rom Bicubic algo for backgrounds; might behave the same in PST:EE.

    That's actually an improvement, thank you very much. How do you know it uses Catmull-Rom? Nevermind, I found some info about it, I can't believe the enhanced edition's engine actually used that, but it got replaced with bilinear... There's even a request to bring it back on the issue tracker.
    Post edited by kynnige on
  • AndreaColomboAndreaColombo Member Posts: 5,530
    edited April 2017
    kynnige said:

    I can't believe the enhanced edition's engine actually used that, but it got replaced with bilinear... There's even a request to bring it back on the issue tracker.

    To put it in perspective, IIRC bilinear was implemented as a requirement to enable sprite outlines and sprite highlighting, both features that Beamdog wanted to have in Siege of Dragonspear and were ported to the other games with patch 2.0.

    I'm fine with it if we're given the option to revert to Catmull-Rom Bicubic. What I don't understand is why we were given an option to "revert" to Nearest Neighbor instead, which is vastly inferior and was never in the Enhanced Editions to begin with.

    I'm sure this is already on @ScottBrooks 's radar but I'll tag him just the same as this is not the first thread in which the matter is brought up. I really, really hope we can get Catmull-Rom Bicubic back.
  • HoochHooch Member Posts: 2
    They are not even aware of it. Done by a contractor and long forgotten, they probably don't even understand the issue.

    As it turns out they wanted to see returns on a mobile platform, so outline all the sprites and linear filtering hardly matters because people cant see anything anyway.

    They've just got no respect for the source material - hence making content additions to a classic and disposing of decent filtering.

    I couldn't understand why BG2 2.5 looked like such a hopeless blurry mess. Looked abysmal until rolled back to 1.3. Night and day, anyone can see it - if they could be bothered.

    Pixel perfect (nearest neighbour at correct zoom) is still vastly improved with a better filtering algorithm as it intelligently smooths across the otherwise jarring transitions - it's elementary to understand the problem if not to fix it, but they'd already paid someone who provided an excellent solution for them.

    It's been retrograded, probably simply because they lost the guy who can fix it.
  • AndreaColomboAndreaColombo Member Posts: 5,530
    edited September 2018
    It should be as easy as to look at the 1.3 code (or the more recently superseded IWD 1.4) and see how Catmull-Rom had been implemented. I doubt it would be beyond the skill of their in-house programming team.
    Post edited by AndreaColombo on
Sign In or Register to comment.