Catmull-Rom Bicubic scaling causes all kinds of issues on mobile, this is why it was removed with 2.0.
Well that's disappointing. I don't care about mobile version. So instead of a limitation on mobile making desktop version worse, it would be much better if they kept it for desktop and not release it for mobile. It's not like the codebase can be the same anyway.
Anyway, considering they are planning to do something about it now, I hope they bring it back sooner rather than later.
Best way to compare is to click on the screenshots to open a bigger version in a different tab, then switch across tabs. Nearest Neighbor looks sharp, but pixelated; Bilinear is too blurry. Catmull-Rom is like the best of two worlds. No pixelation but lots of clarity on the details. I really miss it.
It would be interesting to do a blind test of this - give a group of people say 10 different sets of screenshots of images taken using different techniques and see if there is a consistent preference. If that was the case that would be a decent argument to use that it should be adopted, even if that did cause some additional technical headaches. Looking at just these sample images myself I doubt that I would have a consistent preference (though I can see they're not identical when blown up and laid side by side). However, I appreciate that others will view them differently / more acutely (and my vision is not as good as it used to be in any case ).
@JuliusBorisov would that sort of test be something Beamdog would be prepared to be involved in (particularly if some of the work was done by community members)? Apart from anything else that would help demonstrate that there is indeed a willingness to consider change where there's good reason for that.
If people are interested, I can prepare screenshots from the 3 games with the three scaling algorithms so you can do a blind test.
Ditto, in part because I can't understand why they removed it in the first place from the PC version, as it only caused issues on mobile devices. It almost looks like they wanted an unified build but now there are plans to port the games to consoles, and try to have an unified build with that.
Best way to compare is to click on the screenshots to open a bigger version in a different tab, then switch across tabs. Nearest Neighbor looks sharp, but pixelated; Bilinear is too blurry. Catmull-Rom is like the best of two worlds. No pixelation but lots of clarity on the details. I really miss it.
It would be interesting to do a blind test of this - give a group of people say 10 different sets of screenshots of images taken using different techniques and see if there is a consistent preference. If that was the case that would be a decent argument to use that it should be adopted, even if that did cause some additional technical headaches. Looking at just these sample images myself I doubt that I would have a consistent preference (though I can see they're not identical when blown up and laid side by side). However, I appreciate that others will view them differently / more acutely (and my vision is not as good as it used to be in any case ).
@JuliusBorisov would that sort of test be something Beamdog would be prepared to be involved in (particularly if some of the work was done by community members)? Apart from anything else that would help demonstrate that there is indeed a willingness to consider change where there's good reason for that.
If people are interested, I can prepare screenshots from the 3 games with the three scaling algorithms so you can do a blind test.
I honestly can't see any difference between the images posted so far.
The difference would be more evident in-game, but if I could show you what to look for (which would be easier by pointing at the picture in RL), I'm sure you'd see the differences pretty clearly.
@Raduziel by following this advice I could see there was a difference, though I doubt if I personally would notice that in the game. It also wasn't obvious to me which one I would prefer - that's why I thought a blind test would be useful to see whether there really is a clear preferred alternative for most people or if it's just a question of taste.
I've seen the comparisons, but personally, I prefer the new renderer. Yeah, its less sharp, but Catmuli Rom looks really pixellated to me. I think the softer edges does better for the games art style than making things as sharp as possible. Again, totally subjective opinion here.
Catmull-Rom Bicubic scaling causes all kinds of issues on mobile, this is why it was removed with 2.0.
Well that's disappointing. I don't care about mobile version. So instead of a limitation on mobile making desktop version worse, it would be much better if they kept it for desktop and not release it for mobile. It's not like the codebase can be the same anyway.
Anyway, considering they are planning to do something about it now, I hope they bring it back sooner rather than later.
For YOU maybe, but I am not interested in the PC or Console version and would rather the game be available on mobile than have improved PC graphics. BUT, I do have the 1.3 version on my old Android tablet that I used to play Baldur’s Gate on and I noticed a large drop in quality when switching to SoD on my iPad (2.5 version)
BUT, I do have the 1.3 version on my old Android tablet
So, is Catmull-Rom particularly problematic on this old Android tablet?
Appreciate one device is not representative of the varied pool of devices these games are made to run on, but you know—gotta start from somewhere and anecdotal evidence qualifies as somewhere.
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Well that's disappointing. I don't care about mobile version. So instead of a limitation on mobile making desktop version worse, it would be much better if they kept it for desktop and not release it for mobile. It's not like the codebase can be the same anyway.
Anyway, considering they are planning to do something about it now, I hope they bring it back sooner rather than later.
If people are interested, I can prepare screenshots from the 3 games with the three scaling algorithms so you can do a blind test.
I'll be your huckleberry for such a test.
The difference would be more evident in-game, but if I could show you what to look for (which would be easier by pointing at the picture in RL), I'm sure you'd see the differences pretty clearly.
For YOU maybe, but I am not interested in the PC or Console version and would rather the game be available on mobile than have improved PC graphics. BUT, I do have the 1.3 version on my old Android tablet that I used to play Baldur’s Gate on and I noticed a large drop in quality when switching to SoD on my iPad (2.5 version)
Now, whether Beamdog will actually do it is another question.
So, is Catmull-Rom particularly problematic on this old Android tablet?
Appreciate one device is not representative of the varied pool of devices these games are made to run on, but you know—gotta start from somewhere and anecdotal evidence qualifies as somewhere.
I do prefer the bilinear, however.