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[sn00zer]

Yay rejoining the PC crowd. Got my fancy new computer and ready to go. Download some old a steam games and....oof.... why do the games look bad? Like real bad?

They run AMAZING the IQ is PERFECT, but wow do low resolution textures and lower poly models stick out like a sore thumb. These games were clearly not intended to run at this high of resolution since a lot of the objects in the distance that were blurred by low AA and res are now shining in their barren low poly glory.

I have to imagine devs depended on the grit of lower AA and blurring of lower resolution to give the illusion of detail, similar to your brain filling in the details in pixel art JRPGs from the SNES era.

But when you rip off that sheen it just suddenly gives SOME games a more barren look. Binary Domain for example has an opening sequence where everything is getting rained on. When I played it on an older PC the scene was pretty neat, now it looks like a "rain shader" placed on top of a series of flat shapes.

Before everyone calls me an idiot. The recent Devil Daggers used this "low resolution" look to make the game look pretty damn gritty.

Here's an image of Quake 1 in "low res" and "high res"

These are fairly extreme, but a good example of what I'm talking about.

So, is there a way to get this sort of "grittier" look? Is it as simple as just reducing the resolution in the settings or does it require more elaborate filtering to avoid creating the Vaseline look of stretching an image?

Note: This does not apply to new games. DOOM looks fucking GLORIOUS in 2k and super clean IQ, but since I do not have the cash at the moment to get newer games Im stuck going through my old steam games.

 

[strafer]

Maybe because they werent made for todays PCs?

 

[Kayhan]

So you are saying PC graphics are too clean and angular?

 

[Notor!ousG]

If you have an old CRT OP, hook your pc up on that one and enjoy your old games.

 

[stryker1138]

Well yeah, when you view art assets at a higher resolution than they were ever intended to be viewed, the cracks in the facade become pretty apparent. No one was making sure their textures looked good at 1440p in 1995.

 

[lazygecko]

I don't think think Quake looks bad at all in higher resolutions. The main issue is texture filtering, which can still be turned off. The lowpoly models might look visibly more angular with the sharper resolution, but I don't find it as bad as others. It also helps in games like Quake and Doom that the environment textures are neatly tiled/repeated instead of being stretched out over large surfaces, which started becoming more common as bilinear filtering was standardized and it would just look like smudge rather than giant squares.

PS1 games on the other hand I almost always prefer running in their original 240p-ish resolution, as higher IQ really, really accentuates the wobbly unstable geometry from the lack of perspective correction. It was always that bad really, but thanks to the low resolution we just didn't notice it as much.

 

[GhostTrick]

This isn't a resolution problem but texture filtering.

 

[John_Videogames]

Part of the problem is texture filtering, especially with Quake. It turns old low-resolution textures into blobby messes, but chunky squares can look really nice. There are often console commands for it, and it's what games looked like in software mode very often.

If you played the demo for the System Shock Remaster, go and look at the textures up close - it's what gave that the distinctive look it has.

 

[Maxey]

I don't mind it at all. In fact I even sort of enjoy the look of super sharp IQ in early polygonal games.

What makes it more jarring to me is the addition of high-res textures to those kinds of games, specially the simpler the lighting model is. It's almost like playing a modern game with completely flat lighting, albeit with far far less geometric detail.

 

[BigEmil]

Lower res can hide some bad visuals in parts

 

[epmode]

Part of the problem is texture filtering, especially with Quake. It turns old low-resolution textures into blobby messes, but chunky squares can look really nice. There are often console commands for it, and it's what games looked like in software mode very often.

Unfiltered, low-res pixel-art textures are pretty great, even when rendered at at high resolutions. I wish more games would go with that look.

That Quake screenshot in the OP would look 365859726274x better with texture filtering disabled.

 

[Dropline]

PS1 games on the other hand I almost always prefer running in their original 240p-ish resolution, as higher IQ really, really accentuates the wobbly unstable geometry from the lack of perspective correction. It was always that bad really, but thanks to the low resolution we just didn't notice it as much.

If you want to get rid of (most of) the "shaky" polys on Hi-Res PSX games, I would recommend you to check this : http://ngemu.com/threads/pcsxr-pgxp.186369/

Works perfectly for NTSC Vagrant Story @ 1440p

(Of course, upscaled PSX-era textures are not amazing, as stated above)

 

[nded]

This isn't a resolution problem but texture filtering.

Yep. If you want those crunchy textures back, disable texture filtering.

 

[Eccocid]

How come they didnt put a proper perspective correction in Ps1? It was marketed as a 3d machine at least more than Saturn and one of the biggest faults was those janky polygons. Was it demanding too much resource? an extra ram or cpu or hardware needed for it?

 

[Maxey]

Yep. If you want those crunchy textures back, disable texture filtering.

Are there many games that give you that option short of running them in software mode?

 

[sn00zer]

Yep. If you want those crunchy textures back, disable texture filtering.

Unfiltered, low-res pixel-art textures are pretty great, even when rendered at at high resolutions. I wish more games would go with that look.

That Quake screenshot in the OP would look 365859726274x better with texture filtering disabled.

Lower res can hide some bad visuals in parts

This isn't a resolution problem but texture filtering.

Is there a way I can get the "crunchy" AA as well (yes I know this is a weird request). Essentially I want a way to control the "Devil Dagger" look.

 

[Shepard]

I also find it sometimes to be true, OP. Right now I am playing through the steam version of Xanadu Next with a lower framebuffer res value. Looks much better, imo.

 

[bomblord1]

How come they didnt put a proper perspective correction in Ps1? It was marketed as a 3d machine at least more than Saturn and one of the biggest faults was those janky polygons. Was it demanding too much resource? an extra ram or cpu or hardware needed for it?

If I remember correctly the GPU lacked the ability to do it.

 

[Mihos]

How come they didnt put a proper perspective correction in Ps1? It was marketed as a 3d machine at least more than Saturn and one of the biggest faults was those janky polygons. Was it demanding too much resource? an extra ram or cpu or hardware needed for it?

You have compare it against the tech at the time. For the price, that is as good as it gets.
And price was critical for their entry ento the market

 

[Piston Hyundai]

open up the console

GL_TEXTUREMODE GL_NEAREST

enjoy

 

[nded]

Are there many games that give you that option short of running them in software mode?

I suppose in most games you can edit a cfg somewhere to set texture filtering to "nearest" if the option isn't available in the game.

Is there a way I can get the "crunchy" AA as well (yes I know this is a weird request). Essentially I want a way to control the "Devil Dagger" look.

Lower the resolution to 320x240.

 

[epmode]

Are there many games that give you that option short of running them in software mode?

Well, most of the cases in which texture filtering is ruining the image, you'll have an option somewhere. For example, Quake and Doom source ports usually provide the option, 3D emulators tend to allow it, etc.

 

[lightchris]

I like higher resolutions and texture filtering, even in early games like Quake (and yes, that includes OP's comparison images).

That's mostly because I think of aliasing as a flaw and not as something that was intended (not in all, but in almost all circumstances at least). A clean image is just so much more pleasant to look at. That doesn't mean it has to "sharp" though. For 2D games and content I prefer blurring/CRT shaders over large and easily discernable pixels. In 3D there's the additional shimmering of the whole scene in motion, making texture filtering even more desirable.

 

[sn00zer]

open up the console

GL_TEXTUREMODE GL_NEAREST

enjoy

Is there an Nvidia setting I can mess with to do this across the board? Would essentially like to play games designed for 720p at most at 1080p rather than 2k while avoiding the blurring issue that comes with lower res on a high res monitor.

 

[gelf]

The games that most suffer from this for me are those that mixed a lot of 2D and 3D assets back in the early 3D era. At the resolution they were designed for it tends to blend together better rather then having some higher resolution polygons walking though a bunch of giant blocky pixels.

 

[sn00zer]

The games that most suffer from this for me are those that mixed a lot of 2D and 3D assets back in the early 3D era. At the resolution they were designed for it tends to blend together better rather then having some higher resolution polygons walking though a bunch of giant blocky pixels.

I would say they suffer the most, but its an issue I see from games made in the PS360 era as well. Dishonored 1 was the first time I really noticed it.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

I can't agree with the OP. Basically every last gen game, Binary Domain included, looks much better once kicked above 720p.

I'd much rather take the clarity of the right Quake 1 screenshot if I'm seriously playing the game. Easier to see past the muddy browns and grays.

EDIT: WTF, no, Dishonored 1 looks amazing at a higher resolution. Absolutely gorgeous.

 

[gdt]

I would say they suffer the most, but its an issue I see from games made in the PS360 era as well. Dishonored 1 was the first time I really noticed it.

I recently played Dishonored at 4k/60fps on a 4k tv and it was glorious. Odd texture here and there but I put that on the art style.

 

[King_Moc]

That hi res Quake shot looks a lot better.

 

[McSpidey]

Is there an Nvidia setting I can mess with to do this across the board? Would essentially like to play games designed for 720p at most at 1080p rather than 2k while avoiding the blurring issue that comes with lower res on a high res monitor.

I never knew I wanted an OS level global nearest neighbour upsampler for the desktop until this moment, but now I wonder how I can live without it.

 

[Übermatik]

How is Devil Daggers, by the way?

 

[Maxey]

How is Devil Daggers, by the way?

Pretty good. The sound design is both terrific and terrifying.

 

[Übermatik]

Pretty good. The sound design is both terrific and terrifying.

This + the visual style is all the persuasion I need at £3.99

 

[Cleve]

I disagree. I was thrilled to run glquake(also unreal 1) and Team Fortress 1 at 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 as my video hardware scaled up. Software rendering at 320x240 didn't give better IQ or experience then, and it doesn't now.

 

[pottuvoi]

No bilinear filtering, proper anisotropic and supersampling for great quality in quake and ps1 games.

 

[thunder_snail]

I agree with you OP.

When assets (such as textures) are much lower res than the rendered resolution, it creates this weird effects where the medium and art don't seem to belong together.
Playing PS2 games in high-res using an emulator feels almost as bad as playing SNES games with those god awful lanczos upscale.

Even with more recent (as in x360/ps3 gen) games, the difference in resolution between 2D assets like skyboxes don't mix well with super high resolutions. It creates this divide between what's in the game world and what's not. Creates this "oh, I'm in a fake game world" effect.

However, what does work great for x360/ps3 era games is downsampling from higher res. When I play some older games, I play them on my lower res 1080p screen instead of the 1440p, and downsample from higher resolution.
The lower pixel count still hides some glaring flaws that can be seen at higher res yet downsampling removes the ugly flickers.

 

[lazygecko]

Texture filtering doesn't really behoove a game like Quake since the textures are essentially pixel art, where important details can be conveyed with as little as 1 pixel. By filtering, all you're really doing is muddying the clarity of the visual information.

The games that most suffer from this for me are those that mixed a lot of 2D and 3D assets back in the early 3D era. At the resolution they were designed for it tends to blend together better rather then having some higher resolution polygons walking though a bunch of giant blocky pixels.

I had so much trouble trying to get Breath of Fire 3 to look alright in ePSXe. The game looks downright awful if played in higher resolutions, and even when trying to run in the original resolution it still didn't look completely right (sprite tiles seemed to not align correctly making them look all warbly when moving). Only with Mednafen did I see the light.

I suppose in most games you can edit a cfg somewhere to set texture filtering to "nearest" if the option isn't available in the game.



Lower the resolution to 320x240.

The HUD really doesn't look right there. Looks like it was rendered originally at a smaller scale in a higher resolution, which doesn't translate well when just downscaling the whole image.

 

[nded]

The HUD really doesn't look right there. Looks like it was rendered originally at a smaller scale in a higher resolution, which doesn't translate well when just downscaling the whole image.

I don't normally play the game at 320x240, so I had the HUD set to something more suited to 1080p. Here's the classic HUD.

Anyway, if OP is set on making newer games look low-res, he's going to have to deal with HUDs that never took 320x240 into account.

 

[chrislowe]

Ive bought a lot cheap games on pc that I played on the ps3 back in 2012 and now to play the same games maxed out on pc with framerates above 100 looks fantastic.

Dont go for the era of lowpoly games in late 90ies.

 

[lightchris]

Texture filtering doesn't really behoove a game like Quake since the textures are essentially pixel art, where important details can be conveyed with as little as 1 pixel. By filtering, all you're really doing is muddying the clarity of the visual information.

That only really applies to a still image with a texture you look at frontally.
In actual gameplay all textures need to be distorted to fit onto the polygons/triagnles depending on the viewing angle and camera distance, with no way for the developer to know or control from which point the player chooses to look at them. This is a fundamental difference to the pixel art of 2D games.
Texture filtering tries to get these distortions closer to a physically correct result than the point sampling of texturing in early 3D games, resulting in more actual detail but potentially less subjective "sharpness".

You may still like the old look better of course. That's subjective, and it's fine.

 

[Izuna]

yeah, resolution has nothing to do with this

if you want to use nearest, be my guest

looks horrible
--

also, 256 colour

 

[pottuvoi]

yeah, resolution has nothing to do with this

if you want to use nearest, be my guest

looks horrible
--

also, 256 colour

It can look great with proper AA.
Although it really depends on content.

 

[2San]

If you want to get rid of (most of) the "shaky" polys on Hi-Res PSX games, I would recommend you to check this : http://ngemu.com/threads/pcsxr-pgxp.186369/

Works perfectly for NTSC Vagrant Story @ 1440p

(Of course, upscaled PSX-era textures are not amazing, as stated above)

This is amazing. I didn't know this was possible.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

I would say they suffer the most, but its an issue I see from games made in the PS360 era as well. Dishonored 1 was the first time I really noticed it.

dishonored is an hd game built in the hd era

it's designed to be run in hd

...

 

[lazygecko]

That only really applies to a still image with a texture you look at frontally.
In actual gameplay all textures need to be distorted to fit onto the polygons/triagnles depending on the viewing angle and camera distance, with no way for the developer to know or control from which point the player chooses to look at them. This is a fundamental difference to the pixel art of 2D games.
Texture filtering tries to get these distortions closer to a physically correct result than the point sampling of texturing in early 3D games, resulting in more actual detail but potentially less subjective "sharpness".

You may still like the old look better of course. That's subjective, and it's fine.

Depends on what you mean with "actual detail". What I'm talking about here are details like screws, nails, or other pixel-wide line where the edges between those objects and different parts of the texture are literally represented by the tiny difference in the pixel positions, which we use to interpret what we're looking at. The filtering process rather blends the information between those pixels, which in turn obfuscates the intended (conjecture as it might be on my part) result of the art. I think this comparison of Metal Gear Solid 1 very aptly illustrates this (unless the PC version for some reason has even lower res textures than the PS1 version resulting in even more blur than usual. I really don't know).

 

[Gbraga]

I don't play a lot of this kind of game, so I thought it was an interesting discussion to follow and maybe take some notes, since people started to mention emulators and all.

Then OP mentioned Dishonored.

OP, you're insane.

 

[potatohead]

You can use dithering or other shaders or simply render at lower resolution. Can even use softening filters like bilinear or nearest over a lower res final output to soften it but keep the gritty aspect

Ps1 games are the best for the gritty low res look because textures would generally high quality for that time being on cd

However for stuff like quake and doom I like the higher res with darkplaces and doomengine I don't use extra effects but I like the added resolution and iq

 

[jett]

If you want to get rid of (most of) the "shaky" polys on Hi-Res PSX games, I would recommend you to check this : http://ngemu.com/threads/pcsxr-pgxp.186369/

Works perfectly for NTSC Vagrant Story @ 1440p

(Of course, upscaled PSX-era textures are not amazing, as stated above)

I've tested this many times.

Might be a bit better, but PS1 games still look awful in motion.

I agree 100% with lazygecko, PS1 games are better being run in their original resolution.

Tested a new version of this GTE stuff, it does work much better.

 

[potatohead]

I've tested this many times.

Might be a bit better, but PS1 games still look awful in motion.

I agree 100% with lazygecko, PS1 games are better being run in their original resolution.

No it doesn't. It works very well on many games. Not perfect but far better than regular ogl2 which judders far more than og ps1 itself

It is game specific too. Pgxp does not work with all games and it breaks some games. It also only works with that one custom fork of pcsxr so if you tried it with a different emulator or different version of pcsxr it wasn't ever working.

 

[univbee]

This isn't even that new of a problem, for a much older example, numerous games would use dithering to fake transparency or color gradient effects with checkerboarding, and the high level of signal loss from RF and composite connections would effectively blend that all together.

On early 3D systems, effectively anything pre-Xbox 360, a lot of similar shortcuts were taken, especially things like 2D assets used which looked 3D, to cheat at the lower (240p or 480p) resolutions those games were expected to run in, and attempting to run them at higher resolutions like 1080p effectively only increases the resolution of the 3D elements and doesn't magically improve the 2D assets or textures, so things look uneven and almost broken/unfinished.