Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

New ideas and suggestions.
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Toshiba-3
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Re: Quakespasm

Post by Toshiba-3 »

MT_ wrote:Do you mean some `r_scale`? How exactly should it be used?)
Hello, yes I meant r_scale indeed. It is not the same thing as what is discussed in this topic but it gives that retro and detail-packed look. It only affects the ingame 3D view and renders it at 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 of the resolution and then upscale it the nearestneighbor way:
New "r_scale" cvar. Set to 2, 3, or 4 to render the view at 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 resolution.
You just have to add it to /id1/autoexec.cfg (or any mod's autoexec.cfg). I usually have gl_texturemode set to 3 to ensure there's no texture filtering:

Code: Select all

gl_texturemode 3
r_scale 3
Screenshots:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBBWALoWAAMotBF.jpg:orig
https://i.imgur.com/6hAsqS5.png

Zeus wrote:Will you be surprised if I say you're in 5% minority?
I'm not too surprised. I'm turning 32 and only recently started to feel like I wanted to rather experience that original look with some titles. The comfort of old games running at the desktop native resolution is awesome too. nGlide will be able to satisfy both experiences :)
Image / carmageddon add-ons at road reaction
yrbrkfstdspsbl875943
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Re: Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

Post by yrbrkfstdspsbl875943 »

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

You might or might not want to help us pressurize the major GPU makers to give us a proper solution.
If you do want to help us then you could consider putting a small hint into the NGlide software to show the interested people where the major mob of unsatisfied users is gathering. (Which is the according topic on the Nvidia forum obviously. I think it's safe to say that it became our de facto main base of operations.) Right now we have some difficulty in getting the word out and attracting more people. (I was interested in this stuff for years and I didn't know that I wasn't alone for a very long time until I stumbled upon that nvidia-forum-topic almost purely by accident. So I know that by far not everyone who would want to join the mob knows that the mob even exists.) So such a hint in your software would certainly help us a lot.
Of course you might have something against this idea, because such an "advertising" might make your software look bad. So we will understand if you refuse. After all the implementation of the feature we have demanded for so long is already a great help in demonstrating the people what's possible and thus making more people interested. And being ungrateful is... ahem... very ungrateful. :mrgreen:
So far we had at least two key-events that gave us huge sudden surges of petition-signatures (several hundreds of signatures due to each of them):
1. There was an according discussion on Reddit.
2. A more or less good known Youtube-video-blogger mentioned the subject in his video.
yrbrkfstdspsbl875943
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Re: Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

Post by yrbrkfstdspsbl875943 »

Even if those GPU makers don't react, it will be great to be able to properly play at least some of the old games again.
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Zeus
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Re: Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

Post by Zeus »

yrbrkfstdspsbl875943 wrote:Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
You don't need sneaky advertisements like this. What you need IMO are YouTube videos explaining the whole subject in a positive way i.e. why it's a useful feature and what it means for both retro and modern gaming. The petition itself should rather be treated as a dessert.

Try contacting some of those small / middle sized channels. I'm pretty sure somebody will see a potential in the topic.

And one more thing. Stop positioning nVidia thread as a nest with an angry mob of unsatisfied users or something. ;) Maybe it's just me but I don't see how this could help you in any way...
yrbrkfstdspsbl875943
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Re: Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

Post by yrbrkfstdspsbl875943 »

Zeus wrote:You don't need sneaky advertisements like this.
Well I actually though of it in a way that after the user tries out the new scaling method the program asks him some thing like this: "Do you like this method and do you want it to become a part of the drivers, so that it works with all the other games too? Then express your opinion here <link>" But since you don't seem to like this idea I probably shouldn't annoy you with it anymore.
Zeus wrote:Try contacting some of those small / middle sized channels. I'm pretty sure somebody will see a potential in the topic.
We're glad that you did ;) .

Actually that youtube video seems to have attracted the most people so far.

We also tried to talk to linustechtips, but they didn't seem to be very interested. (One of the forum moderators made a short comment on it, but otherwise there was no response from them.)

And there was at least one other youtube video, that appeared by itself without our intervention. But in the second case we didn't observe any major attraction of people, because the according blogger doesn't seem to be very popular yet. The video has approximately 2000 views. Also we noticed the video and posted an according comment with all the relevant links relatively late. (Thanks to MT for writing that comment.)
Zeus wrote:And one more thing. Stop positioning nVidia thread as a nest with an angry mob of unsatisfied users or something. ;) Maybe it's just me but I don't see how this could help you in any way...
Right, I'm generally not even trying to be careful with my choice of words. :mrgreen: I might be wrong, but sometimes I do try to use words that sound negative as a means to increase the emphasis. In cases like this I expect people to already understand that I don't actually mean it like something negative. It's not like we're trying to overthrow the government or anything like that. :mrgreen:
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MT_
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Feature itself is important

Post by MT_ »

I personally don’t care about any hints.
I am interested in the feature itself in nGlide itself.
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MT_
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Re: Quakespasm

Post by MT_ »

Toshiba-3 wrote:yes I meant r_scale indeed. It is not the same thing as what is discussed in this topic but it gives that retro and detail-packed look. It only affects the ingame 3D view and renders it at 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 of the resolution and then upscale it the nearestneighbor way
Thanks. I’ve just tested QuakeSpasm with the `r_scale` configuration option introduced in the latest version 0.93.0 (2017-11-20).

Looks like it indeed works exactly as we need (except missing black margins unneeded given that `r_scale` specifies a ratio that the in-game resolution is perfectly divided by). For example, at the 3840×2160 resolution with the `r_scale` set to `4`, the game effectively runs at 960×540 (960 = 3840 / 4) with each logical pixel represented as a perfect square group of 4×4 physical pixels of the same color with no blur. The only blurry thing is the main menu.

So QuakeSpasm is now a good real-world proof of implementability of nonblurry scaling for hardware-accelerated 3D games.

Afaict, the `r_scale` feature is handled by the `R_ScaleView()` (`void R_ScaleView (void)`) function in the "Quake/gl_rmain.c" file (line 968 for trunk version 1576). This could probably help Zeus with implementing integer-ratio scaling in nGlide to bring blur-free integer-ratio scaling to all Glide-powered games.
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MT_
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Being implemented or waiting for that?

Post by MT_ »

Zeus wrote:The next release will feature not only Integer-ratio upscaling, something you guys asked for, but also Integer-ratio uprendering.
I wonder whether the feature is being implemented in nGlide or still waiting for being implemented.

Fwiw, it would probably make sense to ship integer-ratio upscaling (the requested feature itself) and integer-ratio uprendering (a nice addition not requested specifically) separately so that users were not be forced to wait for both features to be implemented while they could already use one of them. As a hobbyist programmer, I suspect upscaling the entire rendered image should be much easier to implement than hybrid upscaling involving upscaling bitmaps and uprendering 3D scenes at the same time. Thanks.
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Re: Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

Post by Zeus »

Both modes are already fully implemented.
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MT_
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Re: Integer-ratio upscaling with NO BLUR (e.g. FHD → 4K with logical pixel as 2×2 same-color physical pixels)

Post by MT_ »

Zeus wrote:Both modes are already fully implemented.
Wow, great. Is the new nGlide version going to be released soon, or is a beta available for testing? Thanks.
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