FF7 battle swirls with OGL 1.76

[Stevedroid]

Pete's OpenGL 2 runs the game just fine for me, but here's the thing, I hate the whole internal resolution thing. I mean when I run the game at 1024x768 I want it to render at 1024x768! Not render to a texture at 640x480 and then just resize to 1024x768. It's kind of ironic that it has so many advanced graphics options yet it effectively renders at such a low resolution and looks so jaggy and the only way to improve it is to blur the whole screen.

So I've been trying use Pete's OpenGL 1.76 and things generally look much better. Everything is sharper and because it's not rendering to a texture I can use my video card's AA options. However, I can't seem to get the battle swirls to work. Anyone know the settings to enable it (if it's actually possible of course).

Alternatively, if someone knows how to smooth out the jaggies using the OGL2 plugin without blurring the whole screen, that'd be great too.

I'm using SSSPSX and my video card is a Radeon X800XT.

[Stevedroid]

Nevermind, I figured it out.

Had to set offscreen drawing to full to get them to appear. Settings 4-2-3 under the compatibility section.

The don't look nearly as good as those in OGL2, but they're there at least and I'll easily take the higher resolution over better swirl effects.

I'm still open to any info on how to get less jaggies out of OGL2 without blurring everything else though.

[I-Chan]

As a matter of fact, ogl2's internal resolution is the best you are gonna get in terms of resolution. PSX games are designed to use psx's native resolution of 320x240, so textures will always be low resolution, no matter what you do. Most plugins simply render in 320x240 and then resize to your selected resolution. At least, ogl's resampling makes for more accurate calculations while laying out the graphics onto the rendering target, and minimizes the effects of resizing afterwards.

[Stevedroid]

Originally Posted by I-Chan

As a matter of fact, ogl2's internal resolution is the best you are gonna get in terms of resolution. PSX games are designed to use psx's native resolution of 320x240, so textures will always be low resolution, no matter what you do. Most plugins simply render in 320x240 and then resize to your selected resolution. At least, ogl's resampling makes for more accurate calculations while laying out the graphics onto the rendering target, and minimizes the effects of resizing afterwards.

3000 posts or not, your wrong. I'm not talking about texture resolution, I'm talking about the rendering resolution. In practice this mainly effects the edges of polygons. Pete's OpenGL 1.76 renders at the resolution you set it at whatever that resolution may be. OpenGL 2 renders with an internal resolution to a texture and then just displays that image, which is why video card AA doesn't work. OGL 1.76 is not rendering to a target/texture, it's rendering at the resolution you set it at, if it were rendering to a texture video card AA would not work with it.

By the way, I've done some graphics programming myself and I actually happen to know what I'm talking about in this case. If you need proof then please look at these:

This is the game on OGL2 with internal resolution set to high X,high Y and screen resolution set to 1024x768:


This is game on OGL1.76 at 1024x768


Look at the edges of the characters, it's pretty darn obvious that the OGL1.76 screen is very clearly running at a higher resolution.

[GreenImp]

On Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.7 set the Internal X resolution & Internal Y resolution to [2: Very high] and it will look the way you want. His GPU also explains you need atleast 128 VRAM to do this.

[Stevedroid]

Originally Posted by GreenImp

On Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.7 set the Internal X resolution & Internal Y resolution to [2: Very high] and it will look the way you want. His GPU also explains you need atleast 128 VRAM to do this.

Not possible on my video card. I have an ATI card and that crashes on it. I can only set the Y resolution to very high and that still doesn't look all that good.

[dbhankins]

The tip of the sword in those pics especially highlights the difference.

BTW, Stevedroid, I don't know whether to thank you or curse you for making me notice a quality difference that before I was blissfully unaware of.


Dan

[TheMaister]

Well.. OpenGL looks better, but is not so compatible. (It sucks when you play Square-RPGs...) If you use OpenGL2 with Very High X/Y you will see that OpenGL2 is better looking.

[hushypushy]

stevedroid: with ATi cards OGL is probably better, nice and smooth polygons. in my OGL days i used 4/0/4, but i've also heard good news out of the 4/2/3 camp too, so whatever you like.

dbhankins: you never noticed that? i'd hate to run OGL2 without very high X and Y....

and i remember in Halo PC if you disabled render-to-texture, you could use AA. unfortunately, not so with pete's OGL2 (disclaimer: it could work on an ATi card. go for it).

[Stevedroid]

Originally Posted by dbhankins

The tip of the sword in those pics especially highlights the difference.

BTW, Stevedroid, I don't know whether to thank you or curse you for making me notice a quality difference that before I was blissfully unaware of.

Dan

Heh, sorry and unfortunately it's a big'un since playing in higher resolutions is one of the main draws of emulation. Yup, the jaggies are pretty apparent in the OL2 screen and of course much more noticable in motion.

Originally Posted by hushypushy

and i remember in Halo PC if you disabled render-to-texture, you could use AA. unfortunately, not so with pete's OGL2 (disclaimer: it could work on an ATi card. go for it).

Yeah I thought that, but unfortunately it still seems it renders to a texture no matter what. It's just that instead of using a special render to texture capability that modern cards have, it just constructs and inserts the image manually into the frame buffer.

I'm was very disappointed to discover that the OGL2 plugin worked this way by the way. Seems like a very week sauce implementation to me now - especially given that you're limited to rendering at a wimpy three different internal resolutions. There are plenty of games out there that have shaders without rendering to texture, they're just applied at a slightly different part in the pipeline. In my mind, Pete wrote this great advanced plugin and then shot it in the gut by limiting the resolution. Until this changes I will unfortunately be using the old puglin and enjoying the games with 4xAA at a true resolution of 1024x768. I'll just have to stomach the slightly worse framebuffer effects

[I-Chan]

Originally Posted by Stevedroid

3000 posts or not, your wrong.

Next time, i'll thank if you use that answer after i try to raise my post count as a reason for being right. You'll probably avoid looking like an smartass .

About graphics, i use an ATI card and i'll rather have nicer looking textures, wich in my opinion ogl2 has, and slightly less pleasant looking polygons. Of course, that's a matter of preference, and on the issue you are referring, and not what i first thought it was about, you are right.

BTW, as we are on the line of stating things in a touchy, crude manner, double posting on these forums is frowned upon. There's an edit button on every post you make, next time you need to add something and no one posted in between, use it.

[hushypushy]

just to add to what I-Chan said, post count has no effect on intelligence or experience. i think it just indicates you have nothing better to do than come here every day and waste your life... *glances at post count* ...sigh

[Stevedroid]

Just trying to avoid the inevitable "what the heck do you know n00b" because I pointed out a veteren member was wrong.

Also it was fully my intention to be a smartass

[hushypushy]

Originally Posted by Stevedroid

Just trying to avoid the inevitable "what the heck do you know n00b" because I pointed out a veteren member was wrong.

luckily, that's not how it works around here

[I-Chan]

Originally Posted by Stevedroid

Just trying to avoid the inevitable "what the heck do you know n00b" because I pointed out a veteren member was wrong.

Also it was fully my intention to be a smartass

Next time you are about to launch a preventive attack, make sure the nukes are really there. It's not very smart to pick on a mod. It is not very polite, either, be it on a mod or any other member, and the very least we ask for in here is politeness. Please remember it from now on.

[dbhankins]

With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien...

Do not meddle in the affairs of Mods, for they are subtle and quick to anger.


Dan

[Stevedroid]

Originally Posted by I-Chan

Next time you are about to launch a preventive attack, make sure the nukes are really there. It's not very smart to pick on a mod. It is not very polite, either, be it on a mod or any other member, and the very least we ask for in here is politeness. Please remember it from now on.

Jeez sorry. I just said you're wrong. I made no comments on your intelligence or any personal attacks whatsoever, I'm not sure how that came to be inferred as "picking on you." Granted I could have made my point with a little less arrogance but politeness and humility are different things.

Anyway, so I don't incur any further wrath, please accept this as an apology, such as it is

[hushypushy]

yeah yeah, drop it ok fellas? let's talk about some FF7 battle swirls.....

[I-Chan]

Originally Posted by Stevedroid

Anyway, so I don't incur any further wrath, please accept this as an apology, such as it is

Accepted.

With these settings i get battle swirls on an ATI card, though much older.

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.76
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9500 x86/SSE2

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x960 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- B8G8R8A8
- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 1
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 50.0

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 2
- Framebuffer access: 3
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: on [00019000]

[Stevedroid]

Cool.

In other news I've been discussing on Pete's board about methods to increase the effective resolution on ATI cards in the OGL2 plugin, but sadly with just a semester of graphics programming under my belt and very little understanding about the internal workings of PSX emulator I fear I'm coming across as an idiot.

Still, theorhetically speaking, it shouldn't require a whole 2048x2048 texture to render a game at 640x480. There are certainly alternative algorithms here. Maybe something will come of this, we'll see.