Comparing various texture and video settings

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JudgeGroovy
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Comparing various texture and video settings

Post by JudgeGroovy »

Hi, big fan of GZDoom, and I've recently gone down the rabbit hole of messing with and comparing tons of video settings. I like the pixel art look in the GL-enhanced world rendering, and I've had texture filter mode on "none (nearest mipmap)" with 16x anisotropic filtering forever. Had never messed around with any anti-aliasing until now as well.

So, for some reason really examining the walls and running around doom2 map01, something about the look of the mild shimmering with none (nearest) and 16x anisotropic filtering stood out to me. Something about the aliasing, being more subtle yet maybe less uniform makes me notice it. Still looks good, just it got me tinkering with the settings.

It seems that none (nearest mipmap) may be the most popular recommended setting, with anisotropic filtering. But I notice without anisotropic filtering, none (linear mipmap) looks a lot smoother and less chunky than nearest, for example in the longer hallway on doom2 map01. And with anistropy I seem to notice less wall jaggies when moving with none (linear) compared to none (nearest). Though I think nearest map be crisper at more angles, so maybe that makes it best with anisotropy. It may be a pretty subtle comparison.

I noticed that none with 16x looks good to me as well, without either mipmap option, just sort of has a uniformity to the mild jaggies etc. I haven't noticed minding "pixel swimming" I've read about, but in larger maps I can see the appeal of far off things and angles being smoothed a bit by mipmapping, though I'm not that knowledgeable on it.

So, any preferences or thoughts on those settings? I know this has come up before, and I searched and saw a couple topics from years ago, I may have missed a recent one though.

Also, how about anti-aliasing? I get the impression multisampling is the "best" choice (supersampling seems a bit costly), and setting it to 32x makes my gtx 970 with i5-2500k slow to a crawl. But it still seems subtle, since with it set to 8x I still notice shimmering and aliasing on walls when moving. I do see the smoothness when setting it to 16x, though I wonder if that might be taxing on some maps. And rendering is set to "quality", playing in 1080p without vsync, capped at 120 FPS by the way, for the responsiveness. There'a also FXAA, but even on extreme I don't see it having much effect on walls.

Also, "fake contrast" is something I like, though had never messed with before, and having googled it I may switch it to "smooth".

tl;dr, I'm messing around with and pondering lots of settings, even though GZDoom looks good either way. Thoughts and/or preferences?
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Pixel Eater
 
 
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Re: Comparing various texture and video settings

Post by Pixel Eater »

I find FXAA on low to be smoother/faster and means you can get away with a lower multisampling level too.

There's also a good theory that using anisotropic filtering will look closer to the DOS version.
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Comparing various texture and video settings

Post by Graf Zahl »

I am using 4x Antialiasing. Anything more doesn't really improve things, it only inflates the video memory requirements. On 4x you get 16 samples per pixel (4x4) which should nearly always be enough - even for hiding some minor rendering imprecisions that normally require setting the render mode to "precise" Adding FXAA on top of it is mainly a matter of taste. I am not a fan of it, because it can produce visible artifacts.
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JudgeGroovy
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Re: Comparing various texture and video settings

Post by JudgeGroovy »

Thanks, that's good to know. After messing around with it 4x multisampling looks good to me too.
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axredneck
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Re: Comparing various texture and video settings

Post by axredneck »

Graf Zahl wrote:On 4x you get 16 samples per pixel (4x4)
AFAIK 4x multisampling gets 4 samples per pixel, not exactly 2x2 bit this way: https://i.stack.imgur.com/X4cqV.png (it's somehow related to solution of well-known "queens" puzzle)
But if you speak about supersampling, not multisampling, then yes, 4x gets 16 samples.
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