[penguin]

Originally posted by LtNarol
consider this: you have a screen set to 1024*768, you think you have such high resolution, heres the thing: thats rendering somewhere like twice the number of pixels renderd for 640*480...

I had a long-winded response written last night, but a thunderstorm knocked out the power for 3 hours before I submitted  Here's the abridged rant:

At a higher resolution, you will get a sharper picture -- end of story.  The pixels are smaller, you have more per inch.  You are correct that an unscaled image will not look significantly better at a higher resolution.  But every image in FS2 is scaled, unless you're floating 25m from the side of a capship, and remain perpendicular to it and don't move.  You don't "scale up the maps," this is what the 3d engine does, constantly.

Remember:

• every map in FS2 (or any other 3d game) is scaled.  Always.
• higher resolution = sharper image.  Always.

Yeah, higher resolutions will require more resources, which will result in a worse framerate, that's why it's an option...

hope that made sense to you.

Sorry, but no.

[YodaSean]

Originally posted by LtNarol
consider this: you have a screen set to 1024*768, you think you have such high resolution, heres the thing: thats rendering somewhere like twice the number of pixels renderd for 640*480, if not tripple (did the math already, dont feel like finding my calculator right now, but its up there somewhere).

That makes sense, but many of us have computer setups that can run games at 1024*768 without a problem, and don't care about the increase in computer power needed:wink:  Thats why it would be nice to have other higher resolutions so some people can enjoy high resolutions and some can enjoy low resolutions

[LtNarol]

auto scaling of maps i know about NEWBIE, i have worked with maps before you know.  As for why you cant just rely on auto scaling, its because autoscaling done by the engine does NOT increase any detail from the 256*256 version, if you set the engine to use all 1024*1024 maps, then each pixel of the 256*256 map will be changed to a square of 4*4 pixels.  You would gain NO additional resolution on the maps themselves, only slightly sharper images at longer distances.  You have to manually rescale all the maps by hand, apply filters to increase the detail, or remake them at higher resolutions in order to actually get a better effect.

[penguin]

Originally posted by LtNarol
You would gain NO additional resolution on the maps themselves, only slightly sharper images at longer distances.

OK, I agree, if you consider being 10 meters from an object a "longer distance."  Any further than that, the textures are probably being scaled down, anyhow.  

Obviously it depends on the model and the texures that are used, how they're applied, etc.  But I think this is true for most ships in FS/FS2, certainly for all the fighters & bombers.

[LtNarol]

Originally posted by penguin
OK, I agree, if you consider being 10 meters from an object a "longer distance."  Any further than that, the textures are probably being scaled down, anyhow.  

Obviously it depends on the model and the texures that are used, how they're applied, etc.  But I think this is true for most ships in FS/FS2, certainly for all the fighters & bombers.

textures are not scaled down that way, the game uses LODS (level of detail), each lod is textured with a specific set of textures designed for that lod.  The engine does not rescale the textures to 250*250, 244*244, 230*230, etc.  It simply switches to different lods.  And at 10 meters from a ship, you wont see a whole map, more reason to have higher detail maps instead of higher pixels per screen.  Sure, as pixels begin to merge, you lose detail, but are you going to pick out individual lights or turrets on a capital ship at 2000 meters? not without a magnifying glass.

[CP5670]

I had a long-winded response written last night, but a thunderstorm knocked out the power for 3 hours before I submitted Here's the abridged rant:

Hey, you had the same problem? The power here also went out due to a thunderstorm, resulting in my computer suddenly turning off, but I wasn't doing anything important and the outage only lasted for a few seconds.

[penguin]

Originally posted by LtNarol
textures are not scaled down that way, the game uses LODS (level of detail), each lod is textured with a specific set of textures designed for that lod.  The engine does not rescale the textures to 250*250, 244*244, 230*230, etc.  It simply switches to different lods.  And at 10 meters from a ship, you wont see a whole map, more reason to have higher detail maps instead of higher pixels per screen.  Sure, as pixels begin to merge, you lose detail, but are you going to pick out individual lights or turrets on a capital ship at 2000 meters? not without a magnifying glass.

OK, this is the last post I'll make about this, it's making my head hurt.

LtNarol, maybe we're not talking about the same thing.  

Let's think of a concrete example: an Ursa 25 m away, straight ahead.  The textures on your display (in the framebuffer) are most likely NOT occupying 256x256 (or whatever) pixels on your screen.  Most textures will be distorted one way or another (unless the polygon's normal is parallel to your line-of sight).  Can we at least agree that a square face that is pointing 45 degrees away from you is no longer a square (in the framebuffer)?  Although the map is not changing, the image on the screen is.

OK, now move the Ursa 1 m away from you, so that it's 26 m away.  We are still using the same LOD.  The Ursa is smaller on the screen, right?  The textures as they're displayed in the framebuffer have been scaled.  This is not scaling from a modding perspective, nor is it changing the LOD, this is the 3d engine rasterizing the texture onto a smaller fragment.  I hope we can agree that however many pixels the Ursa occupied on the screen at 25 m, it is occupying fewer at 26 m.

This is what I was talking about when I said the 3d engine is constantly scaling.  It has nothing to do with LOD.  When something (at the same LOD) is further away, the same textures must cover a smaller number of pixels.  So yes, the engine -- DirectX in the case of FS -- does rescale textures from 256x256 to 244x244, 230x230, etc., the further you get away.  If it didn't, the textures would slide all over the model as it moved around.

And I think you'll find in 95% of the time, the textures on the screen are actually being scaled down unless you're right on top of the ship.

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by LtNarol
textures are not scaled down that way, the game uses LODS (level of detail), each lod is textured with a specific set of textures designed for that lod.  The engine does not rescale the textures to 250*250, 244*244, 230*230, etc.  It simply switches to different lods.

There are only so many LoDs. While you are moving towards and away from a model within a specific LoD the game will have to rescale the model and textures on the fly. Otherwise it would look like you weren't going anywhere until you switched LoDs. Also, not all models have multiple LoDs. (Some MODs probably don't use multiple LoDs, at least for early versions.) For them the models and textures applied would have to be rescaled. That's one of the main things the graphics engine does.

Edit: Looks like I was a little late. The post above says what I was trying to say a lot better.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

For god sake, this could go one forever.

Leave. The. Resolutions. Alone.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
For god sake, this could go one forever.

Leave. The. Resolutions. Alone.

You bumped this after a year to tell everyone to leave it alone?

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Forgive me, I did not know it was such heinous bumpage.

I'm sure I saw this thread in the recent posts list. How queer.

Somone is now bound to hit me for this transgression.

[Steel]

more intermediate resolutions would be a good thing...  some points to be considered:

unfortunately, as suggested above, starting from the high end and then scaling down, in the engine if possible, it probably the very best way to go about it.  then you have ONE set of graphics files to download and store on your hard drive.

one thing to consider with this approach though - how does it impact performance with the additional processing of scaling down the graphics.

additionally, disk space is cheap these days - relativle speaking.

the issue is to measure these different approaches vs. the existing community's desires and the desire to bring more folks into the community.

also, how much work would it be to create a graphics engine that can do the scaling, and is someone available to do that work.

[KARMA]

higher res will have sense just for ingame action(3d), and if i correctly understood the game already switch at the beginning of the missions btween 2d (menus) and 3d (ingame).
So the problem is the ingame interface.
I don't think that it will be *so* easy to manually scale up/down all the anis, except the very simple ones, so or they will not change (they will look smaller, not a problem for example at 1240, but a problem maybe on even higher res) or they can be automatically scaled by engine, and i don't know if this is possible and with what amount of resources.
Some artwork can instead be scaled manually i think (only the ingame static interface shouldn't be a lot, i think)
Althought i won't benefit from this (i still play with a voodoo2) i personally think that an higher ingame res could give fs2 a far longer longevity, since better gpu's can handle higher resolutions w/o problems providing a far better aspect to the whole thing.
As far as i can remember in the many other games the 2d artwork is not present in different versions for each resolution, but there are some versions for some resolutions, and between those res' the artwork don't change (it just look smaller), correct me if i'm wrong

[Petrarch of the VBB]

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

[KARMA]

change the nick to "pandora of the vbb":lol:

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

In the future I will point to this thread when people ask me "What does irony mean?"

[Kazan]

video cards that could run fs2 at 1600x1200 cost $50-$100 now

if you cannot handle 1024x768 and think you can't afford to upgrade get out of gaming

[Petrarch of the VBB]

My Video card can handle higher resolutions. My monitor can't. It will be the same for many others.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with 640*480.

[EdrickV]

1024x768 is too high a resolution to look good on my monitor, though for FS2 the only difference I recall seeing is that the text was harder to read. And, when it comes to hardware upgrades, not everyone has much money to spend. A new video card for me would be about 4-6 weeks worth of money, and that's for a card like the GeForce 5200's.

[Ulala]

I demand 2048x1536 resolution! Post haste!