Posted December 16, 2015
Here is a quick guide with some tips for making old games look better!
This is for older Windows games from places such as Steam, GOG or Origin.
I did make a nice little video. The video uses footage to demonstrate all these tweaks, well worth checking out!
Video link: https://youtu.be/P2vnKDeVO8g
But here is a brief outline of what the steps are:
Aspect ratio
Old games typically look best in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio. There is a setting in the graphics driver that lets the GPU scale the image while preserving the aspect ratio. Careful with resolutions: 1280 x 1024 is 5:4 and can sometimes result in vertically stretched images.
Resolution
With Nvidia cards you can create a custom resolution of 1600 x 1200. This will give you a very crisp, sharp and detailed image. I'm not sure if AMD supports this, but likely it does! Would be awesome for someone to test this.
AF
Texture filtering. Many games let you enable anisitropic filtering of 16x in the game. If not, just enable it in the driver. This will ensure that textures, such as tiles on the floor, look sharp and detailed as you look into the distance.
AA
And finally we can use antialiasing and get a more photo-realistic look. While many games have this as an option, you can further enhance, or override through the driver. You can also apply AA to transparent textures and for games that don't support AA, like Splinter Cell, a shader based AA technology can be used.
The result
Good looking retro games!
http://i.imgur.com/MMZK5nB.png
http://i.imgur.com/nqHiV62.png
http://i.imgur.com/UXX473u.png
http://i.imgur.com/ElaRVCK.png
This is for older Windows games from places such as Steam, GOG or Origin.
I did make a nice little video. The video uses footage to demonstrate all these tweaks, well worth checking out!
Video link: https://youtu.be/P2vnKDeVO8g
But here is a brief outline of what the steps are:
Aspect ratio
Old games typically look best in the classic 4:3 aspect ratio. There is a setting in the graphics driver that lets the GPU scale the image while preserving the aspect ratio. Careful with resolutions: 1280 x 1024 is 5:4 and can sometimes result in vertically stretched images.
Resolution
With Nvidia cards you can create a custom resolution of 1600 x 1200. This will give you a very crisp, sharp and detailed image. I'm not sure if AMD supports this, but likely it does! Would be awesome for someone to test this.
AF
Texture filtering. Many games let you enable anisitropic filtering of 16x in the game. If not, just enable it in the driver. This will ensure that textures, such as tiles on the floor, look sharp and detailed as you look into the distance.
AA
And finally we can use antialiasing and get a more photo-realistic look. While many games have this as an option, you can further enhance, or override through the driver. You can also apply AA to transparent textures and for games that don't support AA, like Splinter Cell, a shader based AA technology can be used.
The result
Good looking retro games!
http://i.imgur.com/MMZK5nB.png
http://i.imgur.com/nqHiV62.png
http://i.imgur.com/UXX473u.png
http://i.imgur.com/ElaRVCK.png
Post edited December 16, 2015 by philscomputerlab
