satucker: Running Windows 7 and have tied multiple different compatibility modes and settings. Game runs fine but graphics look like C**P....Any ideas?

Ralackk: I'll assume your not trolling and this is actually a problem. What do you mean the graphics look like crap? This is a very old game now so the graphics compared todays standard won't look amazing its the gameplay thats great in myst. Are the graphics worse then they should be with your version?

melgour: The entire game is pre-rendered, so you're essentially looking at still images. Hence, what you're looking at is the same thing you would be looking at back when Myst Masterpiece was released.
The only possible change is if GOG applied some compression to the images (which they may have), but that would in no way affect the geometry.
Depending on the settings on your video drivers, the game will either play in it's standard resolution (which on your monitor, assuming it is an LCD and what you mentioned is the native resolution) would ammount to a tiny postage stamp image. Or, if your drivers are set to stretch the image, then it will do just that, stretch an image over an area several times its size, which would make it look considerably worse, yes.

satucker: So....If I change the resolution on the monitor to 640 x 480 (which would of course make everything else look like crap) would that improve the image quality in Myst?

satucker: So....If I change the resolution on the monitor to 640 x 480 (which would of course make everything else look like crap) would that improve the image quality in Myst?

BmB: You misunderstood me Melgour. The point was that it probably looks ugly because the game's own resizing is bad. And that if he were to instead use the hardware rescaling of either his graphics card or display it would look nicer. With some good rescaling non-native resolutions on an LCD can look nice.
"Huge pixels" and "jaggies" sounds like pixel doubling to me. There are much better ways of upscaling an image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling
Now, some blurriness as the result is inevitable, but this varies from method to method. And I can almost guarantee the rescaling of his card or display will be somewhat blurry compared to what can be done, though it's still a much better solution than having a tiny image or huge jaggies.
I'd wager the best result comes from GPU scaling. But you never know about displays, there may be surprises.

BmB: I beg to differ, first, no such thing as "original sharpness" or whatever. The "original sharpness" would have been the pixel transistions on a CRT which while quite good isn't any kind of quality guarantee. Depends on the quality and accuracy of the tube really. On a high resolution LCD you can get each pixel so small it is simply seen as a point on your field of vision- a sort of ideal sharpness yes, but at these resolutions the resulting image would be hilariously small and not very playable. A good rescaling algorithm would not only be able to match the "original clarity" but possibly exceed it, bringing out unseen details only possible on the high resolution display. You know how people say an upscaling DVD player is almost as good as HD? Or how programs are sold on the premise of turning SD holiday videos into "HD"? All that is is basically a high quality resizing. And modern GPUs, even CPUs are more than capable of that in realtime (I use it for my DVDs.) It's the same kind of resolution we're dealing with here to boot.
Not that your display or display driver rescaling has the same kind of quality as an upscaling DVD player, but in principle there'd be nothing wrong with them having it.

melgour: IThis is simply an old game that relies primarily on the use of pre-rendered images. There are no resolution settings within the game, it runs on the one and only resolution it runs in.