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Myst seriesUgly graphics(17 posts)(17 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 04, 2009
Running Windows 7 and have tied multiple different compatibility modes and settings. Game runs fine but graphics look like C**P....Any ideas?
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Posted December 04, 2009
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satucker: Running Windows 7 and have tied multiple different compatibility modes and settings. Game runs fine but graphics look like C**P....Any ideas?

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?
Posted December 05, 2009
I think they are worse. I played the game originally and they were beautiful images given they were essntially paintings with hotspots for action. They now have jaggies and HUGE pixels. This would not have looked good 20 years ago so this is not graphics snobbery this is some issue with resolution or colors or soemthing. I am running 1920x1200 native and a gtx 295 so I suspect some kind of "hobbling" is necessary but have already tried various setting in compatibility mode to no affect. Still HUGE pixels...
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satucker: Running Windows 7 and have tied multiple different compatibility modes and settings. Game runs fine but graphics look like C**P....Any ideas?
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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?
Posted December 05, 2009
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.
Post edited December 05, 2009 by melgour
Posted December 05, 2009
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?
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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.
Posted December 05, 2009
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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?

If you change the resolution of your monitor to the lowest it can handle on the desktop that would probably help quite a bit in making the image look better.
Posted December 05, 2009
It was probably running on a 1:1 resolution:pixels ratio on a CRT back when you played it, so scaling wouldn't have been a problem. You probably get ugly jaggies because the game doesn't support anything more than a simple pixel doubling scaling. Proper interpolation, either in the screen or the graphics card should make it look nicer. Find out what the games native resolution is and run it in that instead of your screens resolution. If the scaling still looks ugly try enabling GPU scaling in your graphics control panel.
Posted December 05, 2009
No, not at all.. All that would do is make the dekstop stretch out the way the game is. What you're seeing is a limitation of LCD monitors. They are made with a specific "native" resolution in mind. Whatever you set your resolution as in windows/whatever resolution a program runs in, it will always be stretched to the native resolution, since that is a physical limitation of the LCD technology. CRTs do not suffer from this problem, as they are not locked to a specific "grid" (for the lack of a better term).
Quite simply, the lack of a sharp image is just your monitor upscaling the image to fit it's native resolution. You can set your video drivers to do a 1:1 scale image, the way a CRT monitor does, but then that means it will only display on a fraction of the monitor, but in the original clarity.
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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?
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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.
Post edited December 05, 2009 by melgour
Posted December 06, 2009
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.
Post edited December 06, 2009 by BmB
Posted December 07, 2009
Nostalgia... it's a bitch.
Posted December 07, 2009
I wasn't actually replying to you, but to the topic creator.
You are of course correct in the things you say, we are in essence arguing the same thing. This 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. Therefore, there are really only two options here, both dealing with the way the GPU interprets the image for a significantly larger LCD. Either it can go 1:1 and display as a tiny box, but with the original sharpness. Or it can use a variety of stretching methods (stretching while keeping the aspect ratio, stretching to fit, etc.). Regardless, no amount of rescaling done by a GPU is going to make a game that is maybe possibly 640x look good on a 1920x resolution. Especially when we are talking about still images.
In short, StingingVelvet is right.
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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.
Post edited December 07, 2009 by melgour
Posted December 09, 2009
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.
Posted December 10, 2009
BmB, why are we arguing. This is silly and pointless. We are arguing the same exact thing, I have no idea why you keep going on about this, it is of no merit to the topic creator at all. I merely stated that he has two choices, play in 1:1 ratio which as you said would be ridiculously small on an LCD, or he can use an upscaling/stretching method on his GPU to bring it up to his screens native resolution.
What you are saying of course applies but is of no help here. We are not here to discuss our personal views of upscaling methods but to help the topic creator, so please, let's drop this.
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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.
Posted December 11, 2009
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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.

Just to put things in perspective, the resolution of the backgrounds (in ME) is 544x333. So blowing it up almost four times without quality filtering is going to be ugly.
OG.
Posted December 21, 2009
Just curious, what does the "640x480" setting do, then?
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Myst seriesUgly graphics(17 posts)(17 posts)
(17 posts)