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NoXion

Do you use texture filtering? Why or why not?

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I honestly didn't really pay much attention to it at first, but after someone spoke up about it after seeing a screenshot I had taken in-game with "ew barf that texture filtering" I turned it off in GZDoom out of curiosity and it became obvious to me. Now I have it turned off because it really does look gross by comparison. I can see what the intended effect is by trying to smooth pixels out, but all it really does is make things look blurry. 

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I use texture filtering in GZDoom, but just for stuff in the distance (minification filtering only). I like being able to mostly eliminate shimmer and temporal aliasing for distant objects while maintaining crisp pixels for stuff up close. To me its the best of both worlds and doesn't look like trash due to blurring.

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It feels like if the textures where replaced with chewed gun. So no. I still wonder why is the default option on GZDoom.

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22 minutes ago, Endless said:

I still wonder why is the default option on GZDoom.

Simple difference of opinion.  Graf is one of the people who think the opposite and can't see why we think chunky pixels looks better.

 

In regards to the original question, I suspect that most people would prefer a setting that preserves the chunky pixels up close.  But I've developed software long enough to know that a majority of users will not open the options menu under any circumstance.  Options only exist to satisfy vocal minorities.  So odds are random youtube videos will be using the default settings.  I can't prove my assertion true so while I'd argue for changing the default, Graf's opinion is just as valid.

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No, because it makes everything look like garbage. In D64 however it makes sense since the game and assets were designed with it in mind.

 

Not PC classic Doom though.

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Huge no-no, old games like this with small dimensions for textures and spritework in general don't benefit from filtering whatsoever.

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I do not use texture filtering in Classic Doom at all. I think it looks very bad on the low res pixel art and I prefer to have the visuals look as authentic as possible. (I'm also one of those people that meticulously tweaked GZDoom to look as vanilla as possible for the same reasons).

For Doom 64, I do use texture filtering as that is the intended look and the assets were created with it in mind.

For anyone who is curious, this is what my GZDoom looks like.image.png.f8193100009ab63cd837d48dad129303.png

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No, I keep texture filtering off for the same reasons everybody mentioned. Also in GZDoom I turn the decals off as I hate dark splotches on everything.

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4 hours ago, intacowetrust said:

I use texture filtering in GZDoom, but just for stuff in the distance (minification filtering only). I like being able to mostly eliminate shimmer and temporal aliasing for distant objects while maintaining crisp pixels for stuff up close. To me its the best of both worlds and doesn't look like trash due to blurring.

 

You mean one of the "None" settings then, I think (Linear all the way to Trillinear). I myself use "None (Trillinear)".

 

11 hours ago, uber said:

and I wouldn't be surprised if other non-software ones have it that way too.

 

I think Doomsday and the original Vavoom have it ON by default too. Other GL-compatible ports such as 3DGE, however, no idea.

 

GlBoom actually has it turned OFF by default though, but has two rescaling settings turned ON instead, for whatever reason.

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Never ever. I use Eternity Engine and it does not have OGL mode, just gorgeous Software Renderer. Doom in OGL even without filters looks worse to me.

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Cases and Cases honestly, if anybody wants their crisp pixels on vanilla Doom, that's perfectly fine because it was designed that way. The issue begins when people uses this as excuse to not turn it ON when needed because the mod/map author made the thing with the Filtering in mind and the majority of GZDoom-oriented mods actually works under that, rare cases can be found due the artstyle requiring it. Diabolus Ex or Golden Souls for example, they requires the chunky pixels, but in the opposite side there's like any map or mod made by @Remilia Scarlet or @Ed or even myself that requires the filtering on because we had it in mind when making the stuff.

Speaking frankly, GZDoom having it on by default is no sin because the broad variety of Source Ports and if you want to "just play Doom", you still have a plenty of options that naturally have the unfiltered pixels like Eternity Engine, prBoom+, Chocolate Doom, Crispy Doom etc... For me, GZDoom's proposal is still the same as ZDoom which is mess with the game completely to give it full moddability PLUS extending that to the graphical department as well.

I have no idea why people wage a war between the graphical settings of GZDoom when the Source Port's purpose is actually to go beyond what the game is, instead of just existing to make the game work "as is" in modern operational systems.

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1 hour ago, Loud Silence said:

Never ever. I use Eternity Engine and it does not have OGL mode, just gorgeous Software Renderer. Doom in OGL even without filters looks worse to me.

For me, GlBoom+ offered the best colors of all OGL ports I tried, and it looks better than the software renderer.

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2 hours ago, seed said:

You mean one of the "None" settings then, I think (Linear all the way to Trillinear). I myself use "None (Trillinear)".

 

I use the same setting "None(Trilinear)". Reduces shimmering on far away textures which still maintaining pixelated looks at close-to-medium ranges.

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16 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

For me, GlBoom+ offered the best colors of all OGL ports I tried, and it looks better than the software renderer.

 

Better color reproduction? How so? GlBoom looks the same to me as GZDoom does, more-or-less (thinking of the different sector lights here).

 

But different colors is not something I could ever spot.

 

1 hour ago, Zanieon said:

 any map or mod made by @Remilia Scarlet 

 

Pure personal preference. I've played a few of their maps and would never choose the filtered look over the unfiltered one for them.

 

Unless the mods incorporated stuff such as PBR or upscaled textures, texture filtering is forever staying turned off as far as I'm concerned.

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2 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

 

I use the same setting "None(Trilinear)". Reduces shimmering on far away textures which still maintaining pixelated looks at close-to-medium ranges.

I always thought the "none (x-linear)" options didn't matter that much. The More You Know, I guess!

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29 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

For me, GlBoom+ offered the best colors of all OGL ports I tried, and it looks better than the software renderer.

 

 

Check your color correction settings. If those are identical there shouldn't be a difference.

 

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16 minutes ago, InDOOMnesia said:

I always thought the "none (x-linear)" options didn't matter that much. The More You Know, I guess!

 

They exist for a reason ;)

 

Also, the anisotropic filtering also affects the "none (x-linear)". I recommend 8x AF or 16x AF for best result.

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No, but I have been playing with high FXAA, which gives a nice blended-but-still-pixellated effect. It's kinda weird but I like it. It makes the game look like grainy digital film to me.

Screenshot_Doom_20200705_095426.png.0d621c4361424e946e0e39a381486dc3.png

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I think GZ would look infinitely better out of the box if texture filtering was some flavor of None, lighting was Software (or Vanilla, that's a new one and it's not documented in the wiki) and SW banding was turned on.

 

Before:

67c5f0b888.png

 

I wold think that making a comment about how blurry the textures are could be appropriate, but you'd have to be able to see them first.

 

After:

df114e64ce.png

 

I dunno about you, but I think this looks way better, and all that was necessary was to change a few defaults.

 

And software, for comparison:

bb328cca07.png

 

Okay, so there's a few more differences, but I'm not one to nitpick, those three settings get you 95% of the way there.

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I personally dislike the pixelated look. Everyone has their reason for wanting to use filtering or not, but my personal reason is because I grew up without hardware that could do it. And I remember when it was a big deal to have nice texture filtering. So I'm probably a product of my time. That said, I design my things with texture filtering in mind, like @Zanieon mentioned.

 

It's probably one reason why I purposely remove my glasses when I play Amid Evil.

 

The only games I don't use any sort of filtering on are universally 16-bit console games and earlier, and arcade games. 

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Fun fact: to make Chocolate Doom look like GZDoom, edit chocolate-doom.cfg and set max_scaling_buffer_pixels to some ridiculously low value like 100000.

 

If you delete the line entirely, the default value will be used on the next run.

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14 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

I personally dislike the pixelated look. Everyone has their reason for wanting to use filtering or not, but my personal reason is because I grew up without hardware that could do it. And I remember when it was a big deal to have nice texture filtering

 

The art has to be made with texture filtering in mind.  For example, if you turned off filtering on most N64 games, you would end up with gigantic pixelated soup that doesn't look flattering at all because the art was designed to be filtered.  Doom is like that going the other way.

 

14 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

The only games I don't use any sort of filtering on are universally 16-bit console games and earlier, and arcade games.  

 

Doom actually hails from that exact era of gaming.

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2 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

Doom actually hails from that exact era of gaming. 

Yes, but it's not a console or arcade game, though.  I always use texture filtering in other PC games from that era as well, such as Rott and Quake.  I think it's that my criteria isn't entirely about the era, but also about the platform, as well as the genre.  I don't claim it's logical or correct, just that I tend to like texture filtering in PC games and console games starting with the PlayStation :-P

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9 minutes ago, Remilia Scarlet said:

Yes, but it's not a console or arcade game, though.  I always use texture filtering in other PC games from that era as well, such as Rott and Quake.  I think it's that my criteria isn't entirely about the era, but also about the platform, as well as the genre.  I don't claim it's logical or correct, just that I tend to like texture filtering in PC games and console games starting with the PlayStation :-P

 

Oh absolutely, you like what you like.

 

I just think of it more like what's the better default, and since Doom hails from that era of unfiltered pixel art, no filtering is probably the better default.

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I was definitely of that era that my first FPS titles were experienced without any kind of 3D acceleration. When I got my first GPU and turned it on, I remember being blown away by the upgrade. 

 

So when Doom source ports started to enable Texture Filtering, I immediately turned it on because it was at the time when adding new and exciting graphical upgrades was a whole objective of source port developments, and I was more than happy to go along for the ride.

 

These days though I definitely recognize that Doom looks better without texture filtering. I don't hate it the way some people do, but I do think the original chunky look just suits Doom better. 

 

However, one thing I have absolutely no issue with turning on are GZDoom's lighting enhancements: dynamic lights, shadowmaps, and crucially Ambient Occlusion (which honestly I think is one of the best new additions to the source port). In my mind, Doom's lighting was never low res. It was always very high fidelity, so there's no issue with continuing that philosophy. 

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I dislike texture filtering in anything at all. Turn it off in GZDoom as I hate the smudgy blur-o-vision, and those upscale projects where people turn the sprites into big blobs of smudginess makes me want to hurl. Doom 64 might have been made with it in mind, but it looks so good in the new port with it turned off.

 

I also turn the feature off in every game that gives me an option to on PC, as well as turning off anti-aliasing.

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I definitely use texture filtering (trilinear), always have and always will.

 

I get the appeal of the pixelated look, and it's not necessarily that I think one is better than the other, I've just found that if I'm playing Doom for more than a few minutes -- especially if I'm sitting down to play it for a couple of hours -- the pixelated look at 1920x1080 resolution is a very fast way of making me feel sick to my stomach. A feeling I don't get with texture filtering on. 

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