Texture Filtering

I used to absolutely hate texture filtering and had no idea why anyone would want to do that to Doom. Now, after getting Quake and Hexen 2 to run in GL, I can't get enough of the stuff. What are your opinions on this controversial feature?

Bad.

Yes, if properly ground and filtered, coffee can have that most fitting texture we all love.

Bad. I love all the blocky, pixelated awesomeness.

It isn't so much filtered textures that I'm opposed to, but when you try to apply the same filter to say, sprites, it just looks plain horrible.

It makes borders between textures and alignment-based panel-stretching stick out like a sore thumb.

Let us play our 20 year old game in peace and take your "filtered textures" back to Halo, where they belong...

*grumble*

...today's youth, tsk.

Oddly enough I go back and fourth.

Sometimes I can't stand how much of a blurry mess it makes things when you filter it, and at other times I can't stand how pixelated it is if you don't filter it.

I personally find that 4x Resize in GLBoom-Plus along with Linear filtering makes things look great though. It's not pixelated, and the smaller details that are normally lost when filtering it are still present.

When I'm playing either Vanilla or Chocolate-Doom however, the lower resolution tends to make the texture's pixelation less severe.

"omg guiz i can finaly play dewm wit not shitay graphix!! ftw!! <insert too many smilies>"

I prefer not to have a texture filter on. I like the original look better.

I play GZDoom with the 4x resize on. Without it the GL blurs things up a little, and the status bar looks horrible fullsize. The resize generally makes everything look refreshed and new to me, and makes the status bar usable fullsize again.

I have no problem with software renderer modes though, as I quite like the look of the XBLA Doom on my TV, and thats basically just upscaled a lot iirc

I used to be a big texture filtering fan, GZDoom with WASD and mouselook was the only way I'd play.

However, after getting into demo watching/recording and building an actual DOS machine to play DOOM.EXE, I've actually gone back to software ports and lower res.

I guess I just prefer the classic look more.

I like resize on the patches. It looks good on sprites and textures too, but I don't think it's worth the loss of framerate on my computer.

edit: I changed my mind. I guess the framerate thing was just temporary cause I'm fine now. I think I like resize better. I dunno, I'll probably have changed my mind again in a few hours anyway.

edit2: Okay, so the sprites take forever to load and I can't run nuts.wad in glboom-plus anymore. I'm turning this off.

The problem I am having is that it's applied uniformly. I can see a few places where the blurroview filter could do some good. (IE, mainly organic textures) But for the most part in Doom. They just fuck shit up.

When I made Phobia though. I made it to work with the filtering. I tried to make textures and sprites that would benefit from the filtering. To a degree anyway.

BTW. The HX2QSUPARFILTERING that ports like GZDoom got. I hate those. They make doom look like a truly messy booger.

kristus said:

BTW. The HX2QSUPARFILTERING that ports like GZDoom got. I hate those. They make doom look like a truly messy booger.

I think smoothing algorithms like Super Eagle and 2xSai work really well for console emulators (Genesis, SNES, etc). When resizing little PAL/NTSC to a big computer screen, a little help on the visuals is nice.

Tho I agree they look like balls for Doom.

kristus said:

BTW. The HX2QSUPARFILTERING that ports like GZDoom got. I hate those. They make doom look like a truly messy booger.

That's why it's an option, and even one that if off by default.

kristus said:

BTW. The HX2QSUPARFILTERING that ports like GZDoom got. I hate those. They make doom look like a truly messy booger.

Agreed. But some people still want it that's why it is there.

When I want pixels, I use nearest_mipmap_linear + aniso 16x + AA 4x

esselfortium said:

It makes borders between textures and alignment-based panel-stretching stick out like a sore thumb.

Aren't boundaries between sidedefs also filtered?

As for whether I choose texture filtering on or off, I turn it off for Doom based GL ports and look, now it's much better. I think it looks good for high resolution or shadered textures, as in Hi-Res packs or Quake 3 Arena or Doom 3.

Gez said:

That's why it's an option, and even one that if off by default.

Where is this option?

DuckReconMajor said:

Where is this option?

Options -> Display Options -> OpenGL Options -> Texture Options -> High Quality Resize Mode.
You can set it there to be off (default), 2x, 3x or 4x.

Once you've done that, nothing's changed, because you also need to enable it selectively for textures, sprites and fonts (all three are, too, off by default).

Software Rendering is the way to go! I HATE the fact that the lightning looks worse and the textures get filtered in GL mode.
I can turn off the texture filter in GL, but i can't make the lightning look right, it shouldn't darken the textures, it should change colors in relation to the COLORMAP.
Play levels that are very dark and play them in GL and then in Software mode, you will see how better it looks in Software mode.

TomoAlien said:

you will see how better it looks in Software mode.

Arguable.

At what point do we make the distinction between "OpenGL mode looks like shit" and "I have been playing doom with a software renderer for over 10 years, I don't watch switch." ?

I agree with Mike. As far as lighting goes, they are definitely different, but one is not better than the other.

For bright levels I prefer the diminishing algorithm the software renderer applies. For really dark levels (<64) I'd probably prefer GL lighting as you can actually see something as opposed to seeing nothing in software mode and probably suffering a quick death.

Mike.Reiner said:

Arguable.

That depends if the map was created in OpenGL in mind or for original Doom.
I like the Software mode better, but if a map requires OpenGL it's not a big problem.

TomoAlien said:

Software Rendering is the way to go! I HATE the fact that the lightning looks worse and the textures get filtered in GL mode.

Lightning? Doom doesn't even have that! :D

I can turn off the texture filter in GL, but i can't make the lightning look right, it shouldn't darken the textures, it should change colors in relation to the COLORMAP.

It should? Why? Light doesn't work like that so the software renderer clearly does it wrong. :P Light doesn't band and it doesn't alter colors inconsistently. It gradually weakens until it gets too dark to see anything.

Play levels that are very dark and play them in GL and then in Software mode, you will see how better it looks in Software mode.

In the software renderer it quickly degrades to an indistinguishable mess of dark colors.


I have to concur with the previous posters, all your points are a matter of taste, not fact. Be happy with the software renderer but there's as many people telling that it is shit as there's those who prefer it over hardware rendering.

Graf Zahl said:

Lightning? Doom doesn't even have that! :D

It does now, check out the realm667 special effects gallery. Probably some people have overused them and players have been staring at them with fascination... which is quite hard to do with the tiny duration involved :P

Though I'm pretty sure now that he meant lighting indeed, because that's much more likely. For example, I think diminishing is lacking in GZDoom. I'll see (or not) when I get back home where I have GZDoom. Doomsday addressed some eyecandy complaints by lighting the corners of the world slightly, so it looks 'prettier' (not that it's bad) and adding a small bit of diminishing too.

The main problem of hardware rendering hasn't got much to do with this topic: the problem is rendering nicely all those 2d sprites in the 3d world.

printz said:

It does now, check out the realm667 special effects gallery.

That's no Doom, that's a space station ZDoom features. It would be truer to say that Doom has lightning since Hexen.

Anyway, de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. I prefer when red darkens into dark red, rather than into brownish grey, personally, but to each their own. Having the renderer follow the colormap allows for some interesting tricks sometimes.

printz said:

Though I'm pretty sure now that he meant lighting indeed, because that's much more likely.

Do you think I didn't know? I was just making fun of it as the smilie indicated.

For example, I think diminishing is lacking in GZDoom. I'll see (or not) when I get back home where I have GZDoom. Doomsday addressed some eyecandy complaints by lighting the corners of the world slightly, so it looks 'prettier' (not that it's bad) and adding a small bit of diminishing too.

The effect is there but quite limited, especially on older hardware. On newer cards with proper shader support you will see some brighter areas around the player but I decided to keep the brightness level down because with smoother gradients it'd look like the player was a strong lightbulb otherwise which, if I may say so, looked quite ridiculous.

i use skulltag's opengl render. i find it looks better than GZdoom's opengl in my opinion. and i keep texture filter off unless im playing risen3d, jdoom, skulltag with 3d models, etc.

I really like the games with palettes that are smooth and clean, like all other doom engine games besides doom. I also sometimes like to load up that one modified Doom palette that hijacked the pink range to make smoother red range transitions, and it also fixed all other ugly brown transitions.

And I would really like to have linear mipmapping with no texture filtering, for clean textures at a distance and pixellated goodness up close.

Ultraboy94 said:

i use skulltag's opengl render. i find it looks better than GZdoom's opengl in my opinion.

That's impossible because it's precisely the same.

The only difference is that Skulltag autoloads some dynamic light definitions whereas in GZDoom you have to add them to the INI's autoload section yourself (as in: Leaving the options to the user instead of forcing them upon him.)