jDoom is outta focus

I'm runnin' XP with a GEForce4 MX440 video card and a Gateway FPD1730 monitor. When I play jDoom, the mid to far textures and othere thingies are focused, but the close up is not at all, nor is the TITLEPIC or the status bar. I LOVE how good jDoom looks, but the out of focus-ness hurts my immediately and leaves me with a headache. I want to play, but I simply can't with the current situation. Can sombody help me?

Umm, the question is, are you experiencing the regular or some abnormal kind of blurriness?

Try disabling FSAA for the video card.

It seems abnormal, like when my monitor first came it was outta focus like that, but I hit the auto/set button and it fixed it. Not for jDoom, though. What's FSAA?

If it's abnormally blurred, have you checked if it happens with other hardware-rendered programs or is it just JDoom?

FSAA = Full Screen Anti-Aliasing

I run games like May Payne and Aliens vs. Predator 2 without any problems, and ZDoom as well. I downloaded the hi-res textures and they're not blurred. The sprites are atill outta whack, though. Also, I can't find out how to mess with my video card. Could you point me in the right direction?

You sure its not just the low resolution of all the textures/sprites in Doom?

Try another GL port and see if you get the same thing...

Control Panel->Display->Settings->Advanced, you should see the settings for your Video Card.

Thanks for your help, GameArena. I disabled Anti-Aliasing and it still looked crappy. I tried EdgeGL and got the same damn blurriness. I definateley wasn't present in normal/Direct 3D/whatever Edge. Damn it. Is there any to fix it? I'm runnin' at 1280 x 1024, by the way.

I'm guessing you're just not use to the low quality sprites. If it really bugs you, download the JDoom model pack from the site. But perhaps a screenshot would help us more with helping you ;)

I downloaded DirectX 9.0a, since my previous version had a problem with Direct3D, and ran jDoom in Direct3D mode. The textures and sprites were only blurred at very close range--problem solved, I guess. By the way, what's the difference between OpenGL and Direct3D? Isn't OpenGL the one that has a problem with certain Doom tricks?

OpenGL and Direct3D are both merely interfaces to the hardware and have nothing to do with the way the engine tries to render or misrender tricks. An engine that fails to draw a trick correctly in OpenGL will do the same thing wrong in Direct3D.

I've been complaining about the blur for years. I think it's called mipmapping (been a year since I bothered with the engine cause it hurt my eyes so much). I remember an old old version of JHeretic having a mipmapping option to disable up-close blur, but not far-away blur. I would think later versions could disable it entirely. Look for a mipmapping option somewhere in the display config and see if it has a disabled setting.

Heh, filtering and mipmapping are so easily confused :) Mipmapping is using lower-res textures for surfaces and is dependant on both view distance and view angle. Filtering (bilinear/trilinear/anisotropic, etc) is the smoothing of the texture. In ZDoomGL you can disable filtering with the gl_texture_mode cvar (set it to GL_NEAREST for the software look or GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR for the "pixels up close, smooth far away" look). GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR is the default setting. Note that it's case sensitive...

What's the problem with filtering? It certainly looks better (and more realistic) than the huge pixels of software rendering. I always thought this was the main reason to use a hardware renderer for Doom after all.

timmie said:

Heh, filtering and mipmapping are so easily confused :)

Yeah I'll say, when I disabled the nearby mipmapping, the nearby blur went away, so I guess Jaakko had them confused as well :P

Graf Zahl:
What's the problem with filtering? It certainly looks better (and more realistic) than the huge pixels of software rendering. I always thought this was the main reason to use a hardware renderer for Doom after all.

The problem with Doom is that its textures are such a low resolution that they look horribly out of focus (as the subject of this thread states) instead of smooth. This excessive blur has a negative effect on your eyes' focal system, especially when viewed for extended periods of time. This wouldn't be an issue if Doom's textures were rendered at, say, 5 - 10 times their original resolution.

Lüt said:

The problem with Doom is that its textures are such a low resolution that they look horribly out of focus (as the subject of this thread states) instead of smooth. This excessive blur has a negative effect on your eyes' focal system, especially when viewed for extended periods of time. This wouldn't be an issue if Doom's textures were rendered at, say, 5 - 10 times their original resolution.

Never had that problem. On the other hand big blocky pixels give me eyestrain. I prefer smooth. What screen resolution are you using. I found that a lower screen resolution has much more impact on blurriness than texture filtering. I am normally using 1024x768 or 1280x1024. In 640x480 jDoom looks like shit on my computer.

Of course it will. Either way, y'all wouldn't have to worry about low-res textures if you downloaded the Hi-Res texture pack. Everyone, download it now! Seriously! It will change you, I swear.

RTDscout said:

Of course it will. Either way, y'all wouldn't have to worry about low-res textures if you downloaded the Hi-Res texture pack. Everyone, download it now! Seriously! It will change you, I swear.

Why should I? This piece of garbage ruins the entire atmosphere of Doom. I looked through it for half an hour, tested it shortly and immediately dismissed it. Nothing I need. The original textures are the only real way to play Doom, even in OpenGL. (Not to mention that you practically cannot enjoy any add on with additional textures because they don't fit together anymore!)

Well, I think they are good. They do definately screw up alignment, though (mainly switches).

RTDscout said:

Well, I think they are good.

Ok, the hi-res BIGDOOR1 texture was terrific. It just didn't fit in with most of the rest of the textures. Which makes the few outstanding textures in the pack rather useless as it is brought down by some really ugly ones. In the last version I checked BIGDOOR2-4 stood out as extremely ugly. A lot of textures seem to be slapped together in a few minutes.

They do definately screw up alignment, though (mainly switches).

Which is rather poor. A solid piece of work doesn't have such problems (or inconsistencies as mentioned above)

If the entire pack were more consistent in terms of quality I probably would have less issues with it (although I wouldn't use it anyway...)