Display sizes + Game blurring?

[zeroscares]

Long story short, I'm trying to test if resolution adjustments work well in VX Ace on different computers (not the regular/non-edited Alt+Enter fullscreen), and different monitors gave wildly different results hahahaha

I tried it with:
-Zeus' Fullscreen++
-Basic Window Resizer v1.1 By V.M of D.T.
-Virtual Fullscreen by inatsuka
-LNX25_ゲーム画面倍率切替 (Game Screen configuration) by ももまる (Momomaru)

I noticed that a large screen size (one in question 2736 x 1824) would be fine until I scaled up, and then it became blurry! Same happened for small screen sizes (1280x720). I also tested on different OS, but it didn't seem to change anything??

Does any resolution blurring happen because of weird / uncommon window sizes?

 

[Sixth]

If you mean it becomes blurry when you switch to full screen mode, than yes, that's a normal behaviour.
It scales the game's screen according to the screen resolution of the user's PC, and whenever scaling happens, the quality of anything graphical becomes lower (not just in VX Ace, in every other program as well, it is how images work in general).
Different rendering modes may help to make it less visible, but the default engine for VX Ace only has one, and that will indeed make the game blurry when the scaling is not 1:1.

RGD (I saw you over there, so you know what that means already, I guess) offers another method (nearest neighbor) that will keep the sharpness, but will make the game look more pixelated instead of making it blurry.

Bottom line, you can't do anything about this, some kind of quality loss will always happen if the game's resolution is not the same as the monitor's resolution during full screen mode.

 

[zeroscares]

That is awful hahahaha, and I didn't mean specifically the Alt+Enter fullscreen but I think I got my answer anyways. To make sure I get this right...no one can guarantee 100% consistent nearest-neighbour sharp resolution scaling with the regular exe?

It is surprising how bad the default exe is I wish the RGD was in stable condition but that bandaid fix will do for now.

 

[Sheklon]

You can resize the screen up to 640x480 with a script such as Yanfly's Core Engine. This should help with giving a wider view of the map and it would fit just slightly better in larger resolutions.
But you can't resize further than that.

 

[Roninator2]

But you can't resize further than that.

you can. There are various ways, but they are not 100% clean.
1. high res dll. (if you can find it - it's not approved and we can't share it (if we had it))
2. kk20 made a resolution upscale script but it's a little picky.

 

[Sheklon]

you can. There are various ways, but they are not 100% clean.
1. high res dll. (if you can find it - it's not approved and we can't share it (if we had it))
2. kk20 made a resolution upscale script but it's a little picky.

I did mean "can't" as "shouldn't", it's against EULA and not supported by the default engine, so it might end up bringing more trouble than solutions.

 

[zeroscares]

You can resize the screen up to 640x480 with a script such as Yanfly's Core Engine. This should help with giving a wider view of the map and it would fit just slightly better in larger resolutions.
But you can't resize further than that.

That's not what I asked hahaha
I meant this: I found that increasing the resolution (not the default window screen size) through third-party resources (not necessarily the default alt+enter fullscreen method) still made the game window look blurry, even if they used non-blurry upscaling methods.
Example!: Fullscreen++ should make everything crisp when upscaling! But, it showed up as blurry on some computer monitors.

 

[Sheklon]

That's not what I asked hahaha
I meant this: I found that increasing the resolution (not the default window screen size) through third-party resources (not necessarily the default alt+enter fullscreen method) still made the game window look blurry, even if they used non-blurry upscaling methods.
Example!: Fullscreen++ should make everything crisp when upscaling! But, it showed up as blurry on some computer monitors.

Yes, but that's what @Sixth was trying to explain. The graphics become blurry because you're taking smaller pictures and resizing them to a larger screen resolution, so the pixels have to be "augmented" to fit in the new format. Since VXA doesn't use any A.I. to recreate the images pixel-by-pixel, this process makes the graphics look blurry and low-res. It's like zooming in on a small image in Windows.

 

[zeroscares]

Yes, but that's what @Sixth was trying to explain. The graphics become blurry because you're taking smaller pictures and resizing them to a larger screen resolution, so the pixels have to be "augmented" to fit in the new format. Since VXA doesn't use any A.I. to recreate the images pixel-by-pixel, this process makes the graphics look blurry and low-res. It's like zooming in on a small image in Windows.

Again, not what I said or asked! I'll use visuals to explain this time so you understand!

This is in the context of using third-party resources or any method other than VX ace default fullscreen to adjust resolution. The default fullscreen method is so bad.....

Anyways, zeus81's script to resolution change, should upscale an image like the right image here, labeled "NEAREST"

I tried this first on a 1920x1080 px monitor and it worked fine! However, if I tried it on other varying monitor sizes (all 16:9 aspect ratios, though) it gave me bizarre results that look more like the image on the left, labeled "LINEAR"

So my question was: Does this strange inconsistent happen at random due to display sizes? I know it's not the script itself, and I know it's not "because that's how images work", because I'm specifically trying to upscale nearest-neighbour style

 

[bgillisp]

The thing is, if you do the upcoming resolution / your game resolution for either length or width and don't get an integer, the algorithm has to guess to fill in the pixels, which is where the blur comes in. And honestly if one could upscale images perfectly you know they'd use it to make security images much better than have you seen this man and its a smear. There is NO perfect scaling image algorithm out there at the moment.

In my experience, 640 x 480 is the best one to use, as you can then use windows compatibilty mode to force it at that resolution and then there is no upscaling going on.

BTW if you are doing the default ACE resolution of 544 x 416, then the upscale is doing:

1920 / 544 = 3.529 pixels per original pixel which cannot be done (no such thing as a partial pixel), so you will get blur due to guesses as it tries to decide between 3 or 4 pixels per original pixel and estimate the differences, and:

1080 / 416 = 2.596, same issue as the other. Since you got weird stretch/shifts in both directions and they are uneven its going to be ugly at best.

 

[zeroscares]

The thing is, if you do the upcoming resolution / your game resolution for either length or width and don't get an integer, the algorithm has to guess to fill in the pixels, which is where the blur comes in. And honestly if one could upscale images perfectly you know they'd use it to make security images much better than have you seen this man and its a smear. There is NO perfect scaling image algorithm out there at the moment.

In my experience, 640 x 480 is the best one to use, as you can then use windows compatibilty mode to force it at that resolution and then there is no upscaling going on.

BTW if you are doing the default ACE resolution of 544 x 416, then the upscale is doing:

1920 / 544 = 3.529 pixels per original pixel which cannot be done (no such thing as a partial pixel), so you will get blur due to guesses as it tries to decide between 3 or 4 pixels per original pixel and estimate the differences, and:

1080 / 416 = 2.596, same issue as the other. Since you got weird stretch/shifts in both directions and they are uneven its going to be ugly at best.

Hahahaha, that's still not what I'm asking about though
Here's a scenario:
- Imaginary Game is 16:9 aspect ratio - say 768 by 432 (weird size...)
- Imaginary Game can be upscaled (NOT WITH THE DEFAULT ACE FULLSCREEN) to, hm, double its size. It changes the size but doesn't change the aspect ratio!
- You test it on two computers who should be able to handle that 2x size. (Screen 1 is 1920 by 1080, and Screen 2 can be 1600 by 900)
- On screen 1, it works as meant to be! Everything upscales normally, it's crisp. So, you know that the script does its job, and it's not a problem with the game size... But, On screen 2, Imaginary game is suddenly blurry! Even if it should be able to show the image like monitor one.

So, with that information...I imagine this is a problem with the exe itself. At least, that's what I want to know!

 

[Sixth]

Example!: Fullscreen++ should make everything crisp when upscaling! But, it showed up as blurry on some computer monitors.

That script does not change the image interpolation mode at all, therefore it does not change the scaling method used for the images displayed in the game's window.
In short, it can't make everything crisp on all types of monitors, because it still uses the linear interpolation mode, as that is the default mode for all windows created.
Everything you see in the game's window is made by displaying images. Rescaling them will make them lose quality, no matter what you do, but depending on the interpolation mode used, the rate and type of the quality loss can be changed.

and I know it's not "because that's how images work", because I'm specifically trying to upscale nearest-neighbour style

How to: Use Interpolation Mode to Control Image Quality During Scaling - Windows Forms .NET Framework

As you can see, it IS because that's how upscaling/downscaling works for images in general.
The only thing you can do to change this is to change the interpolation mode used by the images, and that would require knowing the full structure of the Sprite/Bitmap classes. Just guessing here, because that is the most logical place to set that, but since I never saw the original code, I can't know for sure where or how is it set, or if it's even a per-image property or a global one.

RGD changes the whole drawing method, which is why it's possible to change the interpolation method with that, since the programmer who wrote that has access to the source code and can change it whenever he wants to.

Also, note that RGD's default is set to nearest neighbor, so if your first test was with that installed, while the other were without it, than that's the reason why you got different results on different PCs.

Ohh, and no, the aspect ratio got nothing to do with this. Depending on what the ratio is, the quality loss can be smaller/higher, but there will still be a quality loss regardless of it.

 

[zeroscares]

OK! That makes more sense now. I'll keep compatibility mode in mind, also.

 

[bgillisp]

It still does depend some on the resolution of the other monitor. The monitor has to put something there and if the math is off then you will get blur. If you get an integer they can fill it in by duplicating the pixels 1:1 though. That is why most upscales are 2x and 3x that work well.

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