Bilinear filtering on Windows 8.1

[kode54]

Ahboy, you silly people still using ZSNES are in for a treat.

As a side note, it looks like the DirectDraw implementation has also been changed in 8.1 Preview so that blits use bilinear filtering, like the majority of hardware drivers did on XP. If so, this is a nice bonus for older programs that are DirectDraw-based.

[joe_devore]

COOL ^_^ =D SWEET!

ps: I have updates for an old Chrono Trigger glitch thread
Chrono Trigger: reoccuring gfx bug (intro)

[Rashidi]

oh noes, extra vaseline are being rubbed on the monitor

[Yuber]

I try to avoid blurry bilinear filtering, especially when better smoothing filters are available. Although they hurt visual accuracy, xBR filters smooth things out enough to make BF redundant(at least for sprite-based games). I like the oil painted look of xBR filters a LOT more than full screen blurring BF. Vaseline on your monitor is a pretty good simile, especially when used alone.

In MAME, I like substituting HLSL filters for BF. The ones I use blur things a bit, but they look much better than BF. Better yet, use MAME Plus & apply other filters if you don't care about visual accuracy.

[blackmyst]

I like the oil painted look of xBR filters a LOT more than full screen blurring BF. Vaseline on your monitor is a pretty good simile, especially when used alone.

Even bare bilinear, itself being much, much worse than NTSC or even BF+scanlines, is still about a million times better at not ruining the fuck out of pixel art than whatever horrible vector approximation anyone comes up with.

[Yuber]

It certainly affects visual accuracy, but my main goal is smoothing the image so it's not all pixelated & jaggy. I have an old 1080p monitor that generally doesn't handle CRT/NTSC filters well, and 5xBR doesn't fuck up most pixel art enough for it to really bother me. In CT, the character sprite warping definitely took some getting used to, but it's infinitely smoother than the HQx filters. As a whole, I think xBR filters actually preserve slightly more detail than, say, HQ4x. HQx is better for character sprites(namely eyes) but xBR is better for the environments, at least imo. All pixelation & jaggies are gone, but you're right that xBR hurts visual accuracy a lot.

If I find some nice CRT filters for 9x & FB Alpha that look good on my monitor, I'll use em. 9x & FBA are the only emus I use xBR filters in. I generally use HLSL based CRT-type filters(MAME) or HQx in other emus. If I want 100% visual accuracy, I'll play the real games on my CRT. I prefer 100% total smoothness to a pixelated, jagged mess. Straight BF preserves more details, true, but the IQ is shit on my monitor, and that's not even counting the blurriness.

IMO, 5xBR makes the spell effects in CT look much better, because the IQ is almost as smooth as Vida Guerra's sugary sweet ass.