xbrz problem

[shinra358]

in 2d games, cant get xbrz to work for the actual characters. only for the background and hud. for example, sfa3 max. The characters remain pixelated while xbrz works for everything else.

any way you guys can fix this?

It would also be nice if xbrz could work with the spline upscaler as well.

[LunaMoo]

Not going to get "fixed", since it's not a bug, but an important performance feature - scaling textures in real time via xBRZ is extremely heavy and no commercially available cpu could handle scaling everything in every game at least not in real time. To counter that PPSSPP does two things:
- limits scaling to set texels per frame, which means some textures will be scaled with delay,
- checks for frequently changed textures and avoids scaling them completely althrough it sometimes can still get scaled at later time if texture stops being constantly changed.


If you don't like those limits, you can use texture replacements(under tools->dev tools->near the bottom) which does not have any performance features, you can throw as big texture and as many of them as you want hoping your hardware can handle it since in general loading new textures will be much lighter than scaling them.

Replacing textures that change very often might not be easy either which will happen in many games due to how games dealt with PSP limitations, that's why PPSSPP has optional ini file which when created from UI(only on non-mobiles) will include links that explain it's syntax. You can also check this thread where this feature was discussed from the start and aside from the same links also has some lenghty explanations to many things.


Alternative option is to use upscaling shader like 5xBR, however that doesn't work on the textures, so if the game is not using native PSP resolution, but includes any stretched, low res graphics(like most cash_grab/awful ports of older games as well as pixel art and some pixelated special effects in proper 2D games designed for psp), it will not have a chance to look nearly as good.
Also since textures scaled to anything above will be downscaled to render res and scaling shaders having to use psp native res as an input, it can't really be combined, or to be exact, it can, but due to loss of information it's just a dumb waste of power.

[shinra358]

https://postimg.org/image/pfz6i7q0t/

Is it possible for 2 options to remove those restrictions for use with the game profiler so that the user can choose which games scales all (for example, 2D games like this only)? I do know the slow down in which you are talking about. Can happen alot in 3D games in epsxe. But 2D games are better in performance.

As a mugen creator, the upscaling of fighting game character sprites are a nightmare. Very different than just upscaling the sprites of a 3D environment or hud.

Above is a pic of the ps1 version of sfa3 with xbrz with other filters added. Yes there is some slowdown on 6xbrz but in 4x on this 2D game, fps is steady. So that's why I request these options for xbrz for use with the game profiler built in to ppsspp so we could chose which games to use it on that arent intensive on the fps.

*Use link to view fullscreen for uncompressed view of image (looks better)*

BTW, the 5xbr shader is not so good. It doesn't compare to xbrz.

[LunaMoo]

No and no.

You can't turn off those performance limitations, not without building your own custom ppsspp version with all of it removed from texture cache, I don't think we'll ever have an option to disable it, through at some distant future it's possible there will be ways to just detect which part of the texture is used and which not, as that would remove the problem all together, so far that's not possible through;p.

Despite common missinformation 3D graphics is usually both lighter and easier to emulate. Which get's especially bad when it comes to ports of older games that weren't optimized for the console we're emulating. Comparing ps1 games to psp ports is completely pointless.

And yeah as mentioned 5xBR shader will only look nice with native games that actually provide full resolution content. xBRZ would also look terrible if it had to take a screenshot of games abusing stretched content as it's input.

[shinra358]

Oh ok.

Got it as close as I could to the psx xbrz one buy using your gaussian from your scalable shader with reshade. Couldn't get the scanlines in yet because your scanlines change the colors with the screen brighten feature it has. Would look closer but you have to use auto texturing filtering for this game instead of just linear filtering because it creates a grid on the characters. We really need an overlay system for ppsspp because using normal scanlines shaders blend in with other post processing effects and you can barely see them. But here is the pic, got it close as I can:


https://postimg.org/image/batdgegzh/

yeah, imo xbrz only looks great along with a gaussian shader because it hides the edge play-dohy-ness it can have sometimes and makes it look straight up like a photoshop vector image. I'll have to make a 2nd entry with less blur for 3D games to use with the game profiler.

But would you be able to code out '#define SLcolor' in your shader suite though?

[LunaMoo]

I replied to you in shader thread, also with edit as I added some other option instead of removing something that's removed by setting it to 1.0.;p

Not scaling characters isn't really the only problem you have, those hp bars look like sausages.;p

[shinra358]

Oh, didn't see that. Will go look now.

Yeah, I noticed that. That's no big deal to me though. I forgot which setting caused that. But at least there's no lines through the characters. Hopefully some high res textures for those bars could remedy that.