Doom 3 question

[PCgamer81]

While Doom 3 with Sikkmod and Wulfen textures have better actual graphics than Doom 3 BFG, I have noticed that Doom 3 BFG looks a lot smoother, crisper, and cleaner. I have attributed this to being in 1080p - which Doom 3 was not. But this guy I argued with on youtube says that old Doom 3 has 1080p - you just edit the CFG. I was under the impression that editing the CFG for a game that didn't originally support that high of a resolution would merely upscale it to the user's resolution, and even that's only possible if the ability to do so is offered in a patch.

Can someone clear this up for me? Thanks.

 

[Scott_D_Bowen]

Computer Games generally don't 'upscale' resolution like shitty consoles.
- There are some minor exceptions, most are 3rd party hacks to get console ports to run at something other than the 'craptastic' 1280x720 that they're sometimes hard-coded to load at.

When an OpenGL or Direct3D title loads at a given res on the PC that is the resolution it will use for rendering.
- The guy you spoke to is correct...
- A game engine is not 'made' for a singular resolution, game engines are software and are always over engineered by a large factor to avoid rendering artifacts, Z depth precision issues, etc.

If the 'id Tech 4 engine' can support 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratio's with two lines of a config file edit then I wouldn't be surprised if it supports up to 6720 x 4200 within the engine without rendering artifacts on the PC.
- If you don't believe me then Google: "The graphics workload is huge with those settings: At a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 the card has to calculate with 6,720 x 4,200 - so this really is a worst-case scenario." "Geforce GTX 285 reviewed"

Also, have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_4

If an 'id software engine' loads at a given resolution that is the resolution it renders at, it does not 'upscale' using an intermediate pre/post-process effect.

The textures are a different matter, but the mipping/mipmapping and modern texture filtering techniques will still make them look natively better at any higher resolution (up to a point).

Heck, just take a look at the Quake 4 engine, or even Quake (1)!

I've got some Doom (v1.9, Shareware) screenshots at 1680x1050 below, with 8x FSAA and 16x Anisotropic filtering in OpenGL.
- Exactly the same textures and graphics resources from the original WAD file, just rendered in OpenGL with FSAA instead.
- The original game, with these exact same textures and graphics resources, was played at 320x200 in a 4:3 aspect ratio using not quite square 'pixels' back in 1993 on Intel 486's --- mostly with just 4MB of RAM.

Seriously worth checking out, since it was a December 1993 title:
- http://scottdbowen.id.au/games/doom/Doom_JPG.rar (size: 11.4 MB).
- Played at over 27.5x times the original games resolution!

 

[PCgamer81]

Best answer selected by PCgamer81.

 

[PCgamer81]

Whatever it is, I notice that something doesn't seem right running Doom 3 original in 1080p - it seems muddy and the shapes are a tad off. Maybe I am mistaking resolution with textures. I have generally noticed that the higher the resolution the more god-awful textures stand out. This shouldn't be an issue though with Sikkmod. Whatever it is, the BFG edition seems a lot cleaner, more crisp, and more smooth.

Considering what you said, perhaps you have an idea on how to get the original Dawn of War to work in 1920x1080? That would literally make my day. Been wanting that for too long. If you can help with that, please PM me seeing as how this thread will probably be closed.

Thanks.