Pre-rendered backgrounds

[Grimspoon]

Are the pre-rendered backgrounds in FF7 PC a lower color depth than what was in the PSX release?

The screenshots looks like they have some really harsh color gradients in them, almost as if they were converted down to 16bit color from say, 24 bit or 32...

[Seraphita]

I think they are uglier, along with the fact that character models were "upgraded" but don't fit at all with the rest of the screen. Sooo it's possible...

[ThunderPeel2001]

@Grimspoon I don't believe so. Everything else has been given an upgrade -- including the videos, so I doubt they'd have lowered the quality of the backgrounds.

@Sera You can play in the original resolution if you prefer. This means the models are exactly the same blockiness you remember from the PS1 version.

[Bonobi]

Yeah everything looks much better. I think it's the brightness that may make some areas look less gritty, but it is crisp and clear

[Sparky]

Originally posted by ThunderPeel2001:

@Sera You can play in the original resolution if you prefer. This means the models are exactly the same blockiness you remember from the PS1 version.

Not exactly the same blockiness. The lowest resolution is still twice the resolution of the Playstation game, but at least it makes the difference between high and low resolution less noticeable.

[Green Creature]

I guess you guys don't really recall. But the game was made to use 16-bit color originally... so.

if they really bother you, go get an original CRT monitor and hit "original graphic mode" if you really are nitpicky about it. Haha

[NinjutStu]

Yeah, I'm inclined to believe that these didn't look any better back on PS1, they just look more noticeable because the models are slightly better and monitors support much higher resolutions.

Actually a lot of graphics from older games look way worse now because they are being displayed on HD monitors instead of a CRT. The lower resolution of the CRT masked the lack of details and made them look better. When you play it on a high resolution monitor the flaws are much more apparent.

[Bonobi]

Originally posted by Assimi:

I guess you guys don't really recall. But the game was made to use 16-bit color originally... so

Oh wow, I never knew that.

Here is a comparison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMRC-joIYUE

[DirtyStinkyHippy]

The backgrounds are actually clearer on the PC version then the PlayStation version. It all comes down to not playing on an old school CRT monitor. Those scan lines use to blend things and the images were made purposely blurry because of those scan lines back in the day. I keep trying to find a program that can add scan lines to modern games but so far all I have found is sweetFX which don't seem to work very well. A temp solution is try playing at the resolution of 720x576 which is a resolution that scales to the original much better then 1920x1080.