Better graphics without changing game play?

[Citizen10Bears]

Hi, I've come back to the game after several years away, and I notice now that the graphics look quite pixelated. I spent most of my time zoomed fully in where it's most noticeable. Looking at mods to improve things I find that most of them want to change the game play in some way too. So here's my question...

Is there a mod, a feature, or even DLC that will keep the game play the same but give me some super glorious hi-res assets? (PS if you want to talk about why the game doesn't need good graphics and how good graphics aren't everything then please do so on a different thread)

Maybe I've been spoiled graphically with games like Dyson Sphere and my expectations are overly inflated?

[Stellar Remnant]

Check out the FactorioHD Modpack. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/factoriohd_modpack It has dependencies depending on what textures you want.

[Citizen10Bears]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

Check out the FactorioHD Modpack. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/factoriohd_modpack It has dependencies depending on what textures you want.

Thanks. They do look a bit better, but they have been scaled up using some kind of AI rather than properly generated from a hi-res source so they do look a bit weird. But weird is better than pixelated so it's a small win I think :-)

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

I read your comment and thought; no way is Factorio pixalated, especially not in 4K. I logged in and took a screenshot of the most detailed and colorful bit I could find, and zoomed right in. I don't see any pixelation, so maybe it's your system, or the res you have it set at. View this shot full-screen and tell me if this is pixelated, for me it certainly isn't the case.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2923403003

[Citizen10Bears]

Originally posted by 🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾:

I read your comment and thought; no way is Factorio pixalated, especially not in 4K. I logged in and took a screenshot of the most detailed and colorful bit I could find, and zoomed right in. I don't see any pixelation, so maybe it's your system, or the res you have it set at. View this shot full-screen and tell me if this is pixelated, for me it certainly isn't the case.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2923403003

That's great to see. I'll send a screenshot (without the mod I've installed). I've looked in settings for resolution settings but can't spot anything

[Citizen10Bears]

This is what I see on my 4k screen https://imgur.com/a/z5HwFrz

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Citizen10Bears:

Originally posted by 🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾:

I read your comment and thought; no way is Factorio pixalated, especially not in 4K. I logged in and took a screenshot of the most detailed and colorful bit I could find, and zoomed right in. I don't see any pixelation, so maybe it's your system, or the res you have it set at. View this shot full-screen and tell me if this is pixelated, for me it certainly isn't the case.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2923403003

That's great to see. I'll send a screenshot (without the mod I've installed). I've looked in settings for resolution settings but can't spot anything

I'm fairly certain it runs at whatever the monitor is at, don't believe there is a setting for anything than windowed/fullscreen

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

I see what you mean, not quite as crisp.

[Chindraba]

Just a wild shoot, and like as not, off the mark by a mile, but perhaps the GPU is doing it's own attempt at upscaling rather than letting the game use "native" resolution.

[ナオヤ]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

Just a wild shoot, and like as not, off the mark by a mile, but perhaps the GPU is doing it's own attempt at upscaling rather than letting the game use "native" resolution.

That's a good point.
I'd first check GPU's settings panel and make sure any improvements on GPU side are either turned off or at least intentionally enabled. And of course I'd make sure the monitor itself isn't set up for any "improvements" (not sure about 4k displays but at least TVs are infamous for all this crap).

[shadain597]

I spent most of my time zoomed fully in

This is the part that I'm most confused about, because I spend like 95% of my time zoomed out to the max and the other 4.9999% of the time is probably about halfway or more. Trying to play zoomed all the way in would actually be kinda annoying.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by shadain597:

I spent most of my time zoomed fully in

This is the part that I'm most confused about, because I spend like 95% of my time zoomed out to the max and the other 4.9999% of the time is probably about halfway or more. Trying to play zoomed all the way in would actually be kinda annoying.

I tend to zoom in and out very often. Probably centered on the default zoom level, but going to max-out and max-in often. Often I'm even changing zoom while traveling. Enough so that I've bound keys to zoom change so I don't have to switch to the mouse just to zoom. Max-in is really handy for finding where I have a BP ghost of a power pole on copper deposits so I place a real one, as an example from my past few hours of play. As bad as my driving is in the car I nearly always need max-out just to avoid the cliffs and rocks, even on coal fuel speed.

I'm only on 1K, so pixels haven't been a problem, but I can see them being an issue if they were. Especially annoying after handing over the cash for a good 4K and finding the resolution goes down rather than up.

[Stellar Remnant]

Originally posted by Citizen10Bears:

This is what I see on my 4k screen https://imgur.com/a/z5HwFrz

Looks gorgeous. Not seeing pixelation.

[ナオヤ]

Originally posted by MiniHerc:

Originally posted by Citizen10Bears:

This is what I see on my 4k screen https://imgur.com/a/z5HwFrz

Looks gorgeous. Not seeing pixelation.

Zoom it to view it at 100% (not scaled down to fit the display).

At max zoom in it's indeed true that you can clearly see that sprites are not made for it.
However due to how the game renders graphics, using mods that increase texture size might cause crashes.

Thus I'd resort to fiddle around with any driver-side settings to improve filtering/add FXAA to make it less obvious. That, or simply try not to play at max zoom so long.
EVERY game looks bad when you look really closely (otherwise you'd need absurdly large textures for any object that at max zoom/shortest distance from camera takes more than one screen to view (sorry for my clumsy wording here).

[Galileus]

Originally posted by Naoya:

Zoom it to view it at 100% (not scaled down to fit the display).

At max zoom in it's indeed true that you can clearly see that sprites are not made for it.
However due to how the game renders graphics, using mods that increase texture size might cause crashes.

Max-zoom in is not 100% - it's more than that. Sprites are optimized at a zoom level giving 64px grid size - and it allows zooming in closer, though the graphics will take a hit. Considering the scale of the game, I still think it's quite impressive how big the sprite are.

Alas, just saying :)

[ナオヤ]

Originally posted by FullFrontal Asschemist:

Originally posted by Naoya:

Zoom it to view it at 100% (not scaled down to fit the display).

At max zoom in it's indeed true that you can clearly see that sprites are not made for it.
However due to how the game renders graphics, using mods that increase texture size might cause crashes.

Max-zoom in is not 100% - it's more than that. Sprites are optimized at a zoom level giving 64px grid size - and it allows zooming in closer, though the graphics will take a hit. Considering the scale of the game, I still think it's quite impressive how big the sprite are.

Alas, just saying :)

Oh, I meant the screenshot's actual resolution, not how it would look in game ;)

I checked in Factorio myself just to make sure the issue is also present on regular 1080p and indeed it looked exactly like the screenshot. I know there was a way to display sprites in the atlas in the past versions but not anymore and I couldn't be bothered to find out what sprites look at proper 100% anyway :P