GL_NEAREST or GL_LINEAR - Filtering on or Filtering off?

[Lightgreen]

I think everyone knows that Doom, Wolf3D, Quake should be played with a texture filtering off, but what about Half-life or Quake 2? It's kind of a mixed bag because the game required a 3D graphic accelerator (like 3dfx) unlike the three above. so what's your personal preference?

[SURVIVOR-DUP]

Linear. Because I'm not trying to improve graphics for a game older than it's fanbase; I don't think anyone should be concerned with this.

[PsyWarVeteran]

While turning the filtering off gives more detailed textures, the pixelated look doesn't fit a game that has detailed 3D models. The NPCs are not sprites.

I say linear.

[Lychy]

Filtered because it looks better

[copelow]

Originally posted by Lightgreen:

I think everyone knows that Doom, Wolf3D, Quake should be played with a texture filtering off, but what about Half-life or Quake 2? It's kind of a mixed bag because the game required a 3D graphic accelerator (like 3dfx) unlike the three above. so what's your personal preference?

Most definitely with filtering off. Follow this specific guide if you want to disable it:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2021533739

Others don't work anymore, or don't disable filtering on everything.

[UmbralPenumbra]

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

While turning the filtering off gives more detailed textures

This is false

To be more specific, a lack of filtering may 'appear' sharper or more detailed, but this is due to mach bands. lateral inhibition effect in the eye produces ringing at sharp transitions of intensity, as a box filter response in the frequency domain is a sinc response in the spatial domain. this effect increases *acutance*, but not detail or sharpness. sharpness being related to high frequency content, not edge contrast

The main issue with 'bilinear' and 'trilinear' filtering in games, which has been ubiquitous since early GPUs had dedicated texture filtering units (this being one of the few fixed function hardwares still present on GPUs), is that linear filter has two problems; blur, and aliasing. Technically, filtering/blurring (both are essentially the same thing) does not 'remove detail', it spreads the energy across multiple pixels. Linear filtering does this in a very unsophisticated way, so while texel transitions are smoothed, the result has a lower contrast. Better interpolations will weight the contribution of texels so that the energy is more emphasised on the final pixel, which will appear less washed out

Better interpolations are possible are possible in games. Various cubic filters such as Mitchell-Netravali or Catmull Rom. Windowed sinc functions such as Lanczos, etc. However these would need to be implemented most likely on programmable shaders. Cubic interpolations are possible with standard texture units by using multiple linear filters. But this is all very rare. Rage is the only game that comes to mind that has a cubic interpolation option (the option that sharpens textures)

Linear filtering is also likely here to stay as games over time have higher and higher resolution textures, making texture magnification less significant

[UmbralPenumbra]

Originally posted by Lightgreen:

I think everyone knows that Doom, Wolf3D, Quake should be played with a texture filtering off

Who the hell ever said this? Doom and Wolf don't even have an option for texture filtering. Quake doesn't have texture filtering in the original software renderer but every sourceport since GLQuake has it as default

[UmbralPenumbra]

Originally posted by Gubbins:

Others don't work anymore, or don't disable filtering on everything.

It's very simply disabled by using

gl_texturemode gl_nearest

in the console
Negating the need for

gl_ansio 0

, because GL_NEAREST doesn't use mipmaps
If you want mipmaps, use GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST because GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR will linearly interpolate between mipmaps, which isn't what you want if the goal is to make the game look pixelated
But if the goal is to disable filtering, GL_NEAREST will be the most pixelated

[PsyWarVeteran]

Originally posted by PC Incompatible:

Originally posted by PsyWarVeteran:

While turning the filtering off gives more detailed textures

This is false

wall of text

Nope, linear mode blurs the textures, making small details unnoticeable. No need to write a novel to prove me wrong when anyone can see the difference using their eyes.

[Lightgreen]

Originally posted by PC Incompatible:

Who the hell ever said this? Doom and Wolf don't even have an option for texture filtering. Quake doesn't have texture filtering in the original software renderer but every sourceport since GLQuake has it as default

some source port has a option to enable texture filtering, like gzdoom but maybe not wolf3d

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Survivor of Bad Circumstance:

Linear. Because I'm not trying to improve graphics for a game older than it's fanbase; I don't think anyone should be concerned with this.

What do you mean? The HL fans are usually older than the game.

[SURVIVOR-DUP]

Originally posted by Ikagura:

Originally posted by Survivor of Bad Circumstance:

Linear. Because I'm not trying to improve graphics for a game older than it's fanbase; I don't think anyone should be concerned with this.

What do you mean? The HL fans are usually older than the game.

Most have moved on, the ones that remain are batty teenagers or adults with the brains of batty teenagers.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Survivor of Bad Circumstance:

Originally posted by Ikagura:

What do you mean? The HL fans are usually older than the game.

Most have moved on, the ones that remain are batty teenagers or adults with the brains of batty teenagers.

I'd rather see kids playing actual good games than the latest trend.

[SURVIVOR-DUP]

Originally posted by Ikagura:

Originally posted by Survivor of Bad Circumstance:

Most have moved on, the ones that remain are batty teenagers or adults with the brains of batty teenagers.

I'd rather see kids playing actual good games than the latest trend.

Half-Life's... Mediocre. Nothing special about it, apart from storytelling which I'm already not a fan of. Quake/Doom would appeal more to those people since it's more gameplay-oriented but I'm thankful they swarmed this dead game instead.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Survivor of Bad Circumstance:

Originally posted by Ikagura:

I'd rather see kids playing actual good games than the latest trend.

Half-Life's... Mediocre. Nothing special about it, apart from storytelling which I'm already not a fan of. Quake/Doom would appeal more to those people since it's more gameplay-oriented but I'm thankful they swarmed this dead game instead.

Why are you even here then?

[SURVIVOR-DUP]

Originally posted by Ikagura:

Originally posted by Survivor of Bad Circumstance:

Half-Life's... Mediocre. Nothing special about it, apart from storytelling which I'm already not a fan of. Quake/Doom would appeal more to those people since it's more gameplay-oriented but I'm thankful they swarmed this dead game instead.

Why are you even here then?

Old habits die hard.