This just came out.
Note it seems to have issues with multiple monitors and the game must support windowed mode. There’s also this guy that has been tracking this issue for a while.
http://tanalin.com/en/articles/lossless-scaling/
He appears to have free software that does something similar to the Lossless Scaling app above. It might have the exact same features and limitations. I’m not sure.
I’ve tried this. It only seems to be some sort of zoom feature. I have multiple monitors though.
Yes, that’s how it should work, straight-up pixel doubling. This would make 1080p look absolutely perfect on a 4k display.
You tried the one on Steam? It must use the same approach as IntegerScaler, which mentions a zoom feature on Windows 8+. Does that mean Windows does pixel doubling natively?
Yes, with the magnifier accessibility tool, intended for people with poor vision. You wouldn’t want to use that for gaming though.
Yeah, that very product you linked in the OP. All it seemed to do was zoom in on a window. Didn’t make anything actually clearer or anything. Just bigger and blurrier.
Hmm, well it shouldn’t be blurrier. That’s odd.
I’ll try IntegerScaler tonight if I remember.
Yeah, it should be bigger and razor-sharp but jaggy. Jaggie? Jaggy.
Admittedly I only tried it on one game, Distant Worlds, but damn if it didn’t look terrible.
I don’t want to get in the way of a good tech holy war, but pixel doubling isn’t going to be the best idea in many scenarios. Old school and pixel based games, there it’s going to be amazing. Other content/media? Not so much.
Comes down to user preference, do you prefer sharp and jaggy or smooth and blurry.
I prefer mine rich and chunky.
Oh wait…are we talking peanut butter?
Or women, you shameless gold digger.
If this tool works I can finally play Syberia and not have to squint.
But really it’s the graphics card manufacturers who should be fixing this in their drivers.
I wonder if they don’t want to deal with the consumer ignorance. The Steam software has a bunch of negative reviews about how someone tried to use it to go from 1080p and 1440p (non-integer multiple) and it looks blurry or screwy. I’ll go out on a limb and say that’s user error.
Graphic card manufacturers just need to disable the blurring. Yes potentially some moron will misconfigure his settings and complain. There are enough knowledgeable people to talk such a moron down though.
[edit]
Windows 7 not supported by the tool in the OP. Also I don’t quite understand how it is supposed to work with old 4:3 games running on 16:9 screens.
:(
(Russian)
There is an english version of the IntegerScaler webpage. I originally accidentally referred to the russian-language page in the english-language version of the article about nonblurry scaling where you probably found the link to the application. The in-article link is now fixed.
Fwiw, there is a Reddit announcement of IntegerScaler.
I don’t quite understand how it is supposed to work with old 4:3 games running on 16:9 screens.
The space around scaled image is filled with black — just like with true full-screen mode. Note that the commercial app requires user to manually choose a ratio from a limited range (reportedly up to 6), while the free IntegerScaler automatically calculates ratio needed to fill screen as entirely as possible. See e.g a screenshot of SymCity 2000 SE (EA/Origin version) scaled to 4K with IntegerScaler.
IntegerScaler also automatically recalculates ratio when game-window size (game resolution) changes.
I think I might bite the bullet on this and give it a go. The anti-aliasing feature looks like it destroys information and makes everything look cell-shaded (like a lot of HQ scalers do), which isn’t what I would have expected from a program designed to produce lossless scaling, but I am curious as to how it would look if I used real super or multi sampling anti-aliasing methods through the driver.
Oh wait this IntegerScaler thing is free and looks like it does pretty much the same thing.
I saw Lossless Scaling randomly on Steam, and I knew about the IntegerScaler guy from Googling. What article are you talking about?
Oh, are you the author? Have you compared it to Lossless Scaling? I wonder if he’s doing the same thing and charging $5 for it.
