I've started experimenting with the LQ2x and HQ2x filters for MAME32 Plus!

[Bursk]

I dunno whether everyone here is already familiar with the various Image Enhancement options available in MAME32 Plus! (I imagine other ports have similar options), but I thought I might as well create a topic detailing my recent experiences.

In MAME32 Plus! there are quite a few different options under Image Enhancement, but my faves by far are the LQx and HQx filters.  I've specifically mentioned LQ2x and HQ2x because my machine isn't fast enough to run the LQ3x and HQ3x filters.  For the future, maybe...

Anyway, I'm one of those people who likes their games to look nice, if possible.  If you've got a game that already plays great, why not try to make it that little bit better by improving it's looks?  That's what these filters do.  LQ2x and HQ2x look quite similar in the sense that they make a game look much cleaner, and far less blurry than it did before (note that I run all my games at 1280*960 on a PC monitor).  The main difference between the two is that LQ2x is faster, but HQ2x smooths out your jaggies.  Whether you want your jaggies smoothed is entirely up to you, but I look upon it as providing a similar benefit to anti-aliasing in games.

What I did to compare the two filters against the original look of a game was to take a screenshot of the exact same part of the game, with the on-screen characters in exactly the same pose etc, firstly without any filter, then with LQ2x, then with HQ2x.  I did this with about 4 or 5 different games.  The difference between filtered and non-filtered was, IMO, absolutely stunning.  I couldn't believe how much clearer things looked with one of the filters applied to the games.

Although I prefer HQ2x over LQ2x, my machine won't always run a game full speed with HQ2x applied, so in those instances I'm using LQ2x.  Other games won't fun full speed with any kind of filter applied e.g. Daraku Tenshi - The Fallen Angels, so I just leave it as standard for those kinds of games.  I look forward to my next upgrade, though, because running Daraku Tenshi with HQ2x applied makes all the jaggies disappear, and the game looks even more beautiful than it did originally.

I hope this post has been of some use to people who've yet to try out the HQx and LQx filters.

[SpamMe]

I haven't, can you post the screenshots?

[Bursk]

I'm sorry, but I deleted them all once I'd decided what my preferences were going to be.  Posting on this subject was an afterthought, otherwise I'd have kept the screenshots to show people.

You can always try it yourself, since the difference between stock and either HQ2x or LQ2x is blatant.  Regarding the difference between HQ2x and LQ2x, how obvious it is depends on the game e.g. I didn't see that much difference between the two filters when playing Street Fighter II, but the difference was great when playing Daraku Tenshi, as the characters looked quite jaggy when using stock/LQ2x compared to HQ2x.  If my machine were fast enough to use LQ2x on Daraku Tenshi then that'd be great, since LQ2x makes things much less blurry than the stock image.

I found that Double Dragon II was a good one to test, since the opening scene with the red chopper and the yellow boxes really lets you see the difference between filtered and non-filtered.  Sorry I couldn't be of any futher assistance.

[Bursk]

I gone through some older games and found that I can actually use HQ3x on a couple of them, namely Hyper Sports and Renegade so far.  Maybe I'll be able to use the same filter on other games from that era.

Oh, and since this'll probably be my last post on this subject, if anyone else wants to add to this thread then please, feel free to, even if it's just along the lines of, 'HQ2x sucks!' or similar.

[lokki]

Some of the effects can be seen here

http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/

Or here

http://www.hiend3d.com/hq2x.html

The do look pretty cool, if running on computer monitor and want cleares sharper images.

Also most of these effects where originally added to AdvanceMAME and then ported to MAME plus.