Making FFXI look better?

[madpersian]

If you want the best graphics you should really consider just doing a quick regedit. It's not scary at all, and anyone can do it. I've slightly modified the directions shown in the VN Boards link earlier in this thread:


a)Determine what resolution you want to play the game at (likely your native resolutions, I used my HD TV so I go with 1950x1080.

b)Go to FFXI Config and change your resolution to whatever you decided on, save and close, do not use this program to edit graphic settings after you do regedit changes, I believe it overwrites your custom edits.

i) Open the Registry Editor by clicking on "Start" and clicking on "Run" and typing in "regedit" and then pressing "Enter/Return."

ii) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEni x\FinalFantasyXI

iii) The value of 0001 should be your horizontal resolution (1950 for me). The value of 002 should be your vertical resolution (1080 for me). If they are not, follow step IV but for value 0001 and 0002 before proceeding further.
iv) Double click on 0003, click on the "Decimal" radio button. Change the value to your horizontal resolution (1950 for me). Double click on 0004, click on the "Decimal" radio button, and change the value to your vertical resolution (1080 for me).

Now your resolution and background texture will match perfectly and your game will look sick. If you were running the game without any tweaking, it should look substantially better. When I get home I can post what you should change some other values to and how you can force AA on FFXI from your graphics card so you can get rid of excess jagged edges and you can be playing the game with essentially perfect graphics.

[Isiolia]

When I get home I can post what you should change some other values to and how you can force AA on FFXI from your graphics card so you can get rid of excess jagged edges and you can be playing the game with essentially perfect graphics.

You don't force AA on FFXI (other than oversampling, sorta). The game is rendered to a texture and post-processing for effects and such applied. In the buffer that AA effects, the main game picture is already 2D, so AA doesn't do much of anything other than a possible performance hit (not the only game where this is the case).

You can force Anisotropic Filtering via driver though, far as I know, and it's typically suggested rather than cranking Mip Mapping up.

Thats because the maximum is 2048x2048.

Background resolution is , understandably, limited by video card max texture size, which for older cards meant 2048x2048. With newer cards, you can go higher.

[madpersian]

You don't force AA on FFXI (other than oversampling, sorta). The game is rendered to a texture and post-processing for effects and such applied. In the buffer that AA effects, the main game picture is already 2D, so AA doesn't do much of anything other than a possible performance hit (not the only game where this is the case).

You can force Anisotropic Filtering via driver though, far as I know, and it's typically suggested rather than cranking Mip Mapping up.

Yeah, my bad, you force AF not AA, which makes it look better, and its definitely better than cranking up Mip. I think I had mip at 0, though I'm not sure, I'd have to look at how I have my registry setup.

When you do that the game looks markedly better.

[SchuldigGER]

i dont have FFXI installed anymore or i would try it myself can someone please post screenshots of FFXI with either AA or AF driver forced on it ?

[Araelus]

i dont have FFXI installed anymore or i would try it myself can someone please post screenshots of FFXI with either AA or AF driver forced on it ?

There are numerous pictures at the thread Mojo posted. I'd very much like to see a better control for video settings be made, too.

[madpersian]

I didn't see any pictures of forced AF comparison in that thread. I'd be happy to put one up after I finish a paper after work (if no one else has done it in the meanwhile). Not sure what the best area to show the effect would be though.

[Pikarya]

This thread.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/698...omparison.html

But yeah, the imagehost I used is currently down.

[Tsuki]

shame the pics are down ;_;

[Day]

The registry edits are the same thing that GUIlauncher does with windower right??

[Pikarya]

shame the pics are down ;_;

I'll rehost the images on a good site in awhile. Currently doing testing on some equipment atm and no time -.-

[Aro]

-Instructions

This works really well, it's a nice first step and is worth the 5min of work.

[Kimiko]

How do you make it look like the ss's on this blog:

blog

nice blog btw

Thank you, I appreciate that. =D

The images themselves are taken via windower @ 1920x1200 (1024x1024 background res). I'll typically shrink them down to fit the blog site (600xwhatever) then adjust the color levels for brightness and contrast. Afterwards, a Gausian Blur effect is applied to smooth out the jagedness as much as possible.

[richardd]

Thank you, I appreciate that. =D

The images themselves are taken via windower @ 1920x1200 (1024x1024 background res). I'll typically shrink them down to fit the blog site (600xwhatever) then adjust the color levels for brightness and contrast. Afterwards, a Gausian Blur effect is applied to smooth out the jagedness as much as possible.

i made a tutorial about that, but i think you took in the blur too much <_<;

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/442...y-they-do.html

sometimes if the pic is dramatic enough, than you can pull it off

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/695...907ac4copy.jpg

but the way most ppl do it, you need to put on sunglasses. If FFXI looked like SS above, it would be pimp

[Aro]

i made a tutorial about that, but i think you took in the blur too much <_<;

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/442...y-they-do.html

sometimes if the pic is dramatic enough, than you can pull it off

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/695...907ac4copy.jpg

but the way most ppl do it, you need to put on sunglasses. If FFXI looked like SS above, it would be pimp

F yeah.

[Araelus]

Richardd, that is really neat. The clouds especially are incredible. Thank you for the tutorial! Now to figure out what post-recording settings will do that to a video output. :D

[Carraway]

If you want the best graphics you should really consider just doing a quick regedit. It's not scary at all, and anyone can do it. I've slightly modified the directions shown in the VN Boards link earlier in this thread:


a)Determine what resolution you want to play the game at (likely your native resolutions, I used my HD TV so I go with 1950x1080.

b)Go to FFXI Config and change your resolution to whatever you decided on, save and close, do not use this program to edit graphic settings after you do regedit changes, I believe it overwrites your custom edits.

i) Open the Registry Editor by clicking on "Start" and clicking on "Run" and typing in "regedit" and then pressing "Enter/Return."

ii) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PlayOnlineUS\SquareEni x\FinalFantasyXI

iii) The value of 0001 should be your horizontal resolution (1950 for me). The value of 002 should be your vertical resolution (1080 for me). If they are not, follow step IV but for value 0001 and 0002 before proceeding further.
iv) Double click on 0003, click on the "Decimal" radio button. Change the value to your horizontal resolution (1950 for me). Double click on 0004, click on the "Decimal" radio button, and change the value to your vertical resolution (1080 for me).

Now your resolution and background texture will match perfectly and your game will look sick. If you were running the game without any tweaking, it should look substantially better. When I get home I can post what you should change some other values to and how you can force AA on FFXI from your graphics card so you can get rid of excess jagged edges and you can be playing the game with essentially perfect graphics.

To add to this, you can also try changing the second set of resolution parameters (0003 and 0004) to a 2x ratio for a slight increase in quality. The quality/performance ratio isn't as tremendous compared to simply matching the texture resolution to background resolution in the first place, but it's still a boost. 2x seems to be the max the engine can handle, though.

[Kipling]

i made a tutorial about that, but i think you took in the blur too much <_<;

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/442...y-they-do.html

sometimes if the pic is dramatic enough, than you can pull it off

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/695...907ac4copy.jpg

but the way most ppl do it, you need to put on sunglasses. If FFXI looked like SS above, it would be pimp

Is that you and Vey? Nice ass, btw.

[blev]

glad i found this thread. my ffxi is no longer ugly as fuck

[Kimiko]

Tried on my system, and the results look impressive. However, the drawback is that this takes the CPU usage on my computer to near 90% (1920x1200, 1920x1920 background res). Maybe it's time to start considering a newer rig?

[Auspice]

I run 1680x1050 and 1700x1700. It's not as much oversampling as I like but cranking up the BG resolution above 1700 doesn't do much except destroy your PC. I've almost gotten to the point that I was going to drop my resolution down to 1440x900 so it'll sharpen up the edges a bit more but I'm totally spoiled by being fullscreen for the first time ever. I <3 my new PC.