So, I've been playing around with this patch tonight and am trying to determine the "best" setting for my preferences. I've read the patch notes and have done my own testing, and would just like to verify my findings.
Based on my experience, it seems that when playing in fullscreen mode, surfacepp gives the most accurate and sharpest picture. However, in windowed mode, surfacepp unfortunately does not seem to have a correct aspect ratio.
For windowed mode, both surfacenb and openglnb appear identical, while surfacenp seems a bit blurry as compared to the former. So my conclusion so far is thus:
surfacepp = Best possible picture for fullscreen mode. Accurate and sharp image.
surfacenp or openglnb = Most accurate and most sharp picture for windowed mode
Here are the screenshots I took with some notes. Some feedback on all this would be nice. I wish that surfacepp could also be used in windowed mode, otherwise, I have to switch output modes when I want to play in fullscreen versus when I want to play in windowed mode.
Here I have ranked the different modes as I have found through my testing:
Fullscreen mode
1. surfacepp (most accurate)
2. openglnb (less accurate)
3. surfacenp (seems potentially more accurate than surfacenb)
4. surfacenb (least accurate?)
Windowed mode
1. openglnb/surfacenb (seemingly identical - most accurate/most sharp)
2. surfacenp (more blurry/less correct)
3. surfacepp (incorrect aspect ratio)
surface-sharpness and surface-collapse-dbl were at their default values.
Am I interpreting all this correctly? Looking for some input here. I just want the most accurate and the sharpest image in both fullscreen and windowed mode and am simply trying to determine which settings will give me that. It would also be interesting to hear which setting may be the best "middle ground" so that I wouldn't have to switch between output modes frequently. As of right now, openglnb seems to be the best option for both fullscreen and windowed mode, if it indeed is more accurate than surfacenb when in fullscreen mode. Seeing as how surfacepp seems to give the best possible picture in fullscreen mode, it would be nice if it also produced the best (most correct/sharp) picture in windowed mode, as well.
Edit: Upon further testing it seems that surfacepp does in fact give a correct aspect ratio in windowed mode when the resolution is set high enough. I didn't see this in the patch notes - what's the minimum resolution at which surfacepp will render an accurate image in windowed mode? Is this dependent upon the game or across the board?