Some FastDoom news! Doug Johnson has added VESA support for resolutions higher than 320x200 (both direct rendering and backbuffered rendering).

https://youtu.be/pgIRHeQ0e_g?feature=shared
https://twitter.com/viti95/status/17446764388 … Cyh97foLdw&s=19

ViTi95 wrote on 2024-01-09, 16:28:

Some FastDoom news! Doug Johnson has added VESA support for resolutions higher than 320x200 (both direct rendering and backbuffered rendering).

https://youtu.be/pgIRHeQ0e_g?feature=shared
https://twitter.com/viti95/status/17446764388 … Cyh97foLdw&s=19

Awesome news!

So, I'm assuming that the original assets are all 320x200, right?

If so, does that mean this is essentially just an internal upscaling of the image?

thanks

This is very exciting news. This means FastDoom will work on many modern DOS vBIOSes which have removed all sub-640x480 VGA modes! Many "modern" systems have been terribly crippled by removal of all VGA modes. This means no 320x200 games will run on them in bare metal DOS, but now FastDoom will, since with this VESA patch, it doesn't "need" and / or assume 320x200 mode 0x13 is present.

Are any compiled binaries available of the VESA support? And, are there any usable original Doom / Doom 2 assets which were done in higher resolutions which would be compatible and / or injected into FastDoom's WADs to replace the old 320x200 assets?

if it's 'fastdoom' i'd imagine there'd be no asset modifying/upscaling and having nearest integer scaling at best (if any scaling - scaling can be slow especially when you have in mind of the different pixel aspect of a 4:3 mode). There's a bit of philosophical clash here regarding larger screen resolutions used like it's going to be a special mac version...

I'm also failing to see the exact point of a 640x480 rendering option.. There are already a lot of hires renderers for Doom out there.

Doom engine does nearest neighbor integer interpolation when drawing walls and ceilings/floors.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-10, 07:37:

I'm also failing to see the exact point of a 640x480 rendering option.. There are already a lot of hires renderers for Doom out there.

It means the wall/floor edges get less jagged. And there are lots of pointless video modes in fastdoom, that's kinda the point 😀

rasteri wrote on 2024-01-10, 13:18:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-10, 07:37:

I'm also failing to see the exact point of a 640x480 rendering option.. There are already a lot of hires renderers for Doom out there.

It means the wall/floor edges get less jagged. And there are lots of pointless video modes in fastdoom, that's kinda the point 😀

I mean yes but the pointless video modes make the game playable on systems where it would be unfathomable to play - this option just adds eye candy that other renderers already can.. It's like setting out to build a racing car and then deciding to add an air conditioning option to it..

I can see it making sense for something of slow laptops that have way too much unscaled screen real estate or their 1:1 pixel issue wrt 320x200.

BUT ALSO it'd be on brand if it did one of the 'fast' texture mapping tricks of the mid-90s' SVGA games, like having doubled/quadrupled horizontal pixels while retaining edges just to sell on the illusion of a sharper, 'super' image. 😀
Another thing could be dynamically reducing detail based on framerate, which is still a common technique in modern games but it's been tried at least twice in '97.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-01-10, 09:21:

Doom engine does nearest neighbor integer interpolation when drawing walls and ceilings/floors.

This is confusing to me as I only ever see "nearest neighbor interpolation" as something distinct from "integer," which I see used to describe x-y scaling in simple integer multiples of both axis.

When you say the Doom Engine does this, do you mean that it does integer scaling as I'm understanding it, or something totally differen?

I meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearest-neighbor_interpolation like GL_NEAREST.
https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM/blob/7773 … 0/r_draw.c#L570

zyzzle wrote on 2024-01-10, 06:37:

This is very exciting news. This means FastDoom will work on many modern DOS vBIOSes which have removed all sub-640x480 VGA modes! Many "modern" systems have been terribly crippled by removal of all VGA modes. This means no 320x200 games will run on them in bare metal DOS, but now FastDoom will, since with this VESA patch, it doesn't "need" and / or assume 320x200 mode 0x13 is present.

Are any compiled binaries available of the VESA support? And, are there any usable original Doom / Doom 2 assets which were done in higher resolutions which would be compatible and / or injected into FastDoom's WADs to replace the old 320x200 assets?

Not yet, we have to fix some bugs and I'll make a test build. The assets used are the regular IWADs, no new high-res WADs additions at all.

7F20 wrote on 2024-01-10, 01:42:

If so, does that mean this is essentially just an internal upscaling of the image?

thanks

Not just an reescaling of the 320x200 to whatever resolution, this is native rendering on higher resolution. The image is crispier, and you can see better far enemies. Also this is great for laptops that don't reescale images properly (aspect ratio / blurry image).

EDIT: Some 800x600 screenshots

This is great. Might make FastDoom my preferred DOS port, since MBF can only do 640x400 AFAIR. On the other hand, MBF removes limits and is Boom-compatible. A tough choice. 😀

This is great news, I'm really looking forward to trying out the SVGA option!

ViTi95 wrote on 2024-01-11, 09:35:

EDIT: Some 800x600 screenshots

Wow, those look super. Native rendering at VESA resolutions will definitely make FastDoom my preferred Doom engine. Its other fantastic speed optimizations will be gravy - and milk every last bit of performance out of older systems as well.

ViTi95 wrote on 2024-01-09, 16:28:

Some FastDoom news! Doug Johnson has added VESA support for resolutions higher than 320x200 (both direct rendering and backbuffered rendering).

Nice! Looking forward to trying it.

How do these new modes work exactly? Are the 640x480 and 800x600 modes double scanned 320x240 and 400x600 like old VGA, or are they single scanned 640x480 and 800x600?

There's nothing double-scan about those screenshots.

The new modes are native resolution VESA 2.0 modes. The video card decides if it uses double-scan or not. Right now these resolutions are available:

- 320x200
- 320x240
- 512x384
- 640x400
- 640x480
- 800x600
- 1024x768
- 1280x1024

I've uploaded a new test build with the new VESA modes. There will likely be some bugs, so please feel free to report them.

https://github.com/viti95/FastDoom/releases/tag/0.9.9_test1