Jagged screenshots

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

I've been messing around with screenies again after a long time away and I have forgotten how to fix this problem:

My game looks just-fine. Nice and smooth and with no jaggies but,

My screen-shots are crap.

Fraps screenies are bad, and so are my bandicam ones. All jagged.
And 'print-screen' won't do anything. I find no new images in my game file for grabs.
I must be getting oldtimers disease, can't remember how I got- by these problems before.

Example of ugly shot:

Wing Commander Joined: Feb 19, 2010 Posts: 346

Your screenshots (with PrintScreen) should appear in your game directory under the subdirectory Screenshots (depending on your version).

If you're taking screenshots when your Fraps or Bandicam is running and they are crappy while the actual 'movie' looks good it may be in your Fraps / Bandicam settings for screenshots in those apps themselves. i.e. Your Fraps is running at 1080 but your screenshot is being captured at 720 resolution.

Hope that makes sense.

For example this is a screenshot directly from the game (HSFX) after I'd saved a track of one of our missions using PrintScreen and it was saved to the game's Screenshot folder. No Fraps or Bandicam required. My nav lights are on as that's how we fly in coop as it allows us to identify human flyers vs AI.

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

Well, I found out why my 'print screen' command wasn't working and it was simply because my HSFX screenshots folder must have been full, it had 223 screenshots in it.
After I deleted them I was then able to 'control print' screenshots but they look jagged. And I looked at fraps and bandicam and I don't see any way to adjust res in those.
Tried changing game-res but it didn't help.
It must be a setting somewhere in conf file or Nvidia settings or a processor issue. I'm stumped.
This copy of HSFX was copied onto an external HD and then re-copied onto this pc again under a new install of win 10, maybe that messed something up.

Wing Commander Joined: Feb 19, 2010 Posts: 346

Is your game displaying things 'ragged' too or just the screenshots? It sounds like it is just the screenshots so that would lead to the suspicion that it's not your game but the image software.

Are the screenshots being saved as .jpgs? I think that is something that you can set in the conf.ini file.

Try this just as a test and perhaps narrow down the problem as it doesn't use Fraps or Bandicam:

Run a mission, pause it, then Ctrl-Prtscrn to take a screenshot. Ctrl-Prntscrn saves the entire viewed screen to your 'clipboard'. Alt-tab out of the game and start MS-Paint. Then press Ctrl-V and it will put your screenshot directly into MS-Paint.
Now have a look at the image showing in MS-Paint. Is it jagged? If it is then perhaps you are correct and there's a conf.ini setting that needs to be tweaked. If it is not jagged then, while you are still in MS-Paint, save the file to your desktop (you'll have the option of saving it as a .jpg or .bmp etc). Save it as a .jpg.
Go back into your game and close it down. Go back to your desktop and right-click on your saved screenshot, select "Open with" and use whatever graphic software you prefer to open it and have a look. If it is now jagged then it may be a setting in your graphics program or perhaps Windows itself has some default setting for graphics and is 'downgrading' the resolution when saving an image file?

If, after all that, your screenies are fine and you are only having the issue with Fraps and Bandicam then obviously those two apps are your problem and you'll need to check their settings. I believe both of them have their own hotkeys for taking screenshots and IIRC there's an option as to the setting of the resolution of the screenshot in one or both of those apps.

Hope this helps.

NOTE: If you save a mission as a track (e.g. NTRK) then simply run the track file you can pause and do all sorts of screenshots from all sorts of angles. The only downside is that you can't rewind to a specific spot etc and replay from there, you can only pause as the track file progresses (unless there's a mod I'm not aware of).

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

@tomoose
The game looks fine with no jagged edges, only the screenshots are jaggedy.
I tried switching from jpg to TGA, PNG etc in the game and also in the fraps/ Bcam apps.
Thanks for your help, I'll try those other methods when I get back to my pc.(typed from iphone right now) Looks intresting.

Post subject: Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 05:15 PM

I HATE THE JAGGIES!!!

I only have the vanilla game so all my screen shots come from the NTRK Files. I capture them with PrtScm then I get out and go to microsoft paint.

A lot of the time I get the jaggies on my first shot.

What I will do is continue to PrtScm same shot until I get a clean shot...sometimes 6 or more times.

It seem to work for me. The above pictures only required 2 screen prints.

Air commodore Joined: Feb 07, 2013 Posts: 556

Morris wrote:

@tomoose
The game looks fine with no jagged edges, only the screenshots are jaggedy.
I tried switching from jpg to TGA, PNG etc in the game and also in the fraps/ Bcam apps.
Thanks for your help, I'll try those other methods when I get back to my pc.(typed from iphone right now) Looks intresting.

Morris:

Greetings, just to suggest if you have Nvidia and familiar with its tweaking go to its settings select and include il2 .exe game for the Nvidia settings and set the antialiasing to 4x or higher than the current to fix resolution. As of now i got AMD vcard so I cant elaborate exactly but Im not so techy.

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

@fredboy, Darkfall and Tomoose, I have meticulously went through all of the ideas you guys have suggested but I am still in jaggy-land with these screenies.
Still working on it, messing with win10 settings etc. One thing I have noticed since my new win10 install is that I don't have invidia inspector - anymore;
only the nvidia control panel. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I wanted to let you know I appreciate the replies and the help.

Will come back with an update when I finally get this thing ironed-out.

Thanks, thanks and salamat.

On the learning curve Joined: Mar 18, 2021 Posts: 3

The problem you've got is called aliasing

helpx.adobe.com/photos...asing.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...i-aliasing

If you were to open your screenshot in Photoshop or GIMP and search for filters you should find the antialias button

Usually a couple of passes will alleviate the jagged edges

Pilot Officer Joined: Sep 17, 2010 Posts: 124

Hi!

As said above: This seems to be an antialiasing problem.
During normal gameplay you won't see much of a difference (the human eyes are not build to see anything above 60 fps). So I test my settings by starting a mission in QMB, watch my plane from outside, pause the game and zoom in at the antenna. This should be a line - straight as possible.
Here are my Nvidia Contol Panel *) settings (you don't need the inspector for this old game and a modern GPU) for my GTX1050Ti; this might be a good starting point for you:

Code::

Sharpening = off  -> maybe on, depending on Hardware
Anisotropic Filtering =16x
Antialiasing - FXAA = Off
Antialiasing-Setting = 8x
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction = On
Antialiasing - Mode = Override any application settings
Antialiasing-Transparency = 2x (Supersample) -> maybe more for you - trial and error and check out multisample as well :) 
CUDA - GPUs = Use global setting (All)
Triple Buffering = On
Power management mode = Prefer Maximum Performance
Background application frame fequency = off
Max framerate = 1000 (which is simply maximum - you can try anything above 60)
Latency mode = Global (off)
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) = off
OpenGL rendering GPU - your GPU ( GTX 1050Ti on my rig)
Shader Cache - Global (on)
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization = Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias = Allow
Texture filtering - Quality = High quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization = Off
Threaded optimization = Auto
Vertical sync = Fast
Maximum pre-rendered frames = Use 3D Application settings

Try to change the indicated values to your taste and the capabilities of your hardware one by one.
Note: In case you messed around with the inspector before, it will be helpfut to reinstall the GPU and its drivers, so all of the still remaining and hidden inspector values will be deleted.
Remember: The Nvidia Panel let you set values for each game/application on your computer; you'd better not take these above as overall values.

Furthermore here is the OpenGL part of the conf.ini maxxed out for NVIDIA *):

Code::

[window]
width=1920 -> change to your monitors native resolution
height=1080 -> change to your monitors native resolution
ColourBits=32
DepthBits=24
StencilBits=8
ChangeScreenRes=0
FullScreen=1
DrawIfNotFocused=0
EnableResize=0
EnableClose=1
SaveAspect=0
Use3Renders=0
WideScreenFoV=1
UIColor=0
UIDetail=0
UIBackground=de
Use3RendersUI=1

[GLPROVIDER]
GL=Opengl32.dll

[GLPROVIDERS]
Open GL=Opengl32.dll
DirectX=dx8wrap.dll

...

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=0
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=1
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=0
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=1
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=1
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1

HardwareShaders=1

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=2
LandDetails=2

LandGeom=3
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=17
Water=4
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0
;PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15  -> value for "flickering airfields; delete ";"
;PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0  -> value for "flickering airfields; delete ";"
PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.0625 -> set ";" in front when flickering airfields occur
PolygonOffsetUnits=-1.0 -> set ";" in front when flickering airfields occur

[Mods]
RandomSplash=1
netCallsign=
ngHUDposition=0,0,0,0
ngHUDsector=0
ngHUDsubtitles=1
ngHUDmaptime=0
ngHUDpause=1
ngHUDfpsbar=0
ngHUDlogbottom=1
ngHUDloglines=3
PALMODsColor=1
ngMAPfriendly=1
ngMAPhostile=1
ngMAPfilters=1
ngMAPnoise=1
FOVAnim=1
FOVLog=0
FOVSpeed=200
FOVDefault=105
Stab4all=1

Note: The mods section is mine for BAT 4.2 - no need to copy it.
You may prefer forest=3 for more eye-candy, but this let trees appear on runways on some maps.
Furthermore don't use effects=2 - this sometimes leads to strange effects. It's still experimental.

Good luck and have a nice day,

Shoeffel.

*) everything learned from Storebror over at SAS. Thank you, Mike!

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

@Shoefell,
I copied your Nvidia control panel settings and that fixed it. The screenshots seem to be coming back again and are more jaggless.

Thanks to all for the help, and believe me I did try all the suggestions. But Shoe gets the mister fixit helper award on this one.
I just now bandicammed these a little while ago, no editing:

Crazy thing is I did all of these:
www.mission4today.com/...mp;t=22303

on the same exact rig, but on win7, before win10 was installed. That must be what jacked it all up.

Pilot Officer Joined: Sep 17, 2010 Posts: 124

Hi Morris!

Code::

But Shoe gets the mister fixit helper award on this one.

Blame it on Mike over at SAS. Very Happy

I simply followed his advices, but I'm glad that I could pass the tips on to you. I like your screenies very much.

The NVIDIA panel had been slighty changed during the last releases of the driver. Win10 (esp. Home) has an inbuilt update function for crucial drivers and rolls them out via the optional updates. That might have crashed your settings. Mine as well, BTW.
These drivers are "optimized" for Win 10 and "your system", but my experience is, that those Redmond Goblins sometimes bombs one back into the digital stone age.

Anyway, have a nice day and let us all have fun in sharing you screenies.

Shoeffel.

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

Hey guys, just some P38 stuff I've been doing latley:

Post subject: Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2022 05:01 PM

Beautiful screenart, Mo. Looks like you've beat the jaggies. Love the strawberry cotton candy clouds.

Air Chief Marshall Joined: Mar 16, 2011 Posts: 2064

Thanks, DF
That Redko Kyushu map looks nice with weather- poor, Cloud height- 300 and time at 0530 ish. 1830 looks good to. I like to fly with the sun low on the horizon either
at morning or evening, that way it doesn't look as cartoonish. A few of these were staged, but the others I actuallywas trying not to get
killed but its nearly impossible with the P38 for me, the guns just weren't doing damage like they should for some reason even after fiddling around with convergence
but you'd think that wouldn't be much of an issue with the P38. Also, since you can never turn with a zero in a P38 I was diving at 450MPH and the zeros would keep
up with me and chase me down. But in level flight I could stretch it out and get turned around for some head on shots. I am not a very good P38 pilot. Give me an F4U1C
and then I will do more damage. Evil or Very Mad

Oh, just a quick note:
There's a youtube channel and this guy is posting stuff every day, almost every few hours. Short silent films of WW2 aviation and other B&W stuff.
Very interesting, the channel is called: hw97karbine on ytube. If you are interested.