Factorio Forums

Sometime ago, i had made a post about blurry graphics on Sandy Bridge iGPU and it was misunderstood as the "Static" blurry effect from the 'map view'. Now i've took a time to explain better what i meant.


Mipmap Issues
Everyone knows how mipmap works by 'lowering textures depending by how far it is from the camera in order to save resources.'


As it was in Factorio 0.16, there was an option to Enable Mipmap
for lower tiles like ores, ground tiles, belts and so on...



However in 0.17 it is enabled by default and there is no option to turn off, wich would still not a problem, except that it would work with linear
filter wich on some old GPUs are not so well compatible, making lower tiles blurrier rather than just lowering its textures, even when zoomed in.



A comparison between the two lasts, despite the new textures.



There was also an option to enable linear filtering for items

As expected enabling linear filtering for items by default
would also make them blurrier.


I will hope these options will come back for compatibility issues since the game is so well made to run on any computer,
including a way to disable mipmap, textures compression is just enough and does not need my CPU to work even harder resizing textures.
Also i have already uploaded the log file

Hmm, I thought we got rid of all GPUs that have such issues with DX10 compatibility requirement. And would say, if a GPU cannot sample textures properly, it's not really DX10 compatible; but it is also possible the PC struggles to fit everything into memory so it just pages out high-detail mipmaps and resorts to using coarser levels only. But I assume this was still happening also when texture compression was enabled.

Interestingly, this doesn't seems to happen on nearly all Sandy Bridge iGPUs.

For 0.17.12 I added to config.ini setting called "legacy-gpu-no-mipmaps"; you can uncomment it and set it to true as a workaround to your issue. Please keep be aware that its support will be very limited and might go away in the future again.

HLPL4Y3R wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:42 pmI will hope these options will come back for compatibility issues since the game is so well made to run on any computer,

That's not the case. It is video game made to run on gaming PCs. It just happens to run on wide range on non-gaming PCs also. I am not saying we are not putting some effort into not increasing absolute minimum requirements unnecessarily due to people buying the game long time ago, but the goal is not to make the game run on any PC.

HLPL4Y3R wrote: Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:42 pmincluding a way to disable mipmap, textures compression is just enough and does not need my CPU to work even harder resizing textures.
Also i have already uploaded the log file

Memory accesses are quite expensive in GPU computations (more than on CPU), both texture compression and mipmaps make GPU memory accesses more efficient, due to lowering total bandwith and better utilization of GPU caches. Especially on integrated GPUs any computation we do is dwarfed by memory accesses. Also I don't understand "textures compression is just enough" comment, as you have disabled texture compression

Well, first thanks for replying, you just made my day better. And here we go...

posila wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 11:39 am For 0.17.12 I added to config.ini setting called "legacy-gpu-no-mipmaps"; you can uncomment it and set it to true as a workaround to your issue. Please keep be aware that its support will be very limited and might go away in the future again.

That should preserve a bit of the feeling from 0.16 and i still apreciate it even though it might be gone.

posila wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 11:39 am That's not the case. It is video game made to run on gaming PCs. It just happens to run on wide range on non-gaming PCs also. I am not saying we are not putting some effort into not increasing absolute minimum requirements unnecessarily due to people buying the game long time ago, but the goal is not to make the game run on any PC.

Well, everyone probably knows this, but you guys have been doing a great job to increase the performance for huge factories wich is also maintaining to keep those players with weak PCs being able to still play it, wich is somewhat honorable in a time where "the absolute minimun is to have an GTX 960"

posila wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 11:39 am Memory accesses are quite expensive in GPU computations (more than on CPU), both texture compression and mipmaps make GPU memory accesses more efficient, due to lowering total bandwith and better utilization of GPU caches. Especially on integrated GPUs any computation we do is dwarfed by memory accesses. Also I don't understand "textures compression is just enough" comment, as you have disabled texture compression

Now the real deal. Thanks for explaining what i missed, but the actual case is how "Linear Filtering" in is messing up with some mipmaped layers, items and GUI icons, as i said, in 0.16 and before, there was an option to disable linear filtering for tiles and for items in case of compatibility issues if they were 'missing' or 'blurried out' (wich just happens to be my case). Also i've tried a lot of combinations with diferent settings, but i usually use compression.

I barely have problems with mipmap, but the way it is used with linear filtering is actually turning the game into an abstract art the futher i look due to the tiles being blurried. Since mipmap is here to stay, thats good, it helps a lot. But at least add an way to disable Linear Filtering in general even if it may be like "legacy-gpu-no-linearfilter".

Thanks for comprehension.

HLPL4Y3R wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:59 pmI barely have problems with mipmap, but the way it is used with linear filtering is actually turning the game into an abstract art the futher i look due to the tiles being blurried. Since mipmap is here to stay, thats good, it helps a lot. But at least add an way to disable Linear Filtering in general even if it may be like "legacy-gpu-no-linearfilter".

Does it mean things are still blurry even with "legacy-gpu-no-mipmaps" set to true, or did you mean to turn off linear filtering instead of mipmaps?

posila wrote: Thu Mar 14, 2019 11:04 pm Does it mean things are still blurry even with "legacy-gpu-no-mipmaps" set to true, or did you mean to turn off linear filtering instead of mipmaps?

I meant if mipmaps should be always on, you should then add an option to disable the linear filters for it and for the items.


But it seems like you disabled everything. To summarize everything: this is the result, so consider it done for now.


This topic should already have been closed. Sorry for taking your time and thanks a lot for your help.
Thanks for comprehension.