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ValveSoftware
Can we get mat_picmip -10 back? (Ultra high textures)
Can we get mat_picmip -10 back? (Ultra high textures) It's been nearly 3 years now since VALVe locked mat_picmip to -1 to 4. mat_picmip -10 enabled the highest texture resolutions to be used in the game, adding some fine details to some textures (like the clothing of the classes) and removing some hideous noticeable compression artifacts on others (like everything).
mat_picmip was locked, according to the wiki, because of "significant performance and instability issues". Which is a pretty silly reason on its alone. People should know messing in the console is done at their own risk! Besides that, hardware has improved dramatically in the past 3 years. Surely it's not unreasonable to expect a large sum of people are able to use this without 'performance issues'.
Quoting Metal Geo on the steam forum. I'm pretty much agree with him.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3109514
I totally agree with this. I see no reason that this was locked, because when you use the console you use it at your own risk, and mat_picmip can easily be reverted back to normal values.
It would be great for people who make machinima too.
I never understood this. Shouldn't all textures display at their native resolution when you select "Extra High" from the advanced graphics menu? How does Source decide which ones to scale down? I looked at the material file of one of the props apparently affected by this, and there wasn't anything unusual in it.
mat_picmip has a scale from 10 to -10. Very High has the value of -1, so no, the textures won't look at their best.
VTF version 7.3 and newer have an option to lock a certain mipmap to mat_picmip 0 (High). If it isn't defined then high = full resolution. If it is defined, then high = mipmap defined in LOD lock, and the further below 0 mat_picmip is the higher the mipmap it will load. So if you lock the LOD to something that is 50% of full resolution, then mat_picmip -1 (Very High) will display it at 100% resolution. The problem with TF2 is that many of its textures are locked to lower than 50%, and since we don't have any options above very high, those high res mipmaps are left unused.
I've read that this was removed because of performance issues. Does it really affect performance even if it is unaltered by users? Removing this seemed unnecessary unless there was a valid reason to.
It was removed because some people didn't realise that mat_picmip -10 was causing them low performance and crashes. I guess they were too stupid to realise that messing with the console is done at their own risk, and as such those who could run TF2 with that command lost the extra texture quality.
I'm sure systems have improved a lot in the past 3 years, and mat_picmip -10 would be extremely useful for machinima.
This is easy to bring back, right? If it is, then I think it should be in the next update of TF2. I think this will not only help machinimas, but also help in immersing players who use the oculus rift by removing the blurry imperfections on the textures.
@pepper314 So basically almost all of the textures have their first mipmap locked to mat_picmip 0, but a few had their second or third locked instead? Is there a way to go in and find out which are which without just opening every single texture file in VTFEdit?
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/1410 contains some interesting comments about this, shame there’s no comment merging.
I don't understand why it's still locked. Hardware has become much better compared to 2010.
any news about that ? we should at least unlock this cmd for singleplayer games !
Yeah, could it be unlocked? @kisak-valve, it should get the "Team Fortress 2" label.
Just tagging a message on here hoping it'll get noticed by whoever has been actively working on TF2 (seems like @kisak-valve?). mat_picmip has been locked to a range of -1 to 4 for a very long time and given the current hardware landscape I don't think that's necessary anymore.
I'm not the Team Fortress 2 developer you're looking for, but "Updated mat_picmip to allow values below -1" is one of the changelog notes in the 2022-07-07 Team Fortress 2 update.
Would it be possible to have this change reflected in other Source 1 games (ie HL2, Portal, CS, DOD, etc)?
@chipsnapper Do you know of any textures in any of those games that would actually be higher res if you did that? Otherwise it would be a completely useless change.
@stevethepocket While this doesn't have any noticeable effects on world textures, it can affect the texture quality of small prop models. I can't give you an example of a model from Half-Life 2 right now (because the max value is still -1) but here's an example from TF2:
Similar situations exist in HL2 on props like soda cans, trash, etc. I don't see a reason not to re-enable this if TF2 already got it.
@kisak-valve Can you close this issue? It seems that OP hasn't been active in years
Agreed with chipsnapper, It's already been enabled in TF2, it should be enabled in all other Source 1 games (unsure if this also includes the SDK Base 2007, and 2013 branches, but will assume they also count)
SDK2013 reflects the TF2 codebase, it should get this change whenever it gets updated next. SDK2007 is no longer updated however.
On Jul 15, 2022, at 9:39 AM, CptFoxer @.***> wrote:
Agreed with chipsnapper, It's already been enabled in TF2, it should be enabled in all other Source 1 games (unsure if this also includes the SDK Base 2007, and 2013 branches, but will assume they also count)
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Since the release of macOS Catalina which removed support for 32-bit Carbon programs, Valve should reimplement mat_picmip -10 in all Source 1 games, since they lacks the staff necessary to update their macOS ports to 64-bit. The limit of mat_picmip -1 was previously introduced back in 2010, and should be removed due to the release of macOS Catalina and Valve's lack of resources regarding the Apple Silicon processor architecture.
Hey @kisak-valve, Since Valve recently removed the macOS binaries for their Source engine games, why not reimplement mat_picmip -10 for both Windows & Linux. Or maybe the mat_picmip -10 update for all the other Source engine games have been delayed indefinitely.
@kisak-valve Even with the removal of macOS binaries from Valve's titles, I probably think that mat_picmip -10 update for all the other Source engine games has either been delayed indefinitely, or cancelled completely.
mat_picmip -10 update for remaining Source 1 games cancelled indefinitely.
@kisak-valve I think the whole mat_picmip -10 update for remaining Source 1 games has been cancelled indefinitely.
@Wadmodder just so you know, harassing the person at Valve who runs this repo (and all of us who get emails every time a post is made in this issue, tbf) is really not helping things.
@shoober420 repeatedly bumping an issue when you have nothing meaningful to contribute is not reasonable behavior. Posting the same basic comment twice, a passive-aggressive 'guess it's not happening', a month apart, likely with the intent to keep doing so, is harassment.
I agree with wanting to bring mat_picmip -10 back, but the fact of the matter is Valve has no responsibility to any of us, and poking someone over and over when for all we know it's already being planned if not worked on is not endearing anyone to that cause.