possible new upscale

[yarLson]

okay so maybe some of you are aware that I am rather obsessed in my spare time with finding the highest quality method possible for improving ff7 field backgrounds.  I won't go into all the details but since my shader idea isn't really moving I have been messing around with other alternatives. 

As a note, at the time I was more concerned with just getting the project done and experimenting and learning that with quality, but now that I look at the results I can't help but tell you that I absolutely hate the fractal method.  There is sooo much blotchy distortion in the resulting images and even though omzy was kind enough to take my idea and automate it  and bring it everyone I am still not very thrilled with the final results.

Of course I'd really like to give up on this entirely and just help the cause of remodeling the scenes one by one, however that is just not practical and even with team avalanches valiant efforts I think we are still a long way off from making that a reality, if it ever even happens. I have messed with everything and not really satisfied enough to start my project again.  But I have something new here and I'd like to get an opinion.

I won't bore anyone with the technical specifics now but I have been experimenting with a procedure called super resolution and am really intrigued with the results.  Since imgur and other image services tend to compress and therefore destroy the quality which I am here trying to convey, instead I have uploaded a png file to my google drive account.  To those who are interested, download and judge for yourself.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3FK0dqybqUCREpOdk1mdVdYOFE/edit?usp=sharing

This is a 4x blow up of the original.  As you can see there are no ugly blotches and while not perfect, better than any other program I have tried so far at maintaining detail without blurring the image.

Opinions, ideas, criticisms...

[EQ2Alyza]

I am not one to be very particular with eye candy. I like your example just as much as Omzy's and would certainly play with it.

Could this be implemented with battle scenes as well? Those are the most unfinished of all textures in the game, and I've been itching to see some kind of improvement on them.

[yarLson]

Possibly although the image I uploaded is very basic compared to what might yet be possible with super resolution.  I am messing around and getting some extremely interesting results.  I'll post up some of the best ones when I have finished.  Even ones that are much nicer than the one I posted.  As for implementing this into the battle scenes.  Don't count on it since the battle scene textures are layered differently and there would be very ugly seams all over the place.  I'll look into it but don't hold your breath just yet.

[Template]

Good Lord, Yarlson (sorry, I got used to your old name), I blew that up to full screen and it looks a million times better than the basic backgrounds. Is this the kind of quality available playing this game on psx emulators???

I can't help but wonder if the rerelease can be modified to use postprocessing effects like this, once you've got it sorted out, and especially external objects per aali's driver without having to play off-cloud or whatever--offline lol, since some people seem to be charmed by the features. The term "Cloud" for network is too confusing when it comes to ff7. 

[cmh175]

I'm very interested in this. I play on a 36in tv and the backgrounds just look like crap. Ozmys are definitely an improvement over the vanilla, but they still aren't all that clear at all. If this can be refined and done for all the backgrounds I think it would be a huge difference.