Display MoreDue to popular demand, ODVS has put together and posted a complete set of enhanced Wing Commander 3 videos! There is not yet a method developed to integrate these directly into the game, but it's still an awesome trove of cutscenes to play around with. These are based off the Playstation version, so the source material is slightly higher quality. Then ODVS used his AI/machine learning process to increase the quality substantially. It's certainly not up to modern HD standards, but it's a huge improvement over the original footage. There are a couple of new test videos as well as download links below. It's highly likely that a superior iteration will be released in the months ahead, but this provides a fun collection of clips to play around with now.
Well, thanks to AD and EmuMusicFan's help, here's the first batch of remaster/comparison clips lifted directly from the PSX discs.The overall resolution of the source material remains the same (only 160p - so this is still a 600% upscale) - but I think the increased colour depth and edge definition afforded by not using footage that had already been compressed for web deployment has yielded improved results.
I will most likely do some cleanup at some point - but that involves a lot of programming, trial-and-error and general tinkering. I usually stumble across or create methods to clean things up - the progression of the WC4 and WCP HD packs are a case in point. I wouldn't hold your breath for anything too stunning for WC3, though. The video files have tiny dimensions to start with - and while turd-polishing is possible, there are always limits.
Here's another look at the type of improvement that's now possible. While not perfect, it's a stunning jump in fidelity given the blurry low res source
Just something I thought you might find interesting here...Although the remastered WC3 videos admittedly look like arse compared to modern native HD standards, I am often quite astonished by the amount of detail the AI routines manage to recreate. This screenshot from the routine running really encapsulated that for me, so I thought people might like to see it.
It's also worth noting that YouTube strips a lot of detail out of the eventual render with its incredibly over-zealous compression methods. This screenshot shows the output before I even do my post-upscale cleanup workflow.
Granted, the right-side still looks pretty bad by modern standards - but just look at the source quality!
Last, but not least, here are the download links!
- Wing Commander 3, Version 1.0, Pack 1 (4 gig zip)
- Wing Commander 4: Version 1.0, Pack 2 (4 gig zip)
- Wing Commander 4: Version 1.0, Pack 3 (4 gig zip)
- Wing Commander 4: Version 1.0, Pack 4 (2 gig zip)
Well, I know I said I wasn't going to do this since there's currently no way to play the videos in-game, but: Here's WCIII HD Pack V1.0. Since AD and EmuMusicFan helped me get hold of and extract the PSX videos, I figured I might as well process the lot of them and make them available. If anyone feels inspired to mod the Kilrathi Saga EXE to play these back in-game, that would be wonderful.I'm afraid this pack is a whopper - there's around twice as (many FMV clips) in WCIII as in WCIV - and although the quality is lower because of the source material, once it's upscaled it's still a shed-load of 1080p videos - so this lot clocks in at around 14GB!
If you'd like to download and have a watch, feel free. It's only V1.0, so I'm sure I'll figure out improvements down the line. Once again, though, it's a low priority until we have a method to play the files in-game.
If you haven't grabbed them yet, both WC4 and Prophecy are available.
