Request to change GameDB upscaling settings for Haunting Ground.

[EnekoT2001]

Since the change from HPO: vertex to special and round sprite half, the depth of field effects are kinda broken.

They look very low resolution no matter what internal resolution you set and don't align correctly on the X axis (resulting in an outline on characters).

Example:

(for reference, vertex HPO looked like this)

By trying different settings I found a workaround:

First, to fix the low resolution of the effect, all it needs is forcing filtering.
The problem is that forcing bilinear makes that outline issue even worse and doesn't look much better anyway, forcing trilinear (with bilinear set to PS2, with bilinear set to forced it doesn't do anything) does look way better, but the outline is still present, even if a bit less noticeable.

bilinear forced:

Bilinear PS2, trilinear forced:

The ideal solution I found is to set bilinear filtering to nearest and trilinear to forced, there are no drawbacks that i can see (except the DoF effect not showing at the top edge of the screen but it's just a few pixels, and tbh vertex HPO had similar issues anyway)
This gets rid of the outline, the DoF effect is well filtered so it doesn't look super low resolution and doesn't seem to break anything else. Tested in over a dozen cutscenes already.

Bilinear nearest and trilinear forced:

Bilinear filtering (forced or PS2) moves the image a few pixels to the left and that's what causes the outlines. Trilinear doesn't seem to move the image at all so that's why it doesn't cause any issues, not sure if this is an inaccuracy on the emulator end or just how the ps2 handles bilinear filtering (or this game being weird as usual).

I also have gsdumps alongside the screenshots with each setting if anyone wants to take a look at them: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tAVsv4PYXskJBwYIF7500hc8uBVCvkpn/view?usp=sharing google drive link bc it's bigger than 25MB
Also, im using a new version of the widescreen patch from nemesis2000 I got from ps2wide.net (it fixed the FOV on cutscenes, but these issues show up even without WS patches active)

Anyway, I hope these findings will be taken into consideration, I'm not sure if regular render settings can be changed through the GameDB but as it is now, this is the only way to get rid of these issues and I really couldn't find any bugs caused by these settings, if anything it's more accurate to how it looks on real hardware (i compared it with software rendering a lot of times too)

[RedDevilus]

Wrong location and if it looks better on bilinear forced + trilinear forced then that's not what the actual PS2 would do.

[EnekoT2001]

i checked software as well, i mentioned it at the end, and i have gsdumps linked as well

[EnekoT2001]

also, the dof effect has been emulated for years, the only thing that changed was that the upscaling fix in gamedb changed from vertex hpo to special and round sprite half a couple of months ago bc a bug i reported, if i change it manually to vertex and set round sprite to off it looks the same as it used to, that's why i made the comparisons and explained why i arrived to the conclusion that disabling bilinear filtering and forcing trilinear was the best solution, maybe theres a better way but i tried everything i could on my end and this the only thing that worked for me

[RedDevilus]

Oh okay, so it seems half round sprite does indeed make the issue more pronounced (zoomed in and clearer) but reduces ghosting. Wild Arms doesn't make it worse but then you have depth issues around the character:

Disable Renderer Fixes:

Disable Depth Emulation:

Disable Renderer Fixes and Disable Depth Emulation:

It's likely with all those post-processing and rendering effects something is going amiss.

[RedDevilus]

We don't add Bilinear (Forced) or Trilinear (Forced) to automatic fixes as they actively change the rendering which also affect the software renderer which accuracy is the most important aspect. It's another to do it manually yourself. I'm a bit on the fence if this actively an issue but I do see the DoF looks a bit worse as side-effect in that scene.

[EnekoT2001]

I see, makes sense, just wanted to mention it and my current workaround, maybe someone can figure it out better than I can.
There's also the issue of how blocky the DoF looks compared to vertex HPO or trilinear forced here's a good comparison

[F0bes]

Continue this discussion in issue #10054.
We don't use discussions for the purpose, thanks.