New WC3 Test Adds New Detail to Cutscene Footage
ODVS has another exciting experimental clip to share. Wing Commander 3 hasn't been a huge focus lately as he has primarily worked to refine his enhanced WC4 & Prophecy video. There isn't yet a method to reinsert the WC3 cutscenes into the game, but that hasn't stopped Owen from testing out his latest techniques to drastically improve the quality.
It's funny what decades of nostalgia will do to memories. If someone were to jump to the middle of the clip and happen to start at a sharpened scene, it's easy to think that's just what the game used to look like. Then the much lower fidelity original portion scrolls in and it's a shock how blurry everything was. Modern AI/Machine Learning techniques have finally been able to insert the missing detail our brains accounted for all these years!
I took some of the methods I worked out during the creation of my Wing Commander IV HD Pack and applied them here with significant tweaks and changes. As well as upscaling the footage, I've also increased the frame rate from 15fps to 30fps, making for significantly smoother motion.It's still not perfect, but it's definitely a step up. The original resolution is only 160p, so this is an upscale of around 600%! The "crazy eyes" phenomenon is far less apparent now and I applied some of the AVIsynth workflow from the WCP remasters to do some sharpness and motion cleanup before running it through the Machine Learning process. It also now picks out more fine detail in hair (and fur) and other such places.
Anyway, still in the experimental phase, but I thought you all might like to see it :^)
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