AI Upscaled Loading Screen & Intro

[BrandonBranderson]

Upscaled the loading screen from its native 720p up to 1440p.  Just wanted to see how well it would work because of something Matt said in the Reddit AMA today.

 

 

I think it turned out pretty good except for a few little artifacts. I converted LoadingMovieV1.bik to MP4 and used the upscaling application.  To be usable it'll have to be converted back into a .bik.  AI upscaling may be the way to go for those old background movies if the source projects don't exist anymore.   @MattScott

 

 

I would have tried the main menu background movies but I couldn't find them in an older client's files.  Gonna try the intro next which is also 720p and see how it handles all those TV static transitions and blur.  Will post back here when that's done.

 

EDIT: Here's a link to download the upscaled version

https://mega.nz/file/hO5nnCTI#u4C6Ph0dpBwpWavtC1qJE7Qta7jj9DRlAcqNhy9ynWU

 

Just replace it in your APB Reloaded\APBGame\Movies directory.

Edited June 1, 2020 by BrandonBranderson

[NotZombieBiscuit]

I was ready to bltch at this due to how most AI upscaling sort of ruins the look of the video a lot of the time. But it seems that the art style of APB actually sort of lends itself nicely to it. There are certainly some issues I could see, but on the whole I think it actually works pretty well.

 

A bit of tweaking and manually fixing and I could see this being a nice upgrade.

 

Also the old menu 'video' isn't actually a video but a proper 3d scene that dynamically changes along with dynamic music so that both are unique every time.

Edited May 31, 2020 by NotZombieBiscuit

[Thornecroft]

You can tell at times that it's upscaled but overall, looks very nice. Would be nice to have these loading screens have versions for ultrawides.

[_chain]

8 hours ago, BrandonBranderson said:

Upscaled the loading screen from its native 720p up to 1440p.  Just wanted to see how well it would work because of something Matt said in the Reddit AMA today.

 

 

I think it turned out pretty good except for a few little artifacts. I converted LoadingMovieV1.bik to MP4 and used the upscaling application.  To be usable it'll have to be converted back into a .bik.  AI upscaling may be the way to go for those old background movies if the source projects don't exist anymore.   @MattScott

 

 

I would have tried the main menu background movies but I couldn't find them in an older client's files.  Gonna try the intro next which is also 720p and see how it handles all those TV static transitions and blur.  Will post back here when that's done.

 

The artifacting is very minimal, you upscaled from 720p up to 1440p, there probably wasn't too much for the program to guess. I did spot some ''ghosting'' around fonts. Faces look fine, oh well.

 

I'm now using a 5700xt, I had nvidia a few months ago and i messed around with deep learning a lot but never thought about upscaling this video. Dunno if i can use it on AMD. Anyways good job on that, it looks usable.

[Goabea]

that looks pretty cool. Hey, any chance we can get a version of this that we can use in Wallpaper engine?
I'd love to have this on loop as my wallpaper.

[BrandonBranderson]

11 hours ago, Goabea said:

that looks pretty cool. Hey, any chance we can get a version of this that we can use in Wallpaper engine?
I'd love to have this on loop as my wallpaper.

Awesome idea, buying WPE right now.

 

Edit: Done!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2115101068

 

Merged.

 

The intro didn't fare nearly as well as the loading screen did, which was to be expected.  A lot more movement, faces, blurry filters, static, motion blur etc.  It caused a lot of this:

 

A lot of it was recorded to look like it was phone footage from back when it came out so there's a lot of blatant pixelation which caused a lot of artifacts.  Some ghosting on moving text too.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2020 by BrandonBranderson

[GhosT]

Always loved the art style of APB. The loading screen is pretty much the last thing we have left to remind us of the good times.

 

Hope they keep it as an upscaled version, and bring back the old login screen.

[Ulexos]

Nice upscale attempt, tried upscaling to 4K yet? But yeah fine details always suffer when upscaling, basic shapes with little color variety not as much

[BrandonBranderson]

2 hours ago, Ulexos said:

Nice upscale attempt, tried upscaling to 4K yet? But yeah fine details always suffer when upscaling, basic shapes with little color variety not as much

Thanks, that might be a job for when I go to bed tonight lol.  It took about 2-3 hours to upscale it to 1440p with my 1070.  Used to have a TitanX that would come in handy for this, but it shit the bed a few months ago.

[Ulexos]

On 5/31/2020 at 2:54 AM, BrandonBranderson said:

the upscaling application

which one did you use actually @BrandonBranderson?

[BrandonBranderson]

21 minutes ago, Ulexos said:

which one did you use actually @BrandonBranderson?

The one I've been using is Gigapixel AI desktop application.

[Senodus]

I think Matt meant this with the old login screen having a 720p movie in the background. What you did here looks nice tho and all the movies being updated is probably a good idea

 

[PizzaNinja]

Very interesting experiment indeed. Would love to see the return of the original login screen, not to say the current one is any worse but the old one’s got some special magic in it... perhaps its nostalgia. Thanks for sharing anyway!