PCSX2 HD Textures Website

[Plaidray]

But I dont like altering my textures except for Widescreen ,because thats nearest to the original source. I would rather play witha a cleaned and tested texture pack close to the original source ,than some altered textures that look like they dont fit in the game,but I guess everybody has their own taste.

 

[kupo-on-gbatem]

Second I'd like to apologize for the misinformation about the tiers, I did just look at screenshots and take the author's word for it. I can't check every single submission on my own, my bandwidth is too slow. I would need volunteers to help with that.
Also, I'm not listing incomplete packs on my website, again I'm taking the author's word that that's true.

That's an issue though. Infos and screenshots the texture pack author gives to the public and what is really inside the pack can be very different. I remember a guy here who used to post the greatest screenshots and all users were cheering him until someone noticed -ups the texture pack is far from being complete, there are still many textures untouched.
So the most popular texture packs are probably those which are best promoted. Who has the best screenshots, who pretends to make the most effort etc (no matter if this is even true and what the game looks outside these screenshots).
And if your ranking list claims to compare and rank texture packs and being accurate with this while actually you just apply the information from the texture pack author without to check what is under the surface, it only increases the effect of who is the loudest and not who is doing the best work.
As you later said yourself, you would have to test all the texture packs and how should this be possible? Even if you somehow manage to test all the texture packs, your opinion doesn't need to match other opinions.
So if you make such a tier list the least what you should do is to give a big fat note on the top of your list that this ranking only relies to your own opinion and that it also relies to screenshots and infos from the texture pack author (if so) and you didn't check what is inside the texture packs.

I'm only specifying the difference between 1/2K resolution packs and 4/8K resolution packs in a specific category called "Resolution" because someone on here was bothered that no one was making UHD packs. Your pack's "quality" is independent of resolution i.e. Platinum tier but not 4K.

This is a bit off topic now, but I was always wondering what these labels HD, QHD and UHD should mean in context of texture packs? To me this just feels like - once more - promotion. Texture packs are no videos where all frames have a fixed resolution of 1920x1080 pixels or similar. In each game you have small textures, you have big textures, some are 256x256, others might be just 16x16. So what in this case would mean 4k to you? Upscaling all textures to 4096x4096? Even if the source texture is only 16x16? This makes no sense, ingame this texture is so tiny that you won't see a difference. But once more it becomes problematic, if people take these labels too serious and ranking texture packs higher only because texture authors pretend it to be 4k. The only valid information would be by what scaling factor the textures have been upscaled. But even then it means nothing, because if one model in general produces blurrier textures than another one, an upscale from another model can still be better even in lower resolution. So the only proof how good an upscale is would be a comparison of screenshots with and without custom textures. But then you still have the problem that they only show this location while other locations might look completely different in quality. Up to not even upscaled as I said before.

But I dont like altering my textures except for Widescreen ,because thats nearest to the original source. I would rather play witha a cleaned and tested texture pack close to the original source ,than some altered textures that look like they dont fit in the game,but I guess everybody has their own taste.

I agree. Why should altered textures be ranked higher? From my experience most people prefer high resolution textures which are faithful to the original.

 

[JuanchoTexHD]

I just dropped by to give my humble opinion on this matter:
For me there are only 3 types of modalities to work with textures at this moment if you want to classify it in bronze, silver and gold, and this leaving aside the resolution that is variable in each game and understanding as the 4x the most normal, also leaving aside the originality, since outside of a linear rescaling the originality is quite debatable. I ennumerate my criteria:

Bronze: all linear upscalings, from bilinear to RealESRGAN++ and all the similar techs
Bronze+: same as above but with manual enhancement edits, like interfaces redone or fonts
Silver: Stable diffusion or similar IA software, this bcoz the original textures are reimagined/redraw and not aliased
Silver+: same as above but adding manual edits
Gold: completely new textures, the originals are not used at all

 

[SomberShroud]

I've pondered this a lot and decided to move away from a tiered system since realizing how vague and many scenarios in which they don't make sense. The new listing "Models Used" will take its place instead.

That's an issue though. Infos and screenshots the texture pack author gives to the public and what is really inside the pack can be very different. I remember a guy here who used to post the greatest screenshots and all users were cheering him until someone noticed -ups the texture pack is far from being complete, there are still many textures untouched.

That is why I wanted to curate based on the trust of the individual in this group. They can make many packs but eventually, someone is going to point out the inaccurate description, and then I can't trust them anymore. The only way to circumvent this would be to make multiple accounts therefore, I only add people who have been on here a while and have gained respect. Also because of this post, I've been brainstorming ideas on how to efficiently catch incomplete upscale submissions and since I have experience upscaling a few games, I know how big a dump folder approximately should be and I can check the replacements folder to see if the number doesn't match what is expected. That should help circumvent even further fraudulent claims of valor. I've decided not to have a submit option on my website anymore. instead, threads will be the only way.

This is a bit off topic now, but I was always wondering what these labels HD, QHD and UHD should mean in context of texture packs? To me this just feels like - once more - promotion. Texture packs are no videos where all frames have a fixed resolution of 1920x1080 pixels or similar. In each game you have small textures, you have big textures, some are 256x256, others might be just 16x16. So what in this case would mean 4k to you? Upscaling all textures to 4096x4096? Even if the source texture is only 16x16? This makes no sense, ingame this texture is so tiny that you won't see a difference.

ok so, First image, imagine the TV size scaled proportionally to the resolution it can display. let's say the 1080p screen is 30" the 2K is 45" and the 4K is 60". If I were to play at the same distance across all TVs and play a game on the 1080p screen that would be 1x Scale Proportion of pixels, lets say that a small texture takes up 3" in the real world (32x32) and then switch to the 4K TV but keep the in-game resolution the same, now the texture is 2x Bigger in size in the real world (6" now instead of 3") than the 1080p also the TV size difference of 60" compared to 30" but the resolution is the same, that would make the texture .25x(still 32x32) the scale of the TV, in order to make it not pixelated at that size, you would need to scale it 4x making it 128x128. In this scenario It's not "resolution" that matters, its how much space it is expected to take up on the screen. If it isn't meant to take up the whole screen, than it doesn't need to be that big. 4K upscales in this instance just mean 16x the scale of the native resolution texture (most upscales here are 1K so 4x is common). However, you don't need a 4K TV to tell the difference. You can tell the higher resolution even on a monitor that doesn't support higher resolutions, this technique is well-known in gaming, It's called Anti-Aliasing (more specifically SMAA). it renders above the TV/monitors max resolution to get rid of annoying jaggies that appear on really sharp objects. (look at the second image, specifically the wires) The proportions of the image stays the same since its the same monitor but the resolution changes and you can clearly see more detail in the tiny nooks and crannys. I can tell the difference of higher resolutions on my 2K monitor in most games that look sharp. It looks less pixelated. now of course there is a limit to this effect. making 32K textures isn't gonna magically be 400% better than 8K its not THAT big of a difference, but even 1 step above the expected render resolution is noticeable. most people just don't care.

 

[Orion1189]

An aggregate site for the many PS2 texture packs isn't a bad idea at all, but if you wanted some sort of ranking system or indicator of quality, I feel like a user rating system would fit the bill better. It's all very subjective no matter how you approach it, and people want different things from their texture packs (in making and in downloading them), but I think user ratings, either a single overall rating, or rated on a few parameters (quality, dl size, faithfulness, etc) would be a better indicator of what to expect from the pack at a glance, along with comparison shots/videos.

 

[SadOrigami]

A user rating system will always end up being poisoned by infinite factors, specially in a small community.

• You can ask friends to go and vote up your stuff and down on other's stuff // Half of this can be fixed by not allowing downvotes
• You can buy bots to rig the system at your favour // This can be fixed by only allowing registered users to rate
• There is no metaphysics of quality, so people will vote based on if they like the original game, if they consider that having HD textures for free alone it's worth the highest rating possible, etc. // This cannot be fixed
• If someone makes packs for popular games and people like that person for that, they'll start rating their work as the best even if they haven't download every pack, and they'll probably continue to do so even if the quality decreases // You can partially fix this by only allowing to rate for those who have downloaded the packs.

I also listed some possible fixes to show that even if I don't like the idea I'm not againt it. But I'm not in favor of it either

@SomberShroud 4K textures upscales are pointless, I'm gonna explain why:
The PCSX2 renderer looks very blurry, wich makes textures blurry as well, meaning that even 8K textures will look less detailed than 2K textures on a native PC game. Antialisaing on the PCSX2 emulator is bad, it doesn't work as expected and even inyecting it with other programs doesn't solve that fact. You can see this if you set a game to 5K resolution and take a screenshoot with the game's windows set to 10x times the size of the monitor, it will still look blurry and all the borders jagged, and not even ReShade's sharpness and antialiasing shaders can effectively solve this. Not to mention that a compressed 4K texture will have a size of 16-20mb while a 2K one will be around 8-12mb. I have a couple of screenshots at home with comparisons, and the difference is so subtle that if you inject some sharpenning to 2K textures using ReShade it will be much more noticeable. You can only appreciate the detail when you zoom in more than 4x times on a 6K screenshot, just imagine. And the most imprtant part is this: when you upscale an image it looks good from a distance but when you start to zoom in, everything is a mess, this is because no AI upscaler can recreate such tiny levels of detail on a PS2 texture, so you end up with a 4K texture with no detail in it, only doodles that try to recreate something. Or do you think that if you upscale a skin texture belonging to a person's arm the end result will have pores, hair, wrinkles, a little dirt under the nails, etc? You'll end with a mess that resambles an arm and something that looks like nails. If you want a little more, almost noticeable, sharpness you're better off using a filter instead of doubling the size of the textures. I can add the comparisons later if you want. I'm just explaining why making 4K upscales is not worthy and why it's not a good idea to even think of cathegorizing them by that metric

 

[kupo-on-gbatem]

A user rating system will always end up being poisoned by infinite factors, specially in a small community.

• You can ask friends to go and vote up your stuff and down on other's stuff // Half of this can be fixed by not allowing downvotes

This is a valid point. In the dolphin forum two users had a fight and now all texture packs from one of both have been dramatically downvoted (from the other guy I'd guess).

I'm not completely against downvotes, but they only should be allowed with a statement why someone only gave 1/5 stars etc (like a review on amazon). This way people atleast would know why it has a low rating and can decide if the criticism is valid or if it's just hate (and the texture pack author would profit too, since he has the option to improve his texture pack, if he agrees with the criticism).

 

[SomberShroud]

@SomberShroud 4K textures upscales are pointless, I'm gonna explain why:
The PCSX2 renderer looks very blurry, wich makes textures blurry as well, meaning that even 8K textures will look less detailed than 2K textures on a native PC game. Antialisaing on the PCSX2 emulator is bad, it doesn't work as expected and even inyecting it with other programs doesn't solve that fact. You can see this if you set a game to 5K resolution and take a screenshoot with the game's windows set to 10x times the size of the monitor, it will still look blurry and all the borders jagged, and not even ReShade's sharpness and antialiasing shaders can effectively solve this. Not to mention that a compressed 4K texture will have a size of 16-20mb while a 2K one will be around 8-12mb. I have a couple of screenshots at home with comparisons, and the difference is so subtle that if you inject some sharpenning to 2K textures using ReShade it will be much more noticeable. You can only appreciate the detail when you zoom in more than 4x times on a 6K screenshot, just imagine. And the most imprtant part is this: when you upscale an image it looks good from a distance but when you start to zoom in, everything is a mess, this is because no AI upscaler can recreate such tiny levels of detail on a PS2 texture, so you end up with a 4K texture with no detail in it, only doodles that try to recreate something. Or do you think that if you upscale a skin texture belonging to a person's arm the end result will have pores, hair, wrinkles, a little dirt under the nails, etc? You'll end with a mess that resambles an arm and something that looks like nails. If you want a little more, almost noticeable, sharpness you're better off using a filter instead of doubling the size of the textures. I can add the comparisons later if you want. I'm just explaining why making 4K upscales is not worthy and why it's not a good idea to even think of cathegorizing them by that metric

This implies that this issue would "never" be fixed. I think that in the future this won't be an issue and there will eventually be a fix. doesn't hurt to feature now even if it doesn't make a difference, since it would get more people interested in the idea.

This is a valid point. In the dolphin forum two users had a fight and now all texture packs from one of both have been dramatically downvoted (from the other guy I'd guess).

I'm not completely against downvotes, but they only should be allowed with a statement why someone only gave 1/5 stars etc (like a review on amazon). This way people atleast would know why it has a low rating and can decide if the criticism is valid or if it's just hate (and the texture pack author would profit too, since he has the option to improve his texture pack, if he agrees with the criticism).

like it or not, I think one or a very few people being the judge of packs is best in this scenario and it's up to them to be as fair as possible in their assessment to avoid these situations. I aim to be as unbiased as possible and include as many different styles of packs as possible, they just need to pass a certain threshold of effort to make it on the list. Of course, this approach offends people, but that's not the intention, I legit don't want to clutter the site with low effort packs, that's why I'm not allowing more than 1 pack for a game that uses a single model and it'll get deleted by a pack that does feature multiple models. Everyone will have different interpretations of the "best looking" upscalers or just want to fit a style that hasn't been done before and I'm all for that. I've already updated my site to not use Tiers anymore as it was too confusing, in favor of just listing models as it basically explains the same thing the tiers did but more accurately.

 

[Orion1189]

I don't disagree that there's potential for a user rating system to be abused, in one way or another, but ultimately there's really no perfect solution. At the very least, I think dumbing it down to a simple singular judgement of quality, whether by a couple appointed people, or users, won't convey very well to would-be downloaders what they are getting with the packs, if that's the intent of the system in the first place. Tbh, a statement of completeness (like as a rough percentage), and good high quality comparison shots are always going to mean the most to me, personally.

 

[Plaidray]

How about we dont rate anything just put disclaimers if some textures are missing like Legaia 2 has everything upscaled ,except for characters because they dont dump the proper way.
This would also leave a fair option if somebody Update their own textures by using a better upscale Model.
That way we could also have 2 different textures of the same game ,without any rating and you could choose which one you like more.
Because not all texture upscalers use the same models/methods maybe some people like alterd textures more while others want sharper or smoother textures.
That way anybody can be happy and dont need to stop making new textures, just because it might get lower rating than the one that already exist.

 

[SomberShroud]

How about we dont rate anything just put disclaimers if some textures are missing like Legaia 2 has everything upscaled ,except for characters because they dont dump the proper way.
This would also leave a fair option if somebody Update their own textures by using a better upscale Model.
That way we could also have 2 different textures of the same game ,without any rating and you could choose which one you like more.
Because not all texture upscalers use the same models/methods maybe some people like alterd textures more while others want sharper or smoother textures.
That way anybody can be happy and dont need to stop making new textures, just because it might get lower rating than the one that already exist.

I already ditched the rating system, I will include as many different packs by different creators for the same game. so long as it is mostly complete and not a single model upscale (only if no other upscale exists for a game than only 1 single model upscale pack will be allowed)

 

[Distilled_Spirit]

Your website, I sense some favoritism or it's just me? Yeah you made some adjustment but somehow the list nothing change. You should incorporate all the versions which it's not in the gbatemp so people know that version is exist and they have multiple choices what is best for them. Pardon me, why is it that modders like Bl4chH4nd, CCKrizalid and Curse_Arms not included in your list? Maybe I know the answer coz there not using 4xHDcube.

 

[SadOrigami]

Your website, I sense some favoritism or it's just me? Yeah you made some adjustment but somehow the list nothing change. You should incorporate all the versions which it's not in the gbatemp so people know that version is exist and they have multiple choices what is best for them. Pardon me, why is it that modders like Bl4chH4nd, CCKrizalid and Curse_Arms not included in your list? Maybe I know the answer coz there not using 4xHDcube.

It's not that easy. For example:

• Bl4ckH4nd has all of his packs on a mediafire folder, we don't know the region, if it's 100% completed or has some bad dumps.
• CCKrizalid has like 40 packs and nowhere in his mega library thread tells the things missing above. Also if you manually search his threads for every game one by one, that info is still missing.
• Curse_Arms has his downloads behind a 'subscribe to my youtube' wall. I don't know about SomberShroud, but every HD Pack I see behind a wall I'll leave it for last. Also the above info is still missing.

 

[Curse_Arms]

It's not that easy. For example:

• Bl4ckH4nd has all of his packs on a mediafire folder, we don't know the region, if it's 100% completed or has some bad dumps.
• CCKrizalid has like 40 packs and nowhere in his mega library thread tells the things missing above. Also if you manually search his threads for every game one by one, that info is still missing.
• Curse_Arms has his downloads behind a 'subscribe to my youtube' wall. I don't know about SomberShroud, but every HD Pack I see behind a wall I'll leave it for last. Also the above info is still missing.

Count me out, I'm happy with my work. This is just a hobby with me. I upscaled the game that I played during the early days. Whether someone hates me, I don't care I upscaled the game which is based on my preferences, and I shared to the public.

 

[Plaidray]

Count me out, I'm happy with my work. This is just a hobby with me. I upscaled the game that I played during the early days. Whether someone hates me, I don't care I upscaled the game which is based on my preferences, and I shared to the public.

I don't know about others ,but I think most people think like me. And I like all Upscalers, its hard work to even finish the game first ,and check what dumps and sort out so you got my respect. Especialy for Mana Khemia 2 ,a 2D game where nobody even tried to upscale the game.
Thank you for all your and upcoming work for this community

 

[SadOrigami]

Count me out, I'm happy with my work. This is just a hobby with me. I upscaled the game that I played during the early days. Whether someone hates me, I don't care I upscaled the game which is based on my preferences, and I shared to the public.

No one hates you, I hope. It's just that I don't like walls But if you don't wanna be on the list I'll respect that.

 

[SomberShroud]

Your website, I sense some favoritism or it's just me? Yeah you made some adjustment but somehow the list nothing change. You should incorporate all the versions which it's not in the gbatemp so people know that version is exist and they have multiple choices what is best for them. Pardon me, why is it that modders like Bl4chH4nd, CCKrizalid and Curse_Arms not included in your list? Maybe I know the answer coz there not using 4xHDcube.

I just started the website like 5 days ago and I'll be honest, the critiques have de-motivated me a bit on working on it. I'm still updating the list (it's in-complete) and plan on adding CCKrizalid and Curse_Arms and a few others to the list in the future, I would just like some more info about how they upscale so I can add it to the site. I'm saddened Bl4chH4nd doesn't want to be a part of the site but I'll respect his wishes. I hope ya'll are having a nice day.

 

[SomberTwilight]

Your website, I sense some favoritism or it's just me? Yeah you made some adjustment but somehow the list nothing change. You should incorporate all the versions which it's not in the gbatemp so people know that version is exist and they have multiple choices what is best for them. Pardon me, why is it that modders like Bl4chH4nd, CCKrizalid and Curse_Arms not included in your list? Maybe I know the answer coz there not using 4xHDcube.

All of the packs listed by me were used with Hitpaw, paint.net and paint3d.There are only two official games done by me with 4xhdcube plus 4.

 

[TrippyPit]

Cool site

 

[SomberShroud]

Added labels: "PCSX2 currently doesn't support UHD".
Added "For Gamers" section in tutorial
Reformatted entire list to include OG and Edit Status
Added Donation link to list