PS1 contrast levels

[Richard-L]

This was something Arsunt deliberated on for quite a while but eventually made it happen. He presented it like this:

Arsunt:

DirectX 5 has limited texture lighting formula. Every texture cannot be displayed lighter than it is.
But it can be displayed darker than it is. PS1 had full range of texture brightness, so PS1 is more contrast when it comes to dynamic lighting and bright rooms
So I made 3 modes of lighting contrast:

• Low: texture lighting is clamped in 0%-100% range (that's how behaved PC version with hardware renderer).
• Medium: texture lighting is clamped in 0%-150% range (that's most comfort way to play in my opinion, compromise between Low and High).
• High: texture lighting is clamped in 0%-200% range (that's how behaved PC version with software renderer and PS1 version).
  This is especially noticeable when you use flare or flashing with guns

TR2M before (DX5):

TR2M after (DX7):

TR2X:

PS1:

In some levels that are naturally dark it can be quite striking - compare the dragon:
PC:

PS1:

[Richard-L]

Some of the above image links had broken and I fixed them.

While doing so, I found some examples of people trying TR2M's PS1 contrast levels in Golden Mask. The snow there looks too white, almost like a PS1 TR2-JP Tibet. Maybe due to these levels never meant to be played on the PS1? Something to perhaps keep an eye on for later.

[Richard-L]

Small addition that this also seems to affect room lights. Left PSX, right PC.

And although the above already explains it, I found another elaboration on it by Arsunt:

Little theory. Let's take a pure red color texture.
If we set it's lighting to some value on PS1 we'll get new color on screen:

• 0% pitch black
• 25% dark red
• 50% pure red
• 75% light red
• 100% pitch white

But classic PC version cannot make texture brighter than it is because of DirectX 5 limitations. So we have

• 0% pitch black
• 25% dark red
• 50% pure red
• 75% pure red
• 100% pure red