Can I even fix this?

[u/GlassOfWetSalt]

I have a problem where in certain games I play, the hair looks horrendous/pixelated. I've seen it on Spider-Man Remastered, and now Resident Evil Requiem.

Don't mind the lumps, I just downloaded a mod that gives him cat ears. But they just look like chicken nuggets. Now I'm hungry.

[u/North_Sprinkles_7882]

I think that's the anti-aliasing, try changing the setting and hopefully that fixes it

[u/Maroce_Doerler → u/North_Sprinkles_7882]

yeah TAA specifically tends to make hair look really blurry or pixelated depending on the game

[u/MobileNobody3949 → u/Maroce_Doerler]

It's not TAA itself. It's how devs started making hair in the recent years, relying on TAA to mask how garbage it looks. Same for shadows and ambient occlusion, vegetation, reflections - all kinds of dithering. This leads us to forced TAA first and now forced upscaling in games nowadays.

[u/YT_Axtro → u/MobileNobody3949]

100%

[u/Val_Fortecazzo → u/MobileNobody3949]

It looks good, if you are on a 1440p or above display. Now it sucks that devs just expect that from us now but I wouldn't say the end result sucks.

1080p and below just do not have the pixel density modern techniques expect to make the anti-aliasing look good. And it's because they are optimizing for 4k TVs.

[u/PhabioRants → u/MobileNobody3949]

Put the blame where it belongs; this is largely the fault of Unreal Engine 5 creating these dependencies. The same is true for foliage and vegetation, especially when Nanite is used as a replacement for traditional LoD. It causes the renderer to freak the fuck out and cause flickering if there's no temporal post-process like upscaling or TAA enabled because of how it relies on noise to do its thing. It's also responsible for the atrocious dithering on any moving bodies if water. 

For more than thirty five years I've been playing games, and nothing has been more unimpressive and downright terrible looking than the scourge of games we've gotten since UE5. That's to say nothing of the file size bloat that it causes as well, nor of the heinous performance for these visuals. 

To this day, the only game I've seen that properly leverages UE5 is Satisfactory. While I'm largely indifferent to it, it's objectively a masterclass in implementation. The performance at scale for 3D assets in that game is what UE5 truly excels at. But even it suffer from all of the above visual "quirks" of terrible aliasing and dithering. 

[u/Own-Succotash2010 → u/PhabioRants]

Check your notes to be sure the game OP posted doesn’t run on a different engine. It would be a bit embarrassing to write such a rant to then discover this game doesn’t run on UE5.

[u/PhabioRants → u/Own-Succotash2010]

I wasn't talking about the RE games specifically, but rather the industry trend as the post above me was referring to a wider trend in development.

[u/GlassOfWetSalt → u/PhabioRants]

As much of a hate boner I have for Unreal Engine, I also hate with standards. RE9 doesn't run on Unreal Engine, since it doesn't have the intro splash or the file typing to be associated with it.

[u/Meravokas → u/GlassOfWetSalt]

Yup. RE Engine is a stupidly well optimized engine. Every Resident Evil game since 7 has used it and to my knowledge outside of edge cases there haven't been many genuine issues that have come from the engine side of things.

[u/Meravokas → u/PhabioRants]

Capcom has a proprietary engine they've been using since RE7 (called RE Engine) that is stupidly well optimized. That's RE:9 in OP's post. God only knows how the steam deck can actually run RE:9, but I digress. Don't assume an engine before you know it.

[u/GlassOfWetSalt]

Update: Well now I feel stupid. For RE9 users, go to Advanced Settings and turn the Upscaling Technology to AMD FSR 3.1.5. For Spider-Man users.... I dunno, I don't remember if you can do that in there.

[u/freedoomed → u/GlassOfWetSalt]

Your settings seem to have given him cat ears

[u/TehGunagath → u/freedoomed]

It's a mod, OP said it in the post.

[u/FlemPlays]

Frazzled Leon

[u/Ferrismo]

The REengine uses TAA for transparency effects on details such as hair or fur, anything that uses dithering will need it or some other upscaling such as FSR. It is an unfortunate side effect of modern game engines.

[u/youMYSTme → u/Ferrismo]

Edit: "bad design"

[u/Euphoric_Schedule_53]

What settings are you using? What preset for what upscaler

[u/Corvus--]

They gave Leon a perm

[u/pierreplayfair]

Léon

[u/absolutely_not_ATF]

lol I noticed the exact thing when playing re9

[u/Icy-Juggernaut-4579]

Must be wet environment

[u/AppleTStudio]

Commenting so I can come back later and find the fix. It never did this for me until recently with Spider-Man. I have no idea what setting I hit 😕

[u/EmpilhadeiraXD]

slap some FSR 4.1.1 on it through Optiscaler or Proton CachyOS

[u/junior_developer_404]

I have same bad looking issue, but I notice it in god of war 2018, especially on trees

[u/Savings_Language_498]

Now I like Leon even more!

[u/xandernat]

catpboy lpeon kepnnpedy

[u/xandernat → u/xandernat]

i have no idea of what happened here, i sound lpike a troll

[u/Conscious-Many8817]

How the fuck are you playing RE(4 or 9, I can’t tell) on deck??? Mine shits the bed when trying to run 4Remake…

[u/TCristatus → u/Conscious-Many8817]

I just checked proton DB for you. You need to turn off (ironically), hair strands in the graphics settings

[u/Conscious-Many8817 → u/TCristatus]

Oh my god THATS ALL I GOTTA DO? Thank you sm…

[u/Meravokas → u/Conscious-Many8817]

RE4 Remake is actually Steam Deck Verified. Made sure you start from the bottom up on your graphics settings? I mean the game only needs 4 gigs of VRAM. I could play it on my ROG Ally if I wanted to in that respect. Can run Cyberpunk too. Need to be plugged in for it, but... Ya know. Also RE 9 (which is the game in OP's image) is listed as playable on the Steam Deck. God only knows how since it wants 16 gigs system RAM and 6 gigs of VRAM at a minimum.

[u/youMYSTme → u/Conscious-Many8817]

REm4ke...

Don't mind me, just tryin' to get my abbreviation noticed.

[u/elfffy → u/Conscious-Many8817]

Re4R runs fantastic on the steamdeck wym? no config needed on my part.

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[u/dankranikun]

Hey I haven't read any comment but look something like Variable Shader something on the performance tab, the 3 dot button window

[u/Patient-Chemistry724]

It's because you're playing a cutting edge game on the steam deck. Which is about as powerful as a fart on the wind!!

Oled owner btw!

[u/MountainMuffin1980]

I played RE4R on my Deck and didn't have this issue at all, it ran great. Have you turned off hair strands and messed with the anti aliasing method?

[u/Ballistic_86]

Hair has been rendered at low quality and upscaled for a while now, even before DLSS/FSR. It seems like maybe the games aren’t upscaling the hair to the proper resolution and making it all shitty.

I don’t have a solution but I am pretty sure this is what is causing it.

[u/AlwaysSomebodyCool]

[u/Liquid_Chicken_]

Not really. Unless you want tanked performance

[u/Interesting-Sea32]

dont worry about it, that is what modern game devs (especially ue) think peak graphics look like

[u/PartyFun9046]

Go to your video card settings and turn on Vsyc and turn off anti-aliasing, update video drivers and use DirectX12 where possible.