Thank You So Much DF Patreon Supporters! (Patreon)

Hi there everyone - it's Rich writing this one! I just wanted to write a quick post to thank each and every Patreon supporter old and new for getting on board with the revamp and making it so successful. It's great to see so many newcomers, old-timers upgrading their tiers and lapsed supporters returning. It's also been amazing to see the DF Discord become even more busy and even more positive. Thank you so much!

So today I was rooting through my old hard drives looking to put together the next FPS Classic 'Remaster' (which will be the amazing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on PS3 and Xbox 360 by the way!) when I came across a pristine quality version of Crytek's GDC 2009 CryEngine 3 trailer - the first time we'd seen the technology running on consoles. I'm not quite sure *why* I had this asset, but I do know that it was captured on a Digital Foundry capture station as Crytek bought one, which may explain it (if you don't know, back in the day we built capture machines designed for HD consoles and PC - it wasn't quite so easy back then).

Anyway, this is a pretty good example of an asset that doesn't really exist in decent quality online any more. Yes, it's on YouTube, but YouTube's encoders were terrible back in 2009. So first of all I encoded up OG 720p versions for download, then I did the same kind of nearest neighbour upscaling designed to make 720p content look 'authentic' on a 4K screen. Then I thought... why not try an actual AI upscale? It came out OK actually and that's the video embedded above. But you can download all of those versions I put together right here: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/2021-04-28-cryengine-3-gdc-2009-ps3xbox-360-trailer

Doesn't matter which DF supporter tier you're on - you'll be able to watch and download regardless. Just a small bonus and something a certain section of our audience might get a kick out of revisiting so many years on!