Image Mapped Background Resolution Quality

[RichTwo]

I had raised a question about the quality of an image mappped background in this thread in Image Sharing - http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=10721.0 - How to sharpen it up?  Attached is a demo of two renders: 1st is without atmo enabled.  It's a little fuzzy.  2nd is same as the original render and not much worse.  3rd is straight off the bitmap - razor sharp.

My only guess is the bitmap gets "stretched" across the inverted sphere of the background and loses some resolution - but I could be wrong.  Any thoughts?

[cyphyr]

I'm not too sure but have you tried un-checking the "smooth interpolation" in the colour tab of your image loader.
It makes a differance but it may not be what your looking for.
Good luck
Richard

[freelancah]

I believe its because the image is projected onto a sphere. You could try to make a plane big enough to cover the view and project the image into that

[RichTwo]

Thanks, Richard - that was it!  Who knows why that box is auto-checked anyway...

[Volker Harun]

I am glad to see a quick and effective solution .. thanx Richard!

[Oshyan]

Smooth Interpolation is enabled by default because in the majority of cases imported image maps will be scaled up and will simply get pixelated when enlarged. Interpolation gives a smoother and generally more pleasing result. In this case I'm not certain why it's causing a loss of intrinsic image detail, but if you're using spherical projection onto the Background Shader you might try Through Camera instead and see if it helps. Seeing comparison images with and without interpolation would be interesting as well for this particular case.

- Oshyan