The team behind the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition recently pushed its sixth update package to the 19-year-old survival horror game. The update features some major graphical upgrades such as upscaled images, widescreen map support, and integrated shaders. Along with the graphics improvements, the team also added a nifty new screenshot feature, and fixed a few obnoxious visual and audio bugs.
The Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition (PC) - Update Video #6 details all the improvements and fixes added in the latest update, and you can read more about the ongoing Project itself on its official website. In case you’re unaware, the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition (SH2:EE) project is “a collaborative team of programmers, modders, and artists” working on updating and upgrading the PC version of the game to ensure it stays “compatible with modern hardware and playable in a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, while improving visuals, audio, and bugs.”
The most important changes made in this update involved upscaled images, widescreen map support, and integrated shaders. Throughout the entire game, the 2D fullscreen images were “AI upscaled, remastered, and in some cases remade, to provide the highest quality version to date”, according to the update video. Note that the upscaling was applied to the game’s most numerous non-action scenes, which include the main menu, maps, inventory view, save screens, and the riddle and memo images.
Widescreen support was applied to all the in-game maps, allowing them to function properly on displays with a 16:9 ratio. New integrated shader upgrades allowed the mod team to drop the use of the popular ReShade shaders, and went into improving the Brightness Shader, the Color Temperature Shader, and the Anti-aliasing (SMAA) Shader.
A major Quality of Life upgrade was also included within the update – a screenshot tool. You can now take screenshots of the game while playing, and they will be automatically saved in a file in the game’s directory.
Numerous other improvements were made to the game, including an increase in fog texture resolution (from 256 x 256 pixels to 512 x 512 pixels), and the switch from indirect sound to DSOAL (3D audio) to enable surround sound and immersive positional audio. A bunch of bugs were also fixed, including a couple involving James’ flashlight, a couple of on-screen menu corrections, and lighting and item adjustments.
Connect to the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition team’s Twitter and YouTube channels for all the info on this excellent project.
Source: Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition (PC) - Update Video #6