Modder GPUnity has finally released the HD Texture Pack update for his Asylum Reborn Batman: Arkham Asylum PC mod.
- Carefully re-created body textures with adjusted specularity that is more in line with Arkham Knight’s material work;
- Realistic skin bumps. Hair normal map now lines up with hair strands;
- Completely overhauled normal map;
- Damage areas more closely resemble Arkham City;
- Seamlessly replaced shirt material
You can download Asylum Reborn (whose weight is 319 MB) from Nexus Mods, but that’s only part of the full visual overhaul guide.
There’s also an Advanced Launcher that features support for the Asylum Reborn HD Texture Pack and also unlocks graphics settings unavailable in the regular game, such as:
Depth Of Field
Uses blur to simulate depth. Most noticeable when zooming in as Batman.
This effect is always enabled by default in the vanilla game. DoF is tied to colour grading.
Disabling DoF will make the colours of the game appear more natural to life. No more strong tints (like blue or red or green, depending on the area). The colour tints are intentional as part of the game’s art direction, but some will prefer it removed as it’s rather strong and obscuring. Disabling DoF will boost performance, by a small amount.
Anisotropic Filtering
This will improve texture clarity over oblique surfaces. Vanilla game forces 4x AF. Pushing this up to 16x is a notable improvement, and a free upgrade for any modern GPU.
Shadow Resolution
Vanilla game has a shadow map resolution of “512”, resulting in low quality shadows with evident shimmering.
“2048” provides a significant improvement to shadow quality. The filter radius is automatically handled based on the shadow res selected.
Nvidia HBAO+
This setting is exclusive to Nvidia GPUs, as it relies on NvAPI.
Batman: Arkham Asylum was the first game in the acclaimed series of games by Rocksteady and Warner Bros. Montréal. The former is now working on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2023), which is set in the Arkhamverse, while Warner Bros. Montréal will release the standalone Gotham Knights game this October.
