Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 12:56:15 pm

Title: anti-aliasing
Post by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 12:56:15 pm
anti-aliasing doesn't seem to work. I have it on 16x in the launcher but it still looks the same. the only time I can tell the difference is when I force antaliasing in my graphics settings.
is this a bug?
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: d2freak on September 19, 2007, 01:15:34 pm
make sure that your card can handle 16x anti aliasing before setting it so.

whats the maximum anti aliasing you can set in the control panel? that one reflects how much your graphics card is capable of doing so that you cant set it to high.

The open project launcher does not check what your maximum is and therefore if you set to high then it wont activate at all

heres an example... i did a similar thing... i thought my card could do 8x AA so i set 8 in the launcher... i started the game and realized that AA wasnt used at all... i then checked control panel and saw that 6x was my max...so i set the launcher to 4x (becouse 6 doesnt exist...just 4 and 8)
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 01:20:51 pm
it's an 8500 gt. I think it can handle it... maybe?
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: fsphiladelphia on September 19, 2007, 01:24:48 pm
You can specify Anisotropic Filtering, not Anti-Aliasing in the Launcher.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 01:26:50 pm
that's only in old launchers, the new ones can.
EDIT: just to make sure, I checked out what d2freak said and no it's not that.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Herra Tohtori on September 19, 2007, 01:28:00 pm
You can't set AA in launcher... it has it's setting in Launcher, but for now as far as I know, the builds don't support anti-aliasing so the option doesn't really do anything... yet. It's for the future, when the engine will have in-built anti-aliasing option. I could be wrong (better wait for confirmation from some SCP coder) but that's what I think is the situation now.

So, full screen anti-aliasing via driver force-AA options is the way to go for now.

Also, 16xAA is kinda hidden feature in (especially windows) GPU drivers - you can enable it from, say, RivaTuner, though (in OpenGL options). And NVidia's Linux driver has it as an option as well. But the difference in visual quality from 4xAA up is not often noticeable - perhaps it's noticeable in screenshots, but in gameplay it doesn't make real difference to the visuals if you se 4xAA, 8SxAA or 16xAA.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 01:29:30 pm
what does it matter how high I go if I still get the same fps :p?
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Herra Tohtori on September 19, 2007, 01:34:12 pm
What kind of monstrosity your system is? I do indeed be jealous of green-ness if you can do that. :p

Yea, if it gives the same FPS it obviously doesn't matter.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 01:37:06 pm
You can't set AA in launcher... it has it's setting in Launcher, but for now as far as I know, the builds don't support anti-aliasing so the option doesn't really do anything...
]
but it does support af, right?
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: d2freak on September 19, 2007, 01:54:18 pm
just to make sure, I checked out what d2freak said and no it's not that.
I see. Then maybe its true that the AA setting in the launcher doesnt work :O

that would be odd... i who was so certain that it looked different when i set it to 4x instead of 8! I must be blind. Placebo effect hehe

hope to hear from some developer about this
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: taylor on September 19, 2007, 02:00:52 pm
You can't set AA in launcher... it has it's setting in Launcher, but for now as far as I know, the builds don't support anti-aliasing so the option doesn't really do anything... yet. It's for the future, when the engine will have in-built anti-aliasing option. I could be wrong (better wait for confirmation from some SCP coder) but that's what I think is the situation now.
Correct, the AA control in the launcher doesn't actually do anything to the game.  It does set a registry setting, which will be used by the game when it does support AA, but the setting is currently ignored.  Work on the in-game AA code was stopped temporarily when I couldn't work out why my Windows test machine kept getting a BSOD every time I tried to run the game more than once.  At some point I'll go back and work on that stuff again, for 3.6.10, but it's really low priority right now.  The new OpenGL init code (that allows for setting of AA) was primarily for better Vista support, so there is plenty of incentive to get all of the issues worked out and get that new code ready for everyone to use.

And yes, the AF control does work fully.  It was modified in the current launcher to work better (it more accurately fits the spec now) and allow for a bit better control over how it all works.  To get the full affect you need to be using a stable-tree build from around the time that the Launcher test build was released, but it doesn't actually require a new build to work.  Aside from the (relatively) recent changes to allow it to work better though, it has always worked.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: fsphiladelphia on September 19, 2007, 03:21:19 pm
Where in the launcher is the AA setting?  I only installed this back in March, with Turey's installer -- is there a newer launcher I should be using?  Also, I just installed TBP and I'd figure since that's a newer release, they would have the newest launcher, but I don't see an AA setting in that launcher either.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Admiral Nelson on September 19, 2007, 04:02:40 pm
What kind of monstrosity your system is? I do indeed be jealous of green-ness if you can do that. :p

Yea, if it gives the same FPS it obviously doesn't matter.

I can run FS2 at 1920x1600 resolution with 16xAA 16xAF :)
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: CP5670 on September 19, 2007, 04:29:07 pm

Quote
But the difference in visual quality from 4xAA up is not often noticeable - perhaps it's noticeable in screenshots, but in gameplay it doesn't make real difference to the visuals if you se 4xAA, 8SxAA or 16xAA.

No, it's actually in motion that SSAA makes a big difference. It looks similar in screenshots but offers a substantial improvement during real gameplay. FS2 in particular should benefit from it more than most games due to the long view distances and fairly large textures. It should help with that shimmering effect you see on many ships.

However, I don't think AA actually works at all at this point, at least not completely. It's been quite some time since I tried it on an Nvidia card, but I could only get the supersampling component of the AA to show up there. On AMD/ATI cards, it doesn't seem to work at all (as these don't do SSAA). I can easily see the jagged edges even if I force it on maximum.
Title: Re: anti-aliasing
Post by: Topgun on September 19, 2007, 04:34:16 pm
my graphics card settings display 2 types of AA. AA and QAA. what's the difference?