Anti-Aliasing on or off?

[ResurgencE]

I'd like to tune all the settings to the max on all the games i play, for maximum enjoyment.

However, i have no idea what anti-aliasing is, and whether i should turn it off or keep it on for better graphics.

(Dont worry about my FPS. Ive got a jet for a cpu. :D )

[Maarten]

AA is the technique to smooth the edges of models.
Turning it on will result in a smoother image quality, but will drop FPS considerably.
I suggest try it and see if you like the results...

[Siygess]

Anti-Aliasing is where an area of two contrasting colours on a screen are blurred to give the impression of a smoother gradient between the two. In game terms, this eliminates the harsh lines on objects (the so-called "jaggies") but also blurs textures, making them less distinct.

If you can handle running games in high-res, I always find it nicer to leave AA off and get a nice, crisp image.

[ResurgencE]

Excellent.

Thanks folks.

[alig]

NC doesnt work very well with AA/AF on, and NC doesnt use much of your graphics card either it seems, its all cpu power! o_O

Just look at this....It gives you an idea of how much difference it makes (http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031023/nvidia-nv38-nv36-15.html#fsaa_full_scene_antialiasing)

[numb]

I dont have a problem running Neocron with anti-aliasing turned on for my graphics card (gf ti4600) - I run at 1024x768 fullscreen. Havent really noticed a drop in frame rate.

I personally prefer AA over higher res (and with my graphics card, it really is either one or the other).

[alig]

Hmm thats weird, im using a gf4ti4600 too and when i turn it on i suffer with the game jerking but my fps dont drop. My cpu is 2.8+ AMD @ 2.2ghz so i dont suffer with my CPU o_O I run at 1280x1024 though.

[Scikar]

With NC, your CPU is really the limiting factor. That means if you have a fairly good GFX card you can whack all the special features up with no loss of FPS whatsoever. That's also why you can turn up the resolution in the game and not see any FPS drop. I'm running 1152x864 with AA and anisotropy turned way up, but then I have a 9800XT. :)

[kurai]

Originally posted by alig
Hmm thats weird, im using a gf4ti4600 too and when i turn it on i suffer with the game jerking but my fps dont drop. My cpu is 2.8+ AMD @ 2.2ghz so i dont suffer with my CPU o_O I run at 1280x1024 though. I find the same thing.
FPS stays pretty steady as long as I don't go past 4x FSAA, but it really starts to feel sluggish and jerky even with just 2x

RPOS/Chat, or anything with text looks really terrible, so you need to bump up AnIso filtering to compensate - more performance hit. Again - FPS doesn't start to drop until you push it to max but the sluggishness/jerkiness is very noticeable.

I was fiddling with this in Pepper Park 1 earlier - lots of angular shapes, plenty of signs etc etc. Twiddled with lots of GFX card settings and got it looking reasonable without too much of an FPS hit when some PE decides he wants my lunch money ...
soon as I drew a weapon and started to move in combat style it was awful. Had to stealth, Alt-Tab and turn all the shit off again ;)

Pain in the arse really - cant whack up the resolution to 1600x1200 to get rid of the jaggies because although performance is fine the font doesn't scale and you cant read shit - can't drop resolution and turn on FSAA . text is now reasonable size but blurred to buggery.

For now I live with 1280x1024, no FSAA or AnIso.

Ho hum. Roll on DoY engine.

[BramTops]

9800XT user here too....

NC really benefits from FSAA en AA settings to the max!

Here are 2 screenshots to compare:

Without anything (1280x1024):
http://www.chello.nl/~b.tops/s1.jpg


This is at 6x FSAA and 16x AA. Notice that all the "jaggies" are gone. But also the drop in framerate.
http://www.chello.nl/~b.tops/s2.jpg

Notice that textures do NOT get "blurred"... Look at the horizontal floor in front of the runner.... It looks even better WITH FSAA and AA (AA is what's doing this).

This is on a P4 3ghz HT, 800mhz FSB, 1gb TwinX ram, 9800xt. Nothing OC'ed... The FPS is embarrasing... But hey.. that's our "beloved" NC engine.. ;)

[numb]

Originally posted by alig
Hmm thats weird, im using a gf4ti4600 too and when i turn it on i suffer with the game jerking but my fps dont drop. My cpu is 2.8+ AMD @ 2.2ghz so i dont suffer with my CPU o_O I run at 1280x1024 though.

I used to run ao, fsaa 1280x1024 and there was a noticeable drop in framerate (but it was bearable with a game like AO). I think the way fsaa works is by drawing the screen at a much higher resolution (2x = 2x resolution?) - so you are limited by the memory bandwidth of your graphics card. I find 1024x768 is the best res for most games on that card. There is quite a big different between 2x1024x768 compared to 2x1280x1024. I think the larger resolution is an actual resolution increase of 66%. So it taxes the graphics card a whole lot more.

[Mighty Max]

AA is basically rendering the screen at a higher resolution and then scale it to the actual resolution again.

So a 2x AA at 640x480 needs around the power of 1280x960 without AA

Thats for textured environment like NC.

When only using Shading or Wireframes there are other tweak techniques used.

[jernau]

I prefer higher res to FSAA personally as I think the quality:framerate ratio is better. I do try most games with FSAA when I first install them though, just to see what difference it makes.