Game Anti-aliasing

[chriso20]

You noticed that you get 'bricky' / jaggies / pixels in games when things arent vertical or horizontal?

First of all why - This is because to cover these up you'd need anti-aliasing, basically smooths out the line with semi-transparent pixels.
This is the thing that slows down CAD progs if you use them (no not the ONLY thing just a thing)
The reason it slows down? because if you imagine a RED gun over a YELLOW wall, well those semi-transparent bits of RED will blend with the YELLOW to make an orange right? well the CPU has to calculate how orange to make it depending on the opacity or how see-thru it is, it has to do a good 100+ at least every frame and that can be 60+ frames a second...and so why they dont anti-alias!

Well games like HL2 obviously still dont anti-alias, things that spoil it are like the power/telephone lines in the HL2 Coasline vid. Where you may only have a 1 pixel line representing each line of power/telephone line. If it could anti-alias that line then you could see it from further away (currently limited to the distance IN-GAME before the thickness of the wire becomes one pixel) and also improve basic graphics quality


My point:

ONE DAY COMPUTERS WILL HAVE 100GHZ PROCESSORS....50GIG GRAPHICS CARDS WITH 100PIPES.....50GIG OF RAM!!! MUWAAAHA ONE DAY WE CAN USE ANTI-ALIASING!!!! ROLL ON BETTER GAMING!!!!

*this public service anouncement was brought to you by mc Donalds*

 

[adulus]

Ummmmmm....
WTF?

 

[63]

wtf compelled you to write this? Was it the cash infusion via McDonalds?

 

[chriso20]

what doesnt make sense?

 

[ShadowFox]

Funny. Reminds me of Pierre Brunards recliner of rage.

 

[blahblahblah]

I'm buying a Big Mac.

 

[chriso20]

lol i was just saying that the lack of anti-aliasing spoils todays games, one day we'll be able to have anti-aliased games

the mcD thing was a joke, they used to do adverts like that, completely irrelevant.

 

[Axyon]

Uhh, we can use Anti-Aliasing now...

 

[chriso20]

we cna but not for games such as CS. (and yes i suppose u can but not if uwanna PLAY it)

 

[Axyon]

we cna but not for games such as CS. (and yes i suppose u can but not if uwanna PLAY it)

You can easily use AA and play CS, unless you're on some kind of five year old PC.

 

[Roland Deschain]

I pllay FarCry without AA (at max everything) = 55fps.
Turn on AA >30 fps (how much fun ).

 

[chriso20]

CS doesnt use AA though. I would imagine 1/50 do. Just for the excessive CPU load it creates. that's why you see the jaggie bits on players and guns, they're not AA.

 

[KagePrototype]

CS doesnt use AA though. I would imagine 1/50 do. Just for the excessive CPU load it creates. that's why you see the jaggie bits on players and guns, they're not AA.

Y'see, this is why you buy a video card, so AA can be used without adding weight onto the CPU. Obviously if you don't have a video card decent enough to handle AA, the game will run like crap.

 

[chriso20]

just do me a favor and take a screenshot of CS showing the AA then i believe

 

[Stigmata]

There's no need. You can enable anti-aliasing on pretty much any video card that's worth anything. I've used AA in CS, and it doesn't make that huge of a difference, especially in 1280x1024 on a 17 inch monitor (that's the highest mine can go ). If you want you can go to your video card settings and enable AA for D3D and OpenGL regardless of what program you run with it. Just because there's no "Click here to enable Antialiasing" in the CS options menu, doesn't mean that's the only way to enable it.

 

[KagePrototype]

What stigmata said. Your video card will use AA for any application that uses OpenGL or Direct 3D, depending on the settings in the video card drivers. Like I said, this is to take the load off of the CPU, which can then be used for other processes. CS can be run in both OpenGL and Direct 3D modes, so you can use AA in CS.

In regards to your first post, HL2 is able to use AA. It's likely it was switched off in the videos for performance reasons.

 

[MrWhite]

Yeah... AA has been around and can be turned on for most games for a while now. Where have you been?

And yes, we all know what AA is.

 

[Roland Deschain]

But for older games, the difference is so small you can't barely notice it. For newer games such as Far Cry, it's noticable and makes things look more smooth, but the drop in performance does not justify the slightly smoother graphics.

 

[Eywanadi]

What are you talking about lazicsavo ... you seem to not know how AA works. It does the same thing to a game if it is 8 years old, like quake, or 8 weeks old like far cry. The game is rendered in a higher resolution then is shrunk to a smaller resolution to fit on the screen.

 

[Roland Deschain]

I don't know how exactly it works, but I used it with CS and Far Cry and in CS the difference, for me at least, if really really small, whereas in Far Cry it is much more clear.

 

[ShadowFox]

I don't know how exactly it works, but I used it with CS and Far Cry and in CS the difference, for me at least, if really really small, whereas in Far Cry it is much more clear.

Thats because you have more edges with more jaggies.

 

[kakagar]

I'd like to know what the guy that made this thread on?

 

[Snakebyte]

just do me a favor and take a screenshot of CS showing the AA then i believe

Like this?

 

[Roland Deschain]

Nice screenshot, but as I've said, in the intense action, hardly noticable, but still nice to have. Smooth

 

[sHm0zY]

lol. its funny because its true.

 

[chriso20]

wow well i must admit, i thought AA would be waaay too complicated to do for a 60+ frames a second game, like CS. I eat my hat sir.

(i found my AA in display properties but it doesnt make a huge diff, in cs neways)

 

[PvtRyan]

The way FSAA works (and AA is not necessarily FSAA, full scene AA) works is that it devides each pixel into more subpixels (effectively running the game at a higher res, how much is depending on the level of FSAA you chose, 2x2 or 4x4 or 8x8) then take the avarage colour of those subpixels and use that colour for the entire pixel.
This is all done hardware accelerated by the videocard. And videocards have their own methods in how they do it, the samplepoints don't have to be lined up in a grid (like 2x2 or 4x4) but can also be randomly scattered throughout the pixel or in a circular pattern.

Rendering programs don't use FSAA and it's not hardware accelerated either (all done with cpu like you say) but AA that's based on contrast between pixels.

http://www.countywest.com/marek/tut...nd_Mental_Ray/Antialiasing_and_Mental_Ray.htm