WHat is AA/AF

[johnnypoopoopant]

what is that..is it some type of special feature in the new ati cards?

 

[JFry]

Anti-aliasing and antiospotocitrioptropic filtering. They are featured in many games, I'm pretty sure it is a software kinda thing. I couldn't tell you what they do, all I know is unless you have something like an x800 you'll want to turn them off.

 

[GPRT]

Basically AA smooths the edges on pixels so they don't look jagged.
AF is more complicated:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1152380,00.asp

Both features are available on both ATi and nVidia cards and has been about for quite a while now.

 

[cylyk]

Basically AA smooths the edges on pixels so they don't look jagged.
AF is more complicated:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1152380,00.asp

Both features are available on both ATi and nVidia cards and has been about for quite a while now.

doesn't AF just blend the mipmap levels all nice-like?

 

[psyno]

Anti-aliasing and antiospotocitrioptropic filtering. They are featured in many games, I'm pretty sure it is a software kinda thing. I couldn't tell you what they do, all I know is unless you have something like an x800 you'll want to turn them off.

AA = Anti-aliasing
AF = Anisotropic Filtering

AA does more than just smooth jaggies (3dfx's term). It also cuts down other noise, like pixel popping and moiré patterns. AA describes algorithms that try to represent data on low-resolution output devices with better quality -- without the artifacts, or aliasing.

AF deals with texture mapping filtering. It also reduces aliasing, but with a more specific target. The goal is to reduce blurring at large distances and/or low angles.

They're both very general terms and don't describe specific algorithms, but rather algorithms with these goals; there are a lot of different ways to do AA & AF.

They've also both been around for a long time, way before the x800. I never turn the AA off on my Voodoo5, which is from 2000...