AA & AF what Exactly do they do ?

[Nuggs]

Apart from making the game look better, what does anti aliasing and anisotrpic filtering do ?

 

[Nuggs]

bump, anyone ?

 

[Jeff7181]

I'm not sure what you're asking... Do you just know that they make it look better, but don't know in what way? Or do you want to know how they accomplish what they do?

 

[Nuggs]

the later

 

[Jeff7181]

Ahh, ok then... I can't tell you anything you can't read here on AnandTech then =)

 

[NYHoustonman]

AA smooths out the edges of models and objects and stuff, AF smooths out textures.

 

[Nuggs]

cheers mate that's all I wanted to know !

 

[DAPUNISHER]

AA & AF what Exactly do they do ?

Force you to spend a bunch of money to enjoy them

 

[Wedge1]

For Quake 3 TA, I think AF helps a lot, but the AA only makes a bit of a blur that I don't like if set too high. I'm not saying it's this way for all games, only Quake, and only to my eyes.

 

[dguy6789]

yea, see the jagged edges on stuff in a game? this is called aliasing. AA or anti aliasing uses a blurring technique to smooth it out, but sometimes can cause a hug performance hit. AF, or anisotropic filtering is a method used to see textures at an angle smoother.

 

[BFG10K]

AA removes jagged edges, edge crawling and texture shimmering.

AF sharpens textures especially those that stretch at a high angle from the user.

 

[zephyrprime]

With AA, basically renders the screen at a higher resolution and then shrinks the image down to screen size. So if you use 4x and 1024x768, I believe it will actually render the image at 2048x1536 and then shrinks it down. As you can see, this is a very inefficient process.

from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci870037,00.html:
Anisotropic filtering (AF) is a feature of some video cards that sharpens the details of the fading-away part of a 3D object that recedes into the distance. Think of the text in the titles at the beginning of the Star Wars movies that is presented in large letters and then scrolls back into the distance. As it scrolls off, it becomes fuzzy and hard to read. In a 3D image, you may want a comparable effect to retain the sharpness of an object as it recedes; anisotropic filtering does this. (Isotropic describes objects or image elements with vectors of equal value along different axes, such as squares and cubes. Anisotropic describes objects whose vectors are unequal, such as trapezoids and parallelograms.)

 

[nRollo]

AA helps you get in touch with your higher power and lay off the booze.

 

[Wedge1]

AF is similiar to using the force.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

AA & AF what Exactly do they do ?

Force you to spend a bunch of money to enjoy them

Damn right. Have you played Halo with 8x AF on? You can NEVER go back. If you look at the swirling Halo in the opening credits, with no AF on it looks like blurry crap. With AF on it looks beautiful.

Let alone the ground textures look so much smoother and crisper with AF.

I think they said something along the lines of AF not working in Halo, but it's a bunch of BS. Try it out for yourself - it makes the game look way better!

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

AA & AF what Exactly do they do ?

Force you to spend a bunch of money to enjoy them

Damn right. Have you played Halo with 8x AF on? You can NEVER go back. If you look at the swirling Halo in the opening credits, with no AF on it looks like blurry crap. With AF on it looks beautiful.

Let alone the ground textures look so much smoother and crisper with AF.

I think they said something along the lines of AF not working in Halo, but it's a bunch of BS. Try it out for yourself - it makes the game look way better!

Nope, it's AA that doesn't work in Halo


Cheers!

Confused

 

[BFG10K]

With AA, basically renders the screen at a higher resolution and then shrinks the image down to screen size.

Super sampling does; multi sampling (and fragment AA) doesn't.