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Anti Aliasing and TFTs

O

otispunkmeyer

Lifer
am i right in thinking this.....

when i enable AA i am limited to its effect by the resolution/ dot pitch/ Pixel size on my TFT yes?

i can only smooth out the jaggies as much as my monitors pixel size allows for obviousl the smalle the pixels the less jaggy

i have a 1280x10124 17inch iiyama prolite e431s
 
Guh?

AA works regardless of resolution or if you're on a fixed- or variable-pixel display. The resampling is done by the GPU long before the signal gets to your monitor.
 
No, I think you are wrong any way you slice it.

First you might be thinking of AA in that it upsamples the textures to a higher resolution, does the average of a few frames and then downsamples it to the resolution the game/3d application is running at. This would work even if the monitor doesn't support the "higher" resolution (which can be above 1600X1200) because it's an internal calculation in the GPU - the display is at the same resolution.

Second, you might be thinking about running the screen at a lower resolution (ie 1024X768 perhaps) and then thinking you will be limited by the monitor's scaling. While this is true and non-native resolutions cannot look perfect since they are scaling the pixels to display a smaller area, this doesn't 'limit' AA in any way; it just won't look quite as good as at the native resolution (although newer panels, ie newer Samsungs have very good scaling algorithms now and display non-native resolutions almost as nicely as native ones (at least in games) ).


I can't really think of a way to put it any clearer, but as Mathias said, AA works regardless of resolution and screen type. The TFT doesn't limit you in any way aside from the maximum resolution you can run being the TFT's limit (ie 1280X1024 on a 17" or 19" LCD).
 
What I think the OP is trying to say is that after a certain point AA is useless on LCDs. On my laptop's screen I can't tell the difference between 2xAA and 4xAA, but I can definately see the difference on a CRT monitor.
 
Originally posted by: MDE
What I think the OP is trying to say is that after a certain point AA is useless on LCDs. On my laptop's screen I can't tell the difference between 2xAA and 4xAA, but I can definately see the difference on a CRT monitor.
Click to expand...

Even if you can't tell a difference between 2xAA and 4xAA at a certain res, it does exist nonetheless. It's not like AA is 'broken' above certain settings or anything.

In general I don't really notice a huge difference between 2xAA and 4xAA at 1024X768 or above, but if I look close enough I can still nonetheless find differences. Is it worth the performance hit? That's an entirely different debate - in some cases 4xAA slows it down more than I would like, although in general it's tough to get these new cards to struggle at anything below 1600X1200.

Also, is your laptop one of those ultra-high resolution deals, like the 1450 X1050 or whatever or 1600X1200 15" screens? If so I can definately see why AA wouldn't be noticeable.

Also, you'd probably be able to pick out the differences in AA levels a bit more on a 19" LCD (1280X1024) than on a 17" LCD (1280X1024) due to the larger pixels.
 
Nope, it's 1280x800. IMO, the individual pixels on an LCD are much more pronounced and don't blend together as well as a CRT when you're up close which doesn't help matters much either.
 
Originally posted by: MDE
Nope, it's 1280x800. IMO, the individual pixels on an LCD are much more pronounced and don't blend together as well as a CRT when you're up close which doesn't help matters much either.
Click to expand...

True that - a pixel is a pixel on LCD (well actually a construct of 3 (?) subpixels) whereas on a CRT the pixels are drawn by the three electron guns and thus 'glow'/blend together a bit more than LCD, where each pixel is an actual physical unit.

1280X800 is a pretty large resolution nonetheless for a laptop (ie small pixels), so that would help minimize the perceived difference between 2xAA and 4xAA. What size is the screen? 15"? 17"?


In general I find the benefits of AA to be inferior to the benefits of AF, especially at 1280X1024 and above. AA is nice but without any AF the floor/textures in the distance become a blurry mess IMO. ATI had it right when they decided to implement cheap&fast AF way back in the Radeon 1 days.
 
15.4" widescreen. I'm a spoiled little bastard, I want 4xAA and 8xAF or my video card is getting to be too slow. 😛
 
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