Anti-aliasing vs Anisotropic filtering

[Ravynmagi]

I still like to have about 4xAA even with my 30 inch monitor. I do notice when it's not there. And of course 16xAF always is on.

 

[nitromullet]

Both.

If you're not going to run AA/AF, you might as well save the money spent on a gaming PC and play on a console.

As far as games that don't support AA... I'm aware that a few don't out of the box, but I can't think of anything relatively recent that can't have AA forced on via the driver. Most of the recent games that don't support AA are Unreal Engine 3 games, and these can all be forced. ...Maybe Wolfenstein?

 

[NoQuarter]

Man I hate the UE3 engine No engine supported AA, and vert- widescreen.. sigh.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Both are equally important to me. At minimum I like 2xAA and 8xAF, but like stated earlier AF is practically free. I usually run 4xAA and 16xAF.

 

[kreacher]

Same here, 16xAF and 4xAA (if the rig can handle it).

 

[Borealis7]

will we ever see more than 16AF? is there an advantage to it?
personally, i play at 1600x1200 so AA is not a big deal to me, and i always max filtering options. in the future i'd like to see more rugged terrain textures like rocks and roads, make them more rigid, sharper...and if anyone could find a way to make shadows not kill your performance.

 

[MustangSVT]

AF always 16x (locked in driver settings actually). normally AA off or on depending on the performance but I dont mind it much.

 

[toyota]

AF always 16x (locked in driver settings actually). normally AA off or on depending on the performance but I dont mind it much.

not a good idea to lock it in globally because it can mess up the graphics in some games. I know in FEAR 2 it screwed up the lighting.

 

[vj8usa]

will we ever see more than 16AF? is there an advantage to it?

You probably wouldn't be able to see it. Look closely at textures in a game with 16xAF on, and odds are you won't be able to notice blurriness unless you're at a very specific angle. You definitely won't notice while actually playing. Odds are you'd never spot the difference between 8x and 16x AF unless you were really trying to, either.

 

[PingSpike]

I love AF, but I can't really tell the difference between 8x and 16x. The performance hit is so small with modern hardware that its a no brainer trade off.

AA...eh, I don't really care much about jaggies...I was used to them in the old days of 800x600 resolutions and now that everything runs at high res they just aren't noticeable. I'd prefer a higher framerate to the effect.

 

[Daedalus685]

I was unable to bring myself to play ME2 very much until I manged to force AA (at least the hot fix driver from ati came out within a day).

Traditionally this is the case for me; I will almost never notice whether AF is on or off, but jaggies will drive me up the wall in seconds.

I'm not sure why I have such a hard time noticing AF, I really have to look hard to tell if I even have it on.

 

[Occ]

I gotta have my AF (can't stand blurry textures), but I don't mind running without AA in most games. I kind of prefer the "raw" look it creates. Varies from game to game though. For example, I used AA in ME2, but I don't use it in any Source engine games. This is at measly 1280x1024 too. New monitor coming today though. =)

 

[sxr7171]

All good point AF is basically free, I always enable it.

AA is something I like to have but with 1920x1200/1080 it isn't essential if you sit far but I like to have it also. I hate jaggies. I also hate texture shimmering.