Damn Texture Aliasing.

[VIAN]

That's what's starting to really annoy me. We need some freakin Super Sampling support or something to get rid of this crap. Here I am playing some CS:S and I have 4xAA on, so almost all the edges are smooth. I don't notice them. But what I do notice is right on the freakin rifle saying "HI!" with a frantic wave - Texture Aliasing. K, so we got traslucent textures anti-aliased, when are we gonna have texture anti-aliasing. Nobody seems to care about that it seems. High Quality isn't cutting it for me. I need something more.

 

[PrayForDeath]

What you need is SSAA (which will cripple your system)

 

[VIAN]

SS isn't that bad if you play at a lower resolution. Actually, using non-native resolutions on a LCD may have a similar effect.

Say 1024x768 with 2xAA will give you performance a bit worse than 1280x1024, but no even as bad as 16x12. Unless you do 4x, then you are in deep poop.

I think I'm gonna try running it at non-native for a bit to see how it runs.

 

[VIAN]

8xS is awsome. I tried it to see if it would get rid of those texture aliasing and it got rid of some. Awsome. using non-native res muffled things up a bit, but it might have also created some as well, due to lower resolution, I think I put it too low. I have tried a lower resolution and 8xS, maybe that will be the ticket. SS rules, I'm curious why they don't give you options to do both Multisampling and Supersampling.

 

[SonicIce]

Wouldn't this be fixed with better texture filtering and not antialiasing?

 

[VIAN]

There will always be texture aliasing due to lack of a high enough resolution. The big thing that happened was that graphics companies were making the texture filtering crappier, thus adding more undesireable aliasing. We should bring back SSAA.

 

[xtknight]

What do you mean bring it back? Software-wise? Because SSAA is definitely still available on graphics cards today. Try nHancer and you will get a host of modes. TSAA is just a mix of the best of MSAA and SSAA to get the best performance.

 

[jiffylube1024]

PC gamers are so finnicky 😉 .

 

[VIAN]

I try only to use it if it is supported by the game. So I'm not keep on driver changes. But yeah, bring it back to games and stuff.

I'm gonna check out nhancer though. DLing it right now. Thanx.

 

[VIAN]

So, I tried nhancer, and SS works quite nice, I get 30fps at 1280x1024 with 2xSSAA. That isn't that nice, serious performance drop. What also sucks is that I get mouse lag and occasional stuttering, which also sucks. And, the SS only works for D3D. So far it's disappointing, but it's probably because HL2 has these compatability problems that if you don't change the settings in game, it doesn't work properly.

Forgot Vsync was on, reason for 30fps. but other issues are unknown.

 

[VIAN]

SSAA didn't fix it. I tried 4xSSAA at 1280x1024, getting about 40/50fps. It helped clear some smaler stuff, but also created some moire effects. Which sucks. So SSAA isn't the answer. Oh well.

 

[Sc4freak]

Are you sure what you're seeing isn't shimmering?

 

[TheHans]

Maybe it's a lack of AF? Without AF textures are jagged or blurry when they're far away.

 

[VIAN]

K, I was in more of a hurry last time, now I've gotten to have a bunch of fun with it.

4xSSAA @ 1280x1024 = 50fps

4xTR MSAA @ 1280x1024 = 150fps

Took Vsync off, had no mouse lag or stuttering of any kind as previously reported.

Speaking about regular aliasing, the edges of polygons, SSAA looks a bit better than MSAA on diagnal aliasing, while MSAA looks much better than SSAA on horizontal lines.

Now, remembering that SSAA affects textures as well, unlike MSAA, SSAA can clear about 80% of texture aliasing when the aliasing is viewed diagnally, but most of the aliasing will reappear when viewed horizontally.

Since it doesn't fully do it's job and because of the monster drop in fps, SSAA isn't worth enabling and is clearly outdated technology. Just as we had to wait for Transparent AA, so will we have to wait for TextureAA.

Originally posted by: TheHans
Maybe it's a lack of AF? Without AF textures are jagged or blurry when they're far away.

Blurry -yes, jagged -no. Besides, AF was set to 16x at all times.

Maybe it's me, or it's because shaders have worsened texture aliasing, or maybe it's just Nvidia's new driver optimizations, but High Quality, doesn't look as good as used to. I'm testing out Quality right now and it's a bit worse. I'll see how it goes.

 

[VIAN]

High Quality used to provide a much bigger difference compared to Quality. It seems like today we have a crap load of texture aliasing in games compared to 2 years before. Quality just adds a band of aliasing on top of that making it worse but adding performance.

What happened? It wouldn't bother me that much to use Quality since there is still a crap load of texture aliasing without it anyway, but why shouldn't I push for the highest quality. High Quality looks more polished than Quality, so I will keep using it.