Does it bother a lot of people to play w/filtering optimizations and w/o aa?

[Anarchist420]

Texture aliasing and not having AA piss me off to no end. I'd rather have no AF and textures that are blurry in the distance than to have brilinear filtering.

As for myself, I can't play games without AA and without full trilinear mipmapping which is why I don't game on consoles and why I don't play as many games on the PC as I would if full trilinear mipmapping was forceable. A lot of old games are completely broken because nvidia removed the force trilinear mipmaps option in the driver control panel. OpenGL also seems to force optimizations now because I just started a Quake 3 engine for the first time in a few years and I found out that it was using brilinear. I enabled HQUAL under the opengl options in inspector and clicked apply, but it's only giving Quality which sucks.

Optimizations are worthless IMO because reduced IQ is equivalent to a slideshow in that I don't play either one.

 

[Anubis]

i do not care at all about AF or AA

 

[Ben90]

 

[KingFatty]

From what I understand, AF is like a freebie where it doesn't really tax the video card, so might as well use it all the time. But AA is very tough for the video card to do, so goot AA will cost you an expensive video card to pull off.

But, are you suggesting that you prefer to turn off AF altogether when AA is not up to par? You'd rather go without AF at all, even if your video card can handle it?

I think it's better to have AF all the time, even if you need to put up with some jaggies when you can't use AA.

I'm also unsure what you mean when you compare reduced IQ (quality) to a slideshow? I thought that you can get smoother non-slideshow performance if you reduce quality, but if you increase quality, then you approach slideshow? They seem to be opposite ends of a spectrum, and not equivalents as you suggest?

 

[amenx]

The higher the res, the less aliasing is apparent. It can also differ from game to game. In many games I can do without AA (@1920x1200), but in others I use it.

 

[tviceman]

I would rather have high quality AF than AA when at high resolutions. I think Toyota posted a good example a while back comparing Mafia I AF on / off and how well AF improves picture quality.

 

[Anarchist420]

The higher the res, the less aliasing is apparent. It can also differ from game to game. In many games I can do without AA (@1920x1200), but in others I use it.

That's not true at all. The rotated or sparse grid AA patterns pretty much prove that jacking up the resoultion doesn't get rid of edge aliasing.

 

[Anarchist420]

I'm also unsure what you mean when you compare reduced IQ (quality) to a slideshow? I thought that you can get smoother non-slideshow performance if you reduce quality, but if you increase quality, then you approach slideshow? They seem to be opposite ends of a spectrum, and not equivalents as you suggest?

What I was saying that was optimizations are worthless because a slideshow is equally as bad as filtering optimizations.

 

[imaheadcase]

AA and FSAA are the first things i turn off, besides shadows. Completely useless to me, i don't notice a difference on or off.

 

[SirPauly]

Personally don't like optimizations and ideally would like them off and enjoy, very much, having the flexibility of AA. Ideally, it would be nice of developers did take more care with IQ enhancements but considering the added resources, understandable.

 

[SirPauly]

I would rather have high quality AF than AA when at high resolutions. I think Toyota posted a good example a while back comparing Mafia I AF on / off and how well AF improves picture quality.

I'm glad that choice isn't available and gamers, for the most part, can have both. I think AF and AA have been wonderful features over the years to improve gaming quality and immersion.

It would kill me to just have AF or just AA.

 

[roedtogsvart]

I have a 24-inch 1920x1200 ZR24W monitor. I never notice a difference with AA on until it hits 8x+, except the massive framerate loss. AF however I max on everything.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

If the game is good enough I could care less.

Games arn't about graphics. It is nice though to have the filters cranked to the max.

 

[dguy6789]

That's not true at all. The rotated or sparse grid AA patterns pretty much prove that jacking up the resoultion doesn't get rid of edge aliasing.

Jaggies/aliasing is a result of individual pixels being visible to the naked eye. By making the pixels small enough(to where the naked human eye can't see them) you can completely eliminate aliasing/jaggies without needing any kind of AA algorithms at all regardless of the game.

It's about pixel per inch more than it is about resolution. You can increase resolution but that usually comes with increasing monitor size which negates the entire benefit of having a higher resolution if you are measuring display definition as PPI. A 2560x1600 30 inch monitor has about 100PPI, you need roughly triple that pixel density for the pixels to be small enough to eliminate aliasing/jaggies completely.

tl;dr: Higher resolution does contribute to getting rid of aliasing but common display technology for normal PCs isn't even close to reaching the level of pixel density that would completely eradicate aliasing/jaggies for good.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I think that's why gaming on a PC has so much to offer. For myself, I care way more about game play than the look of the game. I enjoy pretty graphics but, I would play a good game over a great looking game anytime.

 

[lehtv]

AA is almost as important to me as polygon count, or texture resolution, or lighting effects. I usually turn off post processing effects like motion blur, depth of field, post-processing AA. They just eat performance while making the game actually look worse.

 

[Phynaz]

What I can't stand is pixel / texture crawl.

 

[Anarchist420]

Personally don't like optimizations and ideally would like them off and enjoy, very much, having the flexibility of AA. Ideally, it would be nice of developers did take more care with IQ enhancements but considering the added resources, understandable.

I really think a lot of the IQ enhancements are up to the IHVs, especially making older games look good. Nvidia and ATi would probably rather go out of business than offer better IQ options. I can't believe nvidia only does brilinear in opengl (or at least Quake 3 engine games) now.

 

[Arkadrel]

The higher the res, the less aliasing is apparent. It can also differ from game to game. In many games I can do without AA (@1920x1200), but in others I use it.

Lower res + AA > Higher Res + No AA.

The end.

if High res means no AA, Id rather run a lower res.
I like the OP dont like jagged edges.

But again I agree, depends on the game. And how appernt a differnce AA makes (in some games hardly any, in others its night and day).

 

[toyota]

not enabling AF can degrade the visuals of a game. heck just turning it on in an old game like Mafia can make a very nice improvement. btw always try and use the in game AF when possible though.

Mafia no AF

Mafia 16x AF

 

[lehtv]

Lower res + AA > Higher Res + No AA.

The end.

Subjective. I'd prefer 1920x1080 with no AA over 1680x1050 with 4xAA any day.

 

[Zap]

I usually just change resolution to match my monitor and call it a day. What matters to me is that the game is fun to play. If I just wanted a pretty picture, I have the internet for that.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Subjective. I'd prefer 1920x1080 with no AA over 1680x1050 with 4xAA any day.

Yep, unless the game forces me to drop resolution to get food framerate online.

I'm looking at you Battlefield 3...grrr lol


For me it's a toss up. Battlefield 3 doesn't look bad without MSAA enabled and it takes quite a FPS hit with it on anyway so I leave it off. Other titles I turn it on because it helps quite a bit. Oblivion is one such example.

 

[Guovssohas]

Not 100% sure what AF does, but AA i don't care about, i've never used it.

 

[wand3r3r]

I never used to care about AA/AF etc but when I upgraded to the GTX 560 TI HAWK and after playing BFBC2 for quite a while and being used to it, I happened to turn the settings to the max being the card could easily handle them. That was a massive improvement! I'll never play without AA again. I also turned on Transparency AA in the nvidia drivers and the combination makes BFBC2 look like a different game (imo).

For those of you that don't care, turn it on and take a look if you haven't. It might not make as big of a difference in some scenes so try out something with a lot of texture and action.