if you use a high enough resolution, do you need AA?

[knifemyglitter]

do you really need to ever do more that 2xAA for that high of a res, and with higher resolutions on the brink, will this feature be phased out eventually?

 

[wpeng]

Personal preference.

 

[VIAN]

yes, no resolution is high enough. Well, let's just say it'd have to be really high. A little too high, not available and probably won't be available for a really long time.

 

[zephyrprime]

Once we hit about 200dpi, AA will not be very useful. But on the other hand, by the time that happens, raw fill rate will probably humongeous compared with current levels.

 

[nitromullet]

Yes, because if your resolution is 1900x1200 you're screen will also be big. Maybe if you could run a 12" screen at that rez you might not need AA.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: wpeng
Personal preference.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Personal preference. There will always be some edge crawl without AA, so 2X aa is always good to enable to get rid of most of that. Personally I find my LCD's native 1680X1050 to look fine without AA, but some people can't stand no AA.

If you use it a lot, though, it is tough to go without. I can't live without AF (I won't notice it at first and then it bugs the hell out of me), so AA is secondary to AF for me. ATI's high quality AF on their new cards looks nice and I'd love to be able to try one for that.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

all down to what you like

for me i dont think i need more than 2xAA or 2xSSTRAA for most games at 1280x1024, i find AF more important so always have 16xAF and high quality setting.

alhtough i have played a few games like HL2 and BF2 with 4xSSTRAA just to see what it was like. one thing is for sure though, ill never go back to not using AA and AF

 

[JBT]

I like ot have atleast 2X AA on. Though with my current video card that isn't really possible. 1920x1200 is just to high for the old girl 🙁

 

[RobertR1]

At 1920x1200, you do need AA but a lot depends on the games. CS:S is fine with just 2xAA where as BF2 greatly benefits from 4xAA. Look at the games you play and decide for yourself. One thing to note, once you start using AA, you become really sensitive to it.

 

[CP5670]

I can notice the jagged edges easily at 2048x1536 on a 20" screen, but generally prefer high resolutions to AA and can't use both simultaneously on my current card in most games. I want both though, so I'm upgrading. 😀

 

[BFG10K]

I'd actually argue that AA can be even more important at high resolutions since it can mean the difference between subtle jaggies and no jaggies at all.

 

[velis]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I'd actually argue that AA can be even more important at high resolutions since it can mean the difference between subtle jaggies and no jaggies at all.

I agree. At low resolutions AA is necessary for stuff not to look too blocky. At high resolutions AA makes the image seem soft which looks more natural than sharp edges which are very noticable since # of objects on screen will always be less than in real life.
I just recently bumped up res in my current favorite game. Went from 1280 to 1600 and couldn't believe the difference. The image suddenly feels sharper and more realistic at the same time. Using 4xAA in both cases.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I'd actually argue that AA can be even more important at high resolutions since it can mean the difference between subtle jaggies and no jaggies at all.

Why not at low resolutions? In low resolutions everything is jaggier than at high ones.

Sure it's still important at high resolutions, but surely not more important than on low ones.

It also depends on the AA we're talking about here. Some AA I find produces grayish offcolored blending while others like rotated-grid produce EXCELLENT near-indistiguishable blending on the edges, and make it look smoother than all hell. RGAA is the professional AA default on the Quadros IIRC. You can enable that in nHancer (and get 1 FPS). But sooner or later it should be fast enough.

 

[Ackmed]

Originally posted by: wpeng
Personal preference.

What he said.

I game at 1920x1200, and I always try to use 4x. If not, at least 2x. Different game engines show jaggies differently. BF2 shows jaggies a lot to me. So many fences, chopper blades, etc. that show jaggies very easily. Other faster paced games dont show them as much to me.

I seriously doubt AA is going anywhere, anytime soon.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Ackmed

Originally posted by: wpeng
Personal preference.

What he said.

I game at 1920x1200, and I always try to use 4x. If not, at least 2x. Different game engines show jaggies differently. BF2 shows jaggies a lot to me. So many fences, chopper blades, etc. that show jaggies very easily. Other faster paced games dont show them as much to me.

I seriously doubt AA is going anywhere, anytime soon.

Right. Although a line segment is a line segment in any game, some do use alpha textures while others use models. Only SSAA will anti-alias those textures. What I don't understand is: why don't the texture-creators antialias their textures before they put them in the game data pack??! Telephone lines are hell for AA.

Oh, and why don't you really see jaggies in digi-cam pictures? Is it automatically supersampled? The picture is still a set of pixels.

 

[BFG10K]

Sure it's still important at high resolutions, but surely not more important than on low ones.

At low resolutions it helps but it doesn't get rid of all of the jaggies, it simply reduces them. Also it can't fix the problems from a low resolution that are not related to jagged edges such as a lack of pixels for accurate interpolation of objects at long ranges.

At high resolutions enabling AA can mean the difference between subtle jaggies and no jaggies. This makes a huge difference to IQ.

 

[ElFenix]

the dpi matters more than the sheer resolution. that said, i noticed jaggies playing at 1600x1200 on a 19" (18" viewable) CRT, so i'd imagine they're just as bad on anything with a lower dpi (such as 20" and 24" LCDs)

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Depends. I've played HL2 @ 2048x1536 0xAA (21" CRT) and I'll tell you that 1600x1200 2xAA looked a little better to me. But again it's probably a matter of personal preference as textures are more detailed at higher resolutions. For games like Doom 3/Quake 4 for instance it probably wouldn't matter. But games like HL2 or BF2 it probably would . . .