Supersampling FSAA in OpenGL on the GeForce 4

[AdamK47]

I originally posted this on Beyond3D. I know I?ll expect and intelligent response there. It's here on Anandtech as reference for anyone who is interested.

I've been told many times before that the only way to get SS FSAA to work on a GeForce 3/4 is to emulate NV1X rendering. I didn't even bother trying to find a way to enable SS FSAA on my GeForce 4 until I played with the new 42.70 drivers on this boring Sunday night. I don't know if this is true with previous nVidia drivers in the 4x.xx set, but there is now a way to enable supersampled FSAA without GeForce 1/2 emulation. To do this all I had to do what change one key in the registry. Location is here:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{52231CBC-8945-4E5B-86AD-97D3BDE42A30}\0000]

(substitute the hex line after \Video\ with your current video)

Change this key (or add it):

"Ogl_FSAAMode"

It has values 0X 00 00 00 where X is the AA mode.

0=off
1=2x MS
2=QuinxAA
3=unknown
4=4X MS
5=9tap 4X MS
6=4X SS

Here's some screenshots with low compression JPGs.

Counter-Strike 4X MS AA:
http://home.wmis.net/~adamk47/CSMSAA.jpg

Counter-Strike 4X SS AA:
http://home.wmis.net/~adamk47/CSSSAA.jpg

Vulpine GLMark 4X MS AA with pixel shaders:
http://home.wmis.net/~adamk47/GLMSAA.jpg

Vulpine GLMark 4X SS AA WITH! pixel shaders:
http://home.wmis.net/~adamk47/GLSSAA.jpg

If it was emulating NV1X, GLMark would be unable to run with pixel shading enabled (or "GeForce 3 features" as it's called in the options).