chaikovski2002
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2003
- Messages
- 2,247
How much AA and AF is good enough for the eye candy at 1680x1050 resolution?
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How much AA and AF
- Thread starter chaikovski2002
- Start date
I've always found anything above 4x AA/16X AF to be overkill, both with my 19" monitor at 1280x1024 and my 22" monitor at 1680x1050.
I'm actually willing to only use 2x FSAA if the framerate is too low at 4x. 2x FSAA kills off most of the crawling pixels along edges and makes the edges reasonably smooth..unless you stare at polygon edges when playing a game, it's fine.
I'm not saying I can't tell the difference between 4X AA and 8X AA or whatever, but when actually playing a game, the small image quality improvement just isn't worth the performance hit. There are other, more important image quality issues that bother me more than a few jagged edges. If I can max out all other in-game settings, I'll enable as much FSAA as possible, but in-game detail settings are almost always more important to me.
Alpha textures flicker and alias slightly even with Adaptive AA, pixel shaded surfaces display moire patterns or noise from a distance, parallax mapping and other techniques don't give you a 100% believable 3D effect, models need more polys, textures need to be higher res, rocks and other surfaces need to look more lifelike - they either look flat with an obvious 2D texture, or they're extremely shiny like they're made of plastic... Just a few examples of issues that are far more important than a few jagged edges to me. When 3D engines can display 100% photo-realistic scenes at smooth framerates, I'll consider adding 16x FSAA for that final touch.
I'm actually willing to only use 2x FSAA if the framerate is too low at 4x. 2x FSAA kills off most of the crawling pixels along edges and makes the edges reasonably smooth..unless you stare at polygon edges when playing a game, it's fine.
I'm not saying I can't tell the difference between 4X AA and 8X AA or whatever, but when actually playing a game, the small image quality improvement just isn't worth the performance hit. There are other, more important image quality issues that bother me more than a few jagged edges. If I can max out all other in-game settings, I'll enable as much FSAA as possible, but in-game detail settings are almost always more important to me.
Alpha textures flicker and alias slightly even with Adaptive AA, pixel shaded surfaces display moire patterns or noise from a distance, parallax mapping and other techniques don't give you a 100% believable 3D effect, models need more polys, textures need to be higher res, rocks and other surfaces need to look more lifelike - they either look flat with an obvious 2D texture, or they're extremely shiny like they're made of plastic... Just a few examples of issues that are far more important than a few jagged edges to me. When 3D engines can display 100% photo-realistic scenes at smooth framerates, I'll consider adding 16x FSAA for that final touch.
Nihilanth99
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2002
- Messages
- 3,564
I have trouble discerning [during gameplay] anything beyond 4xAA/8xAF. To me, it's not worth shooting for anything beyond that unless you easily have the performance to spare.
I typically run 16x AF and 2x or 4x AA. The AF makes a big difference in the texture quality so I run that as high as I can first. I then like AA in moderation... too much and the image can start looking soft (so I typically turn on most other options before running AA).
I am with you as well. I run 16x AF and if I can spare performance I crank up the AA as well. All I can say is as an example the Devil May Cry game that came out on demo looked absolutely stunning with the 16xCQAA or whatever its called enabled @ 2560 x 1600