When does AA not mater anymore?

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Camaroz06

Gawd
Joined
Jan 26, 2007
Messages
642
Hello All,
I was wondering at what resolution and screen size does AA not matter anymore? Is there a resolution and screen size on which it wouldn't matter? I would think if I had a 20ish inch 2560x1600 monitor I would never have to use AA, is my thinking right or not? What about AF?

Thanks,
Eddie
 
Camaroz06 said:
Hello All,
I was wondering at what resolution and screen size does AA not matter anymore? Is there a resolution and screen size on which it wouldn't matter? I would think if I had a 20ish inch 2560x1600 monitor I would never have to use AA, is my thinking right or not? What about AF?

Thanks,
Eddie
Click to expand...

I get where you are coming from, but I do not like to play with no AA even on a 30" with most every game. At least 2XAA is still a requirement to lose a lot of the edges that will catch your eye and distract you as they crawl across the screen. Transparency AA is where the real value is for many games so that you can get rid of the aliasing on plants for the most part.

AA even on a 30" is still one of those things that once you turn it on and see it in action you are spoiled. :)
 
IIRC SSAA is rendering a larger pic than down scaling. so I guess "20ish inch 2560x1600 monitor" would give you Hardware AA in a way.
 
AA always matters. I'm at 2560x1600 and it makes a huge diff.
 
Always needed, it is not just monitors but also how a game is designed, some games will benefit from an increase in resolution and you might get away with 2xAA but others it really seems to show without 4x.

I do not know the reason for this but some games you can notice Aliasing far more than others or maybe it is a placebo effect of sorts.
 
Camaroz06 said:
Hello All,
I was wondering at what resolution and screen size does AA not matter anymore? Is there a resolution and screen size on which it wouldn't matter? I would think if I had a 20ish inch 2560x1600 monitor I would never have to use AA, is my thinking right or not? What about AF?

Thanks,
Eddie
Click to expand...

Well the need for AF is going to be reduced a little but you're always going to need some sort of perspective based texture filtering as even trilinear-filtering of a 2D texture is going to produce aliasing regardless of resolution. Remember as display resolutions increase so will texture resolutions so textures are going to have more and more intricate details that would get aliased when the pixel covers multiple texels (minification).

AA is a bit easier to address with a lower pixel pitch but aliasing won't go away. 2560x1600 at 20" sounds like a pretty high frequency sample but you're going to have even higher frequency polygon transitions at a subpixel level in the underlying image. Especially as games start using smaller and larger numbers of polygons (tesselation etc).

The more high contrast edges there are in the game the more you're going to need AA. Stuff like motion blur and DOF might help reduce the need for AA too.
 
What is this 2560x1600 20" you speak of??

Can you imagine the ghosting on pixels that small?! Still images sure would be purty though.
 
Would have to be a CRT, doubt you could cram all those LCD's into a space that small. Could you?
 
Camaroz06 said:
Hello All,
I was wondering at what resolution and screen size does AA not matter anymore? Is there a resolution and screen size on which it wouldn't matter? I would think if I had a 20ish inch 2560x1600 monitor I would never have to use AA, is my thinking right or not? What about AF?

Thanks,
Eddie
Click to expand...

Your thinking is correct. At some point the pixels will be small enough that your eyes won't be able to easily spot them. A 2560x1600 20" monitor will still have easily visible aliasing. I have a 1920x1200 15.4in laptop monitor, which has a very similar dot pitch/ppi as your hypothetical 2560x1600 20in, and aliasing is still easily visible, but not nearly as bad as my 1280x1024 19in. I'd guess that once we hit about 220-240 ppi AA won't be as important (that would be 2560x1600 on a 13in monitor ;) )

Would have to be a CRT, doubt you could cram all those LCD's into a space that small. Could you?
Click to expand...

You can quite easily cram "all those LCD's " into a 20" monitor. There are many laptops, like mine (1920x1200 15.4in), that have nearly identical PPI as the OPs hypothetical 20in. The problem isn't that we don't have the tech, its that everything would be uncomfortably small for the average user. Windows never did get the whole DPI scaling thing.

Can you imagine the ghosting on pixels that small?! Still images sure would be purty though.
Click to expand...

I have a display with pixels that small - no ghosting.

Well, CRTs are a blurry mess anyway, so there's AA built right in.
Click to expand...

Uh, what? Poor quality CRTs maybe, but CRTs are still the champ when it comes to fast action. A good CRT won't be a blurry mess at all, and have refresh rates higher than LCDs.
 
When you play GTA 4, at least the AA setting in the GPU control panel won't matter anymore in that game. ;)
 
kllrnohj said:
Uh, what? Poor quality CRTs maybe, but CRTs are still the champ when it comes to fast action. A good CRT won't be a blurry mess at all, and have refresh rates higher than LCDs.
Click to expand...
Bingo. I'd guess that LCDs won't achieve what the best CRTs are capable of (CRTs which were made years and years ago) for another three to five years. It's actually a shame that most manufacturers have completely stopped producing CRTs entirely. For those who know, I don't need to say anything more than this: Sony FW900 ;)

The OP's question has been answered, but I just want to reiterate that aliasing is a pixel density issue, not necessarily a resolution issue. Once the pixel density of LCDs is high enough (my guess would actually be that 300dpi would be sufficient), multisampling won't be "necessary". Still, rotated grid multisampling is a more efficient way to achieve anti-aliasing than tripling pixel density, since tripling pixel density is effectively akin to performing 3X supersampling. There are more advantages to supersampling than just anti-aliasing, obviously, but the cards we have now are nowhere near capable enough to render three times the number of pixels and maintain acceptable frame rates in modern games.

 
phide said:
There are more advantages to supersampling than just anti-aliasing, obviously, but the cards we have now are nowhere near capable enough to render three times the number of pixels and maintain acceptable frame rates in modern games.
Click to expand...

We also don't have a connection capable of driving it. Dual-link DVI tops out at 2560x1600 (for 60hz, anyway). A 24in monitor needs a resolution of 5120x3200 to hit 250 PPI. That means you'd need a connection capable of pushing about 3GB/s to have enough bandwidth (or about 3 times faster than HDMI 1.3 ;) )
 
THE FW900 ....now that was a monitor frikken huge but man could she game........
 
I notice aliasing quite well at 2560x1600 in games (some more than others.) I prefer to have 4X AA enabled at least at 2560 and 8X AA enabled at 1920 for the best visual quality.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I notice aliasing quite well at 2560x1600 in games (some more than others.) I prefer to have 4X AA enabled at least at 2560 and 8X AA enabled at 1920 for the best visual quality.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but that is on a 30in monitor, right? 2560x1600 on a 30in monitor only has 100 ppi (compared to 86 ppi for 1280x1024 19in). The OPs theoretical 2560x1600 20in would have a ppi of 150 - quite a significant increase. Resolution isn't important in this case, it is ppi or dot pitch that is important.
 
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