Who actually uses AA and AF?

Dannyb01y · 14 Jul 2006 at 22:45

I certainly cant see any difference in fenderbass86's screenies but its very evident in Úlfhednar's...

I use AA and AF if the game im running can handle it if not then i sometimes sacrifice it or the graphics... online FPS are generally more important for me than graphics

Darkwave · 14 Jul 2006 at 22:51

Dannyb01y said:
I certainly cant see any difference in fenderbass86's screenies but its very evident in Úlfhednar's...

That is because he posted two screenshots taken in the same settings. Like I said, if you zoom in on them the only thing even remotely different is the position of Gordon Freeman's arm and the left-side number on the HUD fading in. Every other pixel is utterly 100% identical.

It's quite obvious he just loaded up Half Life 2 and took two screenshots in quick succession.

NutritioN · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:09

Yeah, he's having a laugh. Or he has a really bad monitor.

Real test:

Hlebio · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:14

I'll only use AA if I can have it enabled without a serious hit on my FPS.

FreeStream · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:17

Always use AA and AF, every game has diff settings but I enable them up to anything that keeps it above 40FPS.

AF is always at 8x or higher, AA is always at 2x at minimum.

Having a X1900XT @ XT-X does help tho

1600x1200 btw, but now still used on a TFT at 1280x1024.

CR

Indy500 · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:18

I try to use at least 2xAA and 4xAF, and adjust resolution depending on the game.

NutritioN · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:29

Bit of wierd thread really.

First person "Who plays with higher image quality"

Loads of other people "I play with the best settings I can live with on my current hardware"

No one's going to be against AA or AF on principle are they? If you can play with them on and know how to change them, you will.

Boogle · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:36

Top arrow: Original Image (640x480)
Bottom arrow: Same image, resized to 240x480

The net effect of resizing & dithering the image to 240x480 is providing antialiasing on the order of 2.6x. This is called supersampling (rendering the image at a high resolution, then dithering it down to a low resolution for display). I've used GIFs to ensure no image quality loss, greyscale is 255 colours, and gifs support 255 distinct colours

This is why resizing a screenshot (even a basic pixel resize) will not represent the actual image provided. Its also why sometimes screenshots look better or worse in magazines.

Personally I like to run at 4x AA at all times, with 8x AF. More AF just looks silly. Take a walk outside and notice where the detail slowly trails off, you get the same effect in games. Overly sharpening the textures results in no detail cutoff, giving an unrealistic image. Go seriously overboard and you get GRAW (Xbox 360) multiplayer, which has so much AF I can't play it, its like daggers coming out of the screen and into my eyes.

Darkwave · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:39

NutritioN said:
Yeah, he's having a laugh.

I certainly hope so.

jim5000 · 16 Jul 2006 at 13:14

If you use a tft, you are pretty much stuck at one resolution, so having aa & af is brilliant as you can't just up the res...

HangTime · 16 Jul 2006 at 14:37

True. In my eyes AA is basically just a substitute for not being able to select a high enough resolution. If we had, say 3200x2400 resolution monitors, jaggies wouldn't be so noticeable.

Boogle · 16 Jul 2006 at 17:17

HangTime said:
True. In my eyes AA is basically just a substitute for not being able to select a high enough resolution. If we had, say 3200x2400 resolution monitors, jaggies wouldn't be so noticeable.

You forgot to mention 3200x2400 on a small screen

High res is no good if the screen is equally as large. 640x480 on a 4" screen will have almost no noticeable jaggies.

Dot pitch for *** win!

Spike_UK · 16 Jul 2006 at 17:23

Personally I find that at my native res (1680x1050) I need only 2xAA. Anything higher is a waste as you really can't notice. As for AF, I go for about half a medium setting. It doesn't bother me too much so I just knock it on the head a little.

Unlike a lot of other gamers, I'd rather have the game settings cranked to the max than to use AA/AF.

Duke · 16 Jul 2006 at 17:46

Having a TFT I can only really run in 1280x1024. I normally have 2x AA (as I can't really notice going above 2x) and 16X AF

(1900XTX)

pinkacidbootson · 16 Jul 2006 at 19:12

I have found that in FEAR, the level of AF does not affect the performance at all. Frame rate is the same at 4xAF and 16xAF. Am i right in presuming that AF takes very little processing power?
Personally i like having all settings turned as high as they go before it really starts to affect framerate.

Drizmod · 16 Jul 2006 at 20:27

Id rather play in medium settings and AA x4 enabled than play at high settings and AA disabled. I hate Jaggies

CSA · 16 Jul 2006 at 20:50

4xAA & 8xAF on every game

fish99 · 16 Jul 2006 at 23:09

I don't use anti-aliasing. Even on a decent card like my X800XT (ok I know it's not the latest and greatest but it's still 16 pipes, running at 510/540 which isn't that bad) AA still drags the framerate down even at fairly modest resolutions (depending on the game of course). In the middle of an action packed game you'll appreciate a smooth framerate more than a reduction in jaggies. I never notice jaggies when playing anyway.

I do however use 8X AF in everything since I hate the blurry textures you get without it.

DanTheMan · 16 Jul 2006 at 23:26

It's weird, some games where I have 4xAA 8xAF on, I notice a dramatic drop in fps, whilst in other games it stays pretty much exactly the same.

Source based games seem to give substantial losses of fps with AA/AF enabled compared to other games.

Fireblade2K4 · 16 Jul 2006 at 23:43

Up until now I've never used AA or AF, found them to lower performance too far, but since I've got my 1900XT I've got max AA and AF and it is nicer....especially in FPS games....you can actually tell if it is a person or a texture dithering in the distance, AA + AF for the win!

Stu