Sorry, I don't even tend to look for this when playing a game. Too busy having fun. Is...it really important?
Anti-Aliasing (Or lack thereof) in New Vegas PS3
- Thread starter SovietX
- Start date
Am I the only person that notices that the difference is REALLY insignificant? Unless you're playing on like..a 50' screen at max resolution...
OH DEAR GOD, THAT EDGE I DON'T EVEN LOOK AT EXCEPT WHEN I'M LOOKING FOR IT TO SEE IF IT'S THERE, IS THERE! OH THE HUGE MANATEE!
OH DEAR GOD, THAT EDGE I DON'T EVEN LOOK AT EXCEPT WHEN I'M LOOKING FOR IT TO SEE IF IT'S THERE, IS THERE! OH THE HUGE MANATEE!
You can quite easily tell the differenceSebenko said:
I was playing GTA 4 on full settings (1024x768 mind you) and I noticed that "heck no matter how good graphics they make,can't they just make draw a straight line instead of jagged one?"
Then I learned about anti aliasing and bought a better graphic card.
I can tell you are not a good PC gamer because a PC gamer is not a good PC gamer until he can name name every effect used in game and what type of memory it uses.
Complaining about anti aliasing is the same of complaining about lack of bloom or poor quality of models or dull textures.
None of them actually makes you a graphical whore
I think a better way to put it is this:
In real life, the world around you is composed of smooth edges. Unfortunately, your computer/console's display can only produce an image made of discrete points. Each of these points can only display a single color at a single intensity at any given time. The unfortunate result is that an image tends to become "jagged" when translated into a screen.
Anti-aliasing is simply an attempt to combat that. There are a number of algorithms that deal with this (and this phenomenon is not unique to displays either - anything that makes an analog to digital conversion faces a similar problem) though with video games graphics games tend to rely on super-sampling.
While the exact process varies, it generally goes something like this: First you render the image in hardware at higher resolution than the display can possibly generate. For each pixel on the resulting (anti-aliased) image you take the average color and luminosity of the pixels representing the same area in the larger image.
The problem here is not one of processing power as the calculations are incredibly fast (direct linear time by most implementations though I wager a pile of money awaits someone who can come up with something on the order of logN time) but rather of storage. The basic amount of video memory you require (and this is incredibly simplified) is equivalent to twice the total number of pixels times the color depth. My current display would require more than 64 megabytes in order to fill each pixel with a unique color/luminosity! Of course, there is often other junk stored in video memory as well such as the various textures and matrices that the image is rendered from. It quickly becomes trivial to fill hundreds of megs of memory with just the basic stuff it takes to put an image on the screen without any fancy post processing.
Current anti-aliasing methods rely on bulk memory in order to work as quickly as possible. If total memory is a problem, the image can be broken down into smaller chunks but this introduces additional operation complexity into the process and requires significantly more computational power. Thus while it is relatively common in PC's where a developer often has access to seemingly endless video and system memory, the use of anti-aliasing technology is somewhat rare on the consoles.
In real life, the world around you is composed of smooth edges. Unfortunately, your computer/console's display can only produce an image made of discrete points. Each of these points can only display a single color at a single intensity at any given time. The unfortunate result is that an image tends to become "jagged" when translated into a screen.
Anti-aliasing is simply an attempt to combat that. There are a number of algorithms that deal with this (and this phenomenon is not unique to displays either - anything that makes an analog to digital conversion faces a similar problem) though with video games graphics games tend to rely on super-sampling.
While the exact process varies, it generally goes something like this: First you render the image in hardware at higher resolution than the display can possibly generate. For each pixel on the resulting (anti-aliased) image you take the average color and luminosity of the pixels representing the same area in the larger image.
The problem here is not one of processing power as the calculations are incredibly fast (direct linear time by most implementations though I wager a pile of money awaits someone who can come up with something on the order of logN time) but rather of storage. The basic amount of video memory you require (and this is incredibly simplified) is equivalent to twice the total number of pixels times the color depth. My current display would require more than 64 megabytes in order to fill each pixel with a unique color/luminosity! Of course, there is often other junk stored in video memory as well such as the various textures and matrices that the image is rendered from. It quickly becomes trivial to fill hundreds of megs of memory with just the basic stuff it takes to put an image on the screen without any fancy post processing.
Current anti-aliasing methods rely on bulk memory in order to work as quickly as possible. If total memory is a problem, the image can be broken down into smaller chunks but this introduces additional operation complexity into the process and requires significantly more computational power. Thus while it is relatively common in PC's where a developer often has access to seemingly endless video and system memory, the use of anti-aliasing technology is somewhat rare on the consoles.
Guys if the 360 doesn't do anti-aliasing, then what exactly is it I'm seeing when I go to the Citadel in Fallout 3 and see textures on the giant rivets that look like the pixels have all been smoothed over as if they were mixing paint?
Is this a different technique?
Is this a different technique?
My thoughts precisely, it's the same when people talk about the PS3 having better graphics than the Xbox 360, or the PC having better graphics than both.Caliostro said:
I don't care! I don't even notice the very minor differences in the graphics on any of the gaming systems to be perfectly honest...
I can name more: Mass Effect 1+2. In both ME's and Borderlands it's because it's a console port, pure and simple and running on UE3. I can't say for sure what is up with GTA4 as I've only played it on console so far. (I've just bought it on Steam 5 minutes ago though.)Akihiko said:I dunno even some PC games haven't got Anti-Aliasing, mainly ones which were ported from the consoles to the PC. Like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Borderlands. Annoyed me to death not having AA aswell. I mean you can turn it on in the nvidia control panel, but it never does it as well as it would if it was actually built into the game.teh_gunslinger said:Aside from the fact that the video could have explained it a bit better I must say this: Oh my god, make the music stop! It hurts my brain I think.LegendaryGamer0 said:
On topic though: that's common on any console. Head to your PC to get some proper graphics. The jaggies were really distracting when I played F3 on my console. I since got a new PC and am now playing NV on that. It's smooth as butter. I love it. AA that is. Not the game. The game is alright.
Are people sure consoles don't do AA? I never see any jaggies on either PS3 or 360, and thats on a 42inch HDMI TV.
Multisampled AA is a much bigger deal than some people seem to think, especially on the PC. It allows you to see finer, sharp details that would have otherwise been obscured by the limitations of your resolution. If you have 8x multisampling, it is equivalent to having rendered each pixel of every frame on a 4 by 4 grid of pixels, and then scaling that down to the effective size of your monitor. Very nice effect, games without it are noticeably handicapped. The PS3, for a system that was so hard-on about being the best and most powerful for graphics, ought to have this technology hardware-supported.
As a side note, nVidia cards (and probably ATI, too) can force any DirectX application to run with AA even if it was not intended to, with varying levels of performance.
As a side note, nVidia cards (and probably ATI, too) can force any DirectX application to run with AA even if it was not intended to, with varying levels of performance.
They're certainly low res textures, but what is the technique used to smooth them over?minxamo2 said:
baddude1337 said:
Big screen tvs often have a process similar to AA in their upscaling processes.
Texture filtering. Essentially a 'smart' blur filter for breaking down low rez textures into a higher rez by resampling and bluring.MiracleOfSound said: