Anti Allaising Problems

posted on May 1st, 2009, 5:40 am

Hi everyone,

I am new here but I recently installed the 3.0.5a Fleet Ops onto my Armada 2 game, it this game looks and plays great.  Just one problem I noticed.

When I turn on the AA, either with my video card or in the game, I have no AA at all.  Everything is jaggy as hell!  I am using an ATI HD 4870 GFX card playing at a resolution of 1900x1200.  Does anyone else have this issue?  Is there a fix out there, or is there one in progress?  Any info would be greatly appreciated. 

posted on May 1st, 2009, 11:08 am

welcome to the forums.
if AA isn't working you via the ingame settings for you, i recommend to try to enable it through your ati control panel

posted on May 1st, 2009, 1:39 pm

When I turn on the AA, either with my video card or in the game, I have no AA at all.

I think he already tried that.

posted on May 1st, 2009, 11:19 pm

welcome to the forums.
if AA isn't working you via the ingame settings for you, i recommend to try to enable it through your ati control panel

Yep, I already tried that.  Game it’self runs fine.  No problems or crashes, just no AA.  I either disable AA “in game” and set up AA from my control panel (which I would prefer), or disable my GFX card AA and enable AA “in game”, I get no AA either way.  I am using the latest 9.4 Cat with my HD 4870.  Maybe a bug with just that card / drivers?  Doesn’t seem like anyone else has this problem.  Maybe something else is at fault?  Again, any suggestions would help.

P.S.  Thanks for the welcome!!! 

posted on May 1st, 2009, 11:52 pm

I'm not sure if I get AA. I think I do not.

Using an HD3870 and Catalyst 9.2.

Might be an ATI thing. Tried both variants, too.

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 5:02 am

I'm not sure if I get AA. I think I do not.

Using an HD3870 and Catalyst 9.2.

Might be an ATI thing. Tried both variants, too.

Yeah,
If there is no change in IQ (Image Quality) then I would say that AA does not work.  It’s funny because I am playing the original Armada 2 and AA is working perfectly.  Not sure why it is not working in FO, but I am sure someone will look into it.  I am wondering what would cause the AA to not function.  Something “in game” possibly?

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 6:21 am

Yep, I already tried that.  Game it’self runs fine.  No problems or crashes, just no AA.  I either disable AA “in game” and set up AA from my control panel (which I would prefer), or disable my GFX card AA and enable AA “in game”, I get no AA either way.  I am using the latest 9.4 Cat with my HD 4870.  Maybe a bug with just that card / drivers?  Doesn’t seem like anyone else has this problem.  Maybe something else is at fault?  Again, any suggestions would help.

P.S.  Thanks for the welcome!!! 

Are you sure disabling one or the other isn't preventing you from getting AA at all? Try enabling the same kind of AA on both the game and your card. That's what I would do at least, probably won't make any difference.

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 3:17 pm

oh, sorry, read that wrong. are you sure you set the profile in your graphics drivers to the armada2.exe in the data directory? if you used fleetops.exe, that won't work, as that is just a shortcut

[Lt.Cdr.White]

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 4:58 pm

Last edited by Lt.Cdr.White on May 2nd, 2009, 11:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Speaking for me:

I'm not using profiles at all. I just choose the seetings from the ATI tray tool / Catalyst Control Center and then start the game. No linked profile, just general settings. Has always worked with other games (that didn't get the settings right with ingame settings, that is, otherwise there would be no need for that).

I'll try to set it to 8x and start the game with the same settings to see if any AA gets applied. I'll report back soon.

UPDATE:

I can now confirm that 4x and 8x indeed do work. Even when AA is disabled ingame, the CCC setting does succeed in overriding that.

The thing that made me thinking AA didn't work right in my case was something else:

When fully zoomed out, the slight jagginess of the textures (which are not affected by AA) gives the impression of not working AA. Setting AF to higher levels doesn't correct this. I'll see if transparency anti-aliasing does help, but I doubt it.

However, looking at the 3D object edges zoomed in, I can definitely confirm AA is working for me.

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 10:07 pm

Speaking for me:

I'm not using profiles at all. I just choose the seetings from the ATI tray tool / Catalyst Control Center and then start the game. No linked profile, just general settings. Has always worked with other games (that didn't get the settings right with ingame settings, that is, otherwise there would be no need for that).

I'll try to set it to 8x and start the game with the same settings to see if any AA gets applied. I'll report back soon.

UPDATE:

I can now confirm that 4x and 8x indeed do work. Even when AA is disabled ingame, the CCC setting does indeed succeed in overriding that.

The thing that made me thinking AA didn't work right in my case was something else:

When fully zoomed out, the slight jagginess of the textures (which are not affected by AA) gives the impression of not working AA. Setting AF to higher levels doesn't correct this. I'll see if transparency aliasing does help, but I doubt it.

However, looking at the 3D object edges zoomed in, I can definitely confirm AA is working for me.

Ok,
Confirmed also, AA does work up close.  In fact, it looks awesome!  But I usually play with the “God’s Eye” view anyway.  Yes, all the way zoomed out, jaggies!  Yes, that is what I am reporting.  So, the AA up close works, but no AA from zoom out.  Is anyone going to address this?  It would be nice to have this fixed.  I know that it is eye candy crap, but the models look great, even when they are at a distance and look jaggy.  Would make this look much better IMO. 

In Armada 2, even faraway, the AA works and the models look good at a distance.  I am hoping this can be fixed easily.  Thanks for all of the attention to this.  Here’s hoping that 3.0.6 has this fixed!     

[Lt.Cdr.White]

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 11:05 pm

Last edited by Lt.Cdr.White on May 2nd, 2009, 11:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, the jagginess is not caused by missing AA in this case.

It's rather a problem of MIP mapping and texture filtering. The high-res textures cause a kind of aliasing when zoomed too far out. Usually, this is corrected by using lower-res textures in these cases i.e. MIP mapping.

posted on May 3rd, 2009, 1:57 am

Well, the jagginess is not caused by missing AA in this case.

It's rather a problem of MIP mapping and texture filtering. The high-res textures cause a kind of aliasing when zoomed too far out. Usually, this is corrected by using lower-res textures in these cases i.e. MIP mapping.

So, what your saying is that it can not be fixed?  I would think that no matter what the texture size were (or distance from them), AA should be able to smooth it out. 

Question for the Devs: can the AA work for the models even when fully zoomed out?

[Lt.Cdr.White]

posted on May 3rd, 2009, 1:29 pm

Last edited by Lt.Cdr.White on May 3rd, 2009, 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The usual FSAA smoothes edges of 3D objects, not textures.

MIP mapping and trilinear filtering can do that and were, after all, invented to do that.

Also, transparency anti-aliasing (called adaptive anti-aliasing by ATI) can smooth the edges of transparent texture areas.

Now it's up to the FO team to tell us whether the Armada II engine is capable of using MIP mapping and all kinds of texture filtering and if they're planning to implement this in FO.

We have to wait for an answer, as I don't know what's possible with the Armada II engine.

posted on May 3rd, 2009, 7:55 pm

FO uses bump mapping i belive.

[Lt.Cdr.White]

posted on May 3rd, 2009, 8:22 pm

Last edited by Lt.Cdr.White on May 3rd, 2009, 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Which has nothing to do with it.

Bump mapping is simulation of a structured surface through a additional heightmap texture which then is calculated by the graphics card.

Bump mapping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia