@Cap Mason re. anti-aliasing

[Wolfko]

Cap, in your review of Megascenery New York you also provide your epertise on settings how to improve visual quality and performance with very useful tips. However, there is one thing, which I do not understand. You recommend to check application preference for anti-aliasing on the ATI control panel and also to uncheck anti-aliasing on the hardware tab of the settings-display menue within fs2004. How does this go together? How can anti-aliasing be application controled, when on the same time it is disabled by the the application. Does this combination of settings not just totally disable anti-aliasing? Please enlighten me.

Regards,
Wolfgag

[TheFlightMan]

I think you got that backwards, it must be check the Anti-Aliasing under FS2004 which means App Controlled and make sure that it is not hardware controlled under the ATI driver. I dont' own an ATI card but this makes more sense, it works the same under NVidia.

TheFlightMan

[Wolfko]

>I think you got that backwards, it must be check the
>Anti-Aliasing under FS2004 which means App Controlled and
>make sure that it is not hardware controlled under the ATI
>driver. I dont' own an ATI card but this makes more sense,
>it works the same under NVidia.

Yes, that's what I thought too and what would be logical. But in his MegaScenery New York review Cap Mason stated it as described in my original post. He even supplemented his explanations with screenshots of the settings on the ATI control panel and in the FS2004 sttings menue. You'll find it at the end of this article:
http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/review/megany.htm

Wolfgang

[W2DR]

Yes, you're right, that will totally disable FSAA. If the article says to do it that way, the article is wrong.

[Bigshot]

Run the AA & AF through the control panel. Uncheck the AA box in the FS9 settings/hardware. The problem with using application preference in the control panel is that you only get 2xAA (that's what it looks like) and that's just not enough regardless of what resolution you run or what video card you're using. It may be a matter of personal taste, but I always run 4xAA & 16xAF (performance AF) and haven't seen a jaggie line since September, 2002.

The visual quality between quality AF and performance AF in FS9 just isn't worth the additional performance hit of using quality AF, IMHO. I find that 16xAF performance runs better and looks better than 8xAF Quality. Mostly, because I want terrain drawn out farther and don't want to see any blurred ground textures. Also, I use trilinear filtering in the FS9 settings. In FS9, using trilinear filtering instead of bilinear filtering improves the terrain quality regardless of whether you're running quality AF or performance AF. Don't ask me why it looks better cause performance AF is supposed to be bilinear. FS2k2 was the same way. I suspect that in FS9, it has to do with the fact we have to run with the FS9 mipmap slider on or about 4 to avoid alaising in the ground textures.

[CapMason]

Good question. Complicated answer.

Normally, I use antialiasing when flying with only stock scenery. FS9 uses dynamic vector objects to create scenery on-the-fly and antialiasing improves that a lot, if you have the horsepower in your system and video card to handle it.

With MegaScenery, it's a whole different story. MS uses bit map photorealistic textures. Antialiasing does very little to improve it and actually slows down the scenery rendering for the bit maps. PC Aviator (publishers of MegaScenery) recommends that you turn off antialiasing for MegaScenery. I tested it both ways and found their recommendation to be accurate.

So, I use antialiasing with stock scenery and turn it off for MegaScenery. But, I do it from within FS9 and set the ATI driver to application preference for antialiasing so I can easily control it from within FS9.

[TheFlightMan]

So to answer the original post, you let FS handle Anti-aliasing and when you need to disable it you do it from within the application. Instead of doing it with the card's driver and having to go there and disable it.

TheFlightMan

[zoynyne]

>Good question. Complicated answer.
>
>Normally, I use antialiasing when flying with only stock
>scenery. FS9 uses dynamic vector objects to create scenery
>on-the-fly and antialiasing improves that a lot, if you have
>the horsepower in your system and video card to handle it.
>
>With MegaScenery, it's a whole different story. MS uses bit
>map photorealistic textures. Antialiasing does very little
>to improve it and actually slows down the scenery rendering
>for the bit maps. PC Aviator (publishers of MegaScenery)
>recommends that you turn off antialiasing for MegaScenery. I
>tested it both ways and found their recommendation to be
>accurate.
>
>So, I use antialiasing with stock scenery and turn it off
>for MegaScenery. But, I do it from within FS9 and set the
>ATI driver to application preference for antialiasing so I
>can easily control it from within FS9.

================

Now this is strange.

As most of us know, ATI rips over Nvidia when it comes to antialiasing.

But I run an Nvidia, and using Megascenery I run 2x antialiasing with it with NO hit in performance. Even 2x will usually at least slow things down a little bit on an Nvidia.

And you're saying there's a slowdown on an ATI card if you run antialiasing with Megascenery?

This would definitely be the first case I've ever heard of where an Nvidia card is working better with antialiasing than a Radeon lol!

BTW, I've never felt a need for antialiasing with the Megascenery either. I use 2x just to "de-jag" my wings on the plane.

[Wolfko]

Ok, this makes sense! Thanks for your explanations Cap!

Wolfgang