zerodamage

Rage3d has a petition up in their forums about enablijng SSAA in the ATI drivers. It seems that the MAC has this option but not windows users. Here is a snip and then you can the rest of it at the rage3d forums. I do ask that you comment on it here in our forums. Thanks
ZD

The current method of AA used in ATI's Catalyst drivers is "Multi-Sampling Anti Aliasing" (MSAA). Without going into explaining why, this method only anti-aliases edges of polygons and does not do any processing on the inside of a polygon. This means that there is less texture blurring and also means quite a significant performance boost over other methods since it does alot less processing.

The problem:
The unfortunate negative effect of MSAA is that alpha textures end up very aliased. Alpha textures are just textures than have sections of transparency where you can see through parts of it. Typically, alpha textures are used in games for things like fence gratings, tree leaves etc. You might think that high levels of Anisotropic filtering would solve this, but it does not, and that is not a very efficient solution either.

The solution
The simple solution is to apply a "Super-Sampling Anti Aliasing" method. Again, without explaining it, the effect of this method is that EVERYTHING on screen is anti aliased. This of course means alpha textures are properly smoothed and also means that AA will still take effect when smart shaders are deployed. For instance, in Max payne 2, when you enter bullet time, with SSAA, the AA will not be 'switched off'. The only negative with this form of AA is, of course, a decrease in performance.

Thanks to Spine at rage3d.com for taking the time to start this.

Source: Rage3d

tastyweat

Yeah - I'm all for it, at least have the option in the drivers! I would use it alot of the time, it would help in games like MP2 and HL2, with certain AA problems that occur in those games. Plus, of course, it looks better.

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Judas

MSAA..... that's what i want to see... in action....

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tastyweat

eh? That's what we use atm

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dorkz

If MAC users are able to use it then so should Windows users too. I've posted.

craig588

thats ATIs current method.

Logla

No thanks, I'll just keep it the way I have it at the moment, but I'm all for seeing it as an option alongside MSAA.

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mainman

Why the hell dont we have this option in the first place, thats just stupid, im all in favour of SSAA. I think Ati should enable this as soon as possible in their next set of drivers.

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The_Neon_Cowboy

[SIZE=large]yeaaa lets lower eveyones frame rates bunch for a little more IQ[/size]
then we'll complain about the frame rates

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drakesteakn

i want SSAA in the new drivers, it will only help make games more realistic and help with the quality of gaming people want.

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mainman

Like MSAA, SSAA is optional, meaning you only use it if you want it, and or if you have a system good enoughf to handle it without frame drops, i dont see this as a bad thing, its just an extra feature that you can use to increase IQ.

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craig588

I dont know if it was just the way the voodoo 5 worked, but at 2X SSAA@ 10x7 it looked as good as ATI does at 16x12 with 6X MSAA

Rayder

I don't know for sure, but isn't SSAA the way it's done on an 8500? I know for a fact that anything over 2x brings games to a crawl on an 8500.....well, below the tolerable threshold anyway. And 2x just doesn't give a noticeable enough difference to me to be useful, especially considering the framerate hit.

It does seem like it could be a selectable switch in the drivers though for R3XX cards, especially if it's directly supported in hardware.

The one argument I read against SSAA said it would be used by reviewers as a negative because it would slow framerates considerably. And they were probably right.

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Falstaff

I am not a gamer and therefore not affected I suppose..hmmmmm

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tek

Sure. As long as I can disable it when I want, and without complicated instructions