What do I need to be able to use the anti-aliasing
option in GPL. I have 2xMonster 3dfx 12mb cards
but the option is greyed out. If I can not use it,
am I missing out on much?
Thanks
Now, if you're running GPL in 800x600 (or higher) then the antialising becomes
less significant (visualy). What it does is smoothes the edges of all
polygons so that you don't see the "jagged" edges. ie. it blends them in.
Regards,
David Mocnay
>Regards,
>David Mocnay
GPL doesn't offer this for voodoo-cards ;-(
I don't know if it's a problem with GPL or the voodoo !?
Also, man mailt sich...
.\\atze [ FmMW2109 - FmMB2139 ]
*home* : http://www.home4u.de/buesing/
-antialiasing = smoothing of the edges on the polygons. This is done by
placing "in between" color pixels in the "jaggies" of the lines. Have a look
at GPL or ICR2 run through the Rendition card/s to see what this looks like.
-bilinear filtering = smoothing of the inside of the polygon.
Now, here's the techical bit. Renition chipset has a spare frame buffer so
that you do your antialising there. Voodoo chipests have got limited bufferes
that are very specific and you don't have a secondary buffer to do your
anialising. Therefore you have send the "screen" to the voodoo chip (as you
normaly do), then retrieve it back to memory where you antialias it, and then
back to the voodoo chip. This takes a lot of time and therefore you can kiss
your frame-rate goodbye.
>>You need a Rendition video card (eg Hercular Thriller 3D). Voodoo cards
>cannot
>>really do antialiasing (in theory they can (look in the mirrors) but in
>>reality it takes way too much of a performance hit (estimate 50%).
>>Regards,
>>David Mocnay
I have a Rendition Card, a Voodoo 1 and a Voodoo 2. In Nascar 2 the top of
the guard rails have the jaggies with software and Rendition rendering, slap
in the 3Dfx patch and presto, the top of the guard rails are smooth. So
which is that, BF or AA?
Steve
Thanks.
By the way, I have a feeling that OpenGL games are more likely to have
anti-aliasing than Glide games, I haven't seen one, but Turok comes to
mind.... it might have antialising in some places but I can't remember. If
anyone can check this then it could be helpfull.
By the way, I'd love it of there was game out there that supports
anti-aliasing though 3dfx. Then we could get on the "back" of manufactures and
make them put it into theyr 3dfx games. IMHO antialising can do amazing things
to the visuals of the game (of course the game has to look good in the 1st
place.... F1RS could have used antialising.... that would make it 10x better).
Regards,
David Mocnay
>I have a Rendition Card, a Voodoo 1 and a Voodoo 2. In Nascar 2 the top of
>the guard rails have the jaggies with software and Rendition rendering, slap
>in the 3Dfx patch and presto, the top of the guard rails are smooth. So
>which is that, BF or AA?
>Steve
>>I have never seen a 3dfx game that does antialising (and I've been
>looking).
>>Quake does not have antialiasing. Also, I doubt that N2 has it (I have
>never
>>seen N2 run though Voodoo so I can't be as definate).
>>I have a feeling that you cannot differentiate between anti-aliasing (only
>>seen in Rendition games) and bilinear filtering (most 3d cards support
>this).
>>Anyway, here's what they are:
The 3Dfx patch for Tomb Raider (still prefer this over 2 and 3) was one of
the first, if not the first, patches that supported edge anti-aliasing for
the Voodoo Graphics. The differences between with and without
anti-aliasing on TR was noticeable. The jaggies were gone, and I would
occasionally turn the feature 'on' and 'off' during the game for those
little 'Kodak moments'. Ooohhh... aawww... eeeewwweeee.... ahhhh. :)
George
Pretty much all 3Dfx games do bilinear filtering, but edge AA
is rare on 3Dfx for two reasons. One, it requires an extra
pass, which affects frame rate. Two, it's incompatible with
Z-buffering, which is used in many games for fast depth
culling. Edge AA is more common for Rendition games because
with that architecture it doesn't kill speed, and Rendition
doesn't support hardware Z-buffering anyway.
The latest Tomb Raider 1 3Dfx patch does full-screen AA when
you hit a function key. (I forget which one; try 'em all.)
TR1 is limited to 30 fps, so with a modern CPU you can leave
it on for the full game without noticing a frame rate hit.
The market has mostly followed the 3Dfx architecture, which
means lots of games using Z-buffering and not many using edge
AA. As resolutions increase, edge AA matters less, though
it's still nice except when it's applied indiscriminately
and blurs text.
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