Flight Simulation Games, Nvidia anti-aliasing finally getting there?

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040504/ati-x800-32.html#fsaa

> NVIDIA's 8xS mode, a combination of SuperSampling and MultiSampling,
> offers superior quality. Unfortunately, it also incurs a major
> performance hit, bringing the frame rates crashing down.

But the 22fps they quote for UT2004 is at 1600x1200. If the 6800 can
generate images like that banking shot of N2004 (note the smooth shadows
and fencing) at >30fps@1024 or so then that's fine for sims, and
V5-quality fsaa might actually have arrived... albeit at a price.

Ok, the x800 has better pricing and that "cheating" temporal fsaa stuff,
but I'm wary of something you can't take a screenshot of, and x6fsaa on a
9700Pro is generally not so impressive visually (compared to the V5) that
I'm inclined to trust ATI too much on this one. The golden rule with fsaa
seems to be that if it's fast, it's not good enough... for me anyway :-)

And before anyone says it, no 1600x1200 with "ordinary" fsaa isn't a
superior solution ;-)

Ah, just found...
http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=4533&head=1&comments=1
...which is all about using temporal fsaa on existing ATI hardware. When I
get back from work I'll have a play with the latest Cats and see what the
fuss is about.

Andrew McP

If you ever get a chance to experience an SGI InfiniteReality or
RealityEngine it's stunning.
The FSAA and mip-mapping is incredible, especially at full real-time frame
rates, and especially for losta $$$.
Thanks for the links. Looks very interesting ... at least to the geek
fringe.

'Bwana' Bob Buckley

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Well, I guess *every* flight-simmer qualifies as a geek to some extent :-)
I can't imagine flying or driving a sim without antialiasing, it just
makes the whole experience so much more immersive. In an FPS my eyes tend
to be all over the place, not concentrating for too long on any one area
of the screen. But in sims you tend to concentrate on relatively small
areas of the screen for relatively long periods (well I do, which probably
explains why I always lose dogfights ;-), and that makes FSAA vital IMO,
especially when dealing with things coming towards you from a small area
of the screen. Jaggies and poor aliasing can make the difference between
being there and flying/driving a desk.

But it's a shame I spotted that, because I was contemplating the fact that
the x800Pro looks like quite good value for an approximate doubling of
performance over a 9700Pro. Even better value when you factor in selling
the old card. But the 6800's far enough up the price scale to give me a
good swift kick in the backside & wake me up ;-)

That x8fsaa looks very nice though, slow by general gaming standards or
not.

Andrew McP

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At the moment I've lost all D3D video output... everything's working (can
hear it) but video's gone AWOL. I'll report back if I find out why, but I
thought I'd better issue a warning.

Andrew McP

In article
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No idea what's going on. Reinstalled cat4.4 and forgot about temporal
wossit for now :-)

Andrew McP

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ATI owners should think about joining this "petition" as well to get super
sampling AA added to ATI's drivers.

http://elitebastards.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3011

Andrew McP... Campaign For Real Antialiasing

My biggest beef about ATI's latest cards - and they are fine equipment - is
that they still utilize 24 bit textures for high quality mode. nVidia cards
use 32 bit textures for high quality, and that is the reason that benchmarks
show higher frame rates with AA turned way up on ATI cards: 24 bit textures
take less processing! The next release of DirectX 9 is 9.0c and to be fully
compliant (at least at tis point) video cards MUST render textures in 32
bit, which even the X800 series cards from ATI can't. Can I see the
difference between the 24 bit and 32 bit textures? No, I can't, but as game
developers continue to push the available hardware to it's limits and
beyond, it won't be long before this becomes a real issue. My advice to
everyone is dto hold off buying a new card until the NEXT set of cards come
out. I'm betting ATI will support 32 bit textures on the R480 chip, and
nVidia will have something out to counter. Maybe then we can get an apples
to apples comparison.

AK



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I think you'll find I said...


At maximum fsaa/aniso (where it matters to me) that seems to be true
looking at a variety of benchmarks, and I've run enough benchmarks on my
own setup to know how other people's numbers relate to my own gaming
experience.

I don't exactly think what I said qualifies me for a job in ATI's
marketing department just yet, and I'll certainly never be first in the
queue to buy *any* new PC hardware. Talk is cheap.

Andrew McP

In article < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >, XXXX@XXXXX.COM (Analog



Fair comment. But you're talking to a 3dfx-flavoured dinosaur who still
thinks 32 bit colour's over-hyped :-)

Andrew McP

How do you figure it has double the performance? I know people keep
saying that, probably die to the press hype, but the benchmarks don't
show that. In a game like LOMAC and IL-2 you will gain about 10fps over
a 9800pro. How is that double the performance?

It does sound like the 3dfx/TNT2 era, doesn't it? Wonder if anyone has
run any benchmarks on the lastest cards in 16 bit color - I'm betting
nVidia would win there, simply because they have a faster core clock. It's
also interesting to note that games that run in OpenGL typically run faster
on nVidia's cards - no suprise since nVidia has access to 3dfx's technology.
I'm just hoping I can find a really good price now on a Radeon 9700 to
replace my TI 4600. That's my motto, stay 1 or 2 generations behind in
computer tech, it's cheaper :).

AK



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I said that wrong again - ATI uses 24 bit floating point precision, nVidia
uses 32 bit.

AK



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