will_maltby
12-23-03, 01:15 PM
I've made the same thread over at the Rage3D forums, but I'm making here as well 'cos I want to get across to as many people as possible. Anyway, this is just a dedicated thread about Super-Sampling AA that many of us would like to see in a future driver set. If you already know all about this, then skip down the page to the last section :)
Background (for peeps who wanna know what this is all about)
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.
SSAA is already supported in hardware!
We know for a FACT that SSAA is embedded in the hardware of the Radeon family of cards. The only thing keeping us from using it is the lack of support in the driver. Check out this driver info page for the Mac OS drivers;
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/radeon_readme_nov_2003.html
At the bottom in the game problem section we see both MSAA and SSAA mentioned clearly demonstrating their existence.
So if the Mac has SSAA, why don't us Windows users have the same?
Well, it's pretty obviously due to marketing. If ATI were to provide an option for SSAA, it'd perform slower. People would then compare this method of AA with the competition and thus ATI's cards would be seen to be performing alot worse than they otherwise would.
So what are we gunna do about it?
Simple, we should ALL (and yes, that means YOU!) goto the driver feedback section at ATI's site and make a request for this feature.
To facilitate this, I've written below a paragraph which you can copy and paste into the relevent section at ATI's site. So it's like this;
1. Goto ATI's driver feedback section: http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/index.asp
2. Fill in your name and other details neccessary.
3. Select "Feature Request" for the "Issue Type" option.
4. Copy and paste the following paragraph into the "Issue Description" section;
Request for SSAA.
The Mac OS drivers support Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing as well as the standard MSAA and so I think it would be a great addition to the windows drivers if the option to choose between the two was available on this platform.
Thankyou for reading.
5. Actually get off your butt and do this! Don't expect everyone else to do it. YOU, yes YOU need to do it as well. This is a very popular forum and if as many people who read this thread make the request it'll most certainly be noticed.
Background (for peeps who wanna know what this is all about)
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.
SSAA is already supported in hardware!
We know for a FACT that SSAA is embedded in the hardware of the Radeon family of cards. The only thing keeping us from using it is the lack of support in the driver. Check out this driver info page for the Mac OS drivers;
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/radeon_readme_nov_2003.html
At the bottom in the game problem section we see both MSAA and SSAA mentioned clearly demonstrating their existence.
So if the Mac has SSAA, why don't us Windows users have the same?
Well, it's pretty obviously due to marketing. If ATI were to provide an option for SSAA, it'd perform slower. People would then compare this method of AA with the competition and thus ATI's cards would be seen to be performing alot worse than they otherwise would.
So what are we gunna do about it?
Simple, we should ALL (and yes, that means YOU!) goto the driver feedback section at ATI's site and make a request for this feature.
To facilitate this, I've written below a paragraph which you can copy and paste into the relevent section at ATI's site. So it's like this;
1. Goto ATI's driver feedback section: http://apps.ati.com/driverfeedback/index.asp
2. Fill in your name and other details neccessary.
3. Select "Feature Request" for the "Issue Type" option.
4. Copy and paste the following paragraph into the "Issue Description" section;
Request for SSAA.
The Mac OS drivers support Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing as well as the standard MSAA and so I think it would be a great addition to the windows drivers if the option to choose between the two was available on this platform.
Thankyou for reading.
5. Actually get off your butt and do this! Don't expect everyone else to do it. YOU, yes YOU need to do it as well. This is a very popular forum and if as many people who read this thread make the request it'll most certainly be noticed.