Another question, this one about graphic settings

[Jason McMaster]

Ok, you have to understand that I've always been the guy with the shitty pc. Now I have a 1337 PC and I don't know what some of this stuff is. First, my setup:

P4 2.8cGHZ 800 FSB Processor
Intel 875P Cantewood 800 FSB MOBO
Radeon 9800 Pro 128


That should be enough.

In BF1942 I get 60-70 FPS in the one above 1024x768 with everything maxed and Enemy AI CPU time maxed as well. I turned on 4x AA and 8x AF and at 1600x1200 I was getting 50-60 fps with the same setup.

When I turned on 4x AA and 8x AF I noticed that the text in BF1942 on the screen got blurry. Why is that?

Also: What do both of those settings do, regferring to AA and AF?

Case, come to my rescue!!!

[voltaic]

AA = anti-aliasing. This is "removing the jaggies". The graphics card looks at the pixels next to a target pixel and kind of shades it a bit to "blur" more cleanly with surrounding pixels. This is why your text will look somewhat blurry, as the hardware is trying to make the transition between (for example) white text and the blue menu bar or whatever more "smooth". This is the feature that the PS2 does not have. :lol:

AF = anisotropic filtering. This is a method for stretching a texture over a 3D surface to account for perspective. For example, when you map a texture onto a square facing you flat on, basically all the pixels in the texture are equal in "closeness" to you, the viewer. However, push the right side of that square back into the monitor about 50 feet (because it represents a wall in a hallway, for example). Now the pixels of the texture on the left side of the wall are close but the ones on the right side are 50 feet away. AF is a way for the graphics card to "unblur" farther away texture pixels so that they preserve their detail.

In layman's (like my own) terms.

[nutsak]

^^^^^ what he said. Although i will add.

BF1942 + AntiAliasing = BLEGH!

It's like it wasn't made for it... not like it matters... heck, I'd rather have Pixel Shaders in a game than AA.


(As a side note, a mate of mine runs BF1942 on a P4 3 Ghz, Geforce FX 5900 and 512 meg of RAM and it 'skips' whenever he has AA turned on... that and the text is also fuzzy... so he just plays with it off.. not that it matters)

[Ben Sones]

I can't give you a technical explanation, but I will say that it has to do with how the game renders text to the screen. The "blurry text" thing is a problem in some games, but doesn't happen at all in others. It's not a problem with your computer--it's the game.

If BF1942 plays well at 1600x1200 on your machine, then it's no big deal. At that resolution there is no need for anti-aliasing--just turn it off.