[fearsomepirate]

I'd love to have more AA/AF in video games...although my TV is only 480i, and Nintendo's deflicker filter along with judicious use of mip-mapping (and whatever else) make games like Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Beyond Good & Evil, and F-Zero GX look extremely smooth...and color-rich, I might add. It's sad...back in the 3dfx era, new implementations of AA were all the rage.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by fearsomepirate

Maybe because it's never been a selling point? Screenshots always have absurd amounts of AA/AF

Nowadays with videos, AA is going to make a difference in selling the product, as is just showing it to friends. Furthermore, the reason to add something isn't just to improve sales. Otherwise why use 4 textures per object when 3 textures per object will do? 4 textures isn't a selling point. Why choose parallax mapping over normal mapping? It's not going to increase sales of a game.

The overall game experience can't be borken into it's constituent parts and each part dealt with individually. You want high game ratings, and AA gives a sense of polish that can contribute to general impression. It's like if you were to submit a book manuscript to a publishers, would you send it typed, double-space, on clean paper, or scrawled in handwriting with scratching outs on old and coffee-stained lined paper? The presentation matters. AA adds considerably to presentation. AA+60fps would provide an incredible sense of quality which will impress people and give them a better feeling towards your title. They'll then be probably be inclined to rate other parts in a more favourable light - first impressions and all that. Alternatively go with 30 fps and no AA, and look the same as every other game out there. Or, if everyone else is 60 fps + AA, look rough in comparison.

[fearsomepirate]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Nowadays with videos

As long as people are watching uncompressed HD footage downloaded over Live/PSN, assuming they already do or soon will offer it. But if you're watching those highly-compressed vids on IGN, it won't make that big a difference.

Otherwise why use 4 textures per object when 3 textures per object will do? 4 textures isn't a selling point. Why choose parallax mapping over normal mapping? It's not going to increase sales of a game.

Because it makes the graphics look snazzy, and snazzy graphics sells games. AA significantly hits resources that could be used for other stuff that is more visible in devshots and compressed videos. And on the PS3, you have a graphics chip that really doesn't like doing AA if you also want HDR (yes, I know there are some workarounds), and on the X360, you have eDRAM that isn't quite large enough to do AA unless you use tiling, which in itself seems to limit what you can do with your graphics engine. And then there are all these tricks you can do that mask a lot of the aliasing as well as add a bullet point to your list of "cool effects," like depth of field, light bloom, and motion blur.

You want high game ratings, and AA gives a sense of polish that can contribute to general impression.

Yet, reviewers don't really seem to care. They didn't care on Xbox when image quality got sacrificed to show off super-duper new graphics tricks in Chronicles of Riddick or Halo 2. GTA has always looked like ass, even for a PS2 game, but reviewers have been extremely forgiving because, well, it's GTA! If reviewers had already shown themselves to be merciless to games that spend most of their time well under 30 fps and plagued with jaggies, we might see a different story. Or if the console manufacturer required a certain level of image quality of their licensees.

[swaaye]

Stop arguing against AA or else!!!

[fearsomepirate]

Personally, I'm for AA. I would be more than happy with Cube-ish graphics with 4xAA. I simply don't expect developers and publishers to care much about it, not when there's so little payoff.

[swaaye]

Well, I'm not really convinced that they don't care. It all comes down to the cost of development it adds. I don't think graphics programmers think entirely about the bottom line. They care about tech and want to push it forward. A graphics programmer would have to be blind to miss what AA can do and how much it has developed over the past 8 years or so.

With 360, we have a console that can do 4X AA for free if you take the time to do use tiling. This isn't some little quirky rendering method; it's how the machine was designed to be used. So, I think AA on 360 is going to become very prevalent. I for one am very pumped for Forza 2, which seems to run ~60fps with 4X AA. Undoubtedly it is going to look very nice if that is the case.

RSX can obviously do AA, but I don't think it has the capability for it to be almost free like 360. PS3 is kinda a lopsided machine though, IMO. Super dooper CPU with a strangely old-tech GPU.

We don't know that Wii can do AA any better than Cube. I'd hope they would've improved that aspect but, from what we've heard from a few devs, it has a lot of Cube like limitations already. To enhance AA functionality over more basic rendering capabilities (like shaders) would be a bit backwards methinks. So, I don't think Wii will much AA, if any. We're seeing a lot of depth of field blur and stuff though, which is sorta another way to deal with some of the aliasing. DoF adds a cool cinematic feel too, which is very nice.

[tongue_of_colicab]

But why would you want AA on Wii so bad? Even a port of the godfather doesnt have any jaggies I notice while playing on my SD tv. I rather see they spend the power on better textures and more poly's in wii games. Though if AA is possible I wouldnt mind if ofcourse.

[DeadlyNinja]

Just what is AA!? Let me rephrase that. Was it anti-aliasing that I saw? If not, then what the heck is it?

Someone kept mentioning AA on the N64 and I've seen plenty of jiggies in the polygons. For example, look at the pedestal during the cinematic rotation as Link pulls out the Master Sword. At the same time, I have seen slanted edges that look completely smooth in an N64 game as well. If the N64 is capable of AA, why do I still see jiggies? Yes, I know the higher level of AA, the better the results, but you can see two completely different thinks at the same time! One surface can look smooth while another isn't.

Same deal with GC/Wii. I saw the Elebits screens and they were barf-tastic. I saw the hideous looking aliasing on the edges, but they were extremely hard to see in the actual game. I actually paid special attention to them when I first played that sucker at the Digital Life Conversation last year. I did notice a slight blurring near the edges of the polygon. I saw the same blurring that I see in the sample image when I turn on AA on my video card. If that's not AA that I saw, then what the heck is it?

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by DeadlyNinja

Just what is AA!? Let me rephrase that. Was it anti-aliasing that I saw? If not, then what the heck is it?

Someone kept mentioning AA on the N64 and I've seen plenty of jiggies in the polygons. For example, look at the pedestal during the cinematic rotation as Link pulls out the Master Sword. At the same time, I have seen slanted edges that look completely smooth in an N64 game as well. If the N64 is capable of AA, why do I still see jiggies? Yes, I know the higher level of AA, the better the results, but you can see two completely different thinks at the same time! One surface can look smooth while another isn't.

Same deal with GC/Wii. I saw the Elebits screens and they were barf-tastic. I saw the hideous looking aliasing on the edges, but they were extremely hard to see in the actual game. I actually paid special attention to them when I first played that sucker at the Digital Life Conversation last year. I did notice a slight blurring near the edges of the polygon. I saw the same blurring that I see in the sample image when I turn on AA on my video card. If that's not AA that I saw, then what the heck is it?

Yes, AA is shorthand for anti-aliasing. We use that little acronym all the time here at B3D.

Not all N64 games use AA. Quite a few do, however. Mario 64 and Goldeneye for certain. It is called edge AA, which is a finnicky AA method used on older hardware mostly. But it is still very effective. An issue with it is that it won't anti-alias all of the polygon edges in a frame, for whatever reason. This type of AA didn't get used much at all in games. I've only personally seen it otherwise used on Rendition's Verite cards within games programmed for Rendition's Speedy3D API. VQuake and Indycar Racing 2, for example, on PC.

GC very rarely used AA. I'm not sure I've ever seen it do AA, actually. It has some nasty drawbacks when used on that hardware. Really hurts performance.

I don't think any Wii games use AA.

[wsippel]

Originally Posted by swaaye

GC very rarely used AA. I'm not sure I've ever seen it do AA, actually. It has some nasty drawbacks when used on that hardware. Really hurts performance.

I don't think any Wii games use AA.

As far as I know, Gamecube and Wii have a certain filter to reduce jaggies, an effect very similar to 2xAA - basically for free. This effect is not visible on screenshots (more precisely framebuffer grabs), though...

[fearsomepirate]

Originally Posted by swaaye

GC very rarely used AA. I'm not sure I've ever seen it do AA, actually. It has some nasty drawbacks when used on that hardware. Really hurts performance.

I've heard it did in the first Splinter Cell. Maybe they're not actually using FSAA, but the games sure look a lot smoother than their PS2 counterparts. For example, bad guys in Spartan: Total Warrior don't flicker and jag in the distance the way they things often do in PS2 games, even though you can sometimes spot an edge that shows aliasing. It might just be the deflicker filter, which I don't think works for 480p images.

[Corwin_B]

Originally Posted by fearsomepirate

I've heard it did in the first Splinter Cell. Maybe they're not actually using FSAA, but the games sure look a lot smoother than their PS2 counterparts. For example, bad guys in Spartan: Total Warrior don't flicker and jag in the distance the way they things often do in PS2 games, even though you can sometimes spot an edge that shows aliasing. It might just be the deflicker filter, which I don't think works for 480p images.

IIRC, the horrible IQ in many early PS2 games could be attributed to devs using a half-buffer in order to save some EDRAM for textures. Basically, instead of using a 640x480 buffer (and letting the interlacing process provide some sort of jaggies reduction), they went for a 640x240 buffer which gave eye-bleeding aliasing... Later in the PS2 life, most devs managed to use texture streaming that allowed them to use a full framebuffer, though.

[The_legend_of_drtre]

Originally Posted by swaaye

We don't know that Wii can do AA any better than Cube. I'd hope they would've improved that aspect but, from what we've heard from a few devs, it has a lot of Cube like limitations already.

Such as? The GC's limitations were memory related.

The disk format was too tiny...

They fixed that with Wii.

The GC didn't have enough ram...

Now the Wii has more than enough ram for an SD only system.

Which other limitations are you speaking of?

[StefanS]

Originally Posted by The_legend_of_drtre

Such as? The GC's limitations were memory related.

Sorry, but that is just plainly wrong. For all we know, the Wii has the same colour depth problems like the GCN for starters. It lacks vertex shaders completely and the TEV are a rather limited PS replacement compared to new architectures. ...

[[maven]]

Originally Posted by StefanS

The TEV are a rather limited PS replacement compared to new architectures. ...

Stefan is of course right, but as an aside I found it quite interesting how the PS 1.1 profile was actually implemented hardware-wise as Register Combiners, instead of "proper" programmability...

[fearsomepirate]

"Proper" is the one of the most overused words in the history of internet video game discussions, to the point of pretty much being meaningless.

Here is a video of the new One Piece game coming to Wii in Japan:
http://dory.mncast.com/mncHMovie.swf...5001&skinNum=1

It's looking quite good. Other screenshots have shown off some pretty expressive faces.

[Blazkowicz]

tried the Wii a bit, I sure can notice aliasing (21" CRT, 480i, default cables) but I was more shocked by the texture filtering, Wii Golf doesn't even seem to use mip-mapping and textures are crawling all over the place. This really is what makes it last gen. I grew used to using 2x AF or higher on my well outdated vid card (ti4200), the Wii GPU should have either done that or angle dependent 8x/16x.

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by The_legend_of_drtre

I just got through playing the final boss in sonic and the secret rings.. the real final boss after you get the 7 world rings. That part of the game looks about up there with Galaxy. It looks that damn good.

I played Sonic for about an hour....ugh, what a horrible game, took it back to blockbuster in disgust.

As far as I know, Gamecube and Wii have a certain filter to reduce jaggies, an effect very similar to 2xAA - basically for free. This effect is not visible on screenshots (more precisely framebuffer grabs), though...

It definitely blurred the graphics, it seemed to take out half the detail in any given frame. It was really only noticeable if you tried to turn it on with progressive scan, but with component cables and a decent enough TV it was also noticeable with interlaced.

[theafu]

Originally Posted by Fox5

I played Sonic for about an hour....ugh, what a horrible game, took it back to blockbuster in disgust.



It definitely blurred the graphics, it seemed to take out half the detail in any given frame. It was really only noticeable if you tried to turn it on with progressive scan, but with component cables and a decent enough TV it was also noticeable with interlaced.

Fox if you play SOTR for an hour you get crap out of it due to the way sega setup the game. If you don't get an upgrade and play for a few hours in it, it will not feel like a sonic game at all after that most who do play seem to like it.

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by theafu

Fox if you play SOTR for an hour you get crap out of it due to the way sega setup the game. If you don't get an upgrade and play for a few hours in it, it will not feel like a sonic game at all after that most who do play seem to like it.

Eh, got a few upgrades and played through a few levels and it wasn't seeming to get any better. The game was pretty much painful to play through, and giving the past few sonic games, I didn't feel like giving it a chance to get better. Even if it does, I don't know if it would have been worth going through the crap.

[The_legend_of_drtre]

Things just got a little more interesting.

Check out these sceens of the Wii version of Siper man 3:

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/action/s...ml?sid=6168556

Impressive.

[StefanS]

OK, this is the last Nintendo refuge I left open that long (other will be closed on sight). The thread is hugely off topic and not even related to technology at all (anymore). Fact of the matter is we don't want subfora for each individual console maker and we don't want to create a B3D version of such forum. We people to interact and to exchange opinions across multiple divides. This thread is just diametrically opposed to that intention.

If you want to talk about games, use the game forum. If you want to talk about technology use the tech forum. Rest is Console Talk.