New D3D FSAA Viewer

[Joe DeFuria]

Haven't Catalyst Beta Testers had access to this?

Nope. (No more or less access than anyone else with cat 4.4 drivers.)

Some catalyst tester (I believe it was GandalftheWhite) over on R3d mentioned like 2 weeks ago that there would be new AA features soon for R3x0 cards, so I just assumed they've been testing it recently.

Nope.

and I would further assume that somebody using beta cats checked their registry and leaked the info.

And....nope. If anything, it was probably someone who was aware of R420 capabilities, who poked someone to "look into" the current R300 drivers...

 

[Bjorn]

No, it wouldn't be pointless, because "true" 8X MSAA does not comprimise quality or applicableness. In other words, there are situations where you would use 8X MSAA, where you couldn't use 4X-2T MSAA. For example...in a game that's getting 30 FPS due to CPU restrictions.

I agree that it's definitely not pointless but most games seems to have pretty low minimum framerates. Are there going to be any new games (Far Cry, Halfe Life 2 , Doom 3 f.e) that run's at an acceptable resolution and a constant > f.e 85 fps/Hz (in my case) ?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I agree that it's definitely not pointless but most games seems to have pretty low minimum framerates. Are there going to be any new games (Far Cry, Halfe Life 2 , Doom 3 f.e) that run's at an acceptable resolution and a constant > f.e 85 fps/Hz (in my case) ?

You could always try dropping the resolution and upping the AA levels, I was going to play around with that this afternoon after hearing some good things about it.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I agree that it's definitely not pointless but most games seems to have pretty low minimum framerates. Are there going to be any new games (Far Cry, Halfe Life 2 , Doom 3 f.e) that run's at an acceptable resolution and a constant > f.e 85 fps/Hz (in my case) ?

Dunno. How many "new games" are there compared to "existing games?" Occaisional dips in frame rate will not diminish Temporal AA's usefulness. constant performance under the refresh rate will.

It's certainly a game-by-game type situation.

 

[Baalthazaar]

Nope. (No more or less access than anyone else with cat 4.4 drivers.)

Nope.

And....nope. If anything, it was probably someone who was aware of R420 capabilities, who poked someone to "look into" the current R300 drivers...

Well maybe they haven't, I was just speculating. But I wonder where else the info about new AA would have come from? (referring to two weeks ago)

Do they give roadmaps to Catalyst testers or anything?

 

[Bjorn]

Dunno. How many "new games" are there compared to "existing games?" Occaisional dips in frame rate will not diminish Temporal AA's usefulness. constant performance under the refresh rate will.

What'll happen when you get the dips then, just "lower percieved FSAA" quality or some other problems ? (as in the ghosting problems that Democoder talked about f.e).

(Damn, my friend wasn't home. I need to have a look at this so i can judge for myself )

 

[tEd]

Nope. (No more or less access than anyone else with cat 4.4 drivers.)

Nope.

And....nope. If anything, it was probably someone who was aware of R420 capabilities, who poked someone to "look into" the current R300 drivers...

Well maybe they haven't, I was just speculating. But I wonder where else the info about new AA would have come from? (referring to two weeks ago)

Do they give roadmaps to Catalyst testers or anything?

I'm actually a little surprised that it wasn't mentioned earlier.

 

[tEd]

Dunno. How many "new games" are there compared to "existing games?" Occaisional dips in frame rate will not diminish Temporal AA's usefulness. constant performance under the refresh rate will.

What'll happen when you get the dips then, just "lower percieved FSAA" quality or some other problems ? (as in the ghosting problems that Democoder talked about f.e).

(Damn, my friend wasn't home. I need to have a look at this so i can judge for myself )

you can set a minimum fps limit where t-AA stops working to get around flickering. Just say you want t-AA working only at 60fps or higher than you can do that and if fps dips below 60fps than you get the normal AA

 

[dr3amz]

Dunno. How many "new games" are there compared to "existing games?" Occaisional dips in frame rate will not diminish Temporal AA's usefulness. constant performance under the refresh rate will.

What'll happen when you get the dips then, just "lower percieved FSAA" quality or some other problems ? (as in the ghosting problems that Democoder talked about f.e).

(Damn, my friend wasn't home. I need to have a look at this so i can judge for myself )

you can set a minimum fps limit where t-AA stops working to get around flickering. Just say you want t-AA working only at 60fps or higher than you can do that and if fps dips below 60fps than you get the normal AA

with 2xT i dont get flickering in any res regardless of how good/bad fps is.

 

[dr3amz]

I agree that it's definitely not pointless but most games seems to have pretty low minimum framerates. Are there going to be any new games (Far Cry, Halfe Life 2 , Doom 3 f.e) that run's at an acceptable resolution and a constant > f.e 85 fps/Hz (in my case) ?

You could always try dropping the resolution and upping the AA levels, I was going to play around with that this afternoon after hearing some good things about it.

crap basically - thats what it looks like. you start to lose definition because the pixels you are aliasing are bigger, and less defined in the first place.

1024*768@100hz with 4xT is definately a sweet spot for me

 

[tEd]

Dunno. How many "new games" are there compared to "existing games?" Occaisional dips in frame rate will not diminish Temporal AA's usefulness. constant performance under the refresh rate will.

What'll happen when you get the dips then, just "lower percieved FSAA" quality or some other problems ? (as in the ghosting problems that Democoder talked about f.e).

(Damn, my friend wasn't home. I need to have a look at this so i can judge for myself )

you can set a minimum fps limit where t-AA stops working to get around flickering. Just say you want t-AA working only at 60fps or higher than you can do that and if fps dips below 60fps than you get the normal AA

with 2xT i dont get flickering in any res regardless of how good/bad fps is.

it may depend on the game you play. I did some testing with cmr4 and when the fps was at 42(85hz refresh) then there was a flickering at the edges

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Well maybe they haven't, I was just speculating. But I wonder where else the info about new AA would have come from? (referring to two weeks ago)

Do they give roadmaps to Catalyst testers or anything?

NO...why do you keep on bringing Catalyst testers into this? The technique was probably mentioned at the last press event ATI had on April 13th. (Don't know for sure...as I wasn't there.) Someone who was attending that event was probably the "catalyst" (no pun intended) for actively trying to figure out if current drivers supported it on R3xx.

But that's a complete guess.

 

[DoS]

The bottom line is, Temporal AA is another performance / quality twaek available to us. Options are good.
You can approach AA quality that is nearly double what you normally get, with no performance hit, and as far as I can tell, no compatibility issues beyond what "normal" MSAA has.
The downside is primarily that there are restrictions upon which you can use it effectively. Your FPS should be higher than your refresh rate, and the higher your refresh rate, the more effective it is.

Agreed

Some people like to run with v-sync off....so it won't really be for them. Though, if they run with v-sync off and therefore don't mind the tearing, they're probably not big AA fans to begin with.

I assume you mean LCD users who are running with v-sync off, cause i always run with v-sync off on a 120Hz CRT (up to 1600x1200) and tearing is almost non-existent/barely noticeable. I really can't stand the side-effects of v-sync.

 

[MuFu]

with 2xT i dont get flickering in any res regardless of how good/bad fps is.

Then you're doing something wrong, have the eyesight of a 90 year-old or T-AA is being switching off at low FPS.

Gave myself a headache staring at 15/30FPS T-AA for too long yesterday. :?

 

[TempestX]

Now if someone could just figure it out for OGL???

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I assume you mean LCD users who are running with v-sync off,

Yup. Because we're limited to 60-75 Hz.

 

[DoS]

I assume you mean LCD users who are running with v-sync off,

Yup. Because we're limited to 60-75 Hz.

Yeah, in that case tearing can be very bad. I don't want to go OT but
how the hell do you people game on those LCDs. The best LCD i have seen to date, is crap @ gaming compared to my 19" 120 Hz CRT

 

[Natoma]

What kind of monitors are you people running? I have a 3 year old 21" Hitachi CM814U and I run 1024x768@200hz, 4xAA, 16xAF on all my games, vsync on. I have to dip to 120hz at 1600x1200, but I never play at that res anyway. Shouldn't this temporal AA thing be a good thing considering how good CRTs are these days in terms of refresh rates? Notwithstanding LCDs that is.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

how the hell do you people game on those LCDs. The best LCD i have seen to date, is crap @ gaming compared to my 19" 120 Hz CRT

gaming isn't all I do, and I'll gladly trade off what is to me minimal gaming impact for all the other benefits that my 20.1" LCD gives (like text clarity, desk space etc) over a 22" CRT.

 

[dr3amz]

with 2xT i dont get flickering in any res regardless of how good/bad fps is.

Then you're doing something wrong, have the eyesight of a 90 year-old or T-AA is being switching off at low FPS.

Gave myself a headache staring at 15/30FPS T-AA for too long yesterday. :?

not doing anything wrong

with 2xT and 4xAA at 1024*768@100hz i get around 34fps average in farcry.

aliasing is working, i have tempthreshold set to 0 (so its always on) and i get NO flicker.

I dunno - but it is working i know how to run it