Which is better, higher res and no AA, or lower res and AA?

Go play your Quake 3 at 640x480 if you want to, I'll take my pixel density any day. BTW, I resent being called "dumb" because I don't run around all the levels in the games I play at full speed without taking notice of my surroundings.

 

With high enough anti-aliasing, you see every enemy at 800x600. It doesn't matter if it's build up of 6 pixels in 800x600 or 24 in 1600x1200 because your eyes can't see more detail. And yes, you're completely right that when you take screenshots and compare those pixels when sitting at 10 cm from your screen the 1600x1200 does look better. But that's again the "my minesweeper looks better than yours" kind of answer.

Take for example a DivX movie. They are all around 640x480 resolution, but I never heard anyone complain about that. The reason is simply that you automatically go sit at the correct distance. When you ask about image quality, they'll all go as near as 10 cm and pause it and prefer higher resolution over color resolution and framerate and such...

 

Just played Return to Catle Wolfenstein at that resolution. All the bad guys are dead and I didn't see any annoying pixels.

When did I call you dumb?

 

You might want to see if there's a class action lawsuit against your Optomitrist.

Q:

A:

Implying someone is dumb because they don't rush through a game as quickly as possible.

 

My vision is fine, else the bad guys would have killed me, don't you think? A game like Quake 3 has nearly the same gameplay as Quake 1, and this was first played in resolutions below 640x480. Nobody complained back then but nowadays resolution is overhyped as improving your gameplay.

I didn't say you are dumb, I said comparing the quality of minesweeper is dumb, and treating an action game the same way is just as dumb. I said this action is dumb, I didn't address any person and certainly not you in particular.

 

You're right, DivX is not a very good analogy. But take DVD. It has plenty of bitrate but still the resolution and framerate is quite limited but in my opinion it looks really good. Or let's just call it 'sufficient', i.e. we don't need more. A bigger resolution woudn't make the movie any better would it?

Absolutely. And it also depends on the type of monitor. Just suppose a 17" monitor existed that supports 1600x1200 resolution. That's totally pointless because at the correct distance you don't see the individual pixels. So in this case 800x600 with analytical anti-aliasing would be the best it can get. For bigger monitors a bigger resolution might be better but in my opinion it won't improve gameplay further.

I just can't agree with people who say a resolution of at least 1024x768 is an absolute must. Anti-aliasing on the other hand, does improve the quality a lot in my opinion, especially on 'small' monitors...

 

Guys, you all fail to realise that 320x240 8bpp and all options turned down/off looks best.

 

8bpp? LUXURY I tell you.

When I were a lad we had to make to with CGA. Colour Graphics Adapter. Aside from the standard black and white, it could do cyan and magenta too!

 

Same applies to a digital camera filming say a car chase. Or if you want really fast then try steaming faeces from a shovel

In the heat of the action, the extra pixels help to make things clearer. I can see what weapon the bad guys is holding which may give me an advantage. IE he's got an assault rifle and I've got my trusty minigun
I may not be able too see that at low resolutions

 

No need to see his weapon, my rocket launcher already turned him into a pile of boiling guts. No high resolution needed here either.

Ok ok, you got a point there. I can't deny resolution is not important. I just want to point out that there's a resolution where the extra number of pixels doesn't matter much for gameplay. For a 17" CRT (or 15" LCD), and that's what the average gamer has, this resolution is around 800x600. So I would choose 800x600 with antialiasing instead of 1024x786 without antialiasing to remove those sometimes annoying jaggies and percieve details smaller than a pixel.

 

To the people with 22" monitors: would you rather have 1600x1200 with best anti-aliasing or 3200x2400

 

That probably still depends on the dot pitch.

On a performance note, it also depends on how much bandwidth you want to burn just doing DAC reads (depending on how a particular piece of HW does its down filtering).

 

That also depends on screen refresh - my 19" can do 1600x1200 @ 70Hz which hurts my eyes. Anything 85Hz or above it fine.

I can't imagine peeps running 3200x2400 AND hitting 85Hz or more

 

MINE DOES



...but only at 43Hz Interlaced, which actually looks just fine for 3D. Even has a built-in slight AA effect

 

On a 22" monitor, I'd rather the bigger pixels and the proper filtering, using a monitor's lack of resolution to do filtering is not going to give you great results.

 

erm..

Higher res is better even in a fast paced game of q3 1024x768 would be far better for me than lower resolutions, especially on long range railgun shots.

I have a 15" monitor (number 1 on my upgrade list ) and 800x600 is as jaggy as hell and very lacking in detail clairty, even with 1000x AA the latter would still apply. I use powerstrip to force my monitor to an acceptable 80Hz at 1152x864 and thats the resolution I use for my games and desktop. (except I play hl games in a 1024x768 window as its easier to alt tab)

Theres a few 17" monitors around that are quite cabable of 1600x1200, in fact I was under the impression that the average half modern 17" could manage 1600x1200 at 60Hz, I know hansol do a flat crt which does that res at 75Hz.

Also it does matter to me if the enemy is merely a antialiased low res blob of 6 pixels some probably semi grey or a much clearer 24pixels.

 

No, its not.
You quite clearly dont know what you are talking about.
As an avid Serious Sam fan, i can assure you you are wrong.
And its not just that game either. Its improves my aim in half-life, UT2003, etc.
This may be your opinion, but its far from fact.
i never siad "take screenshots" - i am talking in game, with far drap distances, resolution is crucial - take UT2003 for example: You play at your uber-leet 800x600. You see a dark 4 pixel blob moving, and shoot it. OOPS! Teamkill! Maybe if you'd have had the res up higher, you'd ahve been able to see which team they were on. Oh well.

 

Nick just e-mailed me a screenshot of a game he was playing on his 22 inch monitor yesterday. Here's the full size picture: