who has implemented FSAA first on 3D graphics card?
- Thread starter kyronet
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asicnewbie
Newcomer
> Actually, wasnt the Tseng Labs ET4000 the first card with AA features?
Are you referring to the Edsun Laboratories "CEG" RAMDAC? CEG = continuous edge graphics!
It supposedly turned an 8-bit palette-VGA display into an anti-aliased 'better than 8-bit' workstation display!
Back in the early 1990 timeframe, the CEG RAMDAC was a novel idea for its time, but unfortunately got killed prematurely by the arrival of 'low-cost' high-color RAMDACs (15/16-bit.)
The CEG RAMDAC did have some other problems, like display readback (getting the exact pixel-value after the CEG-smoothing operation wasn't trivial.) A long time ago, I ran into a programmer's reference manual for the CEG-RAMDAC, but I can't remember anything about it. It was (pin-out) backward compatible with the then industry-standard Sierra/INMOS 8-bit RAMDACs.
Are you referring to the Edsun Laboratories "CEG" RAMDAC? CEG = continuous edge graphics!
It supposedly turned an 8-bit palette-VGA display into an anti-aliased 'better than 8-bit' workstation display!
Back in the early 1990 timeframe, the CEG RAMDAC was a novel idea for its time, but unfortunately got killed prematurely by the arrival of 'low-cost' high-color RAMDACs (15/16-bit.)
The CEG RAMDAC did have some other problems, like display readback (getting the exact pixel-value after the CEG-smoothing operation wasn't trivial.) A long time ago, I ran into a programmer's reference manual for the CEG-RAMDAC, but I can't remember anything about it. It was (pin-out) backward compatible with the then industry-standard Sierra/INMOS 8-bit RAMDACs.
Yeah Dreamcast did support FSAA, it was the first console to do so. It just didn't use it often, if at all. The reason for this was purely lack of fillrate.
As I said mate Neon 250 was the first, it had FSAA before 3dfx released a board supporting FSAA.
A hardware technique that anti-aliases the edges of polys as well as textures (without simply bluring everything like Quincunx)
Look above.
Any anti aliasing technique that is forcable in hardware and anti-aliases both poly edges and textures, without simply bluring, is FSAA AFAICS
BenSkywalker
Regular
No, the N64 had the capability also.
PVR had a solution before 3dfx but Integraph, 3DLabs and E&S all beat PVR to the market(and I'm sure I'm forgetting several others).
All FSAA blurs to some extent, are you trying to exclude Quincunx because of the amount it blurs? I would say Quincunx certainly falls under the FSAA category, even if it does look like crap. I don't think MSAA doesn't fit the description as it doesn't work on the entire scene(although I think that is a step in the right direction), although based on the criteria you are giving Darren it sounds like you would consider MSAA+Anisotropic as FSAA, is that the case? The end result fits the description you are giving, although I can certainly see why some people wouldn't want to consider it as actual FSAA.
The N64 had edge AA, I doubt very much that it had hardware FSAA. It may have had some sort of blur filter, but I'm not talking about a simple blur filter when I say FSAA.
We're talking about consumer gaming cards here, not business cards. The guy asked who was the first to bring FSAA to the market (he quite obviously means consumer gaming cards) and Neon 250 was the first to do that.
Yeah FSAA does blur to some extent, but it does not simply blur a scene to death to hide aliasing like quincunx does. And yes I am excluding Quincunx, I think most people would agree too, its a horrible solution.
Well if it was used as one single solution, then possibly yeah, but I wouldn't consider a card that supports edge aa and aniso to be the first card with FSAA. Anyway I think its pretty obvious what the guy who started this thread meant when he asked about FSAA. He means the first single solution that can be forced in hardware for any game and will anti alias both textures and polygon edges, which was OGSS, Neon 250 was the first consumer gaming card to support that feature.
Quincux is not really FSAA as it doesn't increase texture detail at all. Its an edge AA (the MSAA) with a blur filter on top.
Nvidia also beat 3dfx (although 3dfx's AA was the better quality imo) but typically for nvidia they kept back decent support for the feature to release with the v5 launch.
Nvidia also beat 3dfx (although 3dfx's AA was the better quality imo) but typically for nvidia they kept back decent support for the feature to release with the v5 launch.
BenSkywalker
Regular
What do you mean by 'hardware' FSAA? The N64s output limitation was 640x480(which it did use in some games) while its native output was one quarter that in pixel density. It had edge AA combined with their flicker filter- output to a resolution for non interlaced viewing then use a three line filter to down sample for output to an interlaced display.
His question-
To me that sounds like he is looking for the first company to do it. I'm not sure who it is, but it wasn't 3dfx or PVR
So was 3dfx's RGSS before they put out the LOD bias adjuster
I've never been a fan of any of the consumer FSAA solutions for real time graphics(which I'm sure you know) as they all blur things too much IMO. It is simply a matter of degrees between Quincunx and the rest(although Quincunx is certainly the worst offender).Ok so N64 had edge aa and a flicker filter, stop being so picky, DC had the first real quality FSAA technique of any console.
Read between the lines, he means first FSAA in a consumer gaming card, why do you think he mentions 3dfx and PowerVR as examples?.. he's not interested in which business card first had FSAA.
RGSS was never a horrible solution. I had the Voodoo5 from day one and the RGSS always looked great. RGSS improved texture quality AFAICS, it certainly didn't blur the hell out of everything like Quincunx.
Read between the lines, he means first FSAA in a consumer gaming card, why do you think he mentions 3dfx and PowerVR as examples?.. he's not interested in which business card first had FSAA.
RGSS was never a horrible solution. I had the Voodoo5 from day one and the RGSS always looked great. RGSS improved texture quality AFAICS, it certainly didn't blur the hell out of everything like Quincunx.
Hellbinder[CE said:
Nah....the Edge AA of that time required programmer support. I doubt it would work properly with today's T&L video cards. Besides, we don't need to make it more challenging for programmers to render things in 3D. We need to make it easier, so they can render more complex scenes in games.
Today's multisampling and hardware Edge AA are vastly superior, as they require no developer support, and work flawlessly with hardware T&L technologies.
BenSkywalker said:His question-
To me that sounds like he is looking for the first company to do it. I'm not sure who it is, but it wasn't 3dfx or PVR
If you are going to open it up to this, then you may as well include the cards that vendors in the late 80s to early 90s, such as SGI, Sun, and Apollo, could optionally put into their workstations.
If you want to go earlier than (although not strictly in the add-in card category), then the flight simulators from the 1970-80s often had super-sampling antialiasing as well (at least at the geometry level). They had to because the display resolution was so low! (Memory was damned expensive in those days)
BenSkywalker
Regular
Darren-
I try and avoid reading between the lines. What if someone were to come here pose that question and then start spreading around in other places that PowerVR invented FSAA? I understand what you are saying, but I don't want to tell someone that a company invented a technique that had been around for some time before that company was formed.
There were numerous articles on how RGSS blurred things including Rev's over at the Pulpit which prompted the LOD bias slider(this was actually a compounded issue as 3dfx used a less agressive LOD setting anyway). FSAA blurs things, the sampling proximity used in RGSS made it more prone to it then OGSS. Neither of them are as bad as Quincunx, but they all blur.
Simon-
I actually had SGI in my reply at first but removed them because I couldn't remember if their implementation was what is now considered hardware FSAA(I know they had support for accumulation buffer function supported by software, wasn't sure beyond that).
But your post brining up the other companies is actually what I was trying to remember, not the consumer market makers who just barely entered the market.
I try and avoid reading between the lines. What if someone were to come here pose that question and then start spreading around in other places that PowerVR invented FSAA? I understand what you are saying, but I don't want to tell someone that a company invented a technique that had been around for some time before that company was formed.
There were numerous articles on how RGSS blurred things including Rev's over at the Pulpit which prompted the LOD bias slider(this was actually a compounded issue as 3dfx used a less agressive LOD setting anyway). FSAA blurs things, the sampling proximity used in RGSS made it more prone to it then OGSS. Neither of them are as bad as Quincunx, but they all blur.
Simon-
I actually had SGI in my reply at first but removed them because I couldn't remember if their implementation was what is now considered hardware FSAA(I know they had support for accumulation buffer function supported by software, wasn't sure beyond that).
But your post brining up the other companies is actually what I was trying to remember, not the consumer market makers who just barely entered the market.
Yeah of course, I agree that PowerVR didn't invent it, but as long as that's made clear then their isn't a problem. I doubt anyone knows who invented the idea of FSAA. However I do know what this guy is asking (as i've seen him asking this sort of thing in other threads). I'm pretty sure he just wants to know which consumer graphics card first had FSAA (meaning the popular deffinition of FSAA), which was Neon 250.
Yeah I agree that they all blur to a degree, but you did suggest that RGSS was a horrible solution though, which is hardly fair
While it may have blured on a technical level, and even may have been visible at times, it was still very nice looking in the majority of conditions.BTW it looks like I may not be getting an import version of ED now, Freeloader is now set for mid August and AFAIK ED PAL comes out early October, so I may just get the PAL version instead. But you can bet I'll be asking you to send me a copy of Mario Sunshine
BenSkywalker
Regular
That's my main concern. For a consumer level gaming board PVR was the first to have to the best of my knowledge(I've never heard of anyone having it before them in a gaming board).
For RGSS, I'm not a big fan of any of the FSAA solutions(though I like MSAA+Ani) as I feel they all blur too much(I should clarify that- given the resolutions that we could reasonably run when FSAA first became mainstream they blurred too much). RGSS blurs more then OGSS. If there were a board capable of 12x9 or up with 4X RGSS and proper LOD bias then I would likely warm up quite a bit to it
So you are all set with ED(when it comes out, make sure you grab it), Mario hits over here in about five or six weeks, let me know when you want me to send you over a copy(I'll definitely be grabbing mine first day
).
Rev,Reverend said:
I wasn't refering to "trickery", but specific hardware designed to 'assist' antialiasing. The Accumulation Buffer (effectively a more flexible approach to super-sampling) was described in 1990's SIGGRAPH and, according to that same paper, other prior hardware systems also performed super sampling.
In the PC consumer space, it was PowerVR Series 2 that first provided direct hardware for supersampling.
