What Is The Transparency AntiAliasing ??

[PX7800GT]

OK , Hi My Masters ! I Have A Question , I Use Riva Tuner 2 RC 15.8 To OC My Lovely Graphic Card ... I Go To "DirectDraw & Direct3D Setting" And In The AntiAliasing Menu I Found 2 Interesting Setting :
1- Transparency AntiAliasing
2- Enable Gamma Correction
I Enable The Transparency AntiAliasing To SuperSampling Mode and Also Enable The Gamma Correction To Find Out What are They ... Then I Go To Need For Speed Most Wanted ( 1024x768,4xAA,Max Except Car Reflection)
I Found Out That My Frame Rate Droped From 60~70 To 35~50 ... But I Dont See Any Different In Graphic ... So Any One Has Any Idea What Are These Two Options ?? I Will Be ThankFul As Always For Your Help :twisted:

 

[chuckshissle]

Transparency Anti-aliasing is a technique of smoothing out jagged edges by well making the texture transparent. So transparent texture means the jagged edges are less visible making the image smoother. I don't know about in racing NFSUMW, but in COD2, when you set the transparency AA to supersampling, you'll notice a big difference and its' really noticeable that the weapon and hand specially are transparent.

Gamma correction well explains itself. It makes the colors more accurate and true thus reducing the jagged edges or making it less visible.

So all these two features are mainly for reducing the unwanted jagged edgies on 3D gaming and improving visual quality. Most of all they reduce the gaming performance, so be modest on your setting and set the Transparency AA to multisampling. Your AA is at 4x, that also sucks down on your perfomance, so try or experiment with your graphics card settings and see whats the best during gaming as different games have different settings.

 

[PX7800GT]

WOW ... Chuckshissle , You Know So Much ... Thank You Very Much ...
I Like Your Style My Man :twisted:

 

[PX7800GT]

OK , I Must Say That I Shocked When I Saw The Difference Between SuperSampleling And Normal AA ... I Played F.E.A.R. For A Long Time And I Never See Such A Great Graphic ... With Gamma Correction And SuperSampleing AA The Frame Rate Is About The Same In F.E.A.R. Max Quality 1024x768+4xAA+16xAF But The Graphic Is Far Better ... I`m Shocked 8O
I Must Say That I`m Going To Reduce The Graphic Of The NFS Most Wanted But With SuperSampleing AA ... :twisted:
Thank You Again Chuckshissle ...

 

[chuckshissle]

Hey, try updating your graphics card driver to 84.20 or 84.21. Compare to the old driver, with 84.20 and 84.21 I saw a lot of performance increase on FEAR! High settings with volumetric lights and soft shadows on I got from 50fps and now up to 80fps. 8O Im not joking. So, if havent' done so, update your driver and you might have some performance boost on your graphics.

 

[PX7800GT]

Hey Chuckshissle , Thank You But I Allready Have The 84.21 Driver And Yes With 81.98 I Got A Maximum Of 99 Frame in F.E.A.R. But Now 151 Frame 8O
WOW ... Its Awesome , Isnt It ?

 

[Heyyou27]

I found that the beta 84.20 drivers perform better than the new ones.

 

[chuckshissle]

I have tested both the 84.20 and 84.21 but only on FEAR and I didn't really notice any difference. But I agree what you said that newest driver sometimes not the best on the card. It works on mine and so far I have no problem with the latest driver.

 

[Mobius]

FYI: The reason that Supersampling AA makes such a huge hit on your framerate is because of the "super" part of the sampling. The video card renders the scene in a resolution far higher than your screen is set for. Once the frame is rendered, it is resized down to your screen res.

The problem I have with this approach is that it is like cracking a peanut with a 20lb sledge hammer: totally ridiculous! You're rendering a frame at some ridiculous size (and therefore downsampling EVERY pixel in the frame, which is just silly, coz it makes things blurry) just to smooth out 0.01% of the edges???

WTF! That's insane.

Matrox had the right idea: use software Z-occlusion to discover where the edges are, and just antialias those pixels. True, their approach sucks donkey testicles, but at least it was the right idea.

 

[PX7800GT]

Wow Mobius , I Dont Really Understanding Your Last Post ... My Brother Have A Matrox Parhelia 512 , Wich Has The Same AntiAliasing Mode But ... Never Mind Forget Matrox ...
So You Mean To Tell Me That SuperSampleing AA Is A Waste Of Frame Rate ?? :?

 

[PX7800GT]

Hey I Have ONE VERY BIG QUESTION , What is The Different Between Intellisample Modes ?? I Capture 2 Picture , One With High Performance Mode And Another With High Quality Mode ... I Cant Find ANY Difference In These 2 Pictures ( They Capture in NFS Most Wanted ) But The Problem Is They Have A Huge Frame Rate Difference ( High Quality = 53 Frame , High Performance = 75 Frame ) ... So Whats The Difference ?? I Rather Play In High Performance Mode And Get 20 More Extra Frame Rate ! Any Idea What The HELL Is Going On ?

 

[mitch074]

NFS: Most Wanted isn't exactly a game that use advanced rendering techniques. If you want to see differences, try screencaps in FEAR: in High Performance vs. High Quality, you should notice:
- textures: on the ground, the bump mapping would smooth out must closer to you, and you may even notice some hard stepping.
- texture (2nd): very detailed ones should scale down much less elegantly (look close, then step back)
- AA: the edges would be a bit jaggier with High Performance
- decals: some depht effects would be a bit less impressive in High performance
- shaders: the water may be less precise, and soft shadows look like bilinear resized pixellated textures.

I would agree though, that for those games, the difference of graphic quality between the two modes is slight for a huge performance impact. However, on some rendered scenes, High Quality would provide a much more enchanting result.

 

[PX7800GT]

OK , I Tested F.E.A.R. With Both Quality , There Is A Little Difference In Images ... But Frame Rates ... :
High Quality : Min 33, Ave 57 , Max 141 , 25% Between 25&45 ,75% Above 45
High PerFormance : Min 35 , Ave 65 , Max 153 , 13% Between 25&45 , 87% Above 45 ...
So I Dont Think A Little Extra Graphic Worth These Frame Rate , I Rather Play in High Performance Mode :twisted: ... What Is Your Oponion ?
Performance,Performance ... More Performance Is Better ! :twisted:

 

[mitch074]

I agree with you: for gaming, High Performance is the setting of choice, no question.

However, in some cases, the increased precision of High Quality setting is a must: rendering a complex 3D static scene, for example...

There could also be a game relying heavily on one of the Performance degraded feature, and looking awful in High Performance - thus requiring High Quality.

Example: I recently wanted to play Final Fantasy 7 on PC. After installing, patching, re-patching, stabilizing and starting the game (made for Win9x, DX5 and running on WinXP DX9 ), I noticed that forced antialiasing in High Performance would make caption borders jagged and awful - switching to High Quality made the game MUCH more enjoyable.

This is, of cource, an extreme example. However, in such case, a game relying on bilinear or trilinear rendering may look better in High Quality, Bilinear rendering than in High Performance, Trilinear, and render just as fast.

 

[PX7800GT]

Yeah , Agree ... I Also Disabled The SuperSampleing AA & Gamma Correction AA Because Disableing These Give Me 10 More Frame Rate in Most Wanted and About 10 More Frame Rate in F.E.A.R. ...
I Say Better FrameRate = Better Gaming Experience :twisted:

 

[PX7800GT]

OK , OK , One More Thing :
With HighQuality Mode + SuperSample AA , Games Look SO GREATE ... ( I Mean So Great )
In The Other Hand The Frame Rate Dropped , (16 Frame Difference In My Tests )
I Always Use HighPerformance Mode But Today I Found That in NFS Most Wanted When Use High Performance Mode , The Road Looks awefull ... First I Thought That It Might Be The Game , But When I Changed To High Quality Mode ... WOW , Road Looks Like Natural Raods ... I Also Tested Whit SSAA , and The Roads Looks Even More Natural ... But The Frame Rate Went Too Low !!
Can Anyone Help Me , How I Should Play ?

 

[mitch074]

try intermediary settings - Quality (instead of High Quality) should raise frame rate back 5-6 fps, and Performance (instead of High Performance) should increase quality greatly for the price of 3-5 fps. Take your pick.

As for AA, try lower settings - AA 2x+ doesn't take that much of a performance hit and raises quality a lot.

 

[PX7800GT]

Yeah ... Thanks , & What About SuperSampleing AA ??

 

[mitch074]

Depends - they don't define it the same way at Ati or Nvidia. Look it up on their technical files. As far as I know, supersampling means rendering the same scene than for normal 2x AA (twice the size) but doing weighted filtering instead of simple bilinear resize - can help in some cases, leave jaggyness behind in some others.

 

[jajig]

I don't understand how anyone can use AA you get the same effect by wearing someone else's prescription glasses without the performance penalty

Gamma correction well explains itself. It makes the colors more accurate and true thus reducing the jagged edges or making it less visible.

So all these two features are mainly for reducing the unwanted jagged edgies on 3D gaming and improving visual quality.

Since when has gamma had anything to do with jagged edges? It adjusts the overall brightness of an image making the colours more accurate and true like you said but I don't see how that smooths out the edges.

 

[mitch074]

Since when has gamma had anything to do with jagged edges? It adjusts the overall brightness of an image making the colours more accurate and true like you said but I don't see how that smooths out the edges.

Since the day some people made a difference between overall image gamma level (the one you adjust for the whole screen) and pixel-level gamma level (the one defined in sRGB-8888 : 8-bit gamma, 8-bit red, 8-bit green, 8-bit blue). That setting can also be used to define a pixel's transparency, this way not only do edge pixels blend with their closest counterparts to diffuse jaggyness, it can also blend with its background - giving an even better antialiasing. It can also be a much more efficient way to antialiase, since you only need to compute all pixels' gamma value to say if it's transparent or not, and obtain more or less the same level of antialiasing with a third of the calculations (since computing gamma levels require only 8-bit processing, while color levels require 24-bit processing).

I'm not too sure about that, but I think I can remember an article on the matter a while back.

 

[PX7800GT]

OK , One Last Thing : I Cant PLAY F.E.A.R. in High Performance Mode Because The Graphic Of The Wall Is Horrible ... But in High Quality Mode + SuperSampling AA The Frame Go Low That I Should Change The AA From 4x To 2x ...
I Cant Really Decided Wich Type To Play ... In The Other Hand High Quality Mode ( W or W/O SuperSampling AA ) Makes The Frame Rate OF The NFS MostWanted Too Low That I Should Change The Resolution To 800x600 !
Its Very Hard To Decide Wich Type To Play ; More Graphic Or More FrameRate ... ??
NOW The Question Is HOW DO YOU USE YOUR INTELLISAMPLE SETTINGS ?
High Quality ? High Performance ? Do You Use SuperSampling AA ? Or You Use MultiSampling AA ? Or Non ? ... Tell Me ! I Like To Hear ... ATI Boys Are Welcome Too :twisted:

 

[BaronMatrix]

OK , Hi My Masters ! I Have A Question , I Use Riva Tuner 2 RC 15.8 To OC My Lovely Graphic Card ... I Go To "DirectDraw & Direct3D Setting" And In The AntiAliasing Menu I Found 2 Interesting Setting :
1- Transparency AntiAliasing
2- Enable Gamma Correction
I Enable The Transparency AntiAliasing To SuperSampling Mode and Also Enable The Gamma Correction To Find Out What are They ... Then I Go To Need For Speed Most Wanted ( 1024x768,4xAA,Max Except Car Reflection)
I Found Out That My Frame Rate Droped From 60~70 To 35~50 ... But I Dont See Any Different In Graphic ... So Any One Has Any Idea What Are These Two Options ?? I Will Be ThankFul As Always For Your Help :twisted:

Transparency AA is what is used for fences, leaves, and branches. It smooths the edges on objects with small dimensions (width and thickness).

 

[PX7800GT]

OK , I Finally Decided How To Play :
High Quality Mode , Gamma Correction On , Transparency AA is Set To MultiSampling Mode !
Now The Quality Is Out Standing , & I Play F.E.A.R. With Same Graphic As Before ( 1024x768+4xAA+16xAF ) But In NFS Most Wanted I Reduce The AA From 4x To 2x :twisted:
Thank You Boys For Your Helps

 

[mitch074]

To be more precise: in the case of fences and tree leaves, the antialiasing is also done on textures that include 'transparent' areas - a fence is usually made of a single polygon, with a see-through texture. If you do 'dumb' filtering, then you will have the inside of the fence looking to be made of semi-transparent metal; in that case, AA is used to make a straight line.