What is Anti-Aliasing?

[cyan]

I know this is a really stupid question to a lot of you, but what is Anti-Aliasing and what does it do?
I know it has different... modes I guess you could call them, 4X To like 16X, But what does it do?
(And another one, Anasatropic (not sure on spelling) filtering.)

[cyan]

I had no clue where to put it... so I just post it in off topic. Any mods, if this is in the wrong place just move it and shoot me a message where you moved it.

[Absolute Zero]

I believe it has to do with the outline of the character models, the weapons, and the enviornment (this is if it's a FPS) the less AA you have, the more pixels you will visably see (Biliniar and Trilinear are the lowest, 2x-6x is medium, and pretty much anything above that, like 8x or 16x, you're gonna need a lot of CPU and GPU power)

I mostly have my games at a 4x AA level, though some are at 2x.
FXAA uses GPU power
MSAA uses CPU power

I'm unsure of what Aniscopic Filtering does, though it might have to do with the background of the world.

[Highway]

basically takes away all the horrible jaggy outlines on the graphics in games using a smoothing blend filter at a cost of performance drop. The size of youre screen and it's native resolution also come into play to decide if you really need it but typically this is no longer needed on a hi-rez display from WQHD 16:9 2560x1440 pixels or WQXGA 16:10 2560x1600 pixels due to the pixel size being so small. For example a 1080p 22" monitor may be borderline to not require much AA filtering (2x or 4x) to be smooth compared to a 30" HDTV at 1080p (4x-8x), because the physical pixels are smaller on the smaller screen and bigger on the bigger screen where both have the same pixel resolution.

If you look at say a modern console like the Xb360 and PS3 they have terrible amount of jaggy lines as they dont use Anti-Aliasing nearly as much due to it requiring much faster graphic cards, plus in previous generation less people had LCD TVs, the old CRT Tvs have a natural smudged filter on them due to the fine gause on the screen itelf which acts like AntiAliasing with no performance loss.

Anisotropic filtering is to do with detail of texures, basically you get much higher quality details, and these days having 16x Anistropic Filtering on games has virtually no performance hit.

www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/X800XTdhreview/ATIHTMLPAGES/IQ.jpg

shows how this filter works.

[BOT nic]

it helps to smooth textures out in games.

[cyan]

İlk olarak Highway tarafından gönderildi:

basically takes away all the horrible jaggy outlines on the graphics in games using a smoothing blend filter at a cost of performance drop. The size of youre screen and it's native resolution also come into play to decide if you really need it but typically this is no longer needed on a hi-rez display from WQHD 16:9 2560x1440 pixels or WQXGA 16:10 2560x1600 pixels due to the pixel size being so small. For example a 1080p 22" monitor may be borderline to not require much AA filtering (2x or 4x) to be smooth compared to a 30" HDTV at 1080p (4x-8x), because the physical pixels are smaller on the smaller screen and bigger on the bigger screen where both have the same pixel resolution.

If you look at say a modern console like the Xb360 and PS3 they have terrible amount of jaggy lines as they dont use Anti-Aliasing due to it requiring much faster graphic cards, plus in previous generation less people had LCD TVs, the old CRT Tvs have a natural smudged filter on them due to the fine gause on the screen itelf which acts like AntiAliasing with no performance loss.

Anisotropic filtering is to do with detail of texures, basically you get much higher quality details, and these days having 16x Anistropic Filtering on games has virtually no performance hit.

Well, because we moved not so long ago, I do use the old CRT TV we had in storage for Xbox gaming, which has been my... entertainer... until it died. I think it overheated because the TV case, or something. Glad my mum had one, because my mum and dad use the same Xbox, one of the new S ones... I just wish I could have one.... :P

Btw thanks for all the replies, and this has only been up like 10 mins! After Christmas, I think I'm going to get a load of games off Steam, and do some videos of them, like a benchmark video, and some let's plays. Just about to post a discussion in what games to do first! I have already got my first 3: Minecraft, because its probably my favourite game, Team Fortress 2, and then maybe GTA IV. After that its all up to you guys!

[Highway]

Well AA and Anistropic filtering will have no effect on Minecraft's looks...lol

[Absolute Zero]

İlk olarak Highway tarafından gönderildi:

Well AA and Anistropic filtering will have no effect on Minecraft's looks...lol

AA's not even an option on Minecraft :P

[cyan]

İlk olarak Negative_N tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Highway tarafından gönderildi:

Well AA and Anistropic filtering will have no effect on Minecraft's looks...lol

AA's not even an option on Minecraft :P

Well, it kinda looks like Minecraft has AA on Max, because the lines are so... perfect. If you put your graphics settings, to change Minecraft settings to no anti aliasing, which my friend does to slightly increase fps, and all of a sudden it looks weird... the water doesn't look right, the plants you can see thin lines of the outline of a square around it, and on blocks it just looks weird from a distance...

[Cornflakes]

This page[www.tomshardware.com] explains anti-aliasing. 4x, 16x, 32x refer to the number of times a single anti-aliasing "pass" is applied. This page[www.shinvision.com] explains anisotropic filtering.

[jeffus]

Everone knows what Anti-Aliasing is apart from the guys that made "Dead Space"

[gggg336]

İlk olarak jeffus tarafından gönderildi:

Everone knows what Anti-Aliasing is apart from the guys that made "Dead Space"

And GTA IV; GTA SA has AA, why doesn't a 2009 game don't?

[PorcupineGod]

While Highway is correct in the application of what it does, AA is the process of displaying a pixellated curve as a smooth line.

When you make a circle in MS paint, it displays a series of straight lines loosely connected. When your computer renders a curve in a game, the same thing is happening. AA comes in and takes that _____-------_____ and smooths it out. to a clean crisp line.

the 2x, 4x, 8x options describe how many times the AA filter is applied and how close to a real curve you get.

See Highway's for anisotropic filtering.

[Litagano Motscoud]

Anti-aliasing smoothens out what otherwise would be jagged looking likes around the edge of something in a video game.