Topic: Descent with Anti-Aliasing on ATI cards

[Babylon]

Thanks to the wonderful tool Radeon Pro, those of you with Radeon graphics cards can force high-quality anti-aliasing in games.  While only so much can be done with D3's stubborn/aging Fusion Engine, adding AA definetly gives it a rather nice face-lift.  I imagine that this would also be true of D2X-XL (except I don't have D2 anymore ).  Along with AA, the program also uses a variety of texture handling enhancements (such as trilinear filtering and anisotropic filtering) which greatly helps the visual quality of textures at an angle/distance.  For people with Nvidia cards, I believe there is a program called nHancer (their site is currently down :\), which should do the same thing as the Radeon Pro program.

[karx-elf-erx]

You can turn on AA directly in D2X-XL via the d2x.ini config file, and I think you can also enforce it via the Catalyst Control Center.

What AA cannot do (as can be seen on your screenshot #2) is to make coarse low resolution images (like the gun sprites) look much better.

[Kaiaatzl]

My graphics card supports AA, but it's not powerful enough to actually use it in any games.  Interestingly the only one that was ever playable with it turned on was D2X-XL (even though it was just barely playable).
The framerate in TrackMania gets so low with it turned on that I can't steer  .  Though I do turn it on when I'm rendering a replay to a video.

[VANGUARD]

i don't see any difference except for lines in certain places that say "with", and in screen shot 1

[SaladBadger]

Antialiasing is mostly good at cleaning up polygon edges -- in some games they tend to appear very pixelatted (known as the "Jaggies"), but antialiasing makes the edges look much better. Look by the top of the cockpit windows in the second screenshot (the physical mount of them), you should see it.

However, anisotropic filtering sounds really nice also -- I've always hated the distinct mipmap levels these older games tend to have, but also despise the "Moire" effect which can result when mipmapping is turned off.

[Foil]

There's no need for the Radeon Pro or nHancer apps.

I've always used AA for Descent3.  Just go into the setup (ATI Catalyst Control Center or NVidia Control Panel) and set AA to "always on".

It really smooths things out.

[VANGUARD]

Okay. wasn't really zoomed in enough. Now I can see something different.

[Babylon]

I could never find an AA option in my Catalyst Control Center, even after I updated it ; so I guess that's why I was so excited about finding this.  I guess the other upside to using this is the versatility of the AA (there's a number of different tecniques you can pick from) and the anisotropic filtering.

[Matthew]

The problem with setting it to always on is that if you play more demanding games and you have a weaker computer, you might end up with FPS issues if you don't normally play with AA.

What happens if a game has an AA setting? Does it take preference? Or do the drivers say "Nah, we don't care what you think, you're just a lowly game."

[Babylon]

I don't know about the Catalyst drivers, but Radeon Profile lets you create separate settings (called a "profile") for each game.  When you set up a profile's options, you can default settings to whatever the game prefers.

Not as though Descent 3 should be demanding in any way.

[Scyphi]

Well, D3 used to be demanding at one time, but now...not so much.

[Kaiaatzl]

:Remembers when Descent 3 was a slide show instead of a game -- needless to say level 4 was impossible:

The most bizzare part was how I got the game though -- I ordered it out of a book order I got in 2000 when I was still in elementary school .  The game was rated Teen.  I was 10.

[Scyphi]

Whoa! Where was your school getting those book orders, and why couldn't MY school get the same orders?

...course, when I got a book order in school, it was always to get books for me. Never really ever ordered anything else from them but that.

[-<WillyP>-]

My kids started at age 4.  I don't see anything wrong with it, at least the single-player.  I wasn't too happy about a few of the audio taunts in multiplayer, though.  

[Foil]

Regarding AA for ATI cards in D3:

In CCC, go into 3D settings, uncheck "Use Application Settings", set your desired AA (8X is probably just fine for D3).  Then you can set a "Preset" which is specific to an application (point it to D3's "main.exe").

Done!

[It's a similar thing with the NVidia Control Panel.  Basically, you do the same; change the AA setting, save it as a preset specifically for the game's .exe]