The Future of Anti-Aliasing Settings in Question: NVIDIA Discussion
by Derek Wilson on March 15, 2007 8:23 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Performance and compatibility are always at the top of the list of topics addressed in each new graphics driver release, and our articles usually focus on performance. Over the past couple years we've seen user interface change quite a bit as well. Drivers have been growing in size and complexity a while now, and sometimes it is worthwhile to stop and take a look at where things are headed.
We haven't been hugely impressed with the UI direction either AMD or NVIDIA have taken. We've had quite a few conversations at AnandTech lamenting the loss of the simple driver interface embedded in the advanced display properties panel. It is desirable to enable novice users or the less technically inclined to understand and benefit from driver settings, but decisions on how best to enhance the graphics driver experience can't be taken lightly. It is in this spirit that NVIDIA contacted us about some options it is considering for the future direction of its driver.
For the past few years, the driver setting that has had the single heaviest impact on performance has been antialiasing. In the beginning, applications didn't include AA settings in games, but users were still able to benefit from the feature by enabling the option through the driver control panel. More recently, games have enabled users to set their desired level of antialiasing with in-game graphics settings. But sometimes a game will include a feature that won't allow traditional MSAA (multi-sample antialiasing) to work properly. We saw this very early in Halo, one of the first DX9 games. Later, titles that made use of floating point surfaces (often useful in HDR rendering) also excluded the option for MSAA. Today, while both NVIDIA and AMD have hardware out that can support MSAA on floating point surfaces, some developers are taking entirely different approaches to rendering which get in the way of the very concept of MSAA.
The questions we are going to ask are: how do/should we set AA, how should game developers handle AA, and how should graphics hardware makers address AA in their drivers? Before we get there, let's take a deeper look at some of the complexity associated with AA, in particular with NVIDIA hardware.
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fyord - Sunday, March 18, 2007 - link
The issue has a larger perspective than what anandtech and nvidia has stated. Having game developers, gpu developers, and other parties second guessing each other is a recipe for disaster. They simply need to have a standard, just like we have the 802.11 standards for wireless. To me, it seems that you would want the control to be in the operating system since the scenario is application dependent. I expect more software providers will begin to use the gpu capabilities, after all that is what the Aero interface that Microsoft created with Vista is all about. I can easily see other applications beyond video games such as Google Earth, Apple Itunes, Adobe Premier, gps navigation software, etc. taking advantage of it. Video is the next killer application and interactivity is what will help drive it. It will enable new gaming features. How about a first person shooter where you put down a sensor to monitor a given area of the map and it shows up as a picture in-picture display just like on tv? Video has been shaping what companies do. For example, just look at what Apple is doing with the iPod and the fact that Nokia is releasing a cell phone that also is a mini camcorder. It why the media companies place a high value on things like YouTube in the stock market. The pc in many ways is the centralized server for the consumer as well as a video/gaming system, a typewriter, and a web browser. Companies talk about digital convergence, but they have not fully achieved it because they have not collaborated on software and firmware interactivity standards because they were simply not aware of it. However, as a designer and a consumer, I applaud companies such as Nvidia and AMD that are coming to realize this potential and actively look for a solution.Trisped - Monday, March 19, 2007 - link
My thoughts exactly. Get one system where information can be pulled from the drivers as to what options are available and pass it to the game's user interface.Jodiuh - Friday, March 16, 2007 - link
If "enhance the application" should be used w/ HL2, why doesn't super sampling work unless "override the application" is selected? Or GTR2's 5 levels of AA when using an 8800GTX which has 6? Things like this force us all to either experiment, ie waste more time, or give up entirely.Placing the burden on Devs seems like a great way to push them over to the consoles. IMO, driver options should be able to tell whether override, enhance, or app pref need to be applied. All the user should have to do is pick a level, save it to a profile, and forget about it. Unfortunately it doesn't end w/ AA alone, we have:
Anisotropic Filtering
Texture and AS Quality
Transparency Super/Multi sampling
Gamma AA
LOD Bias
Vsync
to worry about. It can become truly frustrating at times. Then combine all that w/ the piss poor overly sized, scrolling, scattered NV/ATI control panels for more good times. Why is it so tough to have all the settings viewable in one page (for 3d)? No scrolling, no moving cars or NV cubes, just a description of what it can do w/ benefits and possible disadvantages.
And yes, it sure would be nice to have the option of changing the settings while in game w/ a nice transparent GUI overlay that's SMALL and on the BOTTOM of the screen...kind of like a good TV menu.
bojaka - Saturday, March 17, 2007 - link
Surfing via my cell I haven't read all posts. Sorry if I'm re-posting... WWW.NHANCER.COM that's all you GeForce-guys need!Fant - Friday, March 16, 2007 - link
I think there should just be a graphics settings API that the games develop that hooks into the control panel AA. So whenever you go to an in-game graphics settings, up pops the control panel AA that everyone is used to seeing. The game doesnt need to know anything and everything is maintained in one place. As graphics drivers develop new features, it would be shown in game because the game would just be overlaying the actual control panel graphics settings. Whenever a game does this, it can register with the graphics driver so that a "profile" is automatically created for that game and the settings are remembered. The graphics driver would be remembering the settings for the profile, not the game. But I do agree that all the major settings need to be consolidated into 1 user panel that it easy to control.Gstanfor - Friday, March 16, 2007 - link
I would like to see an option where the user can force supersampling AA in games such as STALKER, GOTHIC3, GRAW etc that disallow other AA methods if the user has SLI or crossfire. The forced AA would be totally transparent to the game and SLI would provide the required rendering grunt.I cannot stand scenes/games that are not AA'd, completely ruins the experience. If I wanted junk like that I'd purchase a console...
KashGarinn - Friday, March 16, 2007 - link
For some reason, I've always wondered why AA wasn't just implemented as a shader in games..All it's really doing is giving you a more natural blend between contrasting colours, as when you blow up a picture and then shrink it down to it's right resolution, you're not placing the items in the picture more accurately, you're just blending the boundaries between contrasting colourshapes into a more natural blend.
I don't have the skills myself, so I'm don't know if it's at all possible to let a shader get more detail of a boundary area, or just HDR the edges of things with high contrast (the pixel problem is always a problem between 3d items), but if you can do HDR for extreme light, why not with "normal" light?
K.
MadAd - Friday, March 16, 2007 - link
Profiles/aaI think the problem with profiles are that they are presented in one humongous list when few people would own more than 10% of them. More likely 3 to 10 installed games would represent most gamers (just a guess)
so why not make profiles based on a drive search and put each game on a tab with an active panel, hide away the big list but still allow a manual addition and while giving the full selection on each tab, grey out the higher functions such as unsupported features (or the underlying AA settings declared in this article) but allow forcing, ungreying all options by clicking a NO disclaimer/warning box rather than an OK box for access to the higher options on each tab.
Coolbits
No matter how many years I have worked on and around pcs I still dont like messing with the registry, not unless I have to, and coolbits I found worrying because of the lack of a single official point of info, its almost undergound and who knows if the version we happen to find on site X is a) the latest b) compatible with my version of NV control panel c) will conflict with any other version if I find a version I think is newer.
miahallen - Thursday, March 15, 2007 - link
To reminisce:I love technology, and I read online reviews and editorials religiously (I have read Tom's Hardware Guide since it started back in 1996, I was 16 at the time). I am always interested in the new thing, and I especially find the gaming hardware fascinating. But playing games has always left me wanting.
I've always wanted to be able to play the latest titles, at the highest possible graphical settings. Back in 1998 I built my first computer (for college ;) yah right), it used a Matrox 2D video card with 4MB of RAM (upgradable to 8MB), plus two Voodoo II 12MB 3D accelerator cards in SLI, plus an mpeg2 decoder card. So I had two VGA pass through cables hanging out of the back of my machine, it was crazy! But it was the envy of all my friends at the LAN parties, and ran games like Quake II and Unreal at 1024x768 with amazing frame rates.
In 2002 I purchased the very first DX9 graphics card on the market, the Radeon 9700PRO with 128MB of RAM and 8 pixel pipelines. It was incredible, I could play Far Cry at 1600x1200 with decent frame rates, and even some AA and AF.
Two months ago, I once again took the plunge with the very first DX10 graphics card on the market, the 8800GTX with 768MB of RAM and 128 stream processors, this thing is just amazing by todays standards, and I play Oblivion at 2048x1536 with all the eye candy, and AA + AF + HDR...incredible!
Gaming with the 8800GTX (or all past graphics cards) is incredible - until it crashes...this has always been the problem for me, I push, and push, and push, until I find the limit. This article has really opened my eyes to part of my problem. I thought AA was implemented in the hardware only, and somehow was blind to the fact that a game has to support it. Especially when HDR showed up, and wouldn't work with AA on nVidia HW. This confirmed my thoughts that this was only a hardware issue. But when Rainbow Six Vegas showed up, and the editors were all saying it didn't support AA, I was thinking, "Duh! Just force it through the control panel." That's what I would've done, and when it didn't work, or the game crashed, I'd spend hours trying to figure out why, but eventually get frustrated, and move on to another game. Thanks Anandtech for educating me!
I'm very glad that nVidia is actively trying to rectify this situation, and I hope they can help. But, after reading this, I would put 100% of the burden on the game developers, they need to get their collective heads' out of their collective a$$es and properly implement AA (and AF and HDR) within the games. Of course many of them are doing quite well, and I hope they only continue to improve.
Going forward, I think I will be much more inclined to use in game settings, and only go into the control panel as a last resort. My advice to nVidia would be to hide the settings within the control panel, so they are only available through a hot key combo (shift F10 or something), so that the average user doesn't see or care. But the enthusiast, who knows what to do with these settings will be able to access them. And, I do like profiles, so please don't ditch them. Thanks nVidia!
brian26 - Thursday, March 15, 2007 - link
I use the driver panel mostly, mainly because often the ingame option doesnt even do anything. Its like that turbo button on the old 386's. heh