Smart AA?

[P5ycho]

I was thinking, and 16x FSAA is nearly impossible without a very noticable performance hit. what if Matrox actually created an antialiasing system that aliases the edges only? This would cause little performance hit and detail wouldn't suffer either...

[fav]

p5ycho, don't worry, be happy.

Few topics ago I have put a provocative message about espionage. Later somebody with horryfying name 'Ant' told a horrible message about a clinic and crazy ones who chase for their tails with 'matrox' imprinted on walls. I got a hint, so I draw quickly such an avatar (anybody needs larger version?) and promote Perhelia further.

Seriously - I have a strange silence from major 3d hardware review sites (include russians ones, like ixbt.com) about forthcoming matrox product. It may be only because they have the card on their sticky hands and a plaster on a mouth (remember the clinic walls with bluish letters on it?).

Let's wait till official announcement and then we'll sneak out those who hide the card for maybe weeks and written notes greedily about the Card on serviettes.

[IcedEarth]

I've always wondered why they did FSAA instead of just AA-ing the edges. I mean... the card does have the edges in memory since the it's edges that create a wireframe for the scene on screen, or am I totally wrong here? Or is it somehow harder to just AA-ing the edges rather than AA-ing the entire screen?

[Nappe1]

Making Edge AA as efficient as FSAA is hard.

But what we are waiting for is something that combines both good sides.

[Dr Mordrid]

hehehehehe

If you only knew......

Dr. Mordrid

[P5ycho]

We hate you too Dr Mordrid

[Indiana]

Well done (eg. 16x) edge antialiasing combined with trilinear filtering and 64tap anisotropic should do the trick. And if you had a good algorithm to really only smooth the edges, this should not give major speed-drops...

[IcedEarth]

Originally posted by Indiana
Well done (eg. 16x) edge antialiasing combined with trilinear filtering and 64tap anisotropic should do the trick. And if you had a good algorithm to really only smooth the edges, this should not give major speed-drops...

Haig said something about AA on the matrox forums. He also said they're just announcing the chip, not a card yet

[TdB]

how much video-ram would 8xfsaa in 1024*768*32 + triplebuffer and 32bit z-buffer require?

i don´t know if you can calculate it like this, but i will try:
8*1024*768*4*4 + 3*1024*768*4 = 11010042 bytes
----z-buffer----- + --triplebuffer--


asuming the triplebuffer contains the downsampled output.

thats about 110 Mb and thats without textures or geometry.

seems high to me, or did i calculate it the wrong way?

maybe 8xfsaa in hires, is for the 256mb version only...

if these numbers are correct, then we can rule out 16xfsaa completely.

Btw why do people talk about 8xfsaa, wouldn´t 9xfsaa make more sense? 9xfsaa@1024*768 = (3*1024) * (3*768) = 3072*2304.

[Ant]

Oh if only! Oh hang they will

Originally posted by Dr Mordrid
hehehehehe

If you only knew......

Dr. Mordrid

[Dr Mordrid]

Yeah....

They should put on some safety goggles before reading the Parhelia specs. That way they won't have to pick their eyes up off the floor

Dr. Mordrid

[Ant]

The edges will be so sharp they'll be likely to cut their eyes just looking at it

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Ant
The edges will be so sharp they'll be likely to cut their eyes just looking at it

Sounds like the kind of AA I'm looking for

[Ant]

<h2><b><i>Parhelia - bleeding from the eyes...</i></b></h2>

[P5ycho]

as seen in the ixbt article, it will be Fragment AA...