Cranes and anti-aliasing.
 

Just an observation, but has anyone else noticed that if you set anti-aliasing, the game's cranes are unaffected? At least that's what happens with my Radeon card.

Is there any way to fix this?

Download the Omega Drivers:

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

It also installs the Ati Tray Tools, the icon is in the toolbar. Right-click it, then Direct3D/Adaptive Antialiasing/Enable. Leave it at "Performance Mode"! Also enable normal AA, also under Direct3D.

Some games get a major performance hit when you use AAA, like Far Cry when there are a lot of trees.

AAA doesn´t replace AA, it´s an addition.

"Adaptive antialiasing

In modern games, many objects are not realized as 3D objects because this would unnecessarily increase the strain on the graphics card. An example of this is fences or leaves on trees and plants, since their complex structures would require too many polygons to depict accurately. Instead, game designers often take an alternate route and use a special texture (bitmap) to depict these complex structures. Certain areas within the textures are then declared transparent, ensuring a realistic appearance within the game.

Conventional FSAA methods break down when applied to these kinds of objects, since the edges aren't actual object edges but only appear within the larger texture (bitmap). The new adaptive FSAA automatically recognize this type of object, ensuring optimal anti-aliasing quality."

Halflife 2 without AAA:
http://www.de.tomshardware.com/graph...nohqaf-big.jpg

With AAA:
http://www.de.tomshardware.com/graph...aahqaf-big.jpg

You will probably not like the frame rate counter in the upper right corner. Disable it under Tools&Options/OSD.

Actually, I think it's because the cranes have jaggy partly-transparent textures painted on a solid mesh. It's not related to anti-aliasing at all. :hmm:

Adaptive anti-aliasing comes into play when there are partly-transparent textures on a solid mesh, normal AA doesn´t work there. I´ve quote the description of adaptive antialising in my original post.

Here are two crane screenshots.

4xAA, no adaptive anti-aliasing:
http://home.arcor.de/gizzmoe/files/Crane.jpg

4xAA plus adaptive anti-aliasing:
http://home.arcor.de/gizzmoe/files/Crane_AAA.jpg

This is much better. Thanks for the info and the link. Some of the crane textures are (apparently) supposed to have a jagged appearance, but in general the crane's issues are due to the lack of AAA. These new drivers solve the problem perfectly while leaving intact the parts that are supposed to be jagged. Plus there doesn't seem to be a framerate hit (or if there is it's minimal).