What are Anti-aliasin (AA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF)?
 

I see Anti-aliasin (AA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF) bandied about and I have no clue what these esoteric terms mean, much less how they might affect SH3. Can someone please give a quick primer.

If it helps I recently purchased a Radeon X800 XL card and the AA/AF settings are defaulted to Application Preference. Is that an OK setting or is there some tweeking that can be done for better FX?

FYI,
Dell E510 XP(SP2)
P4 at 3.4GHz. HT
4GB RAM
Radeon X800 XL w/ 6.14 driver

Thanx in advance

P.S. I checked the Wiki and didn't see anything for AA/AF.

You need to check the "custom" button on your 3D screen and you will then have access to the AA and AF slider bars, as well as some other custom settings at the bottom of that page. SH3 uses D3D, but you also need to set your Open GL setting for other games too after you configure your D3D settings.

AA is what eliminates the "jags" when you look at a diaginal line. The higher the AA setting, the smother the diagional line, but the heavier the load on the graphics card.

AF is what allows your to see things clearer the further they are away from you. An example are the "lines" in a sidewalk. The higher the AF, the clearer the lines will be as they get further away from you. Again the higher the AF, the heavier the load on your graphics card.

I have a ATI X800XT PE card and my settings are 1280x1024x32, 4AA & 4AF. This gives me a fantastic quality picture and I only drop below 24 FPS (the "magic" visual number) using the 16km visibility and Harbor Traffic 1.47 mods while looking back at the subpens (both of these mods are a heavy load on the graphics card), otherwise I am between 35 and 50 FPS on the open ocean.

You need to try differrent settings to see what you like best and are willing to live with in each game.

waste gate, a google would of giveb you the answer.

What custom button screen? ive never seen a custom button in the 3d menu. :hmm:

Oh your talking about the custom 3d graphics menu of the card, not SH3?

Thank you so much Panama Red. I'll give your 4X settings a go and then make adjustments as I see appropriate.

kiwi_2005, I did google before I asked, but to my non-computer head a simple english translation works a bit better.

Thanx to both of you for your replies.

waste gate

Spam- double- poster :-j

good reference on the subject here
http://www.tweaktown.com/guides/601/...ide/index.html

what does shift+page up do does it increase AA or the brightness and are there any other key combos to increase pic quality

lol i got a 7800 gt want to take full adavantage of my n70 gpu

I dont know about ****+up, I just use my Nvidia menu in taskbar, and increase the settings.

my settings (Athlon 64 3000+, 1Gig RAM, 6600 256MB)

AA4x
AF8X

HOLY COW! I just adjusted the AA/AF all the way to the max on my notebook and I cannot believe the difference.

Many, many thanks fellas, its like a whole new game. Even with the quality over performance boxes checked the FPS never went below
39 FPS and maintained 69 FPS the vast majority of the time.

I haven't tried the desktop yet but I'm looking forward to it with great anticipation.

Thanx again,
waste gate

Damn boy your machine is a monster. Mine has a 2.4 Ghz CPU and 512 of RAM with a Radeon 9800 Pro and I have to wait like 5 minutes for SH3 to load. I once tried the mod to make SH3 1280/1024 and I was running at fewer than 5 FPS. Bastard! I want your computer!