Subsim's Silent Hunter 4 review

[nhall70]

Originally Posted by Spray

I'd go in the counter most games do support AA at least most games released in the past 2-3 years. Even the Sims 2 has AA come on people the SIMS 2!!! However it doesn't bother me ive lived with SH3 gfx SH4 will be an improvement hopefully one that i'll like.

Yes, virtually all current games support AA...it's a common, basic, fundamental thing these days. Ubisoft is just about the only game publisher on earth that doesn't understand this.

Hell, even SH3 supported AA, but not SH4. If that's not a step backwards, I don't know what is!

[hyperion2206]

May I ask you AA fetishists one question?! Why do you guys have to turn every single thread regardless of its original topic into a debate if SH4 supports AA? That really sucks!

[Immacolata]

8000m visibility? I want to know. Do we still have myopic skippers that cant look further than down their own nosetip?

[RocketDog]

Originally Posted by hyperion2206

May I ask you AA fetishists one question?! Why do you guys have to turn every single thread regardless of its original topic into a debate if SH4 supports AA? That really sucks!

Because it's a fundamental requirement for visual fidelity in a modern simulation. If it supports FSAA, I will buy it. If it doesn't, I may save my money. What I don't want to do is buy it and find I can't force FSAA.

For info, I have the following sims on my PC at home:

IL-2 in all its incarnations
SH3
Lock On and Lock On Flaming Cliffs
FS2004 and various Wings of Power add-ons
Condor
BOB WOVII

All of these support FSAA and are better for it. I have no idea why the SH4 devs decided to cripple their game on release.

RD.

[Gizzmoe]

Originally Posted by RocketDog

Because it's a fundamental requirement for visual fidelity in a modern simulation.

But this thread is not about anti-aliasing, it´s about the upcoming review of SH4, yet there are several posts of people complaining about the lack of AA!

[hyperion2206]

Originally Posted by Gizzmoe

But this thread is not about anti-aliasing, it´s about the upcoming review of SH4, yet there are several posts of people complaining about the lack of AA!

Thank you Gizzmoe, that's exactly what I'm meaning! I don't mind if people discuss AA or FSAA in a special thread but I hate it when they start spamming every single thread.
That's enought OT ranting for now.

[RocketDog]

The reason it's coming up here is because some people (well, me at least) would like a final, definitive answer as to whether FSAA really is forced off all the time or whether it can be forced through the driver. I hope this will be settled once and for all by the subsim review. For me, this may well determine whether I go into town on Friday lunchtime and buy it or not. I don't care how good the game play is if every single wire, rope and sharp edge in every single frame shimmers and kills the immersion. Obviously, other people are less fussed.

Cheers,

RD.

[Schultzy]

Thanks for the update Neal. Looking forward to seeing what you think of her.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by RocketDog

The reason it's coming up here is because some people (well, me at least) would like a final, definitive answer as to whether FSAA really is forced off all the time or whether it can be forced through the driver. I hope this will be settled once and for all by the subsim review. For me, this may well determine whether I go into town on Friday lunchtime and buy it or not. I don't care how good the game play is if every single wire, rope and sharp edge in every single frame shimmers and kills the immersion. Obviously, other people are less fussed.

Cheers,

RD.

Its pretty clear that you can't turn on FSAA from numerous posts about it now. Now get over it. Move along.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Gizzmoe

But this thread is not about anti-aliasing, it´s about the upcoming review of SH4, yet there are several posts of people complaining about the lack of AA!

Agreed! I'm not a hardcore OT cop but we have too many people adding AA posts to every thread. Put them here, so we can retain a margin of sanity

[XanderF]

Originally Posted by Capt.LoneRanger

AA is not depending on the game, it is depending on the GFX-card. If the game uses Post-Effects, pre 8xxx nVidias are not capable of doing rendering these effects and AA at the same time.

The only software/gameside-thing to change this, is to disable the post-effects, which would lower the overall graphical experience. Your choice, but it cannot be "forced" in a game, nor is it "supported" by a game. There are merely games, where you can set FSAA or AF from ingame, to make that option more easily accessable.

That's...kinda true...sorta. But misleading. And also untrue.

It's not HDR that's the problem (and there are several flavors of that, too), or the video card generation. Some things are possible, and some are just...well, not.

HDR is 'high dynamic range' - in increases the 'bit depth' of displayed colors. There are a few variants of that - the "Half-Life 2" games (Episode 1 and later) use integer-based HDR. This isn't "true" HDR, but it has the advantage of being able to be run by just about any video card.

'Oblivion' is an example of a game that uses 'true' floating-point HDR. This is a LOT more complicated - involves rendering to a floating-point render target - and requires specialized hardware to anti-alias properly. ATI's X1K-series cards can anti-alias FP16 HDR just fine, as can nVidia's 8-series.

The (apparent) problem with Sh4, and the problem with 'the other Ubi titles' (Ghost Recon 2, Rainbow Six Vegas, etc), is that they not only use FP16 HDR, but then perform post-processing shader effects on the scene after final rendering. This is the stage that FSAA *should* be taking place in, but it can't, because shader routines are run against the image to generate final output that completely bypass the multisample blending needed for AA to work.

(As to ATI's "other" AA modes - 'temporal' is somewhat interesting. ATI's cards have a programmable FSAA sample collector to generate the final output - vs nVidia's cards with a fixed sample pattern. Due to the programmable nature of this, ATI can switch sample patterns back and forth between frames. IE., if you are playing at 60 frames per second, and have 4x AA with Temporal AA enabled, the video card will take 30 frames at one sample pattern and 30 frames at a different sample pattern...alternating them back and forth. The result - to the human eye - APPEARS to be an 8x sample pattern. Adaptive AA is much more complicated to explain - it basically allows anti-aliasing of 'transparent' alpha textures...like the links in chain-link fences in most shooters, for example.)

If you are not familiar with AA, here are a few links with pics of the differences:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...light=aliasing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FSAA.jpg

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q4...0/index.x?pg=8

So, basically, the 'plus' of the GeForce 8-series and Radeon X1K-series (and later) is that they can anti-alias floating point render targets. No other cards can do that.

Unfortunately, for Sh4 (and other titles), even THAT isn't enough - they continue to do more post-processing that still breaks AA.

Sad thing? Those same effects are done on the XBox360 and PS3 on a regular basis - and certainly CAN be done on the PC, but aren't. Why? Well, the XBox360 and PS3 REQUIRE game devs to provide FSAA in all titles. The PC 'platform' doesn't. So, what are the devs to do? Well, clearly, get lazy and aim for the lowest common denominator.

THAT is what pisses me off the most. Same thing that irks me with Rainbow 6 and Ghost Recon 2. They are ALL FSAA'd on the consoles, but NONE on the PC. For no technical reason at all, it's just because the consoles REQUIRE it and the PCs don't, and the devs are interested in delivering as little as possible to get paid. It's just sad!

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Agreed! I'm not a hardcore OT cop but we have too many people adding AA posts to every thread. Put them here, so we can retain a margin of sanity

To be fair, I understand why you'd want that, but you really SHOULD sticky a 'locked' thread with a full, LEGIT explanation.

Merging all those threads together just provides a BUCKET of misinformation - there were posters going on for dozens of posts of how AA would 'just work' and that the people having problems 'just didn't know how to do it'. And, of course, reams of posts about how FSAA 'didn't really matter' (oh, yeah? Then why do ALL THREE of the major consoles out today REQUIRE IT with EVERY TITLE? "Not a big deal" my ass!). And people posting videos (resized to a much lower res) claiming that "FSAA looks like it is working just fine", etc.

The signal-to-noise ratio in that thread has gone WAY off the deep end, and the useful (and true) information is largely lost.

[McBeck]

Lest get BACK on topic please.

[toby66]

Yeah, back on topic. I'm eagerly waiting for the review.

Toby
(just surfaced from a long time reading-only dive )

[Payoff]

[Barkhorn1x]

Originally Posted by toby66

Yeah, back on topic. I'm eagerly waiting for the review.

Toby
(just surfaced from a long time reading-only dive )

Word!

(Oh cool, I'm "Stinking drunk in Trinidad"!)