WHAT IN THE HELLL!!!!!

[214thCavalier]

Wobble i suggest you look up on exactly what and how FSAA in effect does, cos it does try to blur away the normal jaggies you see on straight lines etc.
And i know what he means by blurring at 1600 res the text in the instruments is clearer and easier to read than at any other res using FSAA.
Looking out the cockpit then yea FSAA looks slightly better than 1600 res but i personally prefer to run at 70fps at 1600 without FSAA.
But its a very personal thing and i know others prefer the FSAA but hell who has time to notice it in a furball  

[TheWobble]

it blur's the jaggies but nothing else, it doesent make textures or anythig else less sharp.

[Lephturn]

Wobble, I think they mean the instruments, and I see the point there.

However, I don't think many of us have a monitor that can support 1600x1200 at 60 Hz, I know mine won't.  1024x768 is the best I can do, so for me 1024x768 32 bit and 2xFSAA is the way to go.  If I had the power to run it fast enough, 4x FSAA would be amazing.

One note... it's always nVidia powered folks that make the resolution vs. quality decision on the resolution side.  That is, IMHO, due to pretty low image quality in general on the GeForce cards, and really 1/2 assed FSAA implementation.  Basically, if the GeForce had a decent FSAA algorithm I think it would be used more.  I've run both of these cards in AH on two computers otherwise identical side by side.  You can't appreciate how much better the V5's FSAA is until you do that.  Screenshots don't do the it justice, you only really get the effect when things are moving.

I hope nVidia builds cards in the future that will give us both T&A AND kick bellybutton FSAA with a decent implementation.  Somebody give me a card that will do 1024x768 32 bit and 4x jittered FSAA at 60 FPS and I will be a very happy camper.

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[214thCavalier]

As i do not have the option to try V5 and GEF2 side by side i can only judge on screen shots posted by Leph etc before and as i have said before    comparing my screen shots at the same res in a paint program and zooming in on the affected area's ie wing edges etc but using the Nvidia FSAA set at 4x then its slightly better looking than the V5's set at 2x.
Now if you could actually use the V5's 4x in a game then no dissenting opinions at all  , no question it would be better.
But personally although this still runs at very good frame rates using FSAA set at 4x i still prefer the 1600 res and no FSAA, i guess its mostly due to the fact that you can always see the intruments when flying and i hate seeing them look all blurry with FSAA on.
I rarely have time to think how nice the leading edge of my wing looks when in flight as its usually a quick scan of all views then back to the cockpit, and flying as Rook currently theres usually more than enough gang bangers to keep my attention  
Now i feel like a criminal, somebody call the Hijack police  

[TheWobble]

My instruments look PERFECT at 1024x786 2X FSAA I dont really know what your talking about.

[Lephturn]

Hehehe Cav.  

What I mean about looking at wing lines is looking at other aircraft in my views.  When there is a plane in the distance and I am trying to see it's wingline to determine what it's direction and plane of flight, is when I notice it.  That is a lot of the time, and it's very important.  That is where, especially with movement, I see the difference in the nVidia vs. the Voodoo FSAA.  I agree, if you look at pictures or look out at your wing, the nVidia 4x looks pretty good, but it's the situation I describe above where I find FSAA to be most importnant, and it's where I see the nVidia FSAA lacking.  It's important because when I'm closing on another airplane, I need to judge the other guy's plane of motion, speed, and such to estimate his E state.  Those small horizontal lines in the distance look much better under the Voodoo scheme even at 2X FSAA to my eye.

Now someday I'll buy a new monitor and be able to use 1600x1200, and then maybe it won't be a big deal.  At 1024x768 (monitor limited here) I'll take the Voodoo FSAA.  

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[miko2d]

 Don't forget that so called 64 megs of memory is really 2x32 duplicated - the same texture is placed into both parts though the frame buffer is split.
 So it is much more like twice faster then 32 MB then twice larger then 32 MB.

 So Voodoo architecture has twice as much bandwidth to deliver to the screen but cannot fit lots of textures (and cannot use AGP texturing). So they cannot support high screen resolution and detailed textures. And they cannot draw lots of polygons either...
 So they use the extra bandwidth to essentially draw the same picture 2 or 4 times to make the low-res and crappy textures look better.

 The flight sumulators are the only kind of games where a noticeable (small but noticeable) fraction of users would prefer lower res and slower frame rate as a tradeoff for better quality of FSAA.

 First person shooters are much higher market share and there most people prefer frame rate and resolution in that order to any visual improvements.

 Of course those bastards at Voodoo slowed down the progress by their vicious counter-advertising of T&L and that hurt all of us (much like they once dissuaded everyone from 32-bit color and large textures when they could not do it - somehow then frame rate was much more important to them then visual quality). I would understand them if they actually profited from it - if according to their plan they released Voodoo5 at the same time as GeForce. But Voodoo5 came later then even GeForce2.

Good riddance to them. Voodoo5 should be sold at $25 in the liquidator bins. They are not produced anymore and good luck waiting for driver updates.

miko

[This message has been edited by miko2d (edited 01-09-2001).]

[Lephturn]

Nice to see you aren't biased at all miko.  

There are many folks like myself that don't have a monitor that will do much over 1024x768 anyway.  squeak all you want about "texture quality" and such, but the V5's image quality is superior without FSAA let alone with it.

For many of us, there IS no resolution penalty to using 2x FSAA and the image quality is markedly superior.  If you are a quake-head this may not be the case, but for flight sim enthusiasts it's a whole different ball game.

You are right about cards the GeForce cards being better for the shooters.  If you mostly play those, buy a GeForce.  If you play a sim like Aces High, it's not such an easy choice.  The V5 has some real advantages for a lot of folks like me.

BTW, my drivers work just fine.  I haven't had any problems with the V5 drivers.  I have been pleasantly surprised at how fast and stable they are, even the beta versions.  It has been a long time since I have seen a graphical anomaly with the V5.  Maybe nVidia should hire 3DFX's driver writing team, as I see plenty of folks here trying all kinds of different drivers trying to get their GeForce or TnT2's to work right.

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs  http://www.flyingpigs.com
 
"A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!" -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"

[214thCavalier]

Hmm no problems here using 6.47 drivers.
One place the Nvidia FSAA does look crappy Leph and i cant comment on the V5 is on any vertical lines.
I dont know why but a horizontal line will be perfect but a vertical as in 6 view looking at your stab will look awful just as if FSAA does not work on verticals, the more vertical the line is the worse it looks.
As for the V5's hitting the bargain basement bin, well i for one sure hope so cos i could do with a good cheap PCI version to fit onto the other end of my Lan  
See not biased at all  

[MrSiD]

Whats this thing about 60hz refresh on monitors? Lol I never go under 85hz.

1600x1200 at 60hz would be a flickering nightmare IMHO.

I'm using my old trustworthy Geforce 256 which gives me plenty of fps in AH (also 1600x1200) and 3dMark2000 (16-bit 1024x768) 4980 pts.
Good price / value considering I've had it for 1,5 years already. What was the level of Voodoo when I bought it? Heh.. no need to mention it