Stupid questions (tm) -- jagged lines and dot distances

[Simaril]

I feel like this is something I really ought to know, but for some reason I haven't been able to find the setting that would address this.

1. When playing AH, angled lines consistently show up with jagged step offs. There isn't any smoothing going on, almost like the interlacing/noninterlacing problems we used to see in the old days. I'm not sure what setting will correct this, and not even sure whether I should be looking at the AH video settings or the computer video display settings.

2. For whatever reason, "dot range" seems significantly closer for me than for many others. When in FSOs for example, with my wingman right beside me, he will see cons 30-60 seconds before they show up on my screen. Don't know why this happens, because I have the distance sliders maxed out.

I run a Radeon X1900 series card with 512mb, and have the screen resolution set at 1600x1200 using 1024 textures. I do not use the proprietary ATI card management software, since it seemed bloated and slow. The monitor is a Samsung 204T LCD.

Would appreciate any thoughts!

[BaldEagl]

Set your anti-aliasing up in your video card set-up.  That will get rid of or lessen the jagged lines.  You may need to balance this against performance.

[Baumer]

This really made a difference! I can see things a LOT better. Silly me, I thought it was supposed to be sw controlled

[Simaril]

Yep, found the same thing here. Always had the setting at "program select" but since cranking it up manually the lines are beautiful.

On the other hand, still wondering about the dot distances.

[OOZ662]

Have you ever considered that the enemy con takes that long to travel the distance between your wingie and you? Check not only that you have the sliders maxed, but that you aren't in Mid or Short range view by pressing Shift+F1 to switch to Full.

[Simaril]

Have you ever considered that the enemy con takes that long to travel the distance between your wingie and you? Check not only that you have the sliders maxed, but that you aren't in Mid or Short range view by pressing Shift+F1 to switch to Full.

Yeah, thought about that too -- but isnt what's doing it. Even when the wingie is BEHIND me it happens. Not sure why, but its not that hard to deal with. I just pretend I'm the old guy in the flight, depending on the young pups to spot the enemy and lead to the engagement!

[BaldEagl]

Are you in some mode other than full vis range (I think it's Alt-F1... never use them myself)?

[RTR]

I have the same Dot limiting view range. I'm playing around with V-sync and anti-aliasing to see what happens. I'll let you know what I find (if anything).

BaldEagl, the key commands in question are:  Shift F1 for full range, Shift F2 for medium range and Shift F3 for short range. Shift F4 will shorten it up even further to "ground vis range", however you may need to map that one.

cheers,
RTR

[Simaril]

Are you in some mode other than full vis range (I think it's Alt-F1... never use them myself)?

Nah, that would be too easy!

I flip between ranges as needed to hunt GVs or fight in the air. The problem I'm talking about happens with full vis on.

[Simaril]

Well, Baumer sent me a couple bmp images that may have identified the problem.

And now I'm betting that it has less to do with the video settings, and more to do with these old Mark 1 eyeballs! He sent me a couple captures of the first dot appearance in a film. The dot looked very, very small to me -- as it should (being only 1/1600th of the screen)! So I think what's happening is that I'm just not catching the single pixel sized dot that first appears, only seeing the aircraft when the range is short enough for multiple pixels to be portrayed. I could overcome this by turning down the resolution, but at this point I'd rather have the immersion of better imagery.

Thanks to all who gave this some thought.