Antialiasing Samples in cfg file freezes FX cards

[fsgregs]

Hi. I have just installed 1.3.2 on my school computers, which have NVidia FX 5200 cards with 128 MB of Video RAM and the latest drivers. The default Celestia opened fine, but I noticed that edges of the planets and spacecraft were jagged and stair-stepped. I had antialiasing turned on in the program but the FX 5200 card was not doing a good job of smoothing lines. So I entered the new Celestia.cfg line into the cfg file that calls for antialiasing. The line I entered was:

AntialiasingSamples 4

When I went to reopen Celestia, however, the program attempted to open, then hung up. No image appeared. It happened consistently. I checked for some error on my part but the line was as above, with no missing or extra punctuation . To get Celestia to open, I had to take out the line and everything worked, although antialiasing was still poor.

Do FX cards require some value other than 4? Can I not use this line in the cfg file with 1.3.2 and an FX 5200 card? (the line has worked very well for me on a GeForce 4 TI 4200 (my home system)). Can I do anything on my FX 5200 card computers to improve antialiasing?

HELP

Thanks

Frank

[selden]

Frank,

That's very strange. "It works fine for me."
Have you tried the other settings? ( 2 and 8 )

Although I don't know if it'll help anyone figure out what might be wrong:

What's the BIOS version on one of the failing cards?

Do they have builtin fans or just passive cooling?
(antialiasing would make them work harder = hotter.)

My system at work has a fan-cooled FX5200 and I've been running with
AntialiasingSamples 4
ever since it became available.

System:
512MB 2.4MHz P4, WinXP Pro SP2
128MB FX 5200, BIOS 4.34.20.13, Forceware 61.76
Celestia v1.3.2 final

I am running the previous version of Nvidia's drivers, but I think the only change between 61.76 and 61.77 was a patch for GF6x00 cards.

[Guest]

Selden. Thanks for the input. Given that it worked for you, I troubleshooted the problem more and found the problem. The line I added to celestia.cfg was in fact:

AntialiasingSamples 4

It should have been:

antialiasingSamples 4

The capital letter screwed up Celestia. When I changed it, everything worked fine.

Thanks for the help.

Frank

[selden]

Frank,

That is very strange.
When I use a lower case "a", Celestia does no antialiasing because it doesn't recognize the keyword. I can clearly see black/white "stairsteps" along straight black/white edges of the ISS.

When I spell it with a capital A, I see intermediate grey pixels along those edges.

Hmmm. It shouldn't cause lockups, but what is your AntiAliasing setting in "Display Properties"/.../"Performance and Quality Settings"?

It should be "Application-controlled".
When that box is not checked, you can use the slider to set the amount of antialiasing manually.

[fsgregs]

Selden:

I have Antialiasing "application controlled" for the setting in performance settings on the FX video card.

The capital letter "A" in AntialiasingSamples 4 when inserted in my cfg file, definitely locks up Celestia. Perhaps that means Celestia is trying to execute it, and is somehow hanging up. I have a few other changes in the cfg file (shadows and eclipses, for example) so I guess I have to do some more troubleshooting. What I am now not sure of is whether "antialiasingSamples 4" is doing anything at all. If you are right and Celestia is simply not executing it because it has a small letter, that would explain why the program no longer hangs. I have to visit the HST or some other spacecraft while changing the line in the cfg file different ways, to see if there is any change. I'll let you know.

Frank

[fsgregs]

OK, I did something that seems to have fixed the problem. However, I don't know what I did. Something in my cfg file must have been in error, because I reconstructed it and AntialiasingSamples 4 now works on my school computers (with the capital letter).

Thanks Selden for your help.

Topic is ended.

Frank