Antialiasing Problem

[Danial]

I've found that using AA is making no difference at all to Celestia's rendering and was just wondering if anyone knew why this might be. I've created a zoomed-in comparison image as proof:

Comparison.jpg

The image on the left was with AA Off and right is On, and as you can see there is no difference at all.

I'm running v1.5.1 on Vista and have a GeForce 8600M GT video card if that helps solve the problem at all.

[revent]

It's not a problem with antialiasing, it's that you're looking at something where antialiasing has no effect. Unless you are actually /seeing/ aliasing, antialiasing does nothing. Go look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antialiasing

For that matter, your images are so lo-rez that any differnce would be invisible anyway.

[Danial]

Shouldn't the edge of the sphere be "softened" with antialiasing? That's what it does in other programs.

EDIT: Looking at that Wiki link, I was actually thinking of MSAA as opposed to just AA.

So if it doesn't remove jagged edges from objects in Celestia, what exactly does it do? And also, is it possible to enable MSAA in Celestia?

[selden]

Which anti-aliasing are you talking about?

Celestia implements it in two different environments.

The anti-aliasing entry (Ctrl-X) in the Render pulldown menu only affects orbital paths. It does nothing for the edges of spheres.

The entry in celestia.cfg controls full-screen anti-aliasing.
AntialiasingSamples 4
You have to delete the # at the beginning of its line to enable it. It affects everything, but only if you've enabled application controlled anti-aliasing in your grahics driver's Display Properties.

[Danial]

Mine is set to '4', but to my eyes, the Earth sphere in the sample I posted isn't smoothed. Can I go higher than 4?

[cartrite]

Mine is set to '4', but to my eyes, the Earth sphere in the sample I posted isn't smoothed. Can I go higher than 4?

As high as your card allows. This can cause the fps to drop though.
cartrite

[revent]

Make sure you have enabled mipmapping and anisotropic filtering also.

BTW, blurring the edges of objects is really only a side effect of antialiasing. When you really need it is if you're seeing odd-looking moire patterns in the middle of a object that aren't in the texture.

[danielj]

It?s not really necessary to change celestia.cfg.
You can simply put the AA to 2X,4X or more in Nvidia Control Panel.To me,it always works.But for me,AA bigger than 4X causes a major dip in perfomance,so I rarely use.With a 8600 GT,MAYBE you can use 8X.

[chris]

Mine is set to '4', but to my eyes, the Earth sphere in the sample I posted isn't smoothed. Can I go higher than 4?

You should be able to go up to 8x (possibly 16x) on a GeForce 8600M. But, it looks like even 4x isn't working. Did you uncomment the AntialiasingSamples line in celestia.cfg? As Selden mentioned, you need to delete the # at the beginning of the line.

--Chris

[Danial]

I haven't changed anything in the cfg file because when I open it in Notepad it open as one large mass of text (no line-breaks) so I can't tell where the AA line starts/ends.

[BobHegwood]

I haven't changed anything in the cfg file because when I open it in Notepad it open as one large mass of text (no line-breaks) so I can't tell where the AA line starts/ends.

Danial,

Try using Notepad2... You can get it free of charge by clicking HERE.
Hope that helps. You can also use Wordpad if you are on Windows. Thanks, Bob

[selden]

or you can use WordPad

[revent]

Easiest it to open the file once in Wordpad, then immediately save it with no changes. That way, next time you doubleclick on the file (and it opens in Notepad) it will be correct in Notepad.

[Kolano]

Question for those suggesting the use of the Nvidia Control Panel to enable AA.

Doesn't this result in all the fonts in Celestia being oddly cropped?

[Boux]

There is a very good and recognized tool to get full control of most 3D app.
Try Nhancer http://www.nhancer.com/
Just create a dedicated profile for celestia.exe and tweak all possible settings to your liking, including AA, AF, SLI rendering method, just set what you are looking for.
The profile will override the driver's control panel settings.
There is a design limitation in Celestia though as someone pointed out.
Too much anti-aliasing corrupts the HUD font rendering and can make the HUD text ugly and close to unlegible.
HUD text overlay should be made independent from scene rendering in the code. Basic stuff if you ask me.

[chris]

There is a very good and recognized tool to get full control of most 3D app.
Try Nhancer http://www.nhancer.com/
Just create a dedicated profile for celestia.exe and tweak all possible settings to your liking, including AA, AF, SLI rendering method, just set what you are looking for.
The profile will override the driver's control panel settings.
There is a design limitation in Celestia though as someone pointed out.
Too much anti-aliasing corrupts the HUD font rendering and can make the HUD text ugly and close to unlegible.
HUD text overlay should be made independent from scene rendering in the code. Basic stuff if you ask me.

At what level of antialiasing do you begin to see troubles with font rendering?

--Chris

[Adirondack]

With 6600GT: 8
Font rendering is still readable but looks ugly though.

Adirondack

[fsgregs]

Boux:

Try Nhancer http://www.nhancer.com/
Just create a dedicated profile for celestia.exe and tweak all possible settings to your liking, including AA, AF, SLI rendering method, just set what you are looking for.

I would like to do this with my 3600 GT card. Would you be willing to share what the recommended "tweaks" should be? I have no idea what mipmapping is, or what the settings should be for Celestia, etc. I would be happy to use your recommended settings for maximizing Celestia's performance on Nvidia cards.

Would it be difficult to post them, or direct us to some place where the best settings are recommended?

Thanks

Frank

[chris]

With 6600GT: 8
Font rendering is still readable but looks ugly though.

Adirondack

I think this may be due to the way 8x antialiasing is done on the 6600: instead of just multisampling, I believe that the 6600 uses a combination of 2x supersampling and 4x multisampling. I'll have to look into this more and see if there's a workaround. It may be possible to make the text looking better by fine-tuning the subpixel offset for text.

--Chris

[Boux]

Boux:

Try Nhancer http://www.nhancer.com/
Just create a dedicated profile for celestia.exe and tweak all possible settings to your liking, including AA, AF, SLI rendering method, just set what you are looking for.

I would like to do this with my 3600 GT card. Would you be willing to share what the recommended "tweaks" should be? I have no idea what mipmapping is, or what the settings should be for Celestia, etc. I would be happy to use your recommended settings for maximizing Celestia's performance on Nvidia cards.

Would it be difficult to post them, or direct us to some place where the best settings are recommended?

Thanks

Frank

Hi, Frank,
Try this:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FILE xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   <INFO Number="0" Version="3" />
   <PROFILESET>
      <PROFILE Label="celestia.exe">
         <APPLICATION Label="celestia.exe" />
         <PROPERTY Label="aa_default" Value="0x00000027" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="aa_selector" Value="0x10000000" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="af_default" Value="0x00000010" Default="0x00000001" />
         <PROPERTY Label="aniso_selector" Value="0x10000000" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="vsync_default" Value="0x60925292" Default="0x60925292" />
         <PROPERTY Label="triple_buffering" Value="0x00000001" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="image_settings" Value="0xFFFFFFF6" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="trilinear_optimization" Value="0x00000001" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="aniso_optimization" Value="0x00000000" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="aniso_sample_optimization" Value="0x00000000" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="conformant_texture_clamp" Value="0x00000000" Default="0x00000000" />
         <PROPERTY Label="multi_cpu" Value="0x00000001" Default="0x00000001" />
         <PROPERTY Label="multi_mon_config" Value="0x00000000" Default="0x00000003" />
         <Manual>False</Manual>
         <Customized>True</Customized>
         <Shadowed>False</Shadowed>
      </PROFILE>
   </PROFILESET>
</FILE>


This is a profile for a very good rendering.
Copy/paste the XML code in an editor and save as "celestia.nhprofile" then open nhancer and import the profile.
It will be immediately applied and visible in the various options.
From there you will be able to adjust the settings individually.

Note to Chris: sorry for being late for replying, I have been away for the last ten days.
From 16x and up, the overlay fonts starts to blur and look dirty (9800GX2 and 174.74 drivers on Vista 64).
BTW, and this is good news, there is no longer any font blurring with the latest Nvidia beta drivers in Linux.