Pre 10 - Poor rendering of new font

[don]

The new font used for HUD text, locations, object names, etc. does NOT render very well on Win XP with my ATI 9700 card at 1024 x 768. At 1280 x 1024 it is almost totally unreadable.

Here are two example full-size screen shots, UNmodified in any way:

1024 x 768 ...



1280 x 1024 ...

[Christophe]

Don, do you have anti-aliasing (FSAA) enabled?

I know fonts do look something like that on NVidia with FSAA on.

[don]

Yes, my graphic-card anti-aliasing is on. With it off, everything (models, curved edge of planets, etc.) looks like crap with all kinds of jagged lines and edges.

It allows 2x, 4x and 6x but the setting does not matter with the text. Only when it is off does the text improve, but still not anywhere near the clarity of the previous font that was used.

[Christophe]

Yes, my graphic-card anti-aliasing is on. With it off, everything (models, curved edge of planets, etc.) looks like crap with all kinds of jagged lines and edges. :(

Then it's a known bug.

It allows 2x, 4x and 6x but the setting does not matter with the text. Only when it is off does the text improve, but still not anywhere near the clarity of the previous font that was used.

I think the same problem existed with the previous bitmapped fonts when FSAA was used.

Some (a minority) of people seem to not like anti-aliased fonts, for most it appears as an improvement (by simulating a higher resolution display).

[don]

I think the same problem existed with the previous bitmapped fonts when FSAA was used.

Not on my system anyway. Here is what the text in 1.3.1 final looked like:

Some (a minority) of people seem to not like anti-aliased fonts, for most it appears as an improvement

Can't imagine that a "majority" of people would select this font (1.3.2 default):


over this font (1.3.1 default):


In the new font, the decimal point is invisible, the coma looks like a decimal point, "m" doesn't look like an "m", and most of the other characters look like an eraser was swiped through them vertically.

And if folks have their graphics card Anti-Aliasing turned OFF, then they are missing out on the fine graphic detail Celestia actually offers, and instead, seeing lots of old-style graphic "jaggies".

Even the non-bold version of the 1.3.1 default font looks better than the new one since you can still see the decimal point:


Not sure what else to say. The pictures say it all.

[Christophe]

I was talking about aa fonts generaly, not necessarily in Celestia.

Compare:

With:


Here is what I see on my system: GeForce4 Ti (drivers: 1.5.1 NVIDIA 61.06) / XFree86 4.3

1.3.2 FSAA off Sans12


1.3.2 FSAA on Sans12


1.3.2 FSAA off Sansbold12


1.3.2 FSAA on Sansbold12


1.3.1 FSAA off

[selden]

Christophe,

Of course, you're illustrating exactly the problem that Don is complaining about:

With FSAA enabled, Celestia's fonts are damaged.
With FSAA disabled, Celestia's images are damaged.

It'd be really nice if we didn't have to make this tradeoff.

[chris]

I checked a fix into CVS that makes text look crisp even when multisample antialiasing is turned on. On my GeForce 6800 Ultra, text now looks great with antialiasing disabled, or with 2x or 4x antiliasing turned on.

--Chris

[selden]

fwiw, I just finished downloading a fresh copy of all of the Celestia source code and compiled it on a WinXP Pro SP1 system using MS Visual Studio .NET 2003.

With 2xQ FSAA and 2x Anisotropic filtering, the default fonts are almost unreadable




System:
256MB 500MHz P3, WinXP Pro SP1
128MB GF4 Ti4200, drivers 56.72 (*)
Celestia from CVS

-----
* -- I'll try 61.76 another day...

[chris]

There's a big problem with forcing on antialiasing via the control panel: the application has no idea what AA mode is being applied or if antialiasing is enabled at all, so the app cannot properly compensate for it. I believe that my fix should work with all the 'standard' antialiasing modes, however. 2xQ (or 'Quincunx') is a special case. It's the only antialiasing mode where samples belonging to neighboring pixels are used to compute the pixel color. I personally never use it because I don't care for the smearing effect it produces, but some people prefer a little extra fuzziness to jaggies. I'm honestly not sure how I can make text look good in 2xQ mode; I recommend normal 2x or 4x antialiasing instead. There is hope that 2xQ will work better though . . . Someone just submitted to me a patch that enables Celestia to turn on antialiasing itself, with the mode selected via a celestia.cfg setting. Perhaps I can make some allowances when Celestia knows it's in 2xQ mode.

--Chris

[symaski62]

Ge5200 FX

2X


2XQ


4X


6XS (direct 3D only)


8X



je sais celestia

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/c ... te#dirlist

[don]

The text looks good to me Chris, thank you!
Now, if we could just convince you to put a few pixels of blank space between the left window border and the text.

Examples from July 21, 2004 CVS build, WinXP, ATI 9700 Pro ...

Anti-Aliasing set to Application Preference (0X):


Anti-Aliasing set to 2X:


Anti-Aliasing set to 4X:


Anti-Aliasing set to 6X: