Where's best spot to set Anti-aliasing/Anisotropy ?

In early Trainz days, before the Anti-aliasing and Anisotropy settings were built into TS2009, I used to dial up some of each via my graphics card's settings. Is this still neccessary/recommended? If you specify these in both the card settings and TS2009 settings how do those settings interact? I've tried a bit of experimenting, but the results are hard to pin down. Which is the best place to specify these ? How do others set them ? I did a bit of a Forum search but couldn't find anything that directly addressed this.

Phil

Edit: I also still use TRS2006 extensively, which doesn't have the new options. So am I better off turning to minimum settings in 2009, and just using the card settings?

BTW: Sometimes I'm not sure if my hobby is Trainz Route building, or Trainz tuning !

I always thought whatever you set in Trainz overrode your card settings in these cases.

I haven't figured it out either. I run TRS06 and Vista on an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC with great graphics and speed, but my water looks horrible. I was told to turn off the anti-aliasing but have no clue where to do it from. ATI Radeon premium graphics also... But how do I fix it?

For TRS2006 (and anything earlier than TS2009), in Vista you right click the desktop wallpaper, in the menu that comes up there should be a command for accessing the ATI settings for the card. I changed to nVidia so I forget the name. When you choose it, a window comes up where you go through the menu to access the card's settings, there's Basic and Advanced displays.

Forgot to add: when I had an ATI card, I always had to use DirectX or I had horrible psychadelic water.

If you're not sure where to set it, then it's probably not on. The anti-aliasing, along with anisotropic filtering, mipmapping, vertical-sync, etc... can be set in a program called Catalyst Control Center (CCC for short).



That is the exact screen where the AA is set, and is set to 8x, but 24x effective through a filter, although there isn't much, if at all, a difference between 8x and the effective 24x, so sticking to 8x would be recommended for the best performance (unless you can afford having maxed out 24x anti-aliasing and still stelar performance).

Just out of curiousity, do you know the exact model number of your card (or even just a more general number)? Ex: My card is a ATI Radeon HD 4850, but a more general answer is the 4800 series (like the picture says), or that it is part of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 generation of graphics cards.

That's strange that you have a problem with the water, as I have 2006 and never have had a problem with the way the water displays (Anti-aliasing on and off). It always looked like water I've seen in others' screenshots, and never didn't display.

Kyle

I'll try what was posted below. My water looks like this...

Ok, I got to the menu shown and tried several anti-aliasing settings and nothing changed the water except for setting the water to "glassy". Better than nothing, but not all water is glassy.

Sorry if I did not make myself clear. The question I was trying to ask in this thread is not how to set it, but which is the best place to set it ? - in the Cards settings (via Catalyst in the case of an ATI card), or in the TS2009 Options Panel (anti-aliasing) and Performance Options (Anisotropy). And what happens if you set it in both places (do you, for example, get 8x AA if you set to 4x in your card and 2x in the Trainz Options. Or do you get the card setting - 4x, or Trainz setting - 2x)?

Phil

Hard to tell...some games, when they detect AA from the card drivers, then AA will be disabled in the game if it also has AA in the game options. Other games will make you disable (by checking the box next to " Use Application Settings" the driver AA and use the in-game AA from it's options (Need for Speed Undercover is this way). And then there are games which will use the driver setting if there is no AA built into the game options, or I've seen a couple games have the option to use the driver or the game settings.

Best way to find out is:
1: Set the AA in the graphics driver to 0x (or disable it/set to application controlled), then set the AA in the Trainz options to the max it will go, and see if you get AA.
2: Do the opposite. Set the AA in the driver control panel to max, and disable the Trainz options of AA to see if you get AA even then.

My advice.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to hijack your thread. I did think you were trying to figure out how to access it so I jumped on in. I apologize for that. I would imagine that if you can set and apply both areas individually, then it shouldn't matter what each is set to as long as your performance doesn't suffer. But I'm a computer idiot, so don't take my word for it. I just maxed all of mine out, and George Fisher's and Ocemy's track look a lot better in motion.

motorbreath said:

Sorry, I wasn't trying to hijack your thread.

:.

Click to expand...

No problems, been guilty of similiar misdemeanours myself in the past. Its easy to get carried away when you curious about something.


Which leads to me another thing... If your wondering why I care (because in truth, if it IS doubling up to beyond 4x antialiasing it is hard to detect with my my poor old eyes), its mainly curiosity, but also I don't want to waste GPU or CPU cycles doing something thats not necessary. But at the sametime, since 2006 does not have the settings built in, I'd prefer not to turn them off at the card. Sorry if this all seems a little deranged !!

Phil

Well, if your curious, here are a couple screenshots of the water that I see in Trainz 2006, which looks completely normal.

Pics are 1680 x 1050, so direct links are needed.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh112/saintjimmy4723/Screen_033.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh112/saintjimmy4723/Screen_034.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh112/saintjimmy4723/Screen_016.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh112/saintjimmy4723/Screen_017.jpg

As you can see, there are no adverse water effects/artifacts, on all the water settings (glassy, choppy, rough, etc.)

Back on topic though, if you can't tell the difference between 4x and 8x, then I see no problem with going for 4x AA, since your game will still look good, and you won't have to worry about a performance drop as much. But I'd stick with 16x for the Anisotropic Filtering (AF) setting, since that is a little more noticeable, especially when working with a route grid/untextured tile.

My opinion, worth 2 cents.

Since no one seems to know, I hope Auran includes some discussion of the use if these new Trainz settings in the doco accompanying TS2010 !

Phil