Trainz and SMAA Application

Hi all. Please bear with me as this goes on a bit but it does apply to any trainz version that uses DX9 and above.

Having recently received TRS2010 ( thanks to Zec for helping me out :wave: ) and i'm getting 2012 next week - i find myself quite dismayed at the in-cab Anti-Aliasing application. I find it particulaly frustrating when trying to achieve an acceptable display. For all intents and purposes the AA appears only to extend some 50-100ft in front of the in-cab view. When in motion, telegraph wires show a definite line between applied AA, and no AA. The track, a short distance ahead - again in-cab - displays a moving change when in motion. It look like perhaps 1 baseboard grid has AA applied at a time.

If i elect to use the Nvidia settings, at 32x CSAA i lose a few frame rates and everything has AA applied. The major downside when using the Graphics cards AA, is that i cannot use fog because it promotes ground texture shimmering. If i use the in-game AA at 4X, AA appears only to be applied as i said, out to 50-100ft. I'm not sure if this is for keeping frame rates high for lower spec systems, but it's at a great cost to the visual immersion of the game.

I use a graphics package (4 small files), which applies SMAA for my other games, this is produced by -

http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/ There is a video comparing various display post-processing.

This is extremely effective in enhancing AA without having to use the Graphics cards settings. The F.P.S cost is very minimal and the results are visually very good.

To my question..... As the package is applied through the supplied D3d9.dll - and TRS doesn't use the 'default' dx9 file - would it be possible to obtain a workaround to enable the SMAA to be used. This is only in the interest of enhancing the users experience of Trainz.

After all that it's probably a no-no, but still it's worth asking :wave:

Regards Barryg

Hi Barry,

Enable Anisitrophic filtering for your video card. This will get rid of bumpy blurry linear edges on such things as power lines, track, and locomotives. This works in conjunction with the AA. You might want to try the AA settings for your video card and have the V/C settings override the application. Somtimes your video driver's version is much better than the application can produce.

The demo is cool, but remember these are stills. An animated world, with forever changing surfaces, requires a lot more video card power and rendering work. Since these scenes are canned, meaning they are already drawn then rendered, this makes them easier to render because they're only rendered once. If they can show this in a realtime animation, that would make this more interesting. Another thought too is much of this technology is not available yet in many game engines. Many companies, including Auran/N3V are still using something that was purchased or developed many years ago. A game development engine is very expensive to own and companies do not upgrade to the latest and greatest if they don't have to. It will be some time before we see this technique in many games on the shelf.

John

Hi John. I have tried using the game settings, the video card, and both at the same time, and still fail to achieve a good quality display output - let alone the constant re-drawing of the terrain. I get similar high frame rates whether i use no Anisotropic and AA, or 16x Anisotropic and 32x CSAA Is it possible because the game engine is old, that there has to be a trade-off for having speedtrees - Lose graphical quality to gain something else.

My 4GHz Cpu, 8Mb Ram, and an Nvidia 560Ti has more than enough horses for this or any other game i've thrown at it. Sorry if this sounds like i'm complaining, of course gameplay is the primary concern, but i'm just frustrated at the difference between what should be achievable, and what can be achieved.

Regards Barryg