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**WereWolf** · 4 April 2000, 12:20

FSAA is overrated...

owned a G-Force for a while, using the newest drivers you can enable it. Everything gets all fuzzy... (especially annoying for text)

I'd rather have some nice fps's and 32 bit color.

wait a minute... I already have that!!!
G400 rulez.

**Nuno** · 4 April 2000, 12:23

One more victim of video-card hype machine.

Man, your G400 supports FSAA. G200 supported FSAA. Matrox m3D supported FSAA (I think). Anti-aliasing isn´t that a big deal. Every video-card can do it. The point is: It must have a MONSTER fill-rate to do it within acceptable performance levels. A fsaa scene is internally rendered at twice (or more) the resolution it is displayed. Like a 800x600x32 fsaa scene is internally rendered at 1600x1200x32, at least.

It would be very easy to include a setting in powerdesk like "enable fsaa" and presto, your G400 would render all 3d with fsaa. SO what´s the point? 640x480 antialiased would be as fast as 1280x960. What would you prefer?

A very nice demo of your G400 fsaa capabilities is Motoracer2. It´s a bit outdated, sure, but you can enable/disable it on the fly and just enjoy your G400 doing fsaa

So don´t worry, I´m sure G800 will support fsaa.

**dZeus** · 4 April 2000, 15:24

There is a difference between supporting FSAA in hardware or with a driver-trick. And the only card supporting it in hardware will be the Voodoo-4/5 as far as I know. And looking at the screenshots, it DOES look great, but the difference is not equaly big in all games. In Q3A and flightsims the difference was increadible, but in UT I hardly saw a difference. But I think the G800 will not yet support it in hardware.... Matrox will probably have Hardware T&L higher on the list. (And I think that is a shame). Almost no games yet are taking advantage of hardware T&L, opposed to FSAA, hich can be enabled in all current games. Therefor I think it would be more justified if FSAA would be integrated first. And Hardware T&L can be integrated when it is (almost) completely supported by DirectX (7.0 does not much T&L yet). I think Matrox opted to go T&L first because of the hype nVidia created around it. And I still think nVidia products suck, because their 2D image quality sucks ass.... And 2D image quality is higher on my list than 3D speed.

**Nuno** · 4 April 2000, 15:43

Could you elaborate more on that hardware/software fsaa support?

**Allan123** · 4 April 2000, 17:45

Yes, T&L is important but I guess you won't see it taken advantage of in large number of games until at least early next year. Sure there'll be a handful at Christmas but not many more, I'd guess.I'll be the first to get a T&L card as soon as there are games that I want to play that use it well.

Most of the editors on the big hardware/gaming sites are pretty jaded when it comes to new technology so I find their comments very interesting when they had a chance to see the 4X FSAA in hardware in action. Forget the screenshots and go and read a couple of articles and tell me it isn't a feature worth getting.
http://www.voodooextreme.com/articles/v5/v5article.html
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/V5Incarnate.htm

Don't get me wrong because I'm not out to bash any particular company or card. I've owned a Voodoo, a Voodoo 2, a TNT and a G400. I just want the best gaming experience possible and, from what I've read, the Voodoo 5 is going to deliver that for the rest of this year. Hopefully, by the end of April

**Joel** · 4 April 2000, 18:35

The game you are running has to be programmed to support FSAA and right now there are more games supporting EMBM than T&L or FSAA. And it only card at this time that supports EMBM is the Matrox G400.

Joel

**CHHAS** · 4 April 2000, 21:18

Joel - FSAA does not have to be supported by the game, that's the big new thing here, all your old games will instantly look better.

And Nuno, the real advantage is in lower resolutions, like 1024x768 and below (which is what my monitor supports), so while I might get a similar experience at higher resolutions my monitor won't let me.

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P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value

**alessandro** · 4 April 2000, 21:45

First let's take in consideration that 3dfx graphic cards picture quality and clarity{the worst in the market by far .....Now add FSAA in the equation plus 640x480 resolution and what’s the result?????????..N64 graphics(LOL)!!!!!!!!!!
I’m playing ALL my games in 1024x1078 so FSAA is useless for me !!!!!!!
Just my opinion!!

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Pentium II 450Mhz@504,Asus P2B rev1.04 (biosrev.1011),17" Sony Multiscan 200PST,128MB PC100 ram,Matrox Millenium G400 MAX 32MB 5ns SGRAM,Quantum Firebal EL 10.2Gb,Epson Stylus Color 740,Sound blaster Live!,Cambridge Soundworks 5.1,Creative PC-DVD 5X,CDR-RW Ricoh MP7040S@MP7060S(Tweaked from 4x--->6x with no problem),Adaptec SCSI 2920C,Diamond SupraExpress 56e PRO,Iomega Zip Drive.

**Corwin_Brute** · 5 April 2000, 00:03

Ok, let's clarify some things :
1) FSAA doesn't need to be supported by a game.
2) 3DFx's T-Buffer FSAA is better than traditional supersampling FSAA, because it uses weighted samples, and not only average samples.
3) FSAA is useful whatever the resolution, because it does not only remove jaggies, but also popping textures, flashing points (remember Homeworld)
4) The G800 will probably have enough fillrate to allow for software FSAA
5) I agree with dZeus, FSAA is IMHO a much more important feature than T&L for the time being. Because with T&L, as the number of polygons increase, so does the number of jaggies. Besides, with processor speed increasing the way it does, T&L can be handled by the processor in a very efficient way.

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Corwin the Brute

**leech** · 5 April 2000, 02:33

Allright, I think I'm a bit confused on the entire definition of FSAA. I always thought that Anti-aliasing was builtin on pretty much all modern graphics card. Yes, in hardware. I mean come on, even my Atari ST could do anti-aliasing in art packages, (although it was pretty slow, what do you expect on a 8mhz 68000?) But still it did it. And I'm pretty sure the N64 has hardware anti-aliasing, so what's the big deal? Some of the earlier 3D accelerated games really just looked to me like they had it. Is there something I'm missing with the definition of FSAA? And with the fast CPU's we have nowadays, who cares if it's done in software only? Hell as it is my computer runs too fast in Q3A in 1600x1200. Max settings. I couldn't even play the thing, 'cause it went too fast. Not that I complained, I like UT better. If I recall corectly, the game Revolt has an option to turn Anti Aliasing on, but this guy's Banshee card had that option disabled, whereas both the G200 and G400 have it. Yes, it does make a big difference in that game.
Oh well, maybe it's just late and I feel like ranting. But really, I always thought that Anti-aliasing was a standard feature, am I wrong? All these years I've seen these absolutely fabulous 3D rendered objects with NO anti-aliasing involved? You've got to be kidding. Even some of the old ST and Amiga demos and Anti-Aliasing in them. I'm not saying I'm a graphics expert or anything, but please inform me what is so special about the Voodoo5 being able to do something that every card out there can do? Only two things impress me about 3dfx. 1) They were really the first 3D accelerator for the PC affordable for the home, and 2) They actually released glide as Open Source so linux programers can do what they want with it, and the linux support they have.
The reason I have a Matrox card and will most likely always have one, is for their 2D quality. It's unsurpassed and everyone knows it. I spend almost all of my time using the desktop in Linux/Win98/BeOS and if my 3D speed or features isn't up to par with the latest and greatest than I don't really care. As long as it's fast enough to run the games I want it too, then I'm happy. Besides what game is going to come out and REQUIRE this FSAA? None. Gone are the days that proprietary API's control a section of software....well now it's just down to OS's battling. Anyhow, I'm getting off subject. What does the FS stand for? Laters

Leech

P.S. I apologize, it's been one long day, I just feel like ranting here. Laters.

**leech** · 5 April 2000, 02:53

My apologies for the lengthy post, ok, so FSAA stands for Full Scene Anti-Aliasing. Now this makes sense that it may be something new. But Anti-aliasing to me has mostly always made things fuzzy and blurred. Of course I wear glasses anyhow, so if I want anti-aliasing I'll just take them off! There, instant anti-aliased textures. Or better yet, I'll get back my 20" monitor from 1987 that I gave to my brother in-law that has a .30 dot pitch and a max res of 1024x768. Good ol' NEC XL. That was a beast. Seriously, though I usually try to play games in the highest res I can, (Rogue Spear in 1600x1200 looks damn good) and at that high of resolution you really can't see jagginess on objects. The pixels are so small anyhow. Anti-aliasing really only helps on the lower resolutions, like 640x480 or 800x600. And of course anything higher it would just slow down the framerates. Well just my two cents. Laters.

Leech

**Allan123** · 5 April 2000, 05:46

Just curious to see how many people have actually read the articles I linked to in my previous post. Read them and then I think you'll know why FSAA is a big deal. There seems to be a lot of people guessing on what FSAA will actually offer. I don't understand how people could not be interested in this feature once they know how good it really is.
Just in case you missed it here are the links again.

http://www.voodooextreme.com/articles/v5/v5article.html http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/V5Incarnate.htm

**leech** · 5 April 2000, 12:38

I know that, sorry, guess I forgot to mention that my graphics card is a Marvel G400, only 16 MB of RAM on this puppy, so why would I need 64MB of ram om my video card? My mom's computer only has 64MB of System Ram. My point is would I personally need FSAA? Besides, 3dfx's cards usually look like they have anti-aliasing in their 2D desktop. I'm sorry, but I will stick with my Matrox cards simply for the 2D. They have pretty damned good 3D too. FSAA is not going to be a feature that everyone NEEDS. Sure it may look pretty, but to me I want a game that has great gameplay, flashy graphics don't mean crap to me. In fact Ultima 9 (which did have great graphics, but because of bad programming ran choppy most of the time) I loved and played 'til the end because of the fact it was an Ultima game and had great gameplay (well the interface kind of sucked, but I got used to it). When I play a game I'm not going to sit there and say, "Oh, I'll only play this 'cause it looks good." Like one of my friends. *laughs* Of course he bought a Voodoo3, don't know why, he has a 1000 dollar monitor to go with it. His desktop looks like crap in 1600x1200 and that's all I run mine in on my 19" Viewsonic, anything else to me doesn't have enough desktop space for what I'm always doing. Well anyhow, this is just my opinion and it doesn't mean that no one else can have FSAA, or motion blur or anything else. Actually I think the motion blur thing is kind of cool, although for certain people that games like quake3 and UT make sick (another one of my friends) that feature would give them even more motion sickness.
So in closing, I'll just say that, is this a feature that the industry as a whole really needs? I always thought that turning on mip-mapping fixed a lot of the texture tears, and really most of those are caused by bad programming anyhow. And as far as the article(s) go, I did read the one on hothardware.com or whatever that link was, and they said something about Homeworld? Homeworld looks breathtakingly beautiful on my Marvel. Laters.

Leech

**Corwin_Brute** · 5 April 2000, 16:20

About this software FSAA thing : it is called software because (correct me if I'm wrong) the scene is internally rendered in high resolution (4x the selected resolution which translates in 1600x1200 for 800x600), and then resampled in software.

I don't think any game will require FSAA, but every game looks much better with it ! Yes, there may be some blur, it will depend on the quality of the FSAA implementation. Of course, higher resolution will give you less jaggies, but, as I said earlier, FSAA has other benefits as well...

Leech, BTW, your computer being able to play Q3@1600x1200 has nothing to do with CPU power : screen resolution is all about the 3D card and not the CPU, because the same amount of polygons is processed wether you play in 512x384 or 2048x1536.

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Corwin the Brute

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G800 to have FSAA ???

G800 to have FSAA ???

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