ATI HD 4870 AA

[vstuart 0]

Looking for advice from owners of the ATI HD 4870 graphics card about anti-aliasing in FSX. I've tried nearly all the permutations of 3D settings in Catalyst Control Center (current driver version 9.8), and also have tried using ATI Tray Tools (latest beta), but cannot get certain textures such as aircraft liveries to be anti-aliased properly. The screenshot below is with AA unchecked in FSX (I've tried FSX's AA to no avail), trilinear filtering and the following settings in CCC:

• AA - 4x (box)
• Anisotropic Filtering - 16x
• Catalyst A.I. - Standard
• Mipmap level detail - High
• Wait for vertical refresh - Off, unless application specifies
• Adaptive AA - Unchecked
• Triple buffering - Unchecked

(Please enlarge the pic to 100% to see the full extent of what I'm on about :()As I say, I've gone through the range of the above settings both in windowed and full-screen modes. Before I potentially invest in a GTX 285 (nVidia seem to do anti-aliasing better in Flight Simulator - my old 6600GT was better in terms of this in FS9!), it would be nice to see if anyone's had this problem and resolved it. Maybe it's not a problem but the AA in that screenshot, excluding the buildings, looks pretty bad IMHO.My graphics card is a Sapphire HD 4870 512MB, with latest drivers and BIOS.Thanks,Vincent

[vstuart 0]

The attachment above appears to have been corrupted, so here is the screenshot posted again:

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Textures do not receive anti-aliasing when applying traditional MSAA. Polygon edges are the only things that benefit from MSAA. If you want your textures to be anti-aliased, you need to apply either pure SSAA, or a hybrid SSAA/MSAA such as Adaptive anti-aliasing with the SSAA mode enabled in CCC. Keep in mind SSAA and hybrid SSAA are likely to incur a large performance penalty.

[vstuart 0]

Thank you TechguyMaxC for the prompt reply and advice. I was under the impression that neither ATI nor nVidia cards use true supersampling anymore, but I went ahead and enabled the hybrid SSAA in CCC (adaptive anti-aliasing set to quality). The following screenshot was taken under the same settings as in the OP, but with the hybrid SSAA enabled. Note that the AI liveries are fine, but that the PMDG's (which happens to be a 32-bit livery) isn't. The terminal building also looks in good shape. In fact, to my eyes, enabling hybrid SSAA has had no effect at all.To reiterate, I've tried the various settings, and have tried using ATI Tray Tools. I think this issue was raised a while ago in another forum, but wasn't resolved IIRC.Vince

[LarryRF 0]

If you got this texture from PMDG (using the installer), instead of 32 bit textures, have you tried the other opton during install? I forget what it is, DXT 3 or 5 or something. If that is AI, my guess would be they are not 32 bit so maybe using the other texture would look better?Larry

[vstuart 0]

Thanks for the suggestion Larry - I'll give it a shot but I wouldn't want to compromise visual quality further for what should seemingly be a standard task for a mid/high-end graphics card such as the HD 4870. I'm guessing the problem isn't isolated to liveries: take a look at the white apron lines surrounding the PMDG 747 in the screenshots for example. I do get a hell of a lot of shimmering as well.Seems I'm not the only one with this issue, as it has been discussed in another forum without conclusion: http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index...t&p=2065555VinceP.S. Just noticed the rule about screenshot size, sorry about that.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

FSX probably doesn't support adaptive AA then (or vice versa). You could submit a problem ticket to ATi support and they can look into the issue and see if they can reproduce it.

[LarryRF 0]

I see what you are saying now, I'm usually fairly close when I'm in spot do I really never noticed it. I've been playing around with this tool.http://epichardware.com/index.php?topic=12.0It's called ATI Xtensions. It's more for a crossfire set up but it does allow you to force AA and AF.. I really haven't had much luck yet, maybe you could try it and see if it helps you.Larry

[vstuart 0]

Thanks for the pointer Larry. Tried the app but didn't improve things (the visual result was the same as using CCC to force AA). I think I've exhausted all options and I bought an nVidia card yesterday. I asked the guy in the thread I linked to if he had managed to sort out the problem (which was noticed months ago), and he also had to buy an nVidia card. Seems there are a few dodgy 4870s about...