In Defense of ATI Radeon Cards.............

[Guest PaulL01]

>Congratulations, Paul, you have again managed to foul the air>of a mature discussion.>>I take it that your last post was directed at me (though>you've revealed your immaturity by addressing it to "Moronic>Mike").>>So let's look at some of your facts:>>You claim to have gone up occassionally to "snap off shots">for your scenery work. And just what does "snap off shots">mean? As a guy who has done more than a little aerial>photography in my time, please give more info. Like the film>you use... that will have alot to do with resolution and>contrast. And tell us about the format and print sizes you>utilize. Filtration? Lens (generic consumer or high perf>"fast glass")? Shooting through a piece of plexiglass or hang>your butt out in the slipstream (I do the latter... but then I>do own "fast glass". Why ruin the abilities of a $2000.00>lens by shooting through a $20.00 piece of plexiglass.)? And>tell us more about the met conditions on those "occasional">trips aloft. How consistent were they? Always the same... I>doubt it. So your eyeball benchmarking of what the world>looks like from the air through a camera lense are all pretty>much worthless.I use a 35MM for the pics I take for refference work, the folks working the "real" equipment Are here:http://www.pictometry.com/They are about two miles from where I am typing this right now, you can ask them about the exact... whatever.But I believe it was Kodak equipment, my film was 9x9 inches as I remember, lets see pulling open the drawer that holds some test shots, measuring... measuring... 10"x10" it is! The cams shot thru the belly of the plane and still do the last time I looked.Ok, let's see, my sattelite data appears to be shot on... 6.5x8 inches as used by SPOT, I don't know what equipment was used for those shots either and no, I did not go on those flights...:-roll>Finally, you mention that you have "normal vision". Just what>is that? Normal for you, or normal for the rest of the world?> And how many people have the same "normal vision"?Normal human 20/20 Dick!>Mike started this thread as a simple discussion. Nothing>more, nothing less. Simple? Kinda called me out by my first and last name as I remember, yeah I think that was it.But then you arrive talking about how>much you know how the real world looks by snapping a few pics>on a few flights over 7 years. You may indeed know alot about>the technical aspects of today's popular video cards, but you>know very little about the scenes they are supposed to render.> So to those amongst us who are far more mature than you, your>arguements have very little validity.I arrived talking about how it is not just a passing fancy smart guy. :)

[Guest PaulL01]

>"But I think what we have here are a few folks in denial>about a peace of hardware because >they< purchased it and so>P.S. I could sell the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card tomorrow for>very little financial loss and reinstall my GeForce4>Ti4400..... but can see no compelling reason for so doing.Then U missed the whole point didn't you.>Hey guys, perhaps we should all club together and get Paul a>Radeon ;)Yes, please do, I, I have never seen one, well not just one. Anyway, yes I'll take it. :)

[JimmiG 244]

"Right, the ATI does not AA them as your GF4 did and as the FX5900 will. Hope you understand."This, is a good thing. Why in the world would you want to AA the CLOUDS?! They have no sharp edges in the first place since they are completely transparent at the edges. The clouds certainly don't need AA and if you AA them you're just wasting bandwidth and fillrate. A LOT of bandwidth at that which is why Supersampling AA is so slow."To get rid of the shimmering folks have to run the settings in "performance mode" which turns off the cards trilinear filtering! >Sorry; but that doesn't sound right. Shimmering and>performance mode are two completely different things. There's>no cause and effect. I control any shimmer by raising the AA>slider and/or reduce the mipmap slider. >>That is Funny. :-lol "It's funny because you were wrong? If you had any clue how 3D graphics work, you would know that there's no way how using Performace AF mode could get rid of "shimmering" alpha textures.As others have pointed out, that is NOT correct. You do NOT have to use Performance mode to get rid of shimmering. The only reason one would want to set it to performance mode, is to get better performance. It has NO effect on the shimmering. How would running bilinear instead of trilinear remove the shimmering anyway?Lowering the Mipmap detail slider within FS2004 (at the default 8, the LOD-bias is so low that all the mipmap "bands" are moved way out towards the horizon on any card), is the key to reducing shimmering and it has no effect on texture sharpness of terrain or non-alpha textures. Compared to Geforce cards that I have used and briefly tried (GF3 Ti500, Ti200, GF4 Ti4200), the Radeon 9700 produces far clearer visuals at 16x AF and 8X AF, and the card is fast enough to use those modes in FS2004."Well sorry, but I would prefer to know about it, that way I can make an educated choice as to what I am buying."Well it seems your idea of an educated choice is misinformation. The only advantage the Geforce has in this case, is that it has the option to use Supersampling AA (4xS, 6xS), which eliminates the shimmering of autogen tree textures. The performance hit is however twice as big as with MSAA.http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv35/index.php?p=17(21% hit with 4x MSAA, 38% performance hit with 4xS AA at 1024x768)Radeon cards technically support Supersampling, but ATI has chosen not to expose it in the drivers, for good reasons - Supersampling belongs to the Geforce2/Voodoo5 era."Some like to run 8xAF with these cards though visually>stunning to the whole scene in the FS world, to the>performance of the card 8xAF absolutely kills it, even 4xAF>practically cuts the fill rate in half.""That is just a big lie. 4x AF certainly does not cut the fillrate in half. It takes a big performance hit on Geforce3/4 cards but both the GeforceFX and Radeon 9x00 series handle AF very well with only a small performance hit. You can use up to 16X AF on the Radeons and 8X AF on GeforceFX (Geforce FX does not support 16X AF) and the performance hit will almost always be too small to even notice.

[Guest PaulL01]

Dear Jimmy,I do not have time to respond to you, you have confused some statments that I made about GF4 cards and have misapplied them, as well have no grasp as to what I know or do not know and are quite wrong on many things here, but that I do not intend to change.:-lol

[JimmiG 244]

:-lol I'm not wrong about anything :-lol I merely corrected your completely false and misinforming statements. I suggest you check out some 3D hardware sites and read a few articles, check a few benchmarks etc. Also, please TRY a Radeon card before you say anything about performance or image quality;)

[Cruachan 705]

Hey guys, don't stop now, I'm starting to enjoy this..LOLMike

[Guest Max Cowgill]

This thread got so out of hand... Let's all just shake hands and down a beer or two :)-Max Cowgill

[Guest SoarPics]

You're nothing if not consistent. You always revert to name calling any time some one calls you on the carpet for your "expert" opinions. "arrived talking about how it is not just a passing fancy smart guy."It is a passing fancy for you. You claim to know how the world is supposed to look, yet you've done little to benchmark the world other than downloading some aerial pics (which you clearly know little or nothing concerning the tech specs of how they were made). And by failing to offer the specs of your own equipment used to make your "snap shots", we can only assume one of two things... you don't know what you're using, or you do and know it's inferior.And yes, I'm a "smart guy". At least I'm smart enough to know not to make definitive claims about how the world should look in our sim. You, on the other hand, fail to realize one very important fact: The view above the world and video card design share the common traits that they are both dynamic, and that nothing is perfect.So you claim to know alot about video card design. That knowledge is useless until you learn more about the scenes those cards render.

[Cruachan 705]

Ah, words of reason and sanity at last!Mike :-wave

[Guest]

does anyone know anything about how to fix that stuttering problem with ati cards?

[Guest Bigshot]

What stuttering problem is that? I never did have that. Heard about it though. Easy things to try if you have stutters.1)turn fastwrites off in your smartgart tab2)switch to 4xAGP in same tab3)make sure you're running at 64 in that other AGP thing4)try performance anisio5)have a couple beersYou shouldn't be having any stutter problems with ATI anymore. If the above fails, give www.rage3d.com forums a good read.

[Guest PaulL01]

>You're nothing if not consistent. You always revert to name>calling any time some one calls you on the carpet for your>"expert" opinions.Not at all, I just call a Dick a Dick that is all and clearly trying to call me a lier well yer a Dick what can I say.> "arrived talking about how it is not just a passing fancy>smart guy.">It is a passing fancy for you. You claim to know how the>world is supposed to look, yet you've done little to benchmark>the world other than downloading some aerial pics (which you>clearly know little or nothing concerning the tech specs of>how they were made). Really? You can download aerial pics of over 800mb in size from where? (Negative to positive/wet drum scan/split and burned) No silly you either contract to have it done or use previously shot stock.I have had to do both.>And by failing to offer the specs of>your own equipment used to make your "snap shots", we can only>assume one of two things... you don't know what you're using,You cant even read my post correctly can you? Go back and read and then come back and correct me if you must, Why must I know the equipment? I never have asked what was being used, why Should I, the company involved is fully professional uses state of the art equipment (this is Rochester NY -Home of RIT, Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb) And are one of the largest and fastest growing companies of its type in the world, I think I was more interested in the time of day and year, angle of sun angle of shot, Ortho correction lack of clouds etc., asking "what type of equipment are we going to shoot with today Hans" would seem a little strange as does your on the spot questioning of my integrity. Dick.>>or you do and know it's inferior.These are resampled way, way down, Look "inferior"?http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/ecto2.jpghttp://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/ecto6.jpg>And yes, I'm a "smart guy". At least I'm smart enough to know>not to make definitive claims about how the world should look>in our sim. You, on the other hand, fail to realize one very>important fact: The view above the world and video card>design share the common traits that they are both dynamic, and>that nothing is perfect.Oh! My

[Guest PaulL01]

>:-lol I'm not wrong about anything :-lol I merely corrected>your completely false and misinforming statements. I suggest>you check out some 3D hardware sites and read a few articles,>check a few benchmarks etc. Also, please TRY a Radeon card>before you say anything about performance or image qualityJimmy,Should I post a link to the thread where you called me a liar and said that NV cards do not AA alpha textures just like ATI then posted you screenies showing that they do?If YOU knew anything on the subject you would never have said that, you still know nothing on the subject so shut yer pie hole!(said with much love and effection) :)Or how about the one where you say just as you did above that NV cards only do this in supersampling mode? when in fact they do it in all AA modes. Duh!I have posted exactly what the cards are doing, Nothing more and nothing less.The point has been lost here and has been a complete waist of time. thanks guys!

[Noel 4,500]

Mine is peachy keen in all games :(). I run FS2002-2004 at 16xAF, 4xAA, 1600 x 1200 x 32. I DO have some issues with FS2004's handling of the ocean color, odd reflections off of low mountain fog under certain lighting. But it's all quite clean and very detailed. Smooth city!Noel

[Guest SoarPics]

I always like it when a guy like you comes back for more.I'll explain this so that your limited brain can understand. If you continue to have difficulty understanding, have someone of greater intellect explain it to you (that would be almost anybody).You are working off photo images that have been created and manipulated (both in camera and lab) per the preception of the photographer. That's the way life is in the photo biz. Yet you know nothing about what you're looking at. You pride yourself in being the all-knowing expert, yet you are ignorant of half the equation... the science and art of photography.There's a reason why it's called "photo-realistic" scenery. Because it's only realistic to the photo. Not to real life. Which means that perception is left to the individual... just like a flight sim on our computers. Yet, you wasted no time coming into this thread telling folks why one video card is inferior for our use, while most of the folks who own that card are quite happy with the image quality. Figure it out, Expert, when someone is happy with what they've purchased you can only hope to make a fool of yourself by telling them it's inferior.Since you seem to have an answer for everything, explain why one would even want to AA clouds? Seems to me that ATI may have been thinking ahead on this one. But, hey, you know more than anybody... so I'll defer to you. We'll take your maturing one question at a time, so don't go away.And while you're pondering your next smart alleck reply, ponder the definition of an "expert"... an ex is a has been, and a spert is a drip under pressure. Yep, seems to fit you to the tee.