My title says is all. Which setting is the best to use....Anistropic or Trilinear in FSX? You can see my system in my signature, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with it. I use Nick's NHancer workaround and my AA seems fantastic. I have no problems with clarity of images. My FPS are generally quite high (25+ - 50+). I use the NVidia 258.96 drivers without a problem. Nearly all my sliders are to the right (THANK YOU...JETLINE SYSTEMS for the computer).I've been keeping the setting on Trilinear...but I have no rationale as to why! What's your advice on this setting.Stan

Depends on your likes and dislikes, to explain:Anisotropic filtering affects whether a moire pattern (which is that weird interference pattern you get, often on brickwork in FS scenery) will appear when the texture is viewed from an oblique angle other than straight on, so if that annoys you, you want anisotropic filtering on. It works by reducing the detail available from directions other than the one your current viewpoint is at, so that the rendering of detail available at other angles does not clash with the detail on your current viewing angle.Trilinear filtering, is a souped up version of bilinear filtering (as the names suggest), both of them effectively take the pixels of a texture, study them them, and interpolate the differences in neighbouring pixel colours, in order to create 'in between pseudo pixels', which creates a blending effect that makes stuff appear smoother with better colour gradients. On mip-mapped textures (i.e ones with pre-rendered smaller vesions of the main full sized texture built into the image file), it can do a good job of that, since much of the processing work is effectively already done, but on non mip-mapped images, it might be working your graphics card quite hard, but the upshot of trilinear filtering is, it can make textures look like they are a slightly higher resolution than they actually are.All such effects can make for some very nice graphics, but all these graphic whistles and bells are part of your computer's workload, so it's often worth considering how you like to view things and make a choice based on that...Here are two scenarios which might assist you in picking which you'd prefer: If you wanted to watch your aircraft disappear into the distance from the tower view, it would be worth having trilinear filtering on, since it would make the thing look nice as it got smaller and smaller, but if all you ever do is check it out from a fixed distance 200 foot away on an external view, you might not need it so much, although keep in mind that the effect will also play on scenery too. Conversely, if you wanted to make a fraps video of your view rotating around your plane, then Anisotropic filtering would improve matters, since it helps with different viewing angles on the fly, but it would also almost certainly affect your frame rates, as that's quite a processor intensive task with the GPU having to constantly recalculate what to filter out as the view shifts.Hope that helps.Al

I like anisotropic as I feel it looks a bit better and I really dont notice any hit in performance. What I never really understood is that Nick says to set Anisotropic in the driver but Triliniar in FSX. I always felt that having it set that way would only increase the filtering work load as it is the card that actually does the work. I feel having two different filtering settings would slow things down. I have mine set to Anisotropic in fsx and nhancer (using older drivers).

You want anisotropic filtering on in FSX (or in any game really) - any video card from the last 3 or 4 years can do 16X AF with little to no performance hit, especially in a CPU limited app like FSX:Here's what trilinear vs. 16X AF looks like in FSX:Trilinear:16X AF:The difference should be immediately clear. AF provides much much better clarity in the texture filtering as things recede at increasing shallow angles to your observing point.

I like anisotropic as I feel it looks a bit better and I really dont notice any hit in performance. What I never really understood is that Nick says to set Anisotropic in the driver but Triliniar in FSX. I always felt that having it set that way would only increase the filtering work load as it is the card that actually does the work. I feel having two different filtering settings would slow things down. I have mine set to Anisotropic in fsx and nhancer (using older drivers).

It doesn't even matter what's set in FS - if you're forcing AF in the driver, that takes precedence. Try it, it should look exactly the same regardless of what you have set there. I have it set to anisotropic in the sim option as well though, but I really don't think it matters - the card can't do both trilinear and aniso at the same time or anything like that.

I appreciate this info. I wasn't entirely clear on this subject myself.

Depends on your likes and dislikes, to explain:Anisotropic filtering affects whether a moire pattern (which is that weird interference pattern you get, often on brickwork in FS scenery) will appear when the texture is viewed from an oblique angle other than straight on, so if that annoys you, you want anisotropic filtering on. It works by reducing the detail available from directions other than the one your current viewpoint is at, so that the rendering of detail available at other angles does not clash with the detail on your current viewing angle.Trilinear filtering, is a souped up version of bilinear filtering (as the names suggest), both of them effectively take the pixels of a texture, study them them, and interpolate the differences in neighbouring pixel colours, in order to create 'in between pseudo pixels', which creates a blending effect that makes stuff appear smoother with better colour gradients. On mip-mapped textures (i.e ones with pre-rendered smaller vesions of the main full sized texture built into the image file), it can do a good job of that, since much of the processing work is effectively already done, but on non mip-mapped images, it might be working your graphics card quite hard, but the upshot of trilinear filtering is, it can make textures look like they are a slightly higher resolution than they actually are.All such effects can make for some very nice graphics, but all these graphic whistles and bells are part of your computer's workload, so it's often worth considering how you like to view things and make a choice based on that...Here are two scenarios which might assist you in picking which you'd prefer: If you wanted to watch your aircraft disappear into the distance from the tower view, it would be worth having trilinear filtering on, since it would make the thing look nice as it got smaller and smaller, but if all you ever do is check it out from a fixed distance 200 foot away on an external view, you might not need it so much, although keep in mind that the effect will also play on scenery too. Conversely, if you wanted to make a fraps video of your view rotating around your plane, then Anisotropic filtering would improve matters, since it helps with different viewing angles on the fly, but it would also almost certainly affect your frame rates, as that's quite a processor intensive task with the GPU having to constantly recalculate what to filter out as the view shifts.Hope that helps.Al

Thank you so much for the thorough information. For the first time, I think I understand the workings of these types of "filtering" choices. I really appreciate it.Stan

Didn't try with the latest drivers yet, but in the past, whenever I set anisotropic filtering in FSX to "off" and tried to do that in the driver, I got no AF at all. Since last weekend, I use Nvidia Inspector 1.93 for my GTS 250 and the latest NVidia drivers.Do I need to leave the AF setting in FSX at e.g. trilinear and "add" higher AF levels with the driver?

My title says is all. Which setting is the best to use....Anistropic or Trilinear in FSX? You can see my system in my signature, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with it. I use Nick's NHancer workaround and my AA seems fantastic. I have no problems with clarity of images. My FPS are generally quite high (25+ - 50+). I use the NVidia 258.96 drivers without a problem. Nearly all my sliders are to the right (THANK YOU...JETLINE SYSTEMS for the computer).I've been keeping the setting on Trilinear...but I have no rationale as to why! What's your advice on this setting.Stan

Most people who complain about blurries are using bi-trilinear filtering. AF provides crisp textures to the horizon. I don't know about your experience with NVidia but with a ATI card that can handle it, the result is pretty stunning.

Nicks guide says to use Trilinear in the FSX menu and set Anistrophic in the drivers. Not sure why though...

Nicks guide says to use Trilinear in the FSX menu and set Anistrophic in the drivers. Not sure why though...

I have never really understood this as well. If the filtering is forced at the card and you turn it off in FSX you get no filtering at all so selecting it in FSX does do something. My thinking do to that is if I am forcing Anis thru the driver that it is best to set the same in fsx. Too bad Nick's not on this forum anymore to be able to set us straight.

I have never really understood this as well. If the filtering is forced at the card and you turn it off in FSX you get no filtering at all so selecting it in FSX does do something. My thinking do to that is if I am forcing Anis thru the driver that it is best to set the same in fsx. Too bad Nick's not on this forum anymore to be able to set us straight.

I am using a GTX285. I get good graphics whether Trilinear or Anistrophic. The only thing that BUGS me, is the deterioration of the graphics after a certain amount of time. All I have to do is move the graphics slider back a notch or forward a notch. That would give it a new LIFE and better graphics and that would last for a while, before I have to repeat the process. I guess the REFRESHING of the screen is mandatory to keep the view sharp. Any other tricks somebody uses? Thanks.

I have never really understood this as well. If the filtering is forced at the card and you turn it off in FSX you get no filtering at all so selecting it in FSX does do something. My thinking do to that is if I am forcing Anis thru the driver that it is best to set the same in fsx. Too bad Nick's not on this forum anymore to be able to set us straight.

I just tried this again - it looks exactly the same for me no matter what the filtering setting in FSX is at. What did change is when it's set to None in FSX, transparency AA stops working, which is strange for sure. The AF was definitely still there though.

I just tried this again - it looks exactly the same for me no matter what the filtering setting in FSX is at.

Same here - identical. FSX trilinear or Aniso, the Nvidia settings of 16X AF take precedence.

I just tried this again - it looks exactly the same for me no matter what the filtering setting in FSX is at.

I just changed my settings to Aniso in FSX (from Trilinear) and the graphics look better and I am getting better frame rates as well!! A win-win situation for sure. To see the difference I had to quit and then restart FSX.I am using older NVIDIA drivers and NHancer set to Nick's settings.Regards, Mike Mann

You are probably getting better performance because any tweaks done like 4096 texture load and radius changes are all back to default