Anti-Aliasing, Minimizing, and Resolution

[Zakatak]

Some things I noticed, and I was just wondering if these problems were curable. Not sure if it is a glitch, intentional, or if it has something to do with the engine.

 

1) In fullscreen mode, resolution doesn't (seem) to change game performance at all. I get the same framerate in 1024x768 as I do at 1366x768.

 

2) In minimized mode however, differences in resolution DO affect game performance (lower res/higher framerate)

 

3) In full screen mode, anti-aliasing (both ingame options and graphic card options) works fine. The latter option getting much better framerates but looking slightly blurrier.

 

4) In minimized mode, anti-aliasing using either method does not work at all. Jaggies remain there, regardless of settings.

 

What I am looking for is to enable AA in minimized mode, so I can play in 1024x768 without sacrificing AA.

[EtherealN]

Just to help you out in future communication: there's no such thing as "minimized mode". You are talking about "windowed" mode. ;) ("Minimized" is when the game window isn't on-screen at all, just sitting in the program dock.)

 

Regarding resolution and performance, I am not sure it even should affect performance in fullscreen - depending on your machine, setup, and so on. In windowed mode there is however a much greater workload because the GPU and CPU both will have to keep working on both the game and the windows shell itself. This might also be the cause of the AA stuff you noticed in windowed mode - when playing in a window, the game does not have direct power over the display. I don't recall ever seeing AA being rendered unusable, though, I'll try it out an extra time to make sure.

 

The reason for the blurrier look when AA-ing through driver is most likely caused by the driver not having proper information about the game. When the game itself governs AA use it can apply it where it's actually needed, whereas forced AA is liable to cause AAing the entire scene - causing smoothing even where it isn't needed, leading to a blurrier image.

 

I'll try out the full/window comparison and get back to you.

[EtherealN]

See the below. The compression might make it a little harder to see, but the difference between AA and no AA is still very visible.

 

 

What is your hardware and drivers, and what specific settings is it you are trying to use?

[Zakatak]

Default Medium settings, but with Water on Low.

ATI 5650 card, set to 2x AA, 8x AF, and the AA mode is "Super Sampling" whatever that means.

[EtherealN]

Super Sampling is something I most definitely recommend you NOT use. As you know AA removes the jaggies - this is essentially through comparing various points in pixel space. MultiSample Anti Aliasing (MSAA) does this through "sampling" several points and assigning the pixel an average. Supersampling does it through rendering a larger image and then shrinking it (which would average things out). So with 2x SuperSampling, at 1024x768 resolution, your are actually rendering at 2048x1536! As you might expect, this gives a severe performance hit compared to what you could have. I'd recommend 8x MSAA through in-game setting instead of SuperSampling.

 

Also, try fully neutraling the settings in driver (delete the profile for DCS) and run a few tests with the settings as such. It might be that you are seeing some conflicts between Windows, Driver, and the application. It might for example be possible that the driver simply isn't allowed by Windows to do SS while in windowed mode, since in windows mode the OS is still lord over the screen. I'm not 100% sure on that, but it might explain the behaviour you are observing.