69 replies to this topic

[Noah Fentz]

With Rawd, Sabbat Moon, and rascal, we've recently discovered a simple NVIDIA profile adjustment that greatly improves the appearance of VP tables.

Right click your Desktop and open the NVIDIA Control Panel (it may be located in your Windows Control Panel, if you can't find it there.)

Select Manage 3D settings, and you'll see this ...



Find 'Anisotropic Filtering' and select it.



The default is Application-controlled.

Change this to the highest possible setting, then click 'Apply' in the lower right.



Run a VP table and see the difference!




NOTE: This can be done globally or as part of a profile specifically for Visual Pinball. That choice is yours.

[Sabbat]

[The Trout]

This applies to ATI cards as well. Discovered it a couple months ago. Set your Anisotropic Filtering to 16x and 4:3 tables will look considerably sharper and clearer.

[Noah Fentz]

This applies to ATI cards as well. Discovered it a couple months ago. Set your Anisotropic Filtering to 16x and 4:3 tables will look considerably sharper and clearer.

AWESOME! Thanks for letting us know!

[RealApprentice]

tried it here but not having same results on a Geforce 8500 GT, see no improvement. But not sure if i have same version of table as you used, iy looks a bit different

[Noah Fentz]

Be sure to close and restart VP between changes.

[Sabbat]

tried it here but not having same results on a Geforce 8500 GT, see no improvement. But not sure if i have same version of table as you used, iy looks a bit different

No, its not the same version. Noah is making a new Breakshot.

[TheMcD]

I can confirm the whole ATI thing. Apparenly something screwed with my settings in there and put everything to minimum, making tables look absolutely sub-par, but I had an FPS increase, at least a bit. So if somebody doesn't mind terrible graphics and is hurting for some FPS, he can try setting everything way down.

The McD

[Rawd]

Yes... This makes a HUGE difference in quality for the Dektop (4:3) tables. I can actually read most aprons now!

I just experimented with FS tables, and although you can see a very slight difference, it is not much of an improvement. Load up both images and swap back and forth, and you can see some minor details that are a bit different...

DR. Who: Anisotropic filtering OFF:




Dr. Who: Anisotropic filtering ON 16X:





So, this filtering option must have something to do with when VP takes a flat playfield or texture, and changes the angle perspective.

It would be cool if this could be forced ON with the software, rather than having to change your Video card defaults.

[rob046]

yeah I thought everybody knew about this by now. AF for me is a MUST on any game I play. Of course AF didn't work on earlier versions of VP9, but it works now. I remember talking about it a few months back as well, there was a thread talking about how much AF helped in VP9.
Btw, mipmap is probably maxed out on everybodys cards, but its an important setting to double check.

& for some, AA might help as well. I'm waiting anxiously for the day when AA is implemented into VP, but for now we can force it on with some success.
I can play a number of tables at 4xAA regular multisample & they look great. Some get glitchy, so I just use it when I can. & for me it must be multisample mode, else glitch city. Also going higher than 4x causes problems.
Thus I have a couple quick GPU profiles I can enter. One with AF & AA, one with just 16x AF. Also have one setup VERY nicely for FP. Where that also has 16xAF forced on (you must force it on for it to work), cept application (FP) is allowed to choose antialias amount, which is good cuz FP does its own antialias much better than it being forced on. I can also use supersample with FP & it looks great, amazingly smooth stuff.

I was actually just thinking about AF & about how maybe not enough people know about this nice little feature, for VP or FP for that matter, so I'm glad you brought it to light for those who aren't away. I again highly recommend making a couple different easy access profiles. I can literally change my profiles in 1 second using the tray tool, so its not a big deal.
& I'm using a 5870 ATI card, btw, not Nvidia. But AF & AA offer the same effect no matter what card you have.

One thing I haven't taken the time to test yet is the performance hit caused by having 16xAF enabled. Anybody check this out? I feel like for me at least it shouldn't hurt much, 1gb of DDR5 video RAM.

[Mudfinger]

HUGE DIFFERENCE with my Nvidia 9800GT !

Thanks so much for the tip Guys!

[Noah Fentz]

I don't notice any performance hit at all with it set at 16x. (I've used it on a 9500GS and now an 8800 GTX OC.)

When UR and I release Breakshot, without this adjustment, it would look like this for many ...



(You'll notice the reel is clear, and the rest is blurry.)

Couldn't have that now, could we?

[Bob5453]

Very nice! Thanks for the screenshot of the settings!

[rob046]

I don't notice any performance hit at all with it set at 16x. (I've used it on a 9500GS and now an 8800 GTX OC.)

When UR and I release Breakshot, without this adjustment, it would look like this for many ...



(You'll notice the reel is clear, and the rest is blurry.)

Couldn't have that now, could we?

Noah, AF also sharpens more than plastics. I could show you a few example of how AF can really crispen up especially the upper portion of a PF. On a nice 2048x PF image you may not notice much, but if you take a VP8 table with a so/so 1024x PF texture, start it up in VP9, you'll notice some pretty major sharpening.

I was playing around with this a ton a couple months back. Damn what was the table that really showed off AF?
I wanna say it was VP8 Mystery Castle, cuz it has that layered brick look, which is right up anisotropic filterings' alley! In fact, I should have brought this up in my Amazon Hunt release thread cuz I thought AF helped quite a bit on that table, mainly on the plastics for which I was still using my old 1024x texture that I sharpened up a tad in photoshop, but AF helped as well.
But even on nice tables with high rez textures made for VP9, AF doesn't seem to hurt anything. Which is why I'm wondering if there is no harm in just leaving it on, performance wise.
I recall comparing AF vs no AF on UW's Monster Bash, could hardly notice any difference. But its a case where his textures were so high rez that AF can't possibly make them much better. Again, this is why you'll see more of a difference on VP8 tables played in VP9, or of course converted VP9 tables.

Yup, AF & AA, one nice thing about VP9.
As I said, if we can only get proper AA implemented in say VP10, we are in damn good shape visually! & techincally VP would be taking advantage of the same modern tech that all other modern games do. But for now its lack of proper AA support is keeping it a bit dated.

Noah you are making Breakshot?
I just played a bunch of games on a mint condition one this past weekend. I had a good time on it, in fact I was starting to find it too easy, but was still fun, just a nice change of pace to play a single level modern pin. If you want playtesting or anything while this game is very fresh in my mind, let me know. There are definitely a couple unique things about Capcom pins like this one. For example, the pop bumpers are strong enough to kill somebody! Strongest bumpers I've ever seen, I dare to say.

[Rawd]

Merry Crispness everyone!

[pizz]

I tested this with funhouse FS and got same results as Rawd. Doesnt seem to help much for FS tables.

[Rawd]

I tested this with funhouse FS and got same results as Rawd. Doesnt seem to help much for FS tables.

Which is fine though, because both ways look good in FS. Nice and crispy!

[rob046]

I tested this with funhouse FS and got same results as Rawd. Doesnt seem to help much for FS tables.

& it wouldn't. It might help if I posted you guys a link on what exactly AF does...

AF's main job is to sharpen/crispen textures as they get further off into the distance (which is why its a popular 3D game setting). Yeah, AF does its best work when working with angled textures. On the wiki link below there is an AWESOME example of what AF does in the upper right corner...
http://en.wikipedia....ropic_filtering

Thus, it only makes sense that AF works better on 4:3 tables, espcially towards the back of the tables. Now 4:3 users can get some of the crispness that FS users enjoy, if they just force a little AF on. Btw, I fully recommend going AF 16x, most gpu's have enough memory that they can handle 16x no problem. & btw I actually have seen in my tests a slight improvement in both VP & FP when AF is set to 16x as opposed to something lower.
But if you are having some slowdown problems & dont have a high end gpu, MAYBE lower AF to 8x or 4x or disabling it will cure your ills.

[Noah Fentz]

This is primarily for Desktop tables, but even for FS, a little improvement is a bonus.

[TuNk77]

Thanks for the tip I just tried it with a computer that has a ATi 9800 PRO card, but it did not make a difference. But I will try it on another computer that has a nvidia card, might be a difference then...