Why are people complaining about anti aliasing?

[jsonedecker]

AA will be supported once video cards will support AA with Deferred Lighting.  This day has not come yet, and once it will, GRAW will have AA.  I do admit that Grin should have done a PS2.0 path with static lighting and with AA support but then you had people complaining about bad visuals. 

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But what does that techy sounding Deferred Lighting get you in tangable visuals today? Honestly, I do not see anything in there that cannot be accomplished with other more traditional techniques that are used everyday.... yes, even dynamic lighting. INMHO, if you choose to make a game that has tech and visual "legs" for a long future then it better offer up something more than something else sitting right next to it. Again, IMHO, this game doesn't look any better than HL2, LD or COD2.

That's not a cut at all as those are nice looking games and run very well on most machines today, but the key point there is they still run nicely on the MAJORITY of the machines people use to play them. IF you are going to make a game that taxes HW great, just make sure it gives you something in exchange.

Maybe if you pop in some as yet designed HW in a year it will accomplish that, who knows.

Using tech for the sake of just "using tech" usually is not a good way to go, except for academia maybe.

BTW: Yes, I fully understand what DL is and how it works.

[Collector*AFZ*]

Be careful J, you'll be the next one the wolves come after...lol!!

Collector*AFZ*

[jsonedecker]

The thing is though, I played all the big graphics card killers over the past 2 years with my current setup, FarCry, Doom3, HL2, BF2, Quake4, FEAR at a minimum of 1024x768 they all look and play great.  GRAW really doesn't look much better, if at all, then any of those.  I think that's why many of us are kind of scratching are heads.

Don't get me wrong, at nice settings it does look good and I do like the game play, just very surprised at how it brings computers to their knees with no real visual indication of "why?"

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I think that sums it all up in a nutshell.

[Hacksaww]

Off topic, sorry:

I just figured out what IMO or IMHO means. I'm becoming more of a geek everyday :( .

[jsonedecker]

Oh, I wouldn't diss LD in terms of graphics, that's the only thing that was relatively nice in it (the demo at least).  Made for indoor environments for sure though.

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Not necessarily... more designed(gameplay) for indoor environments I would say.

-John

[jsonedecker]

Be careful J, you'll be the next one the wolves come after...lol!!

Collector*AFZ*

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HAHA......... Well, while I have a certain connection to these games I am also a fan of playing them. Since I didn't do one bit of work or even have any private knowledge of GR:AW PC I was looking forward to it as much as everyone else here and am trying to help understand what is going on.

I like playing these games as much as I like making them.

-John

[jsonedecker]

I love how we can call the egine crap, like we know how to make one, or view theirs in detail =)

By the way, I also love how we call it crap, rather than "not the best".

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It most definately isn't crap.

[BornToKill]

GRAW on the other hand, struggles to play at 800x600 with everything set to low or off. It doesn't look very good at these settings either, but I'd expect it would at least play pretty nice. Granted, its a different game with different things going on. I think it's more cpu intensive then graphics card intensive actually and the levels seem bigger.

Hmmmm my question is why. or what else do you have running.

I have a low spec card (for this game) and it runs very smooth at 800*600 and is very playable at 1024.

I only have a 9700pro 128mb card, 1gb ram p4 2.8 and i'm not seeing it fall to its knees.

Sounds to me more like the newer cards need newer drivers.

[Moezter]

I have a pretty nice rig but my 23" hdtv will only support lower resolutions

[Night-Hawk]

Your agrument is pointless. GR:AW has a lot of aliasing. I myself am playing at 1600x1200 and I swear it looks like 1024x768. Some games are like that, look at Quake 4 or Doom 3, you can play these games at 1280x960 and there isn't a lot of aliasing. Full Spectrum Warrior 1 and 2 are just like GRAW. Just look at how much aliasing there is in these games, even at high res. My guess is it has something to do with LOD. GR:AW reduces poly count too much at a too near distance of the player's point of view resulting in jaggies everywhere.

Edited April 30, 2006 by Night-Hawk

[Moezter]

first of all:

ITS A DEMO

2nd. I believe GRIN will fix the issues with the jaggies

[Cpl Ledanek]

Jeezz, some ppl have SLI 7900 512 GTX XXX and can't get pass the plaza.

Some ppl have A SINGLE 6600 128RAM GS AGP NO AA, no sound from gun, but have AWESOME ambient sound and actually finish the DEMO on the same day it was released.

Some hate RB6LD coz of the dumb AI and weak ending.

Some lote RB6LD coz of the potential to mod the hell out this old and tried engine.

AA available or not, not everyone will be happy.

At the end of UBI's day, its who bought the game counts.

If you ppl who brags this and that don't do nothing but take webspace, please do it somewhere else.

THIS IS GR.NET where GR1 gamers get together to ENJOY THE GAME. Post ideas, solutions, share websites that help one another.

You wanna brag about your specs go to Overclockers or Modder HQ.

You wanna share ideas, share your modding skills, scripting skills, PC skills, or even humor skills---grab a seat.

You want realism, sign the dotted line and take an oath to serve and protect your country.

[CR6]

If you want "anti-aliasing" just turn the resolution up to 1600x1200 or more, if you don't see an option, you can edit the xml and set whatever resolution you would like.

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Dude, that is an ancient and overly simple argument that Nvidia marketing used against 3dfx when 3dfx intro'd FSAA with the Voodoo 5 - i.e. that is raw speed at higher resolutions looks as good as a lower speed card at a lower res with FSAA on.

There is no doubt that AA improves visual quality above and beyond just simple playing at high resolutions.

For example, look at what AA can do to chain link fences. No amount of increased res. can take away the jaggies from that apart from adding some AA algorithm.

See the 3 screenshots here (esp 4x MSAA with Super-Sample Transparency AA)

http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/g70/index.php?p=06

AA is here to stay - otherwise all those high-end cards wouldn't feature it and they wouldn't need to keep adding more video RAM to support it (amongst other things) and their driver teams wouldn't be working so hard to implement several forms of AA.

So either you aren't aware of the true benefits of AA, or you are taking this chance to toot your SLI rig (and nothing wrong with that if you paid for it with your own hard earned cash as long as you aren't looking down on the have nots)

[Papa6]

This is fun...better than paying big $$$ for pay per view boxing....

[agentkay]

Well Agent Kay, to each his own. But when it comes to likes and dislikes, rather than strict matters of fact, you have to look at numbers. Of over 50 long time GR players to whom I have spoken, all agree with NYR_32.

The Lockdown engine, though difficult to work with, has beautiful effects, phenominal detail and is quite forgiving on hardware. I can run it on a 64MB GeForce 4200 Go in my laptop. The particle effects are not top notch but the instant you see lights or any smoke you understand the amount of silent work that went into the game engine. As one review said, the fires look like they came straight out of Half-Life 2. They have incredible game physics as well. And RSE has no current equal for military models by a prominent studio. But as I said, to each his own.

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Don´t get me wrong, I respect your opinion and NYR_32s and all the other guys who share it, but come on LD is a poor game and I have NO doubt that every game review will rate GRAW PC higher than LD. In my opinion it has absolutely nothing going for it. I had to uninstall LD after not even completing the 2nd mission and I usually give every game a chance until I finish them completely. That was indeed a very sad day.

Regarding the fire effects that look like they came straight out of HL2. I had a smile a little, because I remember many people were extremely disappointed with HL2 flames. It´s not expensive on the hardware side though, I gotta give you that. I still don´t understand why LD ran so poor on computer. I was not lying when I said that it ran worse than GRAW on my computer.

[agentkay]

AA will be supported once video cards will support AA with Deferred Lighting.  This day has not come yet, and once it will, GRAW will have AA.  I do admit that Grin should have done a PS2.0 path with static lighting and with AA support but then you had people complaining about bad visuals. 

←

But what does that techy sounding Deferred Lighting get you in tangable visuals today? Honestly, I do not see anything in there that cannot be accomplished with other more traditional techniques that are used everyday.... yes, even dynamic lighting. INMHO, if you choose to make a game that has tech and visual "legs" for a long future then it better offer up something more than something else sitting right next to it. Again, IMHO, this game doesn't look any better than HL2, LD or COD2.

That's not a cut at all as those are nice looking games and run very well on most machines today, but the key point there is they still run nicely on the MAJORITY of the machines people use to play them. IF you are going to make a game that taxes HW great, just make sure it gives you something in exchange.

Maybe if you pop in some as yet designed HW in a year it will accomplish that, who knows.

Using tech for the sake of just "using tech" usually is not a good way to go, except for academia maybe.

BTW: Yes, I fully understand what DL is and how it works.

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I agree that the normally PC gaming devs aim their min. specs to the lowest HW specs with the largest installbase. This is by todays standard still probably DX8 with the ti4-series cards. Yes I´m rude here and ignore Intel interegrated graphics.

What are the benefits by this "tradional" decision?

1. The game is able to play on more computers, so its able to sell better

2. You don´t have to completely re-design the engine and dev tools, but instead use smaller evolution steps.

There are a few more benefits, but I don´t remember them at this moment.

But what are the benefits when you choose to go the other way:

1. You don´t have to worry about developing for other HW paths (DX8 or lower). This lowers dev costs and time.

2. You actually bring PC gaming forward, as you are not bound to the lower HW anymore. It´s kinda like with Vista and I know there are many devs who can´t wait until that one comes, because they won´t have to deal with DX8 and lower specs anymore. Another benefit is that they can spent more time on others things and issues which might to make better games in the end (hopefully).

I personally think you can´t really compare GRAW PC with HL2, COD2, FEAR, LD (which by the way, all have a fair share of problems on the tech/engine side) as the rendering bill is totally different. They use different type of levels and different type of techs. I don´t know what the most expensive part is of Grins engine, I didn´t develop with it but I´m sure Bo could tell us that, if he wanted to.

You are a dev yourself, you know more about this than I ever will and I have no problem when I´m wrong about a few things.

Edited April 30, 2006 by agentkay

[NYR_32]

Don´t get me wrong, I respect your opinion and NYR_32s and all the other guys who share it, but come on LD is a poor game and I have NO doubt that every game review will rate GRAW PC higher than LD.  In my opinion it has absolutely nothing going for it.  I had to uninstall LD after not even completing the 2nd mission and I usually give every game a chance until I finish them completely.  That was indeed a very sad day.

Neither he or I said the gameplay was the next thing since sliced bread. The gameplay may not be that of the older R6 games, and that isn't the topic at hand. We are referring to the engine under the hood and to me that has a lot going for it. If a game engine has issues that prevent the gameplay from shining(in this case Diesel), people aren't going to have as good of an experience as they should. The opposite can be said of LD, the RSE engine may be great, but the game play (that people are expecting) isn't there.

[agentkay]

Don´t get me wrong, I respect your opinion and NYR_32s and all the other guys who share it, but come on LD is a poor game and I have NO doubt that every game review will rate GRAW PC higher than LD.  In my opinion it has absolutely nothing going for it.  I had to uninstall LD after not even completing the 2nd mission and I usually give every game a chance until I finish them completely.  That was indeed a very sad day.

Neither he or I said the gameplay was the next thing since sliced bread. The gameplay may not be that of the older R6 games, and that isn't the topic at hand. We are referring to the engine under the hood and to me that has a lot going for it. If a gamegine engine has issues that prevent the gameplay from shining (which IMO Diesel has), people aren't going to have as good of an experience as they should. The opposite can be said of LD, the engine may be great, but the game play (that people are expecting) isn't there.

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I can understand and respect this point. Can you understand mine when I said what I did because LD ran worse than GRAW on my PC? It was probably my fault and my system. I know how to keep a system clean and fast, but if LD ran faster on the majority of user computers, then it probably was my fault. Still, I wrote my post based on my personal experience regarding visuals and performance between both games. Like I said, if it doesn´t cover with the experience with the majority of user, I´m out of luck, but honestly, I don´t mind it.

I know I had a blast with the GRAW demo (still do, never played a demo for so many hours) and it´s totally the game I imagined and wanted to be. I know I´m a lucky SOB. I seriously wish other guys could enjoy the game as much as I do.

[deleyt]

the engine is crap. GRIN should have used a third-party engine IMHO

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You don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Every engine needs to develop through time. That's just how things work in the real world.

Todays demands are high and I think GRIN did a good job on trying to reach that level, although I have to agree that they are missing out on some parts.

Using a third party engine would bring us to all those Unreal and Quake engines, which are used too much already IMO.

Every game looks the same (engine-wise) and there's little surprise.

I praise GRIN for developing their own engine, as RSE once did.

Back to the question: should they've added AA? Yes, they should've. This surely is a good feature to be included in the full game or a patch, IF it's technically possible that is.

[Colin]

A.A. seems to be a popular word.

You know some thing Before reading Rocky first post in here on AA I did not know exactly what it was.

And do you want to know something else I realy dont give a About the AA. or how it does this or that.

The game looks fine on my machine.

But above all it plays really well.

You moan about this and you moan about that.

I will tell you something you going to be waiting a very very long time for a game that gives you every thing you want.

[sui317]

AA is nice but when you notice it missing i have one question, do you play the game or are you just sightseeing ?

because when i play i can't be bothered with eye candy, i just want to stay alive and need my focus on other things

and one more thing, when you are looking at something in real life, can you focus on the far ends of you FOV , without directing your pupils ?

i would not say it would not be nice to have AA but i don't think it is such a big deal

when playing you have to ask yourself, Do i really see this or need this ?

this game looks great and for all that is given us in this demo, you can tweak quite a lot be happy with what is given and if complaining do it on things that are actually worth complaining about, because the AA thing is known for some time now and not of any value in game play

i play at 25 fps, and that might not be much, but hell my eyes don't go above 24 frames i do not notice it in any harmfull way and have a lot of eye candy so what if the power/phone lines above are constructed out of 30 or so bloks, i do not need to focus on that, i need to see and focus on the guy firing at me

i did not say i did not try to get it better, but once it was clear i could not get better straight lines and clean the edges i went on playing accepting it as a part of the game,

it is just eye candy not the game

[LT.INSTG8R]

I will give you a good example of why AA is needed

Tango is wedged between a wall and a flower pot at a distance, with all the aliasing you cannot make him out he shoots you, your dead.

Simplistic example I know but I have seen it and it annoys me alot.

Yes Im spoiled and used to playing everything with 4xAA and with this game I would even be happy with 2xAA SOME AA.

Do I think this game needs some optimizations, sure I do, do I think GRIN to consider this choice of Deferred Lighting and lack of AA that comes with it and the HUGE performance hit it has on the average machine, Of course I do.

They aren't winning any customers in the long run, and alienating the Mid Range Gamer that will just choose something else rather than fight with low fps and lack of eye candy that they can get with other titles.

I think this game is FANTASTIC dont get me wrong but I really think it needs to be scaled down to include the the majority that arent running $500 GFX cards at insane resolutions.

The only guys that are actually kinda making out okay with this are the ones who have cards that cant do HDR but still have the power to play(My Missus's 9800XT for example)which can play it but cant do HDR but then of course gets no AA in the tradeoff either

P43.2E @ 3.6(225FSB)Zalman 7000B-Cu

Abit IC-7

2x1024 Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8(1:1)

X800XT/Arctic Silencer 4

Samsung Spinpoint 120G SATA

SB Audigy 2 ZS

Tagan 420W

LG 1930BQ TFT 19" 12ms

Logitech G5

Saitek X-52

Logitech Driving Force Pro

3DMark05 6174

3DMark03 12917

3Dmark06 2162

[Peoples-Agent]

I will play this game online, because its damn good fun.

But I won't even bother entertaining the Single Player aspect until

they give an option for AA.

The year is 2006, and to release a title now without AA even as an

option is a complete joke.

It feels like PC users have been screwed over big time.

Because its a beasty resource hog, I have to run the game at 1280 by 1024 ....the jaggies look disgusting, trying to aim at anything the in the distance when every straight line looks like its been super glued together is plainly wrong.

As a lover of tactical shooters and Ghost Recon, I feel badly let down.

[Hatchetforce]

Well Agent Kay, to each his own. But when it comes to likes and dislikes, rather than strict matters of fact, you have to look at numbers. Of over 50 long time GR players to whom I have spoken, all agree with NYR_32.

The Lockdown engine, though difficult to work with, has beautiful effects, phenominal detail and is quite forgiving on hardware. I can run it on a 64MB GeForce 4200 Go in my laptop. The particle effects are not top notch but the instant you see lights or any smoke you understand the amount of silent work that went into the game engine. As one review said, the fires look like they came straight out of Half-Life 2. They have incredible game physics as well. And RSE has no current equal for military models by a prominent studio. But as I said, to each his own.

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Don´t get me wrong, I respect your opinion and NYR_32s and all the other guys who share it, but come on LD is a poor game and I have NO doubt that every game review will rate GRAW PC higher than LD. In my opinion it has absolutely nothing going for it. I had to uninstall LD after not even completing the 2nd mission and I usually give every game a chance until I finish them completely. That was indeed a very sad day.

Regarding the fire effects that look like they came straight out of HL2. I had a smile a little, because I remember many people were extremely disappointed with HL2 flames. It´s not expensive on the hardware side though, I gotta give you that. I still don´t understand why LD ran so poor on computer. I was not lying when I said that it ran worse than GRAW on my computer.

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Once again you are flying solo. If you look at the reviews and previews for LD you will see the one area where it has as a strong point is in parts of the graphical department. Particle effects suffer but your comments about flames puts you in the minority.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/403/403369p3.html

You really have to see the flame effects in Half-Life 2 for yourselves, as they're some of the most realistic flames I've ever seen in a game.

And that remark is typical. The dynamic lighting in LD stands as quite an achievement. Period. If you think that NYR_32 and myself are the only Staff with this opinion you are wrong. And among the people I am discussing that is a lot of years in gaming in general and GR in particular.

No one was referring to gameplay. And let's not discuss realism as it will only create similar issues which you have seen in the past.

I have found that it always helps to prove your point if you jump up and down and yell and employ the word 'crap' in your posts. I am referring to your earlier remarks.

This demo is not the final version. But the final version is gold and it went gold before any of this feedback was received by the Dev Team. When these issues started being posted, one of the Dev Team referred to such posters as 'whiners'. That alone makes a huge statement about the way the Dev Team views such persons and their legitimate issues. Some of the posts are stictly personal likes and dislikes. Far too many are not. You will always have people that cannot be pleased. But quite frankly the entire community across a multitude of websites are up in arms. And calling money spending gamers whiners does little to enhance your reputations capital.

Does it matter? You bet. When I go to a console forum and visit a part of the forum called PC Lounge and people are not downloading a FREE Demo because of bad buzz, then there is a serious issue that demonstrates the importance of a different type of PR. Once the bad buzz gets too heavy, nothing will allow a title to recover. Believing that it is just a demo is playing the ostrich and putting your head in the sand. If people will not download a FREE demo, do you really expect them to cough up money in a store?

The absolute worst thing that can be done is stonewalling. This is the Sony approach and it never works. GRIN is on vacation but several members have visited this site anyway. Making a formal announcement that the demo is beta and that the Team backs the title and will address any and all concerns once people game the final build would go some distance. But that also entails admitting there may be a few issues. And that is something that some Dev Teams are loathe to do because it means admitting they may not have gotten matters perfect.

John Carmack stated that when developing new tech, you have to draw a line and decide not to support older systems in order to bring to the table everything you can for the future. Scalability can hurt some engines. He also cautioned against drawing the line too close to the front and excluding a majority of gamers. If you expect more than 50% of your target audience to upgrade in order to run your title then you have made a miscalculation. Of course he also meant the right tech and tech that was optimized.

Dev Teams are sometimes under pressure from publishers to kick a title out before it is ready. I suspect that happened here. Of course if a Team ever wants to work again, they can't turn around and tell the truth. But they also have to work WITH their fans to solve the issues. If a Team thinks fans are pathetic little whiners, there will be no 'work with'.

Many systems are having technical issues. Many. We are talking midgrade systems. Battlefield 2 requires a 128MB card in order to run. We all saw that coming in gaming. But there are numerous systems running at 3Ghz with 256MB cards watching slideshows at 800X600. That has nothing to do with likes or dislikes in a game. That has to do with the title even being playable.

[Trident-za]

The thing which puzzles me the most about the GRAW engine is that it's performance doesn't seem to be affected only by hardware specs. My PC is pretty good, but not the best, and it runs smoothly and looks fantastic at 1280x960 (truth be told, it runs far smoother than LD did, for me). I know people with much older PCs and barely the minimum specs who say it runs suprisingly well - certainly playable. And yet other people with topnotch PCs are complaining about slideshows.

There is obviously something at work other than pure hardware specs. No idea what it could be, but I hope GRIN do sort it out so that more people can focus on the gameplay without having performance issues.