Low resolution, high Antialiasing. Looks good if not for...

[Pendrokar]

...low resolution menus. I would like to play on that look but not with such a small menu. Would it be possible to have menu higher resolution and the game world at a lower? (Probably not)

I should try Anti-Aliasing on higher resolutions. But I doubt it will look as good and whenever FPS cost is worth it. (will test later)

Anyone else who would like to play like that?

[smoth]

nope.

[Argh]

With AA, you start eating speed at a higher rate than the improved sharpness per-pixel around 4X4, IIRC.

IOW, if you keep AA low, you can go up in rez and it's actually going to be a better image overall.

[mongus]

make/request menu scaling widget.

[Caydr]

I've used this approach before when my computer couldn't handle a game at a decent resolution. Works good.

What menu items exactly are you having a problem with? I must be really dense, the only things I can think of get larger in screen space as the resolution gets smaller.

In any case, have you tried different UIs?

[Pendrokar]

A different UI won't help much it will still be at low resolution.

I don't have any FPS problems. I would just like to play like that and would if it wasn't for the large menus and them being at a low resolution.

But smoth is right there really isn't an easy way to achieve this. One way would be to play at a high resolution where multiple pixels are grouped together in the game world and the menu stays the same. But IMO that can't be achieve with Lua and I doubt it would be any different with a high resolution with high anti-aliasing(performance wise).

[Caydr]

I've modified RedUI to not be huge at low res. It's smaller at 1024x768 than BA's UI is at 1680x1050. Looks fine. Try it.

[Auswaschbar]

...low resolution menus. I would like to play on that look but not with such a small menu. Would it be possible to have menu higher resolution and the game world at a lower? (Probably not)

I should try Anti-Aliasing on higher resolutions. But I doubt it will look as good and whenever FPS cost is worth it. (will test later)

Anyone else who would like to play like that?

Do you know that antialiasing basically works like this: render the picture at a higher resolution, and scale it down afterwards

What you are trying to do doesn't make sense.

[imbaczek]

that depends. nowadays AA works by rendering the same frame several times with different pixel displacement. this can be more efficient than rendering the same frame at a higher resolution.

[Pendrokar]

...low resolution menus. I would like to play on that look but not with such a small menu. Would it be possible to have menu higher resolution and the game world at a lower? (Probably not)

I should try Anti-Aliasing on higher resolutions. But I doubt it will look as good and whenever FPS cost is worth it. (will test later)

Anyone else who would like to play like that?

Do you know that antialiasing basically works like this: render the picture at a higher resolution, and scale it down afterwards

What you are trying to do doesn't make sense.

Wait... you mean that if you set 16x AA it renders a (ex. default 1024x768) 16384x12288 big frame and then shrinks it?
Almost any PC would crash!

Method which imbaczek says is probably how it works in Spring.

[Auswaschbar]

...low resolution menus. I would like to play on that look but not with such a small menu. Would it be possible to have menu higher resolution and the game world at a lower? (Probably not)

I should try Anti-Aliasing on higher resolutions. But I doubt it will look as good and whenever FPS cost is worth it. (will test later)

Anyone else who would like to play like that?

Do you know that antialiasing basically works like this: render the picture at a higher resolution, and scale it down afterwards

What you are trying to do doesn't make sense.

Wait... you mean that if you set 16x AA it renders a (ex. default 1024x768) 16384x12288 big frame and then shrinks it?
Almost any PC would crash!

Method which imbaczek says is probably how it works in Spring.

Method which imbaczek said is basically the same, jsut with different pixel placement.

[lurker]

It makes a massive image in the graphics card, one tiny piece at a time, and then never saves the original. That's why it works smoothly.

[aegis]

did spring implement CSAA for newer cards?

[Pendrokar]

WOW I just tried putting 16x anti-aliasing while having 1280x1024 resolution. There was zero FPS loss. Does Geforce 9600GT got something special for Anti-Aliasing?
Although I was just trying out viewing a map. Haven't gone through a replay with it. Benchmarking test for Spring would be valuable.

[Master-Athmos]

No - actually only NVIDIA still offers the SSAA method where the entire screen gets rendered at a higher resolution and then shrinked down. You can activate that somewhere in the drivers (using e.g. nhancer as it's not there officially) and it's the best solution as it really smoothes everything but it has a huge performance impact...

Today AA usually is just simple MSAA which has a pattern to search for edges in the geometry and tries to smooth them. That's way faster than SSAA but doesn't smooth textures etc. but just geometry seams. In standard mode MSAA also doesn't smooth alpha-test textures so when you e.g. have a mesh wire fence in Half-Life 2 which consists of a flat plane with a texture where some parts are transparent it won't smooth that too leading to a common flickering effect when e.g. looking at them from a distance and moving. You nowadays can activate alpha-test smoothing too though (usually called TMSAA). It of course costs you a good bit of performance again...

[Pendrokar]

Ok it's clear for me now. Thanks!