The Anti-Aliasing Thread [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

Mortac

04-20-2010, 10:50 AM

Getting EQ2 to run with Anti-Aliasing is not always an easy task. Some simply don't get it to work, and others experience crashes when they finally do. I have made some research on this subject and have spent several days with different settings to confirm what exactly causes problems regarding EQ2 and Anti-Aliasing.I would like to mention that the greatest limit to my testing is the hardware. I have only been able to use one computer and one OS for this, so I am not entirely sure of the differences between ATI/Nvidia and different versions of Windows. I personally run Vista x64 with an ATI HD4890. Using 32-bit Vista or Windows 7 should not make any difference, however, Windows XP may.First up, to be able to enjoy Anti-Aliasing at all, you must first create a file named eq2.ini directly in your game folder. This file does not exist by default, however, custom UIs are likely to include one. To create this file, simply create a new text-document and rename the file. Make sure it still doesn't have .txt in the end since certain methods on how to display files in Explorer may hide the last bit of the filename, and thus you could end up with a file named eq2.ini.txt, which is incorrect.Add this line to this file and save it:r_aa_blit 1I have seen threads where people claim that you should put r_aa_blit_1 (notice the extra underscore). This is incorrect and is a typo that will not work!Next up, you must enable Anti-Aliasing in your display driver. Do this either through the shortcut in the systray (if you have one) or through clicking the advanced settings in your display settings. 4x is a pretty good number when considering a performance/quality ratio.For ATI video cards: In the same place, you also MUST disable Catalyst AI or Anti-Aliasing will not work!For Nvidia video cards: I believe you must select "Force AA" for it to work. (can anybody confirm this?)An additional suggestion: Do try out the anisotropic-filtering as well. 8x or 16x does not decrease your performance noticeably unless you have a very old computer, but makes a drastic difference when looking at terrain some distance around you. This requires no additional changes and works even without having an eq2.ini file. Now here comes the tricky part that has been pestering a lot of people during the last few years, and which took me several days of testing to discover: If you enter the game with Anti-Aliasing enabled, you may encounter repeated game freezes with the screen going black for about 15 seconds, while Windows complains about:"Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered."This may sound like an AMD-only issue, but it is not. This actually has nothing to do with AMD. It does not depend on which CPU or video card manufacturer you use. What causes this are the in-game shadows created by your CPU. Thus, if you have any of these three settings enabled, you are likely to come across this bug:Point Light Shadows (CPU)CPU Character ShadowsCPU Environment ShadowsIF YOU PLAY EQ2 WITH ANTI-ALIASING ENABLED AND ARE HAVING THE ISSUES DESCRIBED ABOVE, YOU MUST DISABLE THESE SETTINGS IN THE GAME OPTIONS UNDER SHADOWS. YOU CAN STILL USE GPU SHADOWS IF DESIRED AS THOSE WILL NOT CAUSE ANY PROBLEMS.Please remember that I can not confirm if this is true on every OS and hardware out there. If you like to use these shadow options along with Anti-Aliasing, go ahead and see if you experience game freezes or not. They may take a while to occur depending on where you are in the game world, or if you are one of the lucky few, it doesn't occur at all. If you do encounter freezes and are unable to even reach and disable these shadow options before your game crashes, then disable Anti-Aliasing in your drivers and enter the game again to uncheck the three options above before re-enabling Anti-Aliasing.Some points to keep in mind:<ul><li>I did not encounter these problems while running Windows XP several years ago, however, I have not been able to retest this and verify if this still holds true.</li><li>Some people have reported that it is necessary to disable Bloom effects in the game options for Anti-Aliasing to work in certain places. If this is indeed correct (which I somehow doubt), then it is likely to occur only on older video cards.</li><li>Some people have reported that 8x Anti-Aliasing does not work, while 4x works just fine. This probably does not hold true anymore.</li><li>Running older drivers has been reported to work without causing game freezes with CPU shadows on, but most of us playing other games as well do not find this solution feasible.</li></ul>Happy jaggie-free gaming!