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Good grief, who do we believe?
After having it 'confirmed' by a Sony 'official' (i.e. Simon at [email protected]) that PS2 does *not* have hardware anti-aliasing, the following items have appeared in the lastest issues of two magazines...
The current issue of PSM2 has the following item (GT2000 article, page 19, top left):
"Furthermore, anti-aliasing has been used to smooth out the jaggies, although Yamauchi wouldn't reveal how he'd done it."
PSM2 backs this up with the following (page 71, top left):
"So what are jaggies? Take a close look at Ridge Racer 5 and you'll notice that diagonal lines are jagged rather than smooth - hence the problem's name. Now, though, Sony's issued clear instructions on how to get the PS2's built-in anti-aliasing (blurring) to earn its pay. Result: Jaggies will exist no more."
So, anyone have any thoughts? Some PS2 screen-shots have looked rough, others almost perfect. Could this explain why early shots of games such as TimeSplitters showed glaring examples of jaggies, yet the recent video footage was so smooth? Has the anti-aliasing now been incorporated?
Granted, when playing a game you'll rarely notice; but I personally would like a final, definitive, official answer from Sony - and (with the greatest respect to the Simon mentioned above) preferably from someone involved in the hardware side, and not a Customer Service rep.
I think I will mail Official UK PlayStation mag and get them to find out, because the conflicting reports are really bugging me!
After having it 'confirmed' by a Sony 'official' (i.e. Simon at [email protected]) that PS2 does *not* have hardware anti-aliasing, the following items have appeared in the lastest issues of two magazines...
The current issue of PSM2 has the following item (GT2000 article, page 19, top left):
"Furthermore, anti-aliasing has been used to smooth out the jaggies, although Yamauchi wouldn't reveal how he'd done it."
PSM2 backs this up with the following (page 71, top left):
"So what are jaggies? Take a close look at Ridge Racer 5 and you'll notice that diagonal lines are jagged rather than smooth - hence the problem's name. Now, though, Sony's issued clear instructions on how to get the PS2's built-in anti-aliasing (blurring) to earn its pay. Result: Jaggies will exist no more."
So, anyone have any thoughts? Some PS2 screen-shots have looked rough, others almost perfect. Could this explain why early shots of games such as TimeSplitters showed glaring examples of jaggies, yet the recent video footage was so smooth? Has the anti-aliasing now been incorporated?
Granted, when playing a game you'll rarely notice; but I personally would like a final, definitive, official answer from Sony - and (with the greatest respect to the Simon mentioned above) preferably from someone involved in the hardware side, and not a Customer Service rep.
I think I will mail Official UK PlayStation mag and get them to find out, because the conflicting reports are really bugging me!
Page:
> anti-aliasing is not'blurring' it is when the anti-aliasing
> software creates new polygons to match surrounding polygons to
> make a picture look smother or in other words it adds more little
> triangles to fill in the blank spaces to make a car for example
> look more curved
Anti-aliasing is nothing to do with polygons, it is to do with colours. If you have a diagonal black line on a white background, it has little 'steps', or jaggies.
Anti-aliasing is the process by which surrounding pixels are assigned colours in-between the contrasting colours, softening - or blurring - the edges to make it look smoother.
See http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/ttalias.htm for more info.
> software creates new polygons to match surrounding polygons to
> make a picture look smother or in other words it adds more little
> triangles to fill in the blank spaces to make a car for example
> look more curved
Anti-aliasing is nothing to do with polygons, it is to do with colours. If you have a diagonal black line on a white background, it has little 'steps', or jaggies.
Anti-aliasing is the process by which surrounding pixels are assigned colours in-between the contrasting colours, softening - or blurring - the edges to make it look smoother.
See http://www.truetype.demon.co.uk/ttalias.htm for more info.
Babylonian,
Like you I have heard conflicting reports about whether the PS2 has or has not got built in EBAA or FSAA. I personally think that whether it has or it has not it wont matter in the long run.
Programmers will always find a way around this and I personally never thought that the N64 graphics were very blurry. That's just my personal opinion, however, and with the PS2's added power I am sure that they could find a way to implement AA without making the game overly blurred.
What annoys me more is that as you have said some games seem to suffer from jaggies while others do not, even this early in the PS2's life. If some developers can overcome the problem then why cant they all put the extra effort in??
Like you I have heard conflicting reports about whether the PS2 has or has not got built in EBAA or FSAA. I personally think that whether it has or it has not it wont matter in the long run.
Programmers will always find a way around this and I personally never thought that the N64 graphics were very blurry. That's just my personal opinion, however, and with the PS2's added power I am sure that they could find a way to implement AA without making the game overly blurred.
What annoys me more is that as you have said some games seem to suffer from jaggies while others do not, even this early in the PS2's life. If some developers can overcome the problem then why cant they all put the extra effort in??
Hello, wondered where you'd got to for the last few days!
In basic terms, anti-aliasing *is* blurring, because with square pixels on-screen, that's the only way to soften hard, high contrast diagonal lines. In effect, you are blurring the edges. But whatever technique they're obviously using in some of the software, it looks fine to me.
My PC has a Voodoo Banshee graphics card, which doesn't have built-in anti-aliasing, and it's never affected my enjoyment of a game yet. It's not a major issue for me, I'd just like to know for sure, one way or the other.
I don't see the graphics RAM as a major issue, because of the sheer speed with which PS2 can shove data around internally.
In basic terms, anti-aliasing *is* blurring, because with square pixels on-screen, that's the only way to soften hard, high contrast diagonal lines. In effect, you are blurring the edges. But whatever technique they're obviously using in some of the software, it looks fine to me.
My PC has a Voodoo Banshee graphics card, which doesn't have built-in anti-aliasing, and it's never affected my enjoyment of a game yet. It's not a major issue for me, I'd just like to know for sure, one way or the other.
I don't see the graphics RAM as a major issue, because of the sheer speed with which PS2 can shove data around internally.
Good grief, who do we believe?
After having it 'confirmed' by a Sony 'official' (i.e. Simon at [email protected]) that PS2 does *not* have hardware anti-aliasing, the following items have appeared in the lastest issues of two magazines...
The current issue of PSM2 has the following item (GT2000 article, page 19, top left):
"Furthermore, anti-aliasing has been used to smooth out the jaggies, although Yamauchi wouldn't reveal how he'd done it."
PSM2 backs this up with the following (page 71, top left):
"So what are jaggies? Take a close look at Ridge Racer 5 and you'll notice that diagonal lines are jagged rather than smooth - hence the problem's name. Now, though, Sony's issued clear instructions on how to get the PS2's built-in anti-aliasing (blurring) to earn its pay. Result: Jaggies will exist no more."
So, anyone have any thoughts? Some PS2 screen-shots have looked rough, others almost perfect. Could this explain why early shots of games such as TimeSplitters showed glaring examples of jaggies, yet the recent video footage was so smooth? Has the anti-aliasing now been incorporated?
Granted, when playing a game you'll rarely notice; but I personally would like a final, definitive, official answer from Sony - and (with the greatest respect to the Simon mentioned above) preferably from someone involved in the hardware side, and not a Customer Service rep.
I think I will mail Official UK PlayStation mag and get them to find out, because the conflicting reports are really bugging me!
After having it 'confirmed' by a Sony 'official' (i.e. Simon at [email protected]) that PS2 does *not* have hardware anti-aliasing, the following items have appeared in the lastest issues of two magazines...
The current issue of PSM2 has the following item (GT2000 article, page 19, top left):
"Furthermore, anti-aliasing has been used to smooth out the jaggies, although Yamauchi wouldn't reveal how he'd done it."
PSM2 backs this up with the following (page 71, top left):
"So what are jaggies? Take a close look at Ridge Racer 5 and you'll notice that diagonal lines are jagged rather than smooth - hence the problem's name. Now, though, Sony's issued clear instructions on how to get the PS2's built-in anti-aliasing (blurring) to earn its pay. Result: Jaggies will exist no more."
So, anyone have any thoughts? Some PS2 screen-shots have looked rough, others almost perfect. Could this explain why early shots of games such as TimeSplitters showed glaring examples of jaggies, yet the recent video footage was so smooth? Has the anti-aliasing now been incorporated?
Granted, when playing a game you'll rarely notice; but I personally would like a final, definitive, official answer from Sony - and (with the greatest respect to the Simon mentioned above) preferably from someone involved in the hardware side, and not a Customer Service rep.
I think I will mail Official UK PlayStation mag and get them to find out, because the conflicting reports are really bugging me!
Page: