Guild Wars with Anti-aliasing x16(forced) ?

I tried searching for it, but I swear I recall seeing someone a long time ago who did this by forcing the Guild Wars client to display AA16(instead of the regular AA4), and it had something to do with either the Nvidia Control Panel, or the equivelent of the ATI side.


Does anybody know anything about this, or is it me who is mad?

what video card do you have and what are your current drivers?

ati its - settings display anti aliasing- force- 16X
same with nvidia but through control panel

Go to you card driver's options - usually on the control panel or on the display options, and find the option to force certain applications to run a plethora of features.

If you're on Nvidia, it's on the Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > select gw.exe from the dropdown menu (add it if it's not there already) and then force whatever AA you want from the menu below it. This is if you're using the recent batch of drivers though the Nvidia Control Panel has been packed with drivers for quite a while.

For nVidia:

• Right right anywhere on desktop/left click nVidia starbar icon,
• click "nVidia control panel",
• within' the "3D settings" branch click "manage 3D settings"
• click "Global Settings (or "program settings"-- in which case select the appropriate gw.exe you wish to edit),
• click "Antialising - Mode"
• click the drop box
• set to either "Enhance" or "Override"
• click "Antialiasing - Setting"
• click the drop box
• set to whatever you wish

Done.

kindof not the same topic, but what does Anti-Aliasing actually do? on my computer i'll put on anti-aliasing X4 along with all the other settings on max and i dont notice a difference between AAx4 and no AA. My framerate doesnt even change except in Eye of the North (just that city, not the expansion) for some reason, so what's the big deal behind anti-aliasing anyways?

antialiasing reduces the "jaggedness" you see on the edges of 3D objects. the higher the level of AA, the more jaggedness is reduced. this is usually very computationally intensive, though for GW on modern hardware, it hardly matters. i too notice no difference in framerates with AA on or off, unless i'm doing AAx12 or something.

just as a heads up: GW apparently won't allow MSAA past x8, so there's no point in turning it any higher. however, i do recall Rahja coming up with a way around it for nvidia cards.

and for ati, thats how you do it.
anything beyond 8AA wont make a difference.
and i prefer use application settings as some games dont like 16*AA wide tent.
big frame drops at some games, and other run perfect

I have the same thing basically, only a much older card and when Nightfall came out I had settings that made it look really, really awesome but had to drop em for frames, I forget what It was, had to have been AA and I think some other video quality sliders.

As Moriz said, AA reduces the effect of "jaggies", which is the jaggedness you can get at the edge of an object when the edge is not perfectly vertical or horizontal. This can make an edge look like a set of stair steps instead of a flat surface.
Jaggies are most apparent at low rez, and less apparent as the rez goes up. AA makes a lot of difference at 1024x768, but is much less noticeable at 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 (HDTV). At those higher rezs, even 4xAA becomes a bit of overkill - 16xAA is waay overkill.

Btw, the way in which AA reduces jaggies is to dynamically calculate pixels of an intermediate colour. For example, if you have a white edge on a black background, AA would calculate some gray pixels to go between to soften the edge. The higher the AA, the more intermediate steps and the more pixels to calculate - and the more load on your gpu and the more heat generated.
In a dynamic environment such as GW, as some of you have implied, you may not even notice the presence or absence of jaggies. You certainly would have a hard time noticing any improvement over 4xAA in anything but a static scene. (Of course, the OP may have any number of reasons to want to do so.)

ok, thanks! Found it!


Does AF work if I override it to AF16?


And it looks like to me that AA16 looks better than AA8... Are you sure AA16 doesnt work for guild wars?

that's what rahja said. i have no idea whether if it is true or not.

and yeah, AF16 will continue to work.

Ive given up on AA in GW, since no matter what setting I use in Control Panel, GW seems to ignore it(even with Override), and I see NO effect at all with AA, unless I use the in-game setting. REALLY ticks me off. By the way, I have a 512MB 8600GTS, using the 190.62 drivers.

set it in game. my GW ignores the catalyst control center for my radeon card also. strangely enough, this happens only in vista/7, not in xp.

I kow I can set it in-game, but its limited to 4X, and my card can do 16, so it seems a waste.

yes your card supports AAx16. believe it or not, my old geforce fx5500 can do it too. it doesn't mean it can manage playable framerates with it on however.

Setting it synthetically higher than 4x (AA that is) is pointless. While it may sharpen the images a bit, you will actually degrade other parts of the image due to the fact that the engine doesn't support it natively, and you are relying on the driver engine (NV or ATi) to compensate. In most cases, some form of image distortion or degradation will occur, and there isn't much you can do to stop that. While it may look better at first glance, you might notice image tearing, swirling, or any number of strange artifacts in the distance at some point, not to mention needlessly straining you card for no real gain.

Anisotropic Filtering (AF) isn't built into the Guild Wars engine to my knowledge, at least not as an upfront value. The texturing systems in GW don't exactly lend themselves to it, considering how GW manages texture quality and clarity depending on location and distance (in town etc, and 2D sprite replacement at distance)

So... I certainly wouldn't go trying to put on any synthetic setting that really won't do anything.

Let me put this, this way - you may be capable of carrying 50 pounds, but would you want to do it all day because not doing it would be a "waste"?

Cool. Thanks for the info.

Before now I haven't really messed with these settings, I have an HD 4850 and get constant 60fps at 1650x1080 with everything turned up in the in-game graphic settings, though I turn off post processing as it's annoying.

Anyway, after seeing this thread I tried 8x AA and edge-detection in catalyst control and it looks a LOT better. I maxed all the other 3D settings as well. Not sure if it changes much but the game does look better and I'm still getting 60 fps. For some reason the colors seem more vibrant too, don't know why as I didn't touch the color settings.

Again, things may appear to look better at first glance, but it can also distort things in certain areas.

Though, the release drivers for the general public use some nifty new technologies to assist with AA and AF override, so they might cover more of the issues then my dev drivers.

Well, I went back and did some comparisons and going beyond 4X doesn't really seem to improve it any noticeable amount. Turns out I had it completely off before and going from off to 4x does indeed make a huge difference =)