[SDL] FSAA and NVidia

[Bob Pendleton]

On Wed, 2003-09-03 at 18:23, Stephane Marchesin wrote:
> Bob Pendleton wrote:
> 
> >Could someone who has this working send me a copy of their XF86Config
> >file? I have tested fsaa at a lower pixel depth and lower resolution and
> >I still don't get any multisample modes. My guess is that I either
> >missed something in the configuration, or my card just doesn't support
> >multisample. I bought my my GeForce 2/MX very shortly after they came
> >out and it may just not support everything...
> >
> >It is so weird, when I set __GL_FSAA_MODE=4 I do get anti-aliasing. But,
> >I do not have any multisample visuals. 
> >
> >		Bob Pendleton
> >
> 
> Here is what I found :
> http://groups.google.fr/groups?dq=&hl=fr&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=NeuYa.168783%24xg5.157833%40twister.austin.rr.com&prev=/groups%3Fdq%3D%26num%3D25%26hl%3Dfr%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26group%3Dcomp.graphics.api.opengl%26start%3D200
> 

Thank You, 

That matches what I found and it it matches (pretty closely) to what I
said in my original message on the subject. But, Sam says it works for
him on his GeForce 2 MX?

Anyway, it looks like the multisample support that has been added to SDL
does not work on many cards that are capable of FSAA. The GeForce 2 MX
does a great job of FSAA via super sampling, but does not provide any
way to enable it through OpenGL.

In other words, multisample support gives access to a subset of the
available hardware support for FSAA.

I know about the magic environment variable you have to set to turn on
FSAA for older NVidia cards. Are there similar bits of magic of the
other video cards (such as ATI)? 

		Bob Pendleton

> There seem to be two ways of getting of fsaa (on nvidia cards at least) 
> : supersampling and multisampling. With a geforce1 or 2 you get 
> supersampling, while a geforce 3 or higher will give you multisampling. 
> So there are no multisample buffers on a geforce 2. The documentation 
> coming with the Nvidia drivers seems to confirm that :
> 
> __GL_FSAA_MODE  GeForce, GeForce2, Quadro, and Quadro2 Pro
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>   0             FSAA disabled
>   1             FSAA disabled
>   2             FSAA disabled
>   3             1.5 x 1.5 Supersampling
>   4             2 x 2 Supersampling
>   5             FSAA disabled
> [notice "supersampling" here...]
> 
> __GL_FSAA_MODE  GeForce4 MX, GeForce4 4xx Go, Quadro4 380,550,580 XGL,
>                 and Quadro4 NVS
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>   0             FSAA disabled
>   1             2x Bilinear Multisampling
>   2             2x Quincunx Multisampling
>   3             FSAA disabled
>   4             2 x 2 Supersampling
>   5             FSAA disabled
> [... and "multisampling" here]
> 
> Stephane
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> SDL mailing list
> SDL at libsdl.org
> http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl
-- 
+-----------------------------------+
+ Bob Pendleton: independent writer +
+ and  programmer.                  +
+ email:    Bob at Pendleton.com       +
+ web:      www.GameProgrammer.com  +
+-----------------------------------+