Can anyone explain Anti Aliasing to me?

[Zak33]

cos while I know what it does (smooth out jaggies and make my WW2 planes look sexier than IL-2 can do itself) I just dont grasp all THIS

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...JsX3BhZ2U9NQ==

Its part of Ryz' review and I've read it lots and lots...and I can't suss it. My head won't take it on board

Anybody know what its all about?

[prehensile]

It is an organisation against singing aliens. now controlled in games through antialiasing technology.

[Kumagoro]

Zak, all that bollocks is more then just straight forward anti-aliasing.

First you have to understand what aliasing is. Aliasing in simple terms is the effect of high freqency components, which have not been filtered out properly.

Anti-aliasing is removing these high freqs. Which is done by analogue and digital filtering. Analogue uses capacitors resistors and inductors opamps etc and is continous. Where as Digital uses sampling and applys a fourier transform using processors. There are two basic types of digital filter FIR finite impulse response and IIR infinite impluse response.

The difference between 2x 4x 6x etc (i think) is the number of TAPS in the filter. Taps are the stages in the filter. The more stages the quicker the high freqencies are cut off. Therefore less jaggies. Digital filters are more difficult to understand then analogue ones.

The stuff in the link is much more complicated then that and applies other types of image processing.

Its not something you can understand without knowing basic and advanced stuff. Well not from just what is written there anyway

[LayZeh]

u iz well cleva.

[eldren]

While that sounds informed, Kumagoro, I don't think anyone understands that. I don't. :/

With regard to that page, Zak, that's merely outlining the different anti-aliasing methods and their effects. As I understand it, because everything is being rendered in a 3D world, applying 2D anti-aliasing methods would be too slow (Having to be done on a per-frame basis). Thus, that page shows how, by clustering the anti-aliasing pixels around the target pixel in 3D space, the anti-aliasing effect is still achieved, even if you view the target pixel from different angles.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Ask Rys?

[PMM]

lol i like the trying to use of using digital signal processing theory to gfx
lucky I know what FIR filter is as used in DSPs

Clear your mind and look here instead.....

best most simple solution i could think of...
http://www.widearea.co.uk/designer/anti.html

[eldren]

I think Zak already understands the basics of anti-aliasing and what it does. What I think he's asking is what it means in the context of that link he gave, with those samples of those three anti-aliasing methods.

[Zak33]

PMM's link helped a bit....but aseldren says.....its a case of trying to get my head around WHAT the different sorts do....and WHY ....BUT I have been thinking in 2d and not 3d and that has actualy made it better in my head...

its those pictures that Rhyz uses...I wasn;t thinking of a straight line leaning away from me or any other 3d thing .