FSAA

Full scene spatial anti-aliasing, this is why you want a Voodoo 5 right? Well, part of the reason why at least. Is it all it’s hyped up to be?

The 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 (& other cards in the Voodoo 4/5 line) has implemented RGSS (Rotated Grid Super-Sampling) as the method for doing FSAA. Competitor’s cards, such as the GeForce 2 GTS have implemented OGSS (Ordered Grid Super-Sampling), generally speaking – most reviewers/users have come to the conclusion that the FSAA implementation in the Voodoo 5 is superior to the other current implementations.

Below is a quote from John Carmack regarding the Voodoo 5, seeing as he is about the only person that people still listen to these days.

Voodoo 5 addresses the fill rate limitations the Mac has been living with in a dramatic fashion, delivering well over twice the pixel rate of existing Mac products, as well as the best anti-aliasing on the market.

Although the quote is regarding the Mac version, all Voodoo 4/5’s use the same method for FSAA (RGSS) so the important part is “the best anti-aliasing on the market”.

If you want to get detailed information on FSAA & how it works then I suggest you download this white paper on the matter, which examines the different implementations. You’ll need Adobe acrobat to view it.

One final note before I get onto the screenshots & commentary is that higher resolutions do not reduce the need for FSAA in anyway. Higher resolutions tend to increase the number of jagged edges if anything (albeit they are smaller in size but higher in frequency & vice versa). Higher resolutions do not eliminate the other forms of texture aliasing either, such as the shimmering textures. If anything proves this to be the case, it is that nVidia & ATI have implemented support for FSAA into their graphics cards despite the stance that both companies earlier had. The following quote is from Firingsquads Geforce256 press conference.

How is NVIDIA dealing with anti aliasing?

Again, we got a not so straightforward answer. Huang mentioned that it is preferable to try and drive everything at 1600x1200 or similar resolution because at that high a resolution, you're not going to see pixels anyway. It will still be possible to use the GeForce 256 to run at lower resolution & anti alias your screen with "super sampling" but Huang kept reiterating that the ability to run at extreme resolutions was much preferable than spending resources on anti aliasing. Huang also alluded to the fact that Hollywood quality film is about 2000 x 2000. In his words, "George Lucas wouldn't go to 640 with anti aliasing."

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