Is 16x AA useless?

[styckx]

Now that I got a solid rig I was playing with AA settings and I noticed something. 16x AA is awful looking. I found the sweet spot is 4x AA

4x





16x





Why would 16x AA look awful compared to 4x AA? Why bother even making it an option if it actually does the opposite of smoothing out the jaggies?? Not complaining, more along the lines of just curious

Graphics card is a Nvidia 9800 GTX+

[rabid]

Looks like RW doesn't support 16x as your 16x grabs look like there is no AA.
I got the same thing when I tried 6x.
What happens if you try 8x?

[raildumper]

I have exactly the same card, 9800 GTX+ with 1Gig of DDR3. A powerfull card that can handle 16x AA very well. RW at 16x works for me, it's just a matter of selecting 16x and disabling the game's setup in your graphics card options, then in the game settings menu whatever you choose has no influence.
Anyway at high resolutions there's no big difference between 4x and 16x, so 4x does it fine and you save some extra frames per second.

[styckx]

Looks like RW doesn't support 16x as your 16x grabs look like there is no AA.
I got the same thing when I tried 6x.
What happens if you try 8x?

8x is the same thing, jaggies everywhere. Looks like 4x is as much AA that is supported.

Raildumper. I tried setting the AA to 0 in RW and set 16x (override application setting) AA in Nvidia control panel. Still looks, meh.

4x AA in RW's itself is the best looking. Strange. Thanks for the responses, just wanted to confirm it wasn't possibly something on my end.

[OTTODAD]

Tested AA x4 and AF x8 with my Catalyst settings and AA x4 in the RW settings and got better frame rates using the BR-101 train out of PO&CM Chicago, 18 - 25 F.p.S. to start and rising to mid-thirties shortly afterwards and no jaggies.

Also noticed that the G function can throw the next trailing switch ahead as well as a facing one !

A trailing one closely followed by a facing one, the loco has to clear the trailing one before the facing one can be thrown. Impossible to do with the train in motion and have to use the #9-Map to set such switches groups !

O t t o

[djt1]

8x is the same thing, jaggies everywhere. Looks like 4x is as much AA that is supported.

No “jaggies” here with 8xAA, as a matter of fact 8xAA seems to be the sweet spot as far as image quality is concerned with RailWorks -

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=283687&page=2

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=285331&page=2

[G-Rat131]

I've got my Nvidia control panel overriding the settings so that I have 16x AA as well as 16x AF. I have no jagged edges and the textures look good at all angles.

Graphics card is a Nvidia 9800 GTX+

Same card as I have.

[styckx]

After some trial and error. I've come to the conclusion this might be a Windows 7 thing. Nvidia control panel seems to have zero effect overriding RW's settings.

Ok. These screens are using RW's AA settings only. I even went as far as removing RW's from Nvidia control panel to make sure RW's was the only thing controlling AA

4x AA



16x AA



Now. I set RW's AA settings to 0. Add RW's back to the Nvidia control panel and ran the same test.

4x override application setting in Nvidia Control panel



I stopped there as it's obvious there isn't any AA being done at all.

Weird

[djt1]

After some trial and error. I've come to the conclusion this might be a Windows 7 thing.

The screen shots in the first link I posted above were taken on a Windows 7/64 bit OS. I’ve been running XP 64 bit Edition/SP2, Vista 64/SP2 and the Windows 7 64 bit RC and never had any problems getting AA to work with the Nvidia control panel.

[styckx]

The screen shots in the first link I posted above were taken on a Windows 7/64 bit OS. I’ve been running XP 64 bit Edition/SP2, Vista 64/SP2 and the Windows 7 64 bit RC and never had any problems getting AA to work with the Nvidia control panel.

Odd. You using railworks or railworksproc in Nvidia control panel? I'll try different routes & configs. Not a big deal, but it does gives me stuff to tinker with and keep me busy

[djt1]

Odd. You using railworks or railworksproc in Nvidia control panel? I'll try different routes & configs. Not a big deal, but it does gives me stuff to tinker with and keep me busy

I’ve been using railworksproc.

Try matching your “Global” and your “Program” (railworksproc) settings in the Nvidia control panel and see if that works.

[styckx]

I’ve been using railworksproc.

Try matching your “Global” and your “Program” (railworksproc) settings in the Nvidia control panel and see if that works.

Bingo! This worked!