Anti-Aliasing in GTA-IV, How To.

[the hubster]

THIS COULD POSSIBLY f*ck UP YOUR SCREEN, PROCEED IF YOU HAVE THE BALLS

 

First things first, this only works on a monitor with a DVI or HDMI connection, if you have a VGA connection, your out of luck.

If you are on an ATI card I have no idea if this will work

If you are on windows XP I have no idea if this will work

If your display does not have built in scaling this will not work

If your display does not have a driver written in a very specific way this will not work

 

Step 1 - Install the Latest GFX card drivers and drivers for your display (display drivers is important, gfx not so much)

 

Step 2 - Download and install Powerstrip from http://entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm, your computer needs to restart at the end of installation.

 

Step 3 - Start PowerStrip, select "run as administrator" if your on Vista/Win7.

 

Step 4 - Go into Nvidia control panel. click "Change flat Panel Scaling" and then select "Use my displays built in scaling"

 

Step 5 -Right click the powerstrip icon in bottom right of your screen, select Display Profiles --> Configure

 

Step 6 - Click "Advanced Timing Options" then "Custom Resolutions"

 

Step 7 - At this step you basically want to double the resolution of your monitor in both axis, but can potentially f*ck things up, so be sure to check the values you enter against the spec of your monitor

 

Step 8 - Powerstrip will prompt you to restart, do it, once windows is restarted, select the new resolution in powerstrip, everything on your desktop should look smaller if it worked.

 

Step 9 - Launch GTA IV at the resolution you set up in powerstrip

 

 

There is a high chance this trick will not work for you, but please, don't make posts shouting "fake", because there is nothing fake about this, it worked for me and IV looks amazing.

Edited June 10, 2009 by the hubster

[gta-man22]

I have a VGA connection, I out of luck.

[Psymn321]

I seem to remember stalker having AA.

[Chevyboy]

Funny, conventional AA works just fine in Stalker. May want to not read reviews that were posted the week the game was released. Both SoC and CS allow for conventional AA, ATI requires cat AI to be enabled, Nvidia if I recall is limited to 4XMSAA.

[Chris1508]

how do you check what you have eg. vga or whatever

[truehighroller]

I want to know how to downscale on my 4870 1GB and my 24" Samsung flat screen which I connected with a DVI cable, some one?

[Gorbachev]

how do you check what you have eg. vga or whatever

If you don't know if you have VGA, HDMI or DVI then you are too inept to use this guide anyway. Sorry.

[Psymn321]

VGA

 

HDMI (left) DVI (Right)

[YoungGun]

If your display does not have built in scaling this will not work

How do I know if mine does or not?

I am on an acer 22" monitor

[ikt]

Am i able to set the resolution in IV to 1280*1024 and downscale it to 640*512 within Windows?

[Lucian04]

This is not real AA. All the TC is showing you is how to "Downsample" resolutions. With certain GPU's, this can actually be more detrimental than if the game actually somehow applied AA. To even get a considerable effect you'd have to downsample from a crazy resolution like 2988x2100 to 1280x720 and doing that can net you upwards of a 40% performance loss. So unless you can somehow manage 30fps at such high resolutions, don't even bother.

 

1920x1080 or 1900x1200 should be more than enough to get the least aliased look with a mod like Ultimate Graphics tweak. Only use this if you've got the hardware or you're just dead set on having some sort of AA like effect.

[YoungGun]

Step 7 - At this step you basically want to double the resolution of your monitor in both axis, but can potentially f*ck things up, so be sure to check the values you enter against the spec of your monitor

 

so if it shows 1680*1050 i would put 3360*2100 ?

[zBobG]

The downsampling rule:

 

To get the equivalent effect of 2x anti-aliasing you must first increase the dimensions of the graphic by 2 times.

 

So for a target graphic size of 800x600 you render the graphic at 1600x1200 then downsize it. Note that this large graphic is 4 times the number of pixels as the downsized target graphic.

 

Resizing using a bi-cubic sampling will smooth the edges but WILL also leave possibly undesirable artifacts throughout the graphic. Resizing using a bi-linear sampling is faster but will not smooth the edges as well as a bi-cubic sample and WILL also leave undesirable artifacts.

 

Note that this procedure is very expensive in terms of CPU cycles and that the effect is somewhat equivalent but is not the same as real anti-aliasing.

 

Real anti-aliasing ONLY smooths edges and is done while the graphic engine has the geometry information for each object. Because of the way the GTA4 graphics engine is designed the geometry is lost at the time that anti-aliasing could be done. This fault only exists in DX9, if the GTA4 graphics engine was implemented in DX10 there is a possibility to anti-alias the graphic. It is no small task to design a DX10 graphics engine and it's possible that the GTA4 developers considered the cost and additional complexity to be too high with the benefit being too small. It's also possible that the GTA4 developers did design a DX10 engine but found that the performance was horrible which is very likely considering that the performance of the DX9 graphics engine is barely adequate.

[OC_Burner]

Check out the video in my signature to.

 

It shows the picture 1:1 as the screen. Its not resizing by me (I think Fraps got the video done by the Nvidiadriver or DirectX).

[darth189]

can anyone post some screens to see how it looks?

[Sobek]

 

The downsampling rule:

 

To get the equivalent effect of 2x anti-aliasing you must first increase the dimensions of the graphic by 2 times.

Not to be a politically correct bastard, but I just wanted to make a point that this method is equivalent to enabling Supersampling AA, as opposed to standard AA.

 

Just don't want people getting the idea that this downsampling method is the way that all standard AA filters work. Supersampling uses a downsampling filter, regular AA is much different (no downsampling involved typically, rather standard AA methods involve sampling and blending adjacent pixels to pixel borders).

 

If anyone finds some kind of workaround to achieve this result on ATi cards, I'll be quite impressed. Technically it's possible, but we're limitd by driver support and such.

 

Edited June 11, 2009 by Sobek

[ikt]

The downsampling rule:

 

To get the equivalent effect of 2x anti-aliasing you must first increase the dimensions of the graphic by 2 times.

Not to be a politically correct bastard, but I just wanted to make a point that this method is equivalent to enabling Supersampling AA, as opposed to standard AA.

 

Just don't want people getting the idea that this downsampling method is the way that all standard AA filters work. Supersampling uses a downsampling filter, regular AA is much different (no downsampling involved typically, rather standard AA methods involve sampling and blending adjacent pixels to pixel borders).

 

If anyone finds some kind of workaround to achieve this result on ATi cards, I'll be quite impressed. Technically it's possible, but we're limitd by driver support and such.

 

ATi Tray Tools?

[Sobek]

 

ATi Tray Tools?

That is what I use, though I seriously doubt it has the necessary functionality. Could always ask Ray to look into it, but we'd be waiting a long long time

[crevlthe]

there was actually a previous note on this in the topic "do you believe this graphic" on downscaling. doesn't the nvidia control panel do similar things by also allowing you to set custom resolutions?

 

[elBATCHo]

 

there was actually a previous note on this in the topic "do you believe this graphic" on downscaling. doesn't the nvidia control panel do similar things by also allowing you to set custom resolutions?

 

I just tried that with 3840 res and it said it failed.

 

 

SO is someone gonna try the program in the OP?

Edited June 17, 2009 by elBATCHo

[crevlthe]

there was actually a previous note on this in the topic "do you believe this graphic" on downscaling. doesn't the nvidia control panel do similar things by also allowing you to set custom resolutions?

 

I just tried that with 3840 res and it said it failed.

 

 

SO is someone gonna try the program in the OP?

don't you mean CP (as in Control Panel)?

 

anyway, after fiddling abit with the monitor, I did actually raise my monitor to 1080p, except it was at 30hz as my monitor is not HD ready, which therefore resulted in a slight flickering.

[Jigglyass]

Ive downsampled to 2560 x 1600 and my monitor supports upto 1680 x 1050..

Not impressed by the results, waste of my video memory, going back to my native resolution.

[crevlthe]

i am certainly impressed with what my monitor can do and has done. no more jaggles for me!

 

i only had 2fps lost even when I did intense things. this works.

[WTFX]

ATi - no go?

VGA - no go?

[Drunk Russian 9]

One question. After you reboot with the custom settings, if your screen shows your normal resolution, does that mean it failed?

[crevlthe]

One question. After you reboot with the custom settings, if your screen shows your normal resolution, does that mean it failed?

yeah. basically;

 

if you do it thru the control panel:

 

firstly on the left column, select change flat panel scaling, select use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect scaling and hit apply.

 

under manage custom resolutions (on the left) hit create.

 

on the timing thing, put auto, its more complicated then it looks, then on the upper section double the horizontal and vertical pixels (of your original resolution), don't tick interlaced and put the refresh rate at least at 60. hit test, and see if it turns up with a bigger resolution (everything should appear smaller). if it works, go ahead and save your setting.

 

now under change resolution on the left, turn the nodge to the custom resolution that you have set.

 

it worked for me.

 

the only thing that is different is I haven't doubled it, as I've just set the resolution to 1080p

[HigherStrife]

Doesn't work, Bullsh*t, Close the Topic.

 

kk, Thnx Bye.

[YoungGun]

One question. After you reboot with the custom settings, if your screen shows your normal resolution, does that mean it failed?

yeah. basically;

 

if you do it thru the control panel:

 

firstly on the left column, select change flat panel scaling, select use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect scaling and hit apply.

 

under manage custom resolutions (on the left) hit create.

 

on the timing thing, put auto, its more complicated then it looks, then on the upper section double the horizontal and vertical pixels (of your original resolution), don't tick interlaced and put the refresh rate at least at 60. hit test, and see if it turns up with a bigger resolution (everything should appear smaller). if it works, go ahead and save your setting.

 

now under change resolution on the left, turn the nodge to the custom resolution that you have set.

 

it worked for me.

 

the only thing that is different is I haven't doubled it, as I've just set the resolution to 1080p

I can not get it to scale right.

 

After I change to my custom resolution, it just stays all streached and doesnt scale down to my screen size. Yes I picked "Use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect scaling" still doesnt work..

 

Any ideas?

[Drunk Russian 9]

Damn, it says custom test failed.

 

Anything else I can try?

 

Also, would it be possible to downsample from 1680x1050(native) to 1280x900?

Edited June 25, 2009 by Drunk Russian 9

[Madjoki]

 

Also, would it be possible to downsample from 1680x1050(native) to 1280x900?

Yes in theory, but 35% of screen would be empty (1680x1050 -> 1280x900 image in 1680x1050 display with blackborders, upscaling would obviously undo downscaling, but worse quality). Also

 

In other words, AA doesn't help unless you are using native resolution (MAXIMUM) of your display! Also higher resolution less aliasing.