How to set AA in FS9 and FSX for Nvidia's 2xx.xx drivers (now with working Transparency AA!)

[Sawydz 4]

Let him play with his new shiny Starcraft II a little :(

[curt1 79]

Applied recommendation to the 257.21 drivers, and it looks very good. I had a lot of shimmering previously in a few of my addon airports, but they are much improved and nearly shimmer free. :(

[Turbine777 13]

Anyone else have a problem with opening pop-ups? When I change sub views or bring up any type of pop-up window, even just the AES window or default ATC window for that matter, my screen goes completely black for a few seconds. I back tracked everything I did in this post. 1st undoing the settings with nvidiaInspector - problem remained, then restored the settings in the nvidia control panel - still had the issue, and then finally within FSX by unclicking the AA box - Problem solved. I then tried just the FSX AA with Bilinearm Trilinear and Anistropic filtering but no matter what setting it's this that's giving me the black screens. Weird how it never happened to me in the past and only now that I changed driver from 257.21 to 258.96. Nothing in my system has changed hardware or software wise other than the driver.I'll probably install the older driver later to see if it's driver related but wanted to see if anyone else has had this issue 1st.*It may also only be a problem for Matrox Triplehead2go users running at 5040x1050 or 3840x1024. Here's what happens when after I even hit the tilde key for the ATC window...Click the image for full size.

[Tabs 2,790]

With AA_MODE_METHOD_MIXEDSAMPLE_8X i have smooth edges but the image it`s very blurry. :(Ex:Using nvidia default settings: (Use my preference emphasizing: Quality)Using Tabs settings with AA_MODE_METHOD_MIXEDSAMPLE_8XUsing Tabs setting with AA_MODE_METHOD_MIXEDSAMPLE_8X_SKEWED_8TAP

Unavoidable byproduct of using a supersample AA algorithm - it AAs everything on the screen and can blur 2D objects slightly. I think the tradeoff in how good the outside world looks is worth the slight blurring.

Ryan?

I haven't bought the 460 yet - couple more weeks probably, I just moved and money's kind of tight.

[pdavies 0]

Well you hit the nail on the head with this one, Ryan. Thanks a ton - the Transparency AA works amazingly. My ATL finally doesn't have shimmering taxi and runway centerlines!

[Christopher Low 5,354]

Can we not just force 8xS AA and 16x AF through the Nvidia Control Panel without following this complicated procedure? I thought that was achievable with the latest drivers?

[greggerm 312]

UPDATE:I discovered earlier tonight (7/31) that Transparancy AA works in both FS versions using these drivers and Nvidia Inspector! This feature never worked to my knowledge in the past and turning it on makes the sim look even better than the usual 8xS AA + 16XAF does. I tried it on a whim wondering if maybe the issue had been solved, and it does work. This puts a much higher level of AA onto what are known as alpha-test textures. Many objects in the sim such as trees, airport fences, power pylons and other similar objects that look like they're made up of a bunch of flat 2D objects are alpha-test textures. AA normally can't touch the edges of these because they're not polygons and they cause shimmer/aliasing as a result. Transparency AA allows the card to get at these textures and eliminate the shimmer. 8xS by definition does do some AA to these because of its supersampling componet, but it's a low level of AA - this allows for a much better sample algorithm to be used.

If this works "as-advertised", Ryan, you've just made me a very happy man. From day one, I've always disliked how the trees weren't anti-aliased in FSX. I even punted back to FS9 on occasion to get that nice, smooth image back. I'll be giving this a try tonight to see how it looks, hopefully taking some before/after screenshots. I'm never one to mess with success (*aka: change video drivers when I have one working), but in this case, I'll make the exception. Thanks for the detailed walkthrough for the conversion and configuration, and I'll report back in shortly...-Greg

[rquick 19]

Thanks for taking the time to do this Ryan. I see a lot of 'one off' statements about this setting or that setting, so it's nice to see a complete setup from someone in the know. So far so good with these settings.

[jport1 10]

I am running dual 27in monitors 3840*1080*32 with the Matrox digital dual2go and these work great. No problems.Joe Porter

[FACA 0]

What about the AA option included in FSX? How many AA do you get by using it?

[penta_a 429]

thank you so very much for this guide, my FS9 plays very smoothly now with no shimmering at all and very good looking world for the first time.still working on FSX though, the display jitters when panning left/right/up/dn.it's just not smooth movement.

[jport1 10]

I just completed a 2 hour flight with these new settings and they worked great. A couple of notes:1. This fixed my frequent (every 2 minute) 2 second pause in FSX.2. Noticed a slight drop in FPS (minor though)3. Got a complete nVidia reset when entering ORBX PNW scenery, then the card and monitors restored and it was smooth and FPS good.Thanks Again Ryan,Joe

[Guest BAKOBOY24]

This was an amazing fix, except I only have one problem:Yesterday flight sim looked amazing. I turned off my computer for the night and this morning flight sim was back to its jaggedy self. And when I went to nVidia inspector, the two gears symbol for messing with profiles was greyed out so I can't restore the settings. And the normal nVidia control panel has no effect on FS either. What happened?

[greggerm 312]

Interesting - I applied the new drivers and adjusted the settings as described to lead off this thread, and indeed I did have much better visual quality, especially considering I turned on the transparency AA as directed. This has been missing from FSX since day one and really improves the image quality across the board. But-For some odd reason, I've introduced a serious amount of blurries. The texture/terrain engine seems to have much more difficulty keeping up with a flight than it has in the past. When flying in a fast mover, slewing unnaturally fast, or using time compression, I very quickly outrun the mipmap texture barriers and eventually end up in blurry mushville FAR faster than I did prior to changing the drivers and settings. I'm puzzled by this because I was under the impression that the driver & settings adjusted for this "tweak" were far more graphics card dependent rather than sim subsystem dependent, but perhaps I am taxing my 260GTX more than ever, and it is actually behaving like a bottleneck. I'll be doing more experimentation to see if I can reproduce this, get back to how it was before, and to see if there are some other reasons for this sudden blurfest, but my gut perception tells me that I suddenly get blurrier much faster. My old system was being driven by the 19x- series of drivers along with nHancer, and I did *not* at all use the in-game AA setting. I wonder if having to use in-game AA is somehow giving the system pause? I wish I could test right now, but alas - the day job beckons. Thanks for the key tips for these new drivers. I'll keep playing to see what happens in the end...-Greg

[Sawydz 4]

You can try adjusting FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION in .cfg file.