DescentBB

Take advantage of your display drivers' application/game profiles feature and make a profile for D2x. Crank anisotropic filtering and antialiasing to the max.

Take these pixel-perfect screenshots for example:
Before (0x aniso and 0x FSAA):
http://home.comcast.net/~jeff250/descent/before.png
After (8x aniso and 8x FSAA):
http://home.comcast.net/~jeff250/descent/after.png

If you compare the two pictures, you'll notice that the \"after\" picture looks much less blurry viewing the textures in the distance (at a sharp angle), especially the ceiling in this example. This is the anisotropic filtering doing its job. Also, you'll notice that the edges between walls, floors, ceilings, and the such are much less jagged or pixelated and appear more smooth. This is the antialiasing taking its effect.

Since D2x is vastly CPU dependent, depending on your card, you can probably crank your aniso and FSAA to its max, or at least farther than you can for other games. I have a Geforce FX 5950 that would normally sh*t its pants with 8x FSAA, but there's no performance difference with D2x.

I've posted this in response to some of the screenshots I've seen posted here, so I'll expect better in the future. Make D2 look it's best.

Cool, Jeff, I didn't know that.

Hey Jeff. Can you post a copy of ur profile for the FX5950. I have one as well. I'ld like to try it out.
Thanks!

In the profile, I've basically got everything maxed for my card and any sort of optimization with even negligible quality loss disabled:
Antialiasing: 8xS
Anisotropic: 8x
Image settings: High quality
Vertical sync: On
Trilinear optimization: Off
Anisotropic mip filter optimization: Off
Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
You'll have to check "Show advanced settings" to see some of these options. The rest of the options really aren't pertinent.

How about setting the resolution a tad higher ? Like 1280x1024 Also, w/ games that have constantly moving images you don't really need more than 2xAA (if at all) -- esp. at higher resolutions. Go 16xAF instead

Personally, I've always preferred 640x480 because it seems to recapture the original feel--the others just don't "feel" right to me. And, plus, since things like movies are hardcoded at 640x480, I don't have to listen to my monitor trying to switch screen resolutions all the time.

I've always been a stickler for jaggies and cannot stand them. They're even more apparent to me in simple games like D2 with uncomplicated and straight edges. If you go with a higher resolution, you'll definitely have to go with 2x FSAA though.

I don't even want to try this with my video card. At least I get a decent framerate without it...

Oh wait.

That explains a lot. It probably has marginal FSAA by default - I remember in D2x the edges ARE somewhat anti-aliased. Somewhat.

With a GF FX 5200, you can forget about every higher AA/AF settings than the defaults/application set ones.

Jeff,

D2X-W32 scales the movies up to the current screen res - no more screen mode switching.

But - you have the bar HUD and cockpit only in 640x480 (or below), and the cockpit view definitely has something to it.

Edit: D2X-W32 now supports all HUDs in all supported screen resolutions.

Grendel,

the quality gain/performance loss ratio by using AA/AF is waaaaaaaay better than by increasing the resolution.

At 640x480 anything will help Mood point in my case tho -- as soon I activate a profile and d2x-w32 switches into hi-res (just after selecting the pilot) it crashes: draws the main menue background, about 3s no music, does not draw the menu itself and hangs there w/ the music playing.. After I delete the profile it works again.

Hey is there any way to check to see if the settings are getting used?

Nvidias application profile manager is flakey to say the least.

Although Im still using 66.93

Perhaps I should upgrade that.

Since I have an older GF4 Ti4200 havent really seen the need.

If you find it difficult to tell the difference visually to see if it's working, sometimes the best way of knowing is a frame rate dive. Try playing at 1600x1200 with no FSAA and then with 8x FSAA.

I run Descent at 800x600 and:
AA: 8xS
AF: 16x
Image: Quality
V-sync: off
Trilinear: off
Aniso mip flter: on

I get a perfect image. No Jags, none! and still get perfect frames. Wow.

OK I have come to the conclusion that nvidias application profile system just does not work.

I have nvidia 71.89 installed.

Created a new profile from scratch. Browsed for d2x-w32.exe and added it. Made sure global settings was unchecked. For testing purposes I only turned vsync on. I set the framerate slider in the game to 100. I know my monitor runs at 75. I start up the game and activate frametime. And it reads 100.

So nvidia application profiles do not work.

And there is no way Im going to setup the parameters in the global area. I shouldnt have too.

Anyone have a suggestion on how to fix this?

nvidia applications profiles do work.

you need to place checkmarks besides all the settings you want applied to the application, then hit apply

Did that.

Im not completely stupid.

At least I dont think so.

try messing around with AA and ansio.

d2x may not properly respect the vsync setting.

Oh.. Vsync is a MUST.
It made a huge change on my compuer.

I never could get into D2. I always found the graphics clunky. Maybe this is why. I may just have to reload.

Well, they still kind of are, but using OpenGL and AA/AF they look about as nice as you could really expect for such a simple graphical engine.

Dedman,

have you ever seen what you can do with D2X-W32 + DLE-XP? If not, take a look at my Descent site's multiplayer level section (see the side menu).

D3 textures, colored lights, transparency, in-level teleports:



D3 textures, colored lights, transpareny, wind tunnels:



Unreal textures:



D2 textures, (not yet fully done) sky dome with D3 cloud texture:

I may just do that.

Jeff250 wrote:In the profile, I've basically got everything maxed for my card and any sort of optimization with even negligible quality loss disabled:
Antialiasing: 8xS
Anisotropic: 8x
Image settings: High quality
Vertical sync: On
Trilinear optimization: Off
Anisotropic mip filter optimization: Off
Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
You'll have to check "Show advanced settings" to see some of these options. The rest of the options really aren't pertinent.

hello Jeff
nice settings for your NV38 aka GeForceFX 5950 AGP.

FSAA x8S is only supported in Direct3D and not OpenGL apps
With my XFX GeForce 6800GT AGP Dual DVI aka MV40GT I can choose the following:

FSAA OFF
FSAA x2
Quincunx
FSAA x4
FSAA x8S

And I can remmeber when useing FSAA x8S in OpenGL apps the card will only work in FSAA x4 mode

Here is how I found that out:


If you left click on the FSAA x8S setting you get that list of FSAA modes and thier discriptions on how they work.

So when running a OpenGL app with the FSAA x8S setting the app will function @ FSAA x4 because the FSAA x8S setting is only usefull for Direct3D apps

I use ForceWare 82.12 Beta.
ForceWare 82.12 Beta Win2K/XP English

ForceWare 82.12 Beta Win2K/XP International

here are the other drivers for WinXP64 use.

ForceWare 82.12 Beta WinXP64 English

ForceWare 82.12 Beta WinXP64 International

8xS mode does work in OpenGL, you read it wrong.

\"This mode offers higher image quality then 6xS mode for Direct3D applications and 4x mode for OpenGL applications.\"

It is 6xS mode that does not work in OpenGL.

ah okay

Well here's my nice screenies which I made with my XFX GeForce 6800GT AGP Dual DVI @ 1024 x 768 x32 FSAA x4 AF x16


Man Descent2 : Counter Strike looks like new and totally revamped also!

And here a screeny of the same settings but then with Descent First Strke aka Descent 1


really Descent 1 has an advantage no Thief Bots ;D

Only what is noticable is that the Descent2 PyroGX cockpit was also used for the D2X-XL for Descent1 ;D LoL

Hmm call me slow here but I really didn't know that D2X-XL was totally CPU dependent. I thought the graphics card had SOMETHING to do with it.

Either way I have 2 7900GTX's in SLI my anitaliasing is crankd to about...

8x AA
16xAF
v-sync: on
image settings: high quality
mipmaps: trilinear
transparency AA: supersampling
gamma correction AA: on
threaded optimization: on (gotta have that with
SLI )
openGL error reporting: on
screen rez at 1680x1050
all D2X settings maxed completely and i still run smooth but load times are like the app locked up lol.

This has everything to do with the fact that the hires textures are in an uncompressed format (TGA)...

Try throwing away the animated missile sprites and use the 3d models instead where possible. That should shorten loading times a bit.

yea well it's not so that I can't live with it, I put the D2X-Xl data on my RAID striped array and so far it's cut load time by like 10x....or so it seems