SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing

[DarkHorse]

Q said:
Thank you very much for your answer. I learn every day something new.
As far as I understood you can't change the antialiasing for SE V alone but you would have to change it for your entire computer. Is that correct?

Here's a technical description of anti-aliasing: wikipedia

In a nutshell, it blows up a frame by a certain factor (2x, 4x, etc) and finds all the edges, then dithers those edges, and finally shrinks the frame back down to be rendered at the initial resolution. The higher the number (2x, 4x) the finer the softening of the edges will be (and the sharper the images will seem), at the cost of higher video memory/gpu cycle requirements.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'd say that it is very likely your anti-aliasing is choking on the every-other-pixel transparency effects in the design screen...
Basically, every single pixel on the screen looks like a jaggie, and the result would be blurring of the picture.

[Phoenix-D]

What every other pixel transperancy? The .bmp for that screen is normal, and I'm not seeing any transparency effects at all in-game.

[DarkHorse]

Another good explanation of anti-aliasing, and as a bonus, anisotropic filtering:
Hardware.info

[TurinTurambar]

I suppose this is as good a thread as any to post my problem.
It was advised on the IRC last night that if my computer could run Starfury, it should run SE:V just fine; that is not the case at all apparently. Once the game is open, my entire system is taxed. Not only does the game operate sluggishly (more on that in a minute) but everything slows down. I was trying to chat at the same time, and sometimes had to wait 10 or 15 seconds for what I typed in the send-line to even show up. The mouse ghosted. The windows start menu opened only after a long delay. Et cetera ad nauseum.
Now the game itself: Opening the game is ok. Going thru all the setup and empire options and all that is all fine. However, once the game actually starts playing.... <Insert sound of Millennium Falcon hyper-drive failure here> The mouse in-game behaves like it's stuck in molasses. I move it, it disappears, it reappears and slides to a halt somewhere in the direction I moved it.

This system is no slouch (though I'll admit the vid-card is a bit lacking) and as I stated before, it plays Starfury very well, even the 3d-rendered battles. I'm looking for ways to fix this.

• I can't find an antialiasing setting in the advanced setup of my card.
• Can I turn off the rotation of the planets in the main screen or something?
• Should I spend $200 on a new card to play this buggy-*** game?

System:
XP Pro sp2
2.4ghz Intel P4
1.5GB RAM
Matrox Millennium G550 with latest drivers and DirectX 9.0

[StarShadow]

I can't help with your card settings, but did you set the video memory mode in SEV, to Safe? That seems to fix most people's problems.

Edit: The G550 only actually supports up to DirectX 6 (at least officially), SEV requires DirectX 8.1 support.

[TurinTurambar]

Yes it's set to Safe. I've tried several different resolutions, windowed mode, set the detail settings low, etc. All with the same result. The latest driver (8/8/05 v5.95.5.0) is installed and running with no display errors in any other app, and I've run the tests on DirX 9.0... all working fine.

TT

[StarShadow]

It will pass the tests regardless, but the tests don't look for version compliance. You could pop in an old GeForce mx440 and it would 'pass' the DirectX test too, but it doesn't support DX9.

The simple answer is, if you want to play SEV you'll have to get a newer card. Not necessiarily a brand new card, just something that supports at least DX8.1, I'd suggest checking local forsale newsgroups, or bargin bins at local hardware stores.

For ATI cards, you'll need at least a Radeon 8500, for Geforce at least a Ti4200 (and the GF3 cards will work too).

[TurinTurambar]

Ok, maybe that's the problem then. What version of DX does Starfury require though?

If I'm actually going to buy a new card, I'll of course buy the best one I can get, so I get the most mileage out of it. That's my adopted strategy for this whole machine, which is why it's lasted so long. (4 years)

Thanks for the help,
TT

[DarkHorse]

I think Starfury was a DX7 game.

EDIT: Checked the system specs on Strategy First's site; DX 7 compatible video card for SE:V