SEV - Menu performance / antialiasing

[scratch]

I've heard many people complaining about sluggish menu performance. At first i didn't have this problem, but since i've tested antialiasing i know that this most likely is the cause of the problem. With only 2xAA activated i get a performance loss of about 100fps! as soon as i enter the ship design menu, it's sluggish indeed.

I've already dispatched an email to Aaron, but i'd like to know if this is a common issue or if it's limited to certain configurations, so try the game with activated / deactivated AA.

My specs:
P4 3.0GHz
Radeon 9800 Pro
1GB Ram

[PDF]

Hey, you're right ! I have an Athlon 2400 and a Radeon9600, didn't know why I had a choppy 6 fps in design screen (and 20 elsewhere), disabled AA and poof I got 60 everywhere now !

It could be an ATI issue, they have many (I think I'll switch back to NVidia next time, they have good OpenGL optimization for Dominions *and* show fog in CM also... )

[Phoenix-D]

I have an nvidia card. With AA 4x and AF 8X, I get 75FPS in the main system screen and exactly the same with it off. (which means the real FPS is higher than that and V-sync is kicking in)

[scratch]

Could you try the same thing with deactivated VSync, Phoenix-D? Just to see if you experience the same fps drop.

[NullAshton]

I'm thinking he means disabling it in the global settings, not setting it to application controlled.

[Phoenix-D]

NullAshton said:
I'm thinking he means disabling it in the global settings, not setting it to application controlled.

SE5 doesn't have a AA setting so application controlled is the same as "off".

That said I lose 5FPS by turning AA on. Whoops de do. Apparently its a video card specific issue. I lose *100* FPS going to the ship design screen though, which is just bizzare.

[Q]

Please forgive my ignorance:

What is antialiasing and how do you acticate/deactivate it?

[Phoenix-D]

Anti-alising is activated either by an in-game menu or in your graphics card settings.

What it does is smooth out the "jaggies" created by low resolutions. Take a circle drawn in a 10x10 'screen'. It'll look a lot less smooth than one drawn in a 100x100 screen, because you don't have as many pixels to draw the edges with.

What AA does is take those rough edges and smooth them out a bit, giving you the effect of higher resolutions without as much of a performance hit.

Or that's what its *supposed* to do; it doesn't always work out.

[Q]

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?

[Phoenix-D]

Depending on your video card, yes. Most of them also have tools where you can force AA on or off for only one program.