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Posted
on December 04, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Force Anisotropic
Filtering. Anisotropic
texture filtering is an advanced, high quality method of
filtering textures. This provides significantly reduced
texture aliasing & maintains texture sharpness over
greater distances. In Applications/Games which have no
options to enable such filtering Ticking
this setting will force its use. However, given the
number of samples used for this filtering method there is a
heavy performance hit & as such I’d recommend leaving
this Unticked
unless the frame rate is already sufficiently high to offset
the loss. With this setting Unticked
you can still enable it if available via an in-game
menu.
Force Texture
Compression. When Ticked,
textures will be compressed using the DXT1 algorithm. This
will greatly lower texture memory requirements, which will
improve performance, although can introduce undesired image
artefacts such as more apparent colour banding into
textures. Should there be an in-game option regarding
texture compression then you should leave this setting Unticked
as it may otherwise interfere with the in-game option, e.g.
in my experience No One Lives Forever displays a large
proportion of textures as completely black with this option enabled.
You should also bear in mind the section on Fast mode
Trilinear filtering when
deciding whether or not to use this.
Force
Trilinear Texture Filtering.
Trilinear texture filtering operates by taking 4 samples (texels)
from 2 neighbouring Mipmaps, applies a bilinear filter to
them & then interpolates the results. This results in
improved image quality, with more seamless transitions
between Mipmap levels & enhanced texture detail compared
to Bilinear filtering. Ticking
this setting will force the use of Trilinear Texture
Filtering; this is most useful where Applications/Games do
not contain an in-Game setting to set the Texture Filtering
mode (If they do then use the setting the Application offers
to set it instead). Performance can be lowered with
Trilinear Texture filtering enabled. Please bear in
mind the section on Fast
mode Trilinear filtering
when deciding whether or not to use this.
Force W Buffering.
W Buffering is an alternative to Z Buffering. Should you
find some Direct3D accelerated Applications/Games displaying
strange rendering errors in the distance (Clipping errors
& such) then try Ticking
this setting to enable the use of W Buffering instead
of the On-chip Z-Buffer. This may fix the rendering errors
in such games although performance may be reduced as a
result. As such it is highly recommended you leave this
setting Unticked
unless you experience strange graphical errors in Direct3D,
one Game which reportedly benefits from enabling this
is Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
Enable Soft Edges
on Cut-out Textures. Ticking
this setting will improve the rendering quality for Cut-out
textures on punch-through objects. This can however cause
some image artifacting to such objects. Leave this setting Unticked
should you notice artefacts for these objects, e.g. leaves.
Performance shouldn’t be affected regardless of the
setting.
Enable External
Depth/Stencil Buffer. When
Ticked the Kyro 1/2
will create & use an external Depth/Stencil
Buffer rather than use its own Internal one. This is useful
should you have severe Compatibility issue with a
Game/Application. Leave it Unticked
at all other times for best performance. When Ticked
the following 3 options become available;
1.
Enable Direct 3D Depth/Stencil Buffer
Format. Tick
this setting to enable conversion of the Kyro 1/2
Depth/Stencil Buffer into the standard Direct3D format. This
may solve some compatibility issues with Games/Applications
& can allow for other effects to be used also. Unticking
this setting will disable this for improved
performance.
2.
Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Storing.
When Ticked all
the Depth/Stencil buffers for frames are stored externally
which may fix some image artifacting or some compatibility
issues, although performance may be reduced as a result.
When Unticked the
Depth buffer for a frame is only stored should the
Game/Application be assumed to need it, this will provide
optimal performance although should the assumption prove
wrong (i.e. It didn’t store the Depth buffer when it
should have) then some image artefacts may occur.
3.
Enable Depth/Stencil Buffer Loading.
When Ticked this
causes the Kyro 1/2 to load the external Depth/Stencil
Buffer before rendering. This may solve some compatibility
issues, although performance will be reduced as a result. Untick
this setting for improved performance.
There
are several combinations of the above 3 settings available
& the effects of each combination are as follows;
1
& 3. This
combination enables the Game/Application to load
their own Depth Buffer values before rendering each frame.
1
& 2. This
combination enables the Game/Application to access
the Depth/Stencil Buffer if necessary.
2
& 3. This
combination enables the loading & storing of
depth buffer to handle games which break render into
multiple passes with direct manipulation of the frame buffer
between passes.
1,
2 & 3.
This combination provides the Game/Application with all of
the above 3 points.
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