Antialiasing

Antialiasing is a technique that reduces the stair-step features seen on images on your computer screen. These stair-step effects are commonly known as jaggies since edges that should appear smooth appear jagged. Antialiasing software will smooth out these jaggies by creating the effect of having more pixels on the screen. This is conventionally done by throwing in pixels of washed-out color along the jagged curves.

The following shows the difference between an image that is Aliased and Antialiased:

Notice the jagged (stair-step) edges on the legs. The even more amazing difference can be seen in the shadow of the spider. Notice how smooth the shadow of the thorax is on the Antialiased image.

Many users may be reluctant to enable or activate Antialiasing features because of the degradation in performance. Antialiasing may sometimes be referred to as oversampling or supersampling because more pixels are being written to the frame buffer than when antialiasing is not present. For example, in 2x oversampling, twice as many pixels are written to the frame buffer which will cause a noticeable drop in frames per second (performance). A traditional technique of overcoming the jaggies, with minimal performance loss, is to increase the screen resolution. The problems with this technique are the limitations of computer monitors and specific screen resolutions required by certain software applications and games.

Antialiasing software has yet been awaited to mature to a level that offers smooth graphic images without the great loss in performance. NVIDIA’s patent-pending Accuview Technology incorporates the next generation of Antialiasing techniques including high-resolution supersampling in 2X, Quincunx, 4X and their all new 4XS mode. The capability of Full-scene antialiasing is also available.

Stay tuned for upcoming articles about NVIDIA’s Accuview Technology including an overview of 2X, Quincunx, 4X and 4XS antialiasing modes.