[Smokey]

I have some detail settings on NBA Live 2004 that I don't know what they do. Here they are:

Texture Filter> "Bilinear" (default), "Trilinear", or "Anisotropic"

Triple Buffer> "On" of "Off" (default)

V-Sync> "On" or "Off" (default)

What are they differences in these settings? Which one will look the best? Which one will play the smoothest?

Thanks,
Nathan

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hey nathan,

did a little research online. From a EA message board http://[email protected]

Triple buffering only works if you have VSync turned on in your Direct3D settings. The idea is that the game pre-draws frames (behind the scenes so to speak) and stores then on pre-defined buffers. When the VSync is triggered, one of those buffers is flipped onto the screen instantly. Another screen is then pre-drawn onto the now vacant buffer... and so on...

If your VSync is not turned on, the program can lose track of when it should be flipping the buffers in and it can cause problems. The other problem that can occur is that if your PC is not fast enough to pre-draw the buffers, it can cause slowdown while it waits.

Trilinear Filtering is best described as how textures seen in your game transition between each other as they fall further away from your viewpoint. Say if you are looking down a hallway with a tile floor. The game engine and drivers will make the tile texture less detailed the further away it is and does this in blocks, or mipmaps. Say you have three visible blocks the second is less detailed than the first and the third less detailed than the second. Instead of leaving a very visible line in between the blocks, video cards do filtering between the blocks to make the transition less noticeable. With Bilinear Filtering in games you might notice "a line" somewhere towards the horizon especially as you move. Trilinear Filtering is a technique to get rid of that line, but can be done in several different ways.

http://www.hardocp.c...e.html?art=NTAw

i hope this gets you started.

ditto

[ditto]

hey nathan,

did a little research online. From a EA message board http://[email protected]

Triple buffering only works if you have VSync turned on in your Direct3D settings. The idea is that the game pre-draws frames (behind the scenes so to speak) and stores then on pre-defined buffers. When the VSync is triggered, one of those buffers is flipped onto the screen instantly. Another screen is then pre-drawn onto the now vacant buffer... and so on...

If your VSync is not turned on, the program can lose track of when it should be flipping the buffers in and it can cause problems. The other problem that can occur is that if your PC is not fast enough to pre-draw the buffers, it can cause slowdown while it waits.

Trilinear Filtering is best described as how textures seen in your game transition between each other as they fall further away from your viewpoint. Say if you are looking down a hallway with a tile floor. The game engine and drivers will make the tile texture less detailed the further away it is and does this in blocks, or mipmaps. Say you have three visible blocks the second is less detailed than the first and the third less detailed than the second. Instead of leaving a very visible line in between the blocks, video cards do filtering between the blocks to make the transition less noticeable. With Bilinear Filtering in games you might notice "a line" somewhere towards the horizon especially as you move. Trilinear Filtering is a technique to get rid of that line, but can be done in several different ways.

http://www.hardocp.c...e.html?art=NTAw

i hope this gets you started.

ditto

[admin]

Antriscopic filtering provides the most detail (especially at distance)>Trilinear less detail>Bilinear least detail, best performance. Some cards choke when asked to perform Antriscopic filtering. Most if the newer cards are able handle it easily.

Vsync limits you to a framerate equal to or a multiple of your refresh rate. If your vsync is set to 85Hz, your screen can only be updated 85 times per second, or 42.5, or 21.25, .... Disabling vsync allows your monitor to display frames as fast as your card can render them. The disadvantage is that you may see some "tearing" of the on-screen image if the video card supplies a new frame before the monitor finishes reading and displaying the previous one from the video card's memory, so you end up with frame A on the top half of the screen, and frame B on the bottom half.

Vsync is desirable from an image quality point of view, but not from a smooth frame rate point of view.

The solution is triple buffering, which takes up more memory but adds an extra (front) buffer for a vsync'ed monitor to draw from if the video card hasn't rendered a new frame in time for a new screen redraw, thus eliminating the multiple-of-refresh-rate-framerate problem.

[Smokey]

Thanks Pat and Blair !

I turned on anisotropic (not antriscopic) filterting and noticed more detail in the crowd. Also, the net looked skinnier (darker) from farther away. It slowed it down just a tiny bit. However, with V-sync and Triple Buffer, all I notice is a slowdown (no better quality). I will keep it at the defaults since it runs smoothest that way.