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TheLuminary t1_jaa1qz7 wrote

Rendering more information, than what can be seen. Allows the system more spaces to decide where edges fade and the different combinations of colours should work.

Then once you take this information and squish it down to your monitor again, it can take that info and merge it down into a smoother and more accurate representation. So that instead of each pixel getting a twig color or sky color. It could be a shade in-between.

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waxlez2 t1_jaak1hp wrote

This is called mip-mapping by the way, and in modern games this process happens all the time.

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JaggedMetalOs t1_jabnco7 wrote

Mip-mapping is slightly different - it's automatically using smaller versions of textures for far away objects, which speeds up rendering and makes the distant textures look better as the GPU isn't good at scaling textures down more than 2x.

What OP is talking about is better described as antialiasing.

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johnnymacmax t1_jabiptz wrote

Why doesn’t the game itself say the pixel should be gray instead of black or white? If the game renders in vectors, I’m assuming it can average for a specific resolution.

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TheLuminary t1_jabj0t4 wrote

The game does.... But it uses these techniques to do it. That's why you have lots of antialiasing options, including super sampling.

Rendering higher resolution for your display, but turning anti aliasing off. Is just kind of manually doing what is built in

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JaggedMetalOs t1_jabnvfm wrote

It can, but some now common graphical special effects and lighting techniques don't work because they need to know which pixel belongs to exactly which object on screen, while that gray pixel is part of both the black and the white object.

It's kind of complex, but generally thought the overall look with those effects without antialiasing is better than without the effects but with antialiasing.

There are workarounds that give something similar to real antialiasing that work with those effects, or if you have lots of GPU power but a low res monitor you can do what OP asks and Renee a larger screen that you realize down.

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