|
 
|
The most dramatic effect of the T-Buffer engine is its ability to perform real-time full scene spatial anti-aliasing. But let's first describe what aliasing is. In very basic terms, aliasing is a graphical effect that results from sampling too little data to get the smooth edges that exist in the real world. Anti-aliasing smoothes out the edges of diagonal lines that are very apparent in today's 3D engine games. Even the most untrained eye can clearly see diagonal lines, which have jagged edges ('jaggies') caused by the collaboration of pixels that obviously have edges (being squares). Scenes without anti-aliasing show 'stair/step' effects. Look at an object with a near vertical or near horizontal line and you will see what we mean.
There are different implementations of anti-aliasing but the general purpose of it is to 'smooth' out these jaggies. Notice the close-up of a scene in Quake 2 on the left hand image (ten brownie points for the first person to write in and name the map). Compare it to an identical scene but now anti-aliased.
|
|
|