Edges of points, help me understand.

Questions about the LÖVE API, installing LÖVE and other support related questions go here.
Forum rules
Before you make a thread asking for help, read this.
Post Reply
easypeasy
Prole
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:14 pm

Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by easypeasy »

Hello, I'm new to löve, and coding in general really, and I'm loving it. There's something I've been bothered with though...

With fsaa set to 0 and pointstyle as smooth, points have soft edges. Circles have rough edges.
With fsaa set to 4 and pointstyle as smooth, points have rough edges. Circles have soft edges.

Why is that? Am I missing something? Please explain :)
User avatar
Jasoco
Inner party member
Posts: 3725
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:35 am
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Contact:

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by Jasoco »

FSAA is Fullscreen Antialiasing. I believe, if I'm correct, that it means Löve will draw everything 4x the size then scale it down using bilinear interpolating or something to smooth the edges of stuff. Correct me if I'm way out of my ballpark here.

Not sure why points show up the way they do though. Screenshot please maybe?
easypeasy
Prole
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:14 pm

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by easypeasy »

Ok, that is helpful to know, but I don't understand why that would make points rough?

Ofcourse, here are two screenshots:
The black ball is a circle, the grey one is a point.

Image
Here fsaa is set to 0.

Image
And here fsaa is set to 4.
User avatar
Jasoco
Inner party member
Posts: 3725
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:35 am
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Contact:

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by Jasoco »

Yeah. That's really odd. I rarely use points though. I always fall back to circles at a radius of like 1 if I need a point currently.
User avatar
slime
Solid Snayke
Posts: 3132
Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2010 6:45 am
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
Contact:

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by slime »

Jasoco wrote:FSAA is Fullscreen Antialiasing. I believe, if I'm correct, that it means Löve will draw everything 4x the size then scale it down using bilinear interpolating or something to smooth the edges of stuff. Correct me if I'm way out of my ballpark here.

Not sure why points show up the way they do though. Screenshot please maybe?
The antialiasing setting actually uses MSAA (multisample anti-aliasing) internally, which is a fair bit more efficient than that. :P
Image

I'm not sure why the point isn't being antialiased...
easypeasy
Prole
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:14 pm

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by easypeasy »

I guess that I could just change all points to circles, but for some reason small points look better than small anti-aliased circles.
I bet nobody has ever encountered this, but me, because I'm the only one using points :P
User avatar
slime
Solid Snayke
Posts: 3132
Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2010 6:45 am
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
Contact:

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by slime »

It works fine for me - looks like it's probably a driver/GPU isssue. What OS and video card do you have? Are your drivers up to date?

The "smooth" point style has various issues on many drivers and I wish there was a better way to do it (without using shaders)...

FSAA at 0:
QTHiIH5.png
QTHiIH5.png (39.42 KiB) Viewed 222 times
FSAA at 4:
scJR59B.png
scJR59B.png (40.72 KiB) Viewed 222 times
easypeasy
Prole
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:14 pm

Re: Edges of points, help me understand.

Post by easypeasy »

Ah, that makes sense. I'm using Win 7 and have a Radeon HD 4800, so quite old, but not ancient.

I'm convinced drivers are up to date, but I'll do a check and see if I find anything.

I'll make it a habit to use circles instead of points in the future. Thanks!
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 73 guests