[0.67.0] Cannot enable anti-aliasing

[Bdc]

Is it only me or was anti-aliasing disabled in one of the recent updates?
I've tried setting it to 8 [Quality], 8, 4, 2 and even 0 (just to be double-sure) without any success. It does not work anymore.
I'm running Kenshi on Win7 with a Radeon HD 6800.
Catalyst control center claims it's not overwriting anti-aliasing settings and uses the application's preference.

Some samples: (Edit: They're zoomed 5x.)

[PnzrNorm]

That looks... terrible.
I do apologise for those graphics, but I have yet to ever see that.

Have you tried any fixes for this yet (unsure if any are stickied)?

If you played Kenshi prior to update 0.67, then try deleting the /Kenshi/data/ folder and re-validating files with Steam. Don't forget to backup Kenshi prior to fix attempt, just in case.

Let us know what happens!

[Bdc]

That looks... terrible.
I do apologise for those graphics, but I have yet to ever see that.

Not sure if obvious, but I zoomed the images 5x, so it's easier to see that anti-aliasing is not active. If you want to ever see this, simply set anti-aliasing to 0 in the launcher settings.

I think that I got this problem since I use the steam version (for two days that is, so probably 0.66.0/0.66.2). Anyway I'm gonna try what you're suggesting.

[Seimears]

That looks... terrible.
I do apologise for those graphics, but I have yet to ever see that.

Have you tried any fixes for this yet (unsure if any are stickied)?

If you played Kenshi prior to update 0.67, then try deleting the /Kenshi/data/ folder and re-validating files with Steam. Don't forget to backup Kenshi prior to fix attempt, just in case.

Let us know what happens!

If they lose every thing if they are using steam it is not like you can not re-download the game. Just you will not have your saves. An I am wondering if not the old saves might be causing some problems or maybe some data that is not transferring well.

[PnzrNorm]

If they lose every thing if they are using steam it is not like you can not re-download the game. Just you will not have your saves. An I am wondering if not the old saves might be causing some problems or maybe some data that is not transferring well.

That is why I always say make a backup of the Kenshi folder, so you will have the old build with the old saves in one spot while you test the most up-to-date /data/ folder with old saves, or new games if the old saves are the problem.

Thus, we test one part of the build at a time trying to narrow down exactly what the problem is for each user.

[Bdc]

I did not re-download the /data directory yet, because it's >2 gb and would take ages to complete, but I checked my non-steam version of Kenshi (0.65.1) and it has the same problem.
I also tried force enabling AA in the catalyst control center without success, which is really strange in my understanding.
Then I noticed while loading a game Kenshi first draws a part of the sky. And that "sky slice" is effected by anti-aliasing.

(I did not zoom or cut the images this time to avoid confusion.)

[Clawdius Talonious]

This is an interesting issue, was it just the Kenshi update that caused it or will reverting to older graphics drivers affect this situation? I haven't been in IT professionally for a few years but I do know that ATI used to effectively require a variety of drivers to adapt to the demands of various titles. If you're currently running the latest WHQL drivers perhaps try some older drivers, or beta drivers if you haven't done so already.

I imagine if I had an affected system to play with I might be able to nail this thing down and provide specifics, but ever since I had an ATI rep chew at me for half an hour at a tech conference for half an hour, nodding and signalling me to go on about an issue I was currently dealing with while jamming as many tacos as he could into his useless gob before eventually telling me to email tech support I haven't purchased another card from them. It puts me at something of a quandary since I was always a staunch AMD supporter and really do firmly believe that for low end systems on a price/performance scale AMD APUs are easily an advisable system for those on a budget, but I digress.

Have you played with specific drivers trying to resolve this issue? Can you upload a DXDIAG.txt in case there are relevant issues involving software versions for Chris' perusal in case it may be useful?

[PnzrNorm]

It can't be anything related to ATI drivers as I am running an NVIDIA 550ti, and I am seeing this issue with older drivers as well as the most up-to-date non-beta drivers.

I've heard of this happening in other games, and their reasoning for it is to reduce memory usage by dropping the resolution on objects, terrain, etc. that is farther in the distance.

You can also observe this happen with the new Storage structures and one of the Weapon Smiths, I believe.
Whenever the camera is farther than a certain distance, it will change the texture to something that looks rancid compared to the actual model.

[Bdc]

@PnzrNorm: I'm afraid what you mean is mip mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap), which hasn't really anything to do with whole screen anti-aliasing. Maybe some levels of detail of the textures are treated by magic filters that prevent aliasing, but that's another story.

@Clawdius Talonious: My driver version is 13.12, which is the most recent one. It's from december 2013 (lol). I'm pretty sure the issue started to accure later so it shouldn't have to do anything with the driver.
Does Kenshi's anti-aliasing work on your system?

My dxdiag.txt: http://pastebin.com/tZ41w2BL

PS: To clear things up, when talking about anti-aliasing I really mean whole screen anti-aliasing which works like kind of rendering to a 2x / 4x / 8x bigger surface than the window and than scale it down with a neat filter so edges are smoother. No mip mapping. I'm not complaining about poor texture quality...

[PnzrNorm]

I figured there was a term for it that I wasn't aware of at the time.
But I have to admit, this may be why shadows take on the shapes they do when casting across the landscape (hint: they're just as rough-edged) for as long as I've been playing.

So I would have to say that the anti-aliasing option doesn't appear to have any noticeable effects regardless of setting.

Then again, comparing your images to mine, I'm not sure if mipmapping is there or not (would assume so since Chris is incredibly knowledgeable), or if anti-aliasing really isn't functioning.

[Bdc]

You can tell if anti-aliasing is functioning by the "pixelatedness" of edges.

example

kenshi_aa5.png (712 Bytes) Viewed 6873 times

Left line is anti-aliased, right one is not.

In Kenshi take a look on the horizon, edges of buildings, distant units and high contrast edges in general. If they're smooth and kind of "blurred" a bit, then AA works. If they're pixelated, it's not.

In older versions it definitely worked and it looked great.

EDIT: I downloaded 0.62.1 and AA does not work for me there.

[Clawdius Talonious]

I had previously thought my AA was functioning as normal with my Nvidia card, but when I lowered my resolution and went fullscreen (typically I play in windowed mode @ 1920x1080, which my 42" display only supports in interlaced mode) it clearly isn't doing any antialiasing at all for me, either.

So it's not an ATI issue, I'd have realized that sooner but interlaced mode on this display makes everything a bit blurrier (on games that don't support AA I always kick it up to 1080i as the 1360x768 native res on this monitor looks and runs great with all the bells and whistles but without great AA the jaggies make my eyes bleed).

It seems odd that even an older build didn't revert the issue at hand, but I clearly had the same (nonexistent) level of AA at 0 or 8 (quality) FSAA setting. At this point I'm uncertain of the exact cause, none of the settings I fooled with seemed to have any affect at all which I imagine was the case for you as well. I'd have expected more people noticing this lack, without being able to pinpoint exactly when the change occurred it may be more troublesome to identify the culprit than it would otherwise be.

[Bdc]

Thank god I'm not the only one!

Is there a history of older Kenshi versions for download somewhere? So we could binary search when the issue was introduced... if it even was introduced.

[someone]

Antialiasing was disabled a few updates ago when the engine switched to a deferred rendering pipeline in preparation for the new lighting system. Unfortunately this is incompatible with traditional antialiasing so the launcher option does nothing.
It will be re-enabled when the new lighting system is done, along with other post processing effects.
For now though you can enable FXAA in the Nvidia control panel, I assume ATI has something similar. Alternatively you can try using SweetFX as discussed here: http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =11&t=6450

[Clawdius Talonious]

Interesting, I don't recall running across that in any update notes, I guess my lack of eidetic memory strikes again.

[Bdc]

I don't remember having heard about anything like a new lightning system, too. Where you got this special agent intel from?

[Hatsune_Neko]

wouldn't mind knowing as well.

[Tolwrath]

I know I've seen his comment about the lighting system before. Lemme see if I can find.

Found it: http://www.lofigames.com/index.php?opti ... &Itemid=18
It's down at the bottom.

[PnzrNorm]

Night time lighting, which will force players to require torches and portable light sources in order to travel at night, is also on the Roadmap under HIGH PRIORITY STUFF, so we will likely see this within the next two waves of features updates (i.e. after this bug-fixing wave, there will be one feature update wave, another bug fixing wave, and so forth).