Antialias settings on nvidia

[mannheim]

I tried turning on the antialiasing for the nvidia binary driver for the compiz application, like this:

__GL_FSAA_MODE=2 compiz ...

This worked well, for example, when rotating the cube: it gets rid of the jaggies on the edges of the cube. Unfortunately, it makes fonts very slightly blurry on all windows that have not been very recently redrawn. (Eg, in th main menu of every app, the words "File, Edit," etc will gradually degrade, until you use the menu again)

Does anybody know anything about this subject? Is this a compiz bug? An nvidia driver bug? Or just something to be expected if you turn on anti-aliasing?

[RAOF]

As far as I can see, FSAA_MODE=2 appears to be "2x Quinucs", or whatever nVidia is calling that. I'm pretty sure that's a temporal AA system, so the anti-aliasing is partially done using the current frame and the previous frame as I understand it. It sounds like the driver is progressively anti-aliasing the text, which is basically the same as blurring it :).

[mannheim]

Thanks for the help. I think you are absolutely right, that this is dependent on the particular mode. It's not only the "2x Quinucs" however that gives the problem. I see the same blurred-text thing happen with FSAA_MODE 2, which is "2x Bilinear".

I am now looking at FSAA_MODE 4, which is 4xBilinear, and I don't see the blurring of text. (Mind you, the effect is rather small, and time-dependent, so I may be wrong: perhaps the effect is still there, but now beyond my eyesight.)

Anyway, 4x Bilinear certainly makes the cube beautiful; but on my card (7600 GS) it slows things down noticeably. (And my other machine has a 6200, which is way to slow for this.) Perhaps I should stop being obsessive, and just turn off antialiasing! Life is a bit crazy if I am spending this long trying to get rid of a slight jagginess on the desktop cube ...