Does Anisotropic Filtering work in the emu?

[Nexxxus]

Tried forcing it with Nvidiainspector?

[Squall Leonhart]

Not true. I just checked it. It doesn't work in 0.9.4 either.

Just to make this clear: I am not saying that Nvida deactivated something for PCSX2 in particular. What I am assuming is that they changed the general behaviour when an application is not using mip mapping.


What Squall said.

And what I want to add is that the reason for using AF in PCSX2 was mainly to fight the extreme texture shimmering. This has always been one of the most annoying things in PS2 graphics, a disadvantage especially in comparison to the other consoles of this generation which usually did proper mip mapping and bilinear/trilinear filtering.
Technically, the PS2 could do this too as far as I know. Yet it is not used because it requires additional VRAM which the PS2 is very short on.

believe i understand the difference, though whether you agree with the answer is up to you.

NVCP used to include a Force Mipmapping setting with off, bilinear and trilinear modes.

This setting forced to on Ultimately reduced the the AF quality of games with existing mipmaps (verifiable on a GTX 2x0 on AF tester with release 197)

Anyhow, the new driver no longer have Force Mipmapping
I believe what you may have been seeing was infact Trilinear rather than AF. which is why i remember it working, but not too great. the Trilinear setting was being applied to PCSX2, rather than the AF setting.

[lightchris]

Tried forcing it with Nvidiainspector?

Yep, though it doesn't make a difference whether you set it in NV's CP or the Inspector. The Inspector sets the exact same flags. Basically it just offers another user interface along with options that are hidden in NV's CP.

believe i understand the difference, though whether you agree with the answer is up to you.

NVCP used to include a Force Mipmapping setting with off, bilinear and trilinear modes.

This setting forced to on Ultimately reduced the the AF quality of games with existing mipmaps (verifiable on a GTX 2x0 on AF tester with release 197)

Anyhow, the new driver no longer have Force Mipmapping
I believe what you may have been seeing was infact Trilinear rather than AF. which is why i remember it working, but not too great. the Trilinear setting was being applied to PCSX2, rather than the AF setting.

It's really sad I don't have more comparison pictures stored. I did them once, just for myself to check the differences, but deleted them.
Anyway: This picture clearly shows AF. It would be much blurrier in the distance with just trilinear filtering.

If my old graphics card was still working, I'd try to install an old driver and see what happens (with my GTX 460 I can't go back that far). This could finally prove or disprove this matter.

[Squall Leonhart]

I believe that the oem releases of r199 that can be found at some places might have code level support for the 460, but it was not included in the inf package.

[hellbringer616]

What about ATi? are they afflicted with the "can't force AA/AF" issue us nVidia users have?

[lightchris]

I just got my old 8800 GTS to work again (with the method of baking - google for it if you're interested).

Again I ran some tests. What I found out was indeed what I was expecting from the beginning: Nvidia did change the behaviour of the AF option in their drivers.
I tested 2 drivers: It does work with FW 162.65 while it doesn't with FW 197.57. Somewhere in between the change must have happened.
In newer GSDX versions "allow 8-bit textures" needs to be disabled for it to work.

Here are some screenshots as proof:

Shadow of the Colossus:
       
Dragon Quest VIII:
       
Drakan 2:
       
Kingdom Hearts:
       

The difference is most noticable when seen in motion and not on screenshots. But nevertheless I think they speak for themselves when you look at the textures in the distance.

[hellbringer616]

Interesting findings, I see you're using FW 197.57

Have you tried any of the 280+ drivers?

[Squall Leonhart]

the only change i know of between 160 and 190 was resolving a mip issue with resulted in heavy shimmering.

[lightchris]

Interesting findings, I see you're using FW 197.57

197.57 was the one where it already stopped working. It does work with FW 162.65 and probably quite a few releases before and in between.

Have you tried any of the 280+ drivers?

Of course. I doubt that the old behaviour will ever come back though.

the only change i know of between 160 and 190 was resolving a mip issue with resulted in heavy shimmering.

Maybe it has got something to do with that. But not all changes made in the driver are documented for the public. Especially not when it comes to subtle changes that impact only very few applications.

[Squall Leonhart]

I'm not talking about a fix that was publicly declared anyway ;p