More Awesome Than You!

I was going to post in an existing thread, but I got the necromancy warning, so I decided against it.

I just thought I'd post this up as a "The moar you know" kind of piece of information, since this glitch has a quick fix. If you turn on adaptive anti-aliasing with ATi Radeon HD4870 (probably applies to other cards, too), you will probably get this glitch. Turning off the adaptive anti-aliasing in the Catalyst Control Center should fix it. Just ran into it today upon having a new (well, hubby's old) video card installed. The trees and bushes glow at close view, and in map view look slightly different but still messed up.

(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8443/graphicglitch01.jpg) (http://img204.imageshack.us/i/graphicglitch01.jpg/)

(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/395/graphicglitch02.jpg) (http://img204.imageshack.us/i/graphicglitch02.jpg/)

With my card, turning adaptive anti-aliasing on didn't do that. However, it made hairs have that white speckled look that a bunch of people were complaining about earlier. Either way, adaptive anti-aliasing +ATI card+ Sims3 = fail.

Mine is a x1950Pro Sapphire.

Mine's the Radeon HD3200, and I pointed out (probably in one of the undead threads you pulled up) that turning on adaptive anti-aliasing gave me no other problems except balding sims.  Everything looked so smooth and sparkly like a baby's bottom, but so did my sims' scalps.  Very much DNW. 

Of course, I'd thought that quite a few other games have problems with ATI's lurvely AA, not just Sims 3.

Hmm, odd. I had a Radeon card before, but I don't think I ever tried to turn on adaptive anti-aliasing with that one, so I don't know how that card would have handled it. Good to know the glitches come in different flavors.

I had this problem, but it was not adjusting or even touching my anti-aliasing settings that fixed it. I had to lower my resolution settings. Adaptive anti-aliasing caused balding sims in my game.

I've had to stop using adaptive antialiasing since TS2, because things like cribs, grills, and DJ booths that used alpha edits would get all wonky. Ah, it's comforting to know that nothing's changed.
[/sarcasm]

IgnorantBliss - I have the same card and had the same issue.

Ah, yes. I play at 1600x1200. It could be that lowering the resolution would fix it, but I refuse to use my LCD screen at a non-native resolution  :P. However, I don't really mind playing without adaptive anti-aliasing since I don't know even what I'm missing  :D.


What kind of a resolution do you play at? I'm curious now if that matters.

*sigh* Why can't I leave well enough alone? Well I just updated to the new 9.7 drivers and now I'm getting graphical glitches and oddness. I'll have to play around and see if it enabled adaptive AA by default and if so disable it.

Good to know since I was thinking about doing the same thing.

I'm also curious about the resolution people are using.  I lowered mine to test out AA at a lower res and still got balding sims.

I haven't used AA since before TS3 came out, but when I was playing TS2, lowering the resolution didn't help at all. My native resolution is 1680 x 1050 but I have it set to 1280 x 960 because it doubles as my TV and is thus a few feet away from me - I like to actually see what I'm reading or typing. Disabling adaptive antialiasing is the only thing that made a difference.

Edited for clarity. And because sometimes I are teh dumb.

I'm doing 1680x1050 windowed. It's my flat screen's native resolution.

That sucks, but damn does it look pretty.

I can't understand why anyone would turn on "anti-aliasing" at all. All it does is turn the game into a blurry mass of crap where nothing has sharp, clearly defined EDGES. I LIKE MY EDGES. I want my edges to be so sharp that you can CUT YOURSELF just BY LOOKING AT THEM. I don't want them to be SMOOTH! That defies the point of having them be EDGES! Edges should be like this:
(http://www.safetyimages.info/admin/uploadedimages/This%20sign%20has%20sharp%20edges.jpg)

I cannot attest to the accuracy of these claims, but according to EAxis:

What video card do you have? A TNT 2? I haven't had blurry anti aliasing in years. I cringe every time I play a game with aa on. Even when my resolution is 1920x1080 aliasing is still very apparent.

So, the programming equivalent of a warning sign...one that nobody will probably ever see at this point. Who's going to read it now?

I can attest to this, it does what it says, it conflicts with ingame edge smoothing, I have ati hd2600 and this is like old news.

Been a few years since you used it? :p

Anti-aliasing on my rig turns what are normally hand-saw, jagged edges into razor blade edges.