Radeon Gallium3D Now Does MSAA On R600

[disi]

What applications need MSAA today? Most of these are probably games and written for MS+Nvidia platform.
Recently I tested a lot of titles with the radeon FOSS driver and have to say: don't touch anything with Nvidia written on it if you have a radeon card.

What I learned: in future stay away from MS and Nvidia stickers

[Sidicas]

What applications need MSAA today? Most of these are probably games and written for MS+Nvidia platform.
Recently I tested a lot of titles with the radeon FOSS driver and have to say: don't touch anything with Nvidia written on it if you have a radeon card.

What I learned: in future stay away from MS and Nvidia stickers

MSAA doesn't stand for Microsoft.. It stands for "Multi-Sampling". It's one of the most basic forms of anti-aliasing. Of course, CSAA and MLAA are much more efficient but also are much more complex. That's what really boggles my mind is why they completed MLAA so much earlier than MSAA, especially since a lot of hardware that can run MSAA *CAN'T* run MLAA or CSAA but all hardware that can run MLAA or CSAA can easily run MSAA.. /shrug. Don't know why MSAA is so late, I've been waiting for it to be in the open source Radeon driver for many years. Hopefully it will come to r300g as well soon. I don't know anybody that would run MSAA above 4X, it's just a waste as CSAA or MLAA is much more efficient performance wise at higher anti-aliasing levels. People who are running very old hardware that can only run MSAA certainly aren't going to be going above 4X MSAA for performance reasons..

I just want my 2XMSAA on r300g... That's enough to keep me happy, I hate jaggies

[jonnyh]

That's what really boggles my mind is why they completed MLAA so much earlier than MSAA, especially since a lot of hardware that can run MSAA *CAN'T* run MLAA or CSAA but all hardware that can run MLAA or CSAA can easily run MSAA..

That's because the MSAA is a hardware feature, so needs r600-specific magic to turn on and use, (Which possibly changes between hardware generations, and no doubt different magic to nvidia/intel/other hardware).

MLAA, on the other hand, is implemented as a shader pass over the final image, so only a shader needs to be written (And assuming that the shader compilers work correctly for their corresponding cards, the same shader should work on all generations/architectures with no changes) and can be completed with no hardware-specific knowledge.

[disi]

MSAA doesn't stand for Microsoft.. It stands for "Multi-Sampling". It's one of the most basic forms of anti-aliasing. Of course, CSAA and MLAA are much more efficient but also are much more complex. That's what really boggles my mind is why they completed MLAA so much earlier than MSAA, especially since a lot of hardware that can run MSAA *CAN'T* run MLAA or CSAA but all hardware that can run MLAA or CSAA can easily run MSAA.. /shrug. Don't know why MSAA is so late, I've been waiting for it to be in the open source Radeon driver for many years. Hopefully it will come to r300g as well soon. I don't know anybody that would run MSAA above 4X, it's just a waste as CSAA or MLAA is much more efficient performance wise at higher anti-aliasing levels. People who are running very old hardware that can only run MSAA certainly aren't going to be going above 4X MSAA for performance reasons..

I just want my 2XMSAA on r300g... That's enough to keep me happy, I hate jaggies

Oh I knew it doesn't stand for Microsoft, but wine just got support end of last year? And especially under wine with kind of older titles there is the possibility to raise the quality to maximum with modern graphic cards to make them look better.
So I went along and tested some titles from GOG under PlayOnLinux and radeon driver:
1. D&D - Dragonshard -> works perfect
2. The Nations -> works perfect
3. Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone -> characters not rendered (like EQ2 in the beginning or still? Not playing any more)
4. Disciples 2 Gold -> works perfect

[neatnoise]

When will be antialiasing usable in games like xonotic, sauerbraten? It says that isn't supported. I'm using latest kernel, libdrm, mesa-git

[whitecat]

When will be antialiasing usable in games like xonotic, sauerbraten? It says that isn't supported. I'm using latest kernel, libdrm, mesa-git

You need at least kernel 3.6-rc3.

[marek]

I think he actually needs 3.6-rc4. The dmesg should say "[drm] Initialized radeon 2.22.0". The version is the only thing that matters.

The only required components for MSAA are the kernel, and Mesa 9.0 or git. Mesa won't let you built itself unless you have the latest libdrm too, that's the third requirement.

Some people have said that you need to update xf86-video-ati or even xorg... that's not true.

As I said before, the MSAA can be used through OpenGL framebuffer objects, not through GLX, which some apps use instead. That will hopefully be tackled in the next Mesa release. GLX support is kinda a separate project on its own.

[whitecat]

As I said before, the MSAA can be used through OpenGL framebuffer objects, not through GLX, which some apps use instead. That will hopefully be tackled in the next Mesa release. GLX support is kinda a separate project on its own.

Is there a way to know what an apps uses? (opengl fbo or glx)

[neatnoise]

That must be because of GLX, what I have is:

Linux 3.6.0-rc4 #1 SMP Sun Sep 2 15:14:45 CEST 2012 x86_64
libdrm 2.4.39
GL_RENDERER: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV770
GL_VERSION: 3.0 Mesa 9.0-devel (git-a96119c)

Xonotic log, after trying to enable 2x AA:

VID_Restart: changing from fullscreen 1440x900x32bpp, to fullscreen 1440x900x32bpp (2x AA).
Linked against SDL version 1.2.12
Using SDL library version 1.2.15
Failed to set video mode to 1440x900: Couldn't find matching GLX visual
Video mode change failed
Linked against SDL version 1.2.12
Using SDL library version 1.2.15
GL_VENDOR: X.Org
GL_RENDERER: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV770
GL_VERSION: 3.0 Mesa 9.0-devel (git-a96119c)
vid.support.arb_multisample 1
vid.support.gl20shaders 1
NOTE: requested 1x AA, got 0x AA
Video Mode: fullscreen 1440x900x32x0.00hz

[whitecat]

Xonotic is a fork of Nexuiz. I know nexuiz have different launcher, like nexuiz-sdl and nexuiz-glx. See if there is something similar with xonotic.