Valve's Gary McTaggart, in response to an inquiry by halflife2.net, has cast serious doubt over the possibility of Half-Life 2 supporting anti-aliasing. The full correspondence suggests that it is unlikely that this will change by the time the game is released, this fall, especially for nVidia owners but does provide some hope for those who possess one of the latest ATI cards.
The whole issue developed when, an inquisitive mind from, HalfLife2.net sent Valve a message asking why AA was off in the videos we've seen so far.
This is what Mr. McTaggart had to say: There are problems with the way that current hardware implements FSAA. If you enable it, you will see a lot of artifacts on polygon boundaries due to the way that they sample texture subrects with FSAA enabled. We are working with the harware companies and the DirectX team to make sure that future hardware doesn't have this problem. This message however, did not fully explain the extent of the problem, when queried further McTaggart said:
At the present, you wouldn't want to run the game with AA enabled. You'd see some pretty bad artifacts. We may come up with some way to work around the hardware problems in the future though so that you can use AA.
So far the messages left some hope that the problem was a development one and would be eradicated by the time of release but Valve sent a final message which cast serious doubt over the compatibility of nVidia cards with Half-Life 2.
Asked whether this problem could, at some time in the future be solved by new improved drivers Valve's reply was simple. Drivers aren't likely to fix the problem, with the exception of the ATI 9500-9800. There's hope there for being able to use FSAA properly. You are out of luck on NVidia unless either NVidia or us come up with some clever way of solving this problem.
Asked whether the game source had something to do with the problem Valve replied:
It's a problem for any app that packs small textures into larger textures. The small textures will bleed into each other if you have multisample FSAA enabled. The best thing to do right now is either buy an ATI card in the hopes that it will be solved there, or wait until the next generation of cards come out.
So for the time being no AA with H-L 2 with ATI's latest cards more likely to support the feature than nVidia boards. It is true that the game is so stunning that by the time players recover they will have little time to miss AA. It is also true that opinions about AA are divided among gamers with some claiming that they never use it anyway.
The fact remains however, that H-L 2 is a hardcore gamers title and one representing the cutting edge of technological advancement in the field and as such should support all available developments. There is a chance that the issue will be resolved before the game hits the shelves and it is certain that many gamers and some hardware manufacturers are praying that it is.
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