Do You Care About Anti-Aliasing?

[ComputerNerd]

I care about eye-candy as much as my hardware allows me to, which is not a lot.
With better hardware, maybe.
Just not at the moment.

[anveena]

No. It usually kills my fps.

[Easo]

If it makes the game look sharp, yes of course. I don't like jagged edges.

[Advent]

Clearly something must be wrong with my eyes, because I don't even notice in games. A lot of games that I play use FXAA which makes some of the image very blurry, which I very much DO notice. Otherwise, I think I just either don't notice what I'm supposed to, or I've gotten used to Aliasing as part of the overall experience. I often find that aliasing is something I'd chalk up to nitpicking on a moving image, so I don't bother with it.

[fangless]

Easiest way to really notice is play an older game, and leave it off. It just looks horrendous. Then max it up to like 16x AA, and everthing suddenly becomes clean, as much as it could for a really old game.

With the rise of 2560x1440 and 4096x2160 resolution monitors though, AA can be dropped a few levels and still look respectable. At 4k, it's likely you can even just turn it off completely (since it'll probably murder your FPS at that level) and the game could look spot on.

[Powerogue]

It can be distracting. If I can have it on "low" that's usually enough.

[Advent]

I'm playing primarily at 1440p right now, and I don't notice unless I'm so close to something I can almost count the pixel clusters. So I just turn it off completely because it's such a resource hog.

[Veyne]

Anti-aliasing to me is one of the biggest graphical enhancements I can make in my settings. That being said, some games run like garbage with AA.

[zeropeorth]

Simply put yes. It increases quality and my pc can handle it. I prefer a sharp, clean image ... doesn't matter if it is minecraft or FFXIV. The cleaner the image, whether from super sampling, higher res textures, whatever the case may be, I appreciate it. I explore and zoom in games, like Destiny with a sniper rifle on planets; I get a little disappointed at low res sky boxes or ground clutter. I get visually distracted by a chain link fence that 'shimmers' from jaggies, or that power line that looks terrible when you move or swaying in the wind. Doesn't matter if the art style is more cartoony like WoW, or blocky/retro. Just want a nice, crisp image

[stellvia]

Standard AA makes sense, IE: FXAA or whatever. But the Supersampling kind tends to kill fps and has very marginal benefits. Similar to dynamic shadows and specular lighting: Lots of computational cost for not a lot of visual fidelity gains.

[anaxie]

I've started turning off AA in all my games since I don't care nor notice jagged edges. I feel that Anti Aliasing is a bit overrated. What do you all do in your games? How do you feel about AA?

If you don't notice jagged edges. Get your eyes checked before you hurt someone.

[Barael]

High enough resolution might eliminate the need for AA in still images. In motion, without AA, edges will shimmer annoyingly regardless of resolution because of the pixels shifting around.

Edit: That said, supersampling @ 4k is obviously a wasteful way of fixing that.

[amishjello]

I always turn it off because I never understood what it did and never noticed a difference with it on. Then again, I am fine with my Skyrim on medium settings even though my pc can handle max settings.

[Advent]

If you don't notice jagged edges. Get your eyes checked before you hurt someone.

What is that supposed to mean, exactly?

On that note however, I may have misspoke. I notice, but it's so minor in all the games I've played that turning it on seems like a waste considering the performance hit. And at 1440p it's less noticeable to me than it was previously.

[Teri]

I hate bad looking power lines/chainlink fences and such in games, pixelated and half transparent.

[Mirishka]

I take a lot of screenshots so yeah, its something I tend to turn on.

[kail]

I definetly care about the looks of my games. With a 1070, I can run some form of AA easily while hitting 90+ frames. If I were to make a choice between looks vs performance, I'll take the performance.

[I Push Buttons]

Depends on the game really. With strategy games I usually have it on since the models are small and bad aliasing can really distort the detail of them... But on shooters and RPGs, I will usually have it on if I am already more than maxing the game, but if I have to drop it off to get a better FPS I don't mind.

Though most games have FXAA and such now, so I usually have something like that on no matter what since a lot of these new Nvidia AA solutions don't have much impact on performance.

[Deleted]

Yes, its a must, I always must have at least 2x on. Pixelated graphics are unplayable.

[nekobaka]

If I ever bother to fiddle with stock gfx settings, AA and then shadows are the first to be axed in that order

Those two are usually my first hit as well. With some games AA really hits performance. I generally do not notice shadows as much in many of the games I play to appreciate in increased detail at higher settings for such a performance hit. Also since getting a 144hz monitor I have been taking a few more settings down a notch.