In Layman's Terms, What is Anti-aliasing?

Hey there. Just in the midst of watching the Crysis 3 Quick Look. Brad changes the graphics settings and turns off anti-aliasing. I've heard the term several times before, Googled it, but have never really come up with an easy explanation. I know some terminology when it comes to graphics but this one has thrown me. In the easiest way, what is anti-aliasing?

Please and Thanks :)

It smooths out the jaggies on the edge of objects.

@garfield518 said:

It smooths out the jaggies on the edge of objects.

Pretty much yep. It makes your image look cleaner around the edges of objects and other elements. There are a few different methods for performing it, some better looking and more costly than others (the TXAA they had enabled in the quick look is a very new technology that looks great, but devours your framerate).

I have a different question from said quick look, what is v-sync? I usually leave it disabled.

v-sync makes it so you don't get screen tear you want that on at all times.

i actually rarely use v-sync screen tearing isnt as big of a problem some people make it out to be

V-sync stands for vertical sync, and it locks your frame rate to the refresh rate of your monitor so you don't get that jarring screen tearing.

Wow. So simple with that image. Thanks guys! Appreciate it. I was actually thinking about that v-sync is as well. Thanks again. :) so here's another question. One of the most prominent things I notice while playing games on the consoles(which is where I play pretty much all my games, thus the reason for my lack of graphics knowledge), is that the shadows of characters and objects, whether in game or cut scene have jagged lines. None are smooth and straight or round. Some games are better at it than others. It's ugly as sin and very distracting. Hope it's something that'll go away with the next generation. So is this also a part of anti-aliasing?

It makes things look less jaggy and more smooth.

The more detailed the shadows, the more resources are used. Shadow quality is usually a separate graphics option on PC games, but it's safe to say that shadow quality is usually not a priority in optimizing console games (much like v-sync and anti-aliasing).

@luciddreams117: Yep. Console games tend not to render super amazing shadows to save on performance.

For most PC games this a toggle you control based on your machine.

Shadows that are chunky are just low-resolution. AA might help a bit, but it's best if the game's engine is able to render higher quality shadows of objects. Most console games have to sacrifice nice shadows because every time something in the game moves, its shadow has to be recalculated, and the more complex a shadow is, the more work the system has to do to render it.

And I agree, it's pure ugly. I think that will definitely go away next gen, at least for the majority of games.

Ahh alright. Thank you to everyone. Feel more knowledgeable already! And as we know, knowledge is power

Seriously though, thanks guys. Long time questions I've had, glad I finally got the answers. :)

AA = making it harder to distinguish pixels, using smoke and mirrors xD

Well, that's the definition of AA according to the eggtionary.