VMD-L Mailing List

From: Stéphane Teletchéa (steletch_at_biomedicale.univ-paris5.fr)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 02:16:35 CDT

I have a GeForce II MX 400, and as you can see in the readme file, you can :
[stephane_at_pcumr70 stephane]$ more /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README
<cut text>
The following tables describe the possible values for __GL_FSAA_MODE
and their effect on various NVIDIA GPUs.

__GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce, GeForce2, Quadro, and Quadro2 Pro
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  0 FSAA disabled
  1 FSAA disabled
  2 FSAA disabled
  3 1.5 x 1.5 Supersampling
  4 2 x 2 Supersampling
  5 FSAA disabled

__GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce4 MX, Quadro4 500/550 XGL, and
                Quadro4 200/400 NVS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  0 FSAA disabled
  1 2x Bilinear Multisampling
  2 2x Quincunx Multisampling
  3 FSAA disabled
  4 2 x 2 Supersampling
  5 FSAA disabled

__GL_FSAA_MODE GeForce3, Quadro DCC, GeForce4 Ti, Quadro4 700 XGL,
                Quadro4 750 XGL, and Quadro4 900 XGL
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  0 FSAA disabled
  1 2x Bilinear Multisampling
  2 2x Quincunx Multisampling
  3 FSAA disabled
  4 4x Bilinear Multisampling
  5 4x Gaussian Multisampling

Please note that to use FSAA on Quadro-family products, you must disable
UBB (please see APPENDIX M: PAGE FLIPPING, WINDOW FLIPPING, AND UBB
for details).
<cut text>

So for me, to have nice exported pictures, i do in one shell (in bash) :
export __GL_FSAA_MODE=4, and then in the same console :
vmd

You could consider adding it in your starting login files, but then AA will
be enabled for all the screen, with considerably lower the performances.

Stef

Le Mercredi 23 Octobre 2002 17:07, John Stone a écrit :
> Hi Marc,
> Not all of the NVidia cards behave the same way with respect to
> antialiasing. The GeForce 3 seems to behave more like a real workstation,
> in that it allows you to enable or disable antialiasing on the fly.
> The GeForce 2 and the MX series are less dynamic, they only seem to
> enable antialiasing if you set environment variables prior to starting
> VMD, and then once enabled, they do not allow VMD to turn it back off.
> This appears to be something about the way their hardware or drivers
> work. Anyway, if you read the NVidia driver README file, they describe
> the environment variables you need to set to turn on antialiasing, the
> values are card-specific, so you'll need to look up the value that
> corresponds to the right mode for your card.
>
> Thanks,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 02:45:22PM +0100, Marc Baaden wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > what is necessary to have the antialiasing option working in VMD
> > (I am using the experimental 1.8a28). The AntiAliasing option is
> > grayed out.
> > Is it related to the
> >
> > >>Info) Multisample antialiasing buffer is NOT available.
> >
> > message that I get on VMD startup ?
> > I am quite sure that my graphics card should support it. It is a
> > nVidia Geforce 4GO 440
> >
> > At home I have a Geforce3 and it is working.
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Marc Baaden
> >
> > --
> > Dr. Marc Baaden - Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Oxford University
> > mailto:baaden_at_smplinux.de - ICQ# 11466242 - http://www.marc-baaden.de
> > FAX/Voice +49 697912 39550 - Tel: +44 1865 275380 or +33 609 843217