How to Smooth the Pixel Edges Of Everything ?

I'm not at all technical savvy, so please talk to me like a stubborn and confused 4 year old! lol!

All the AVs and buildings and objects I see, are very very pixelated. I even run the Nicholaz viewer, and the pixels are still very very visible, making the world and its residents, almost look as if it were made from Lego bricks.

Is there anyway to give me back my smooth edged look ? On either and/or both viewers? I have slid various sliders and counters up and down and to be honest - it hasn't made a difference. But then maybe I am doing something wrong?

My view of my world, now kinda reminds me of when TV programme makers started using blue backgrounds to 'insert' a person into any bit of scenery

All suggestions extremely gratefully received.

could just be your graphics card

Thanks for your amazingly swift response..... errr.... but how do I check that out? Haven't a clue about these things.

thanks again

Are you running SL full screen? If I do that my view is very pixelated. Check in your preferrences and make sure you are running in a window........might be as simple as that

Go to your room - right now!

At the risk of lower frame rates ..

Press Ctrl + P and under the Graphics tab slide everything to the right ..

If your graphics card can handle it .. no more "jaggies"

Failing that .. take the default settings and get a faster PC/Mac.

/me spits his pepsi on his keyboard

Well if you have an ATI card you should have something called the Catalyst software. If you run that you can turn on anti-aliasing. I don't know what those Nvidia heathens use.

nVidia's control panel that gets installed with the driver.

What version of SL are you currectly using, or what version would you like to use for giving instructions on how to do things?

It might be useful if you could take screenshots and link to them here.

Do you have any screenshots made before things went wrong?

Did SL ever work right, so far as this problem is concerned?

There is a setting in Debug Settings called RenderResolutionDivisor that should be set to 1 - maybe you managed to change that.

Ya know? It's the dang new viewer. They made everything WindLight, so you get the super-duper graphics if you have a good card, and crud if not. My video card can only handle "Medium". When I tried to start one notch up, SL went haywire and I couldn't even read the screen.

So, the way to fix it is apparently to get a high-end video card. Sheesh. I already had to upgrade RAM. Now $300+ for a video card? Not to mention, from what I read on some Dell Site, they have to perform a Frankenstein-like reconstruction of my laptop with all kinds of scary steps to make it work. So, now I need a new PC?

Give me a break. I'll live with pixels and LEGO people sliding around I guess.

Turn off Avatar Imposters and at least some of that lego look will go away.

Have you unchecked Avatar Imposters?
EDIT: Nevermind, if it's buildings too then, I have no clue.

On my browsing machine with a lowly onboard mx440, the new viewer doesn't run fast but it doesn't make things look highly pixelated.

What resolution is your display set to?

What resolution is SL set run at?

Don't Wanna!

menu/About will tell you (and us) what kind of graphics card you have.

If you are running SL in a window on the desktop

rt-click/properties on the desktop, then settings (in XP) will tell you what your screen resolution is. That is, how many dots horizontal and vertical. Try a higher setting.

If you are running full screen

Try running in a window.

There might be a utility for ATI or nVidia (one of these *might* be your video card) somewhere on your disk that can be used to adjust the settings SL will use in full screen mode.

Originally Posted by Jinnywitha Cleanslate
I'm not at all technical savvy, so please talk to me like a stubborn and confused 4 year old! lol!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabriele Graves:/Go to your room - right now!

Kevo Lefavre :/me spits his pepsi on his keyboard

Lee Ponzu:/Don't Wanna!
_______________________________

Hahahah - thanks for the responses - especially to my speak to me like a four year old request! hahahahha!

Ok.... don't know if I'm doing this right but here goes :
Gave up on Windlight - followed the 'make it look pretty' tutorials, and videos, etc, and read and read and read....well, it never looked pretty to me! garish colours - harsh white, tipped water ripples, and the lego look. So I defected and went to Nicholaz viewer.

imposter thingamygig was turned off after reading about it in the forums....still not sure what the heck it is, but I did it anyway.

Screen res at: 1680x1050, and I am running it in a window.

Running on Vista computer....the NVIDIA control panel says :

GEForce 8600 GT
Forceware Version 163.71
Video Bios Version 60.84.51.00.17
Bus: PCI Express 16 x16

Intel (R) core (TM) 2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 266GHz
DirectX version: 10.0

Suzannec -
it wont' let me do the snapshots, and SL was great before the update...thats when all this chaos and misery started.

"There is a setting in Debug Settings called RenderResolutionDivisor that should be set to 1 - maybe you managed to change that." - errrrrrr........HUH ???? :/


Ok - hopefully all of the above will mean something to someone, because it doesn't mean a thing to me.

thanks guys

In the latest Release Candidate version, 1.20.0 (84432), I have on my system actually managed to get the RenderResolutionDivisor stuck at the wrong setting. (That's my reward for messing around with stuff all the time.)

The effect this produces is precisely one on making most things in the world view very low-res. Menus and buttons and hovertext are displayed properly in the lates RC.

It's unlikely you managed to produce this condition if you aren't mucking around with debug settings, but then again, it's unlikely that I've happend to get a version of SL stuck in a low res mode right when you are posting about a low res problem, but it's happened.

There's nothing complicated about Debug Settings. There's just a lot of them.

If you have the Client or Advanced menus showing, the Debug Settings are an option on the Client or Advanced menus. Client and Anvanced are basically the same menus on different versions of the SL viewer with different names.

If you don't have the Client or Advanced Menu showing, press Control Alt D on most systems, or Control Alt Shift D if Control Alt D doesn't work. Control Alt D or Control Alt Shift D toggles the Client (aka Advanced) menu off and on.

Once you have the Advanced (aka client) menu showing, you select Debug Setting in order to set the debug settings.

Arrow down the list of debug settings and check what the value of RenderResolutionDetal is. The normal value is 1. Click the Reset To Default button if it's not 1 and it will be put back to one.

This change takes effect immediately so if this is the source of the problem in your case, it should get corrected.

If the value of RenderResolutionDivisor is already 1 and the display is pixelated anyway, then you will have to find another cause, but if you follow the steps I gave above, you will know how to toggle the Advanced/Client menu off and on and how to find and use the Debug Settings. Not everything in the Debug Settings is quite as oddball as the RenderResolutionDivisor setting. Lot's of stuff in there is prettty useful. It's easy to do and takes little time.

I find it hard to believe that I have managed to mess up this obscure part of SL settings.

So in my case I will try doing a complete uninstall of the Release Candidate and see if that fixes my problem.

Enough of that topic. Back to your display problem.

=====

Are the text, buttons, menus, hovertext, etc. proper looking or is pixellated or otherwise messed up?

The next thing I'd try would be changing your screen resolution, and running SL full screen.

In your situation I would try doing a complete uninstall of all versions of SL. Then I'd check to make sure that they are really uninstalled.

Again I suggest some screen shots.

As for taking screenshots, what happens if you press the PrintScreen key, then go to Paint (Start Programs Accessories Paint in WinXP, I don't know about Vista) and do edit paste?

Check your graphic card's antialiasing settings.

I think we need more information from you before we can be more helpful.

The 1.20 RC in fact includes anti-aliasing under "Hardware options" in the "Custom" graphics setting. (Bear with me if the names aren't quite right. I am not in the client right now).
How much you can smooth things depends before it costs performance depends on your graphics card.

Even with the 'anti-aliasing' active you'll still get jagged edges (aliasing) to a certain degree. Why!? Because to anti-alias EVERYTHING would so much resource it'd be unplayable. Aliasing uses a technique whereby the edges are shaded with colours in the same pallet of the object (black will fade to grey to white at the edges for example). The trouble is that this requires much more data to process and, while not outside th capability of the rendering engine of SL, would mean everyone needs some kick-ass computer. Anti-aliasing on 2D images (chat bubbles UI, ect) doesn't use up hardly anything but as soon as you hit 3d....

Actually, modern hardware typically *do* antialias everything, by brute-force internally rendering things in a higher resolution than needed for the screen, and then downsampling.

hehe, I only get the lego (i call them nintendo people) look, when people are rebaking, or when they are to far away. I kinda like it though. Didn't start happening till the latest update.