Panther still has the Jaggies
 

Panther 10.3.2 came out today and I noticed right away that it contained new drivers for the video cards and my hopes instantly soared that they would fix the Jaguar Jaggies. Ever since Jaguar came out people have noticed that the fish aren't nearly as realistic as they are in OS9 as they shimmer with a diagonalish stairstep jagged aliased interference pattern making them look like a mediocre animation instead of being almost totally photorealistic as they did pre-10.2. Marine Aquarium 2 didn't fix the problem. Panther didn't fix it. And now the new drivers didn't fix it. I wonder if anyone even cares anymore. Well I do. Here is a picture to remind the many makers of this program of how bad Marine Aquarium looks compared to how it used to. It's like.... a bummer.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/mrtew/Jaggies1032.jpg

Tew,
I feel for you. Though I'm not sure who's fault this is (No irony or anything – I'm just not sure) it's truly a (nasty) dent in the MA suite.

/Tiny

For those not familiar with Screen Capturing on OS X, Grab doesn't stop updates to the screen buffer while it is working so artifacts are common. There are 3rd party programs which actually attach to the process and freeze it so that the capture is more clean. I am not aware which capture utility Mr. Tew used.

In any case Jaguar _did_ introduce an artifact to moving object textures which show up most noticeably on the bannerfish. Apple has been unable to explain it and we have spent money having them look at it.

There is a big difference between not caring any more and being unable to do anything further. We are constantly working on MA to increase its performance and decrease its system resource consumption (improved graphics card usage and I've been learning AltiVec). Should we find out why the problem happens and be able to fix it you can be sure that we will.

Darnit

Of course it is. I know and understand your situation. Apologies if it came across as anything else.

/TT

Tiny,

You didn't offend at all. No need to apologize. Nor for Mr. Tew's frustration that Panther's new drivers didn't help. I'm frustrated by it as well.


Jim

I need a couple volunteers to test a build of MA2 for me. Please use the feedback form on the Order N Development web site to supply your name and e-mail address.

Thanks. Testing done. No more volunteers, thanks.

I'm thinking 10.3.3 has *helped* the jaggies...
Wishful thinking? I can't get *any* free capture tools to give me a clean shot. :(

Jaggies solution solution/clue!!!
 

Another thread got me thinking about the ATI drivers so I played around with the settings in my ATI control panel (located in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder), and I basically created a Unique profile for the Marine Aquarium application and cranked all the settings all the way up. Short story is that it WORKED! The jaggies are completely gone! The fish are completely smooth and beautiful! It's unreal! Here's a picture of my settings and a picture of what my tank looks like now. Like the other poster I can only set the ATI profile for the application, not the saver which is even more frustrating but now I have hope. Is there a way to set the ATI profile for the entire screensaver engine? Where is it located? Hopefully some fix can be written into a MA update soon! I'm very excited!

John mrtew@comcast.net

http://home.wideopenwest.com/~mrtew/atiprefs.jpg

http://home.wideopenwest.com/~mrtew/ati fish.jpg

Works for Screensaver too!
 

Well I found the Screensaver engine inside the System folder Library in System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver/framework/Version/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine and set it for Best Quality in the ATI panel and it fixes the Jaggies in the Screensaver too!!! I also did it for the application SaverLab which lets you run MA as a desktop background and it works there too even though it doesn't for BackLight2.0 which in another desktopsaver app. I'm totally happy and thrilled now and the best news is that this doesn't seem to slow down the computer more or use more CPU or anything... it just makes the fish look great at last. I hope this info helps all the other people that may have Jaggies here.

Yay!
Thanks a lot, Tew.

Anyone know how to turn on AA on the Mac Mini? I even went to ATI's website to download the control panel from them but it doesn't recognize my 9200... :confused: I didn't try to install the actual drivers though, it said they were only for 10.3.6... And I'm guessing they're not suppose to support this particular 9200...

Did you look for the ATI Displays control panel in Applications/Utilities/ATI Utilities/ATI Displays ? That's how I did it, but the AA doesn't do that much for me... it's mostly the Anisotropic Filtering (the third slider) that makes the difference for me.

Yep, but it just says "Unknown ATI graphics" instead of the type of card... I guess I have to wait for updated drivers that cover the mini...

Edit: And you're right, it would be AF, not AA, that 's what makes the GA look better on the PC...

have the jaggles worked their out in 10.3.8? i do seem to notice more jaggles in the application than when running the screen saver. i wonder what the processing consumptiion is for MA...

also, i looked for the ati control panel, but it's not around 10.3.8

typo: 'worked their way out'

Wakanda,
You can click on the little "Edit" button in your posts when you discover typos. That one allows you to fix those things without having to post one more time.

/Tiny Tip

Any post longer than 2 sentences, I usually write it and immediately hit Edit and start tweaking it. :eek:

Mac mini ATI Control Panel 4.5 now out!
 

4-18-2005
ATI Displays 4.5 is out!!!
Works with Mac mini and reports ATI Radeon™ 9200...
No more jaggies!!! ...(except with "BackLight")
Screen saver works too using instructions above.

edit: here's the url, since it's hard to find on ati.com
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...asp?deptID=894
(look at bottom under most recent topics - ATI Displays 4.5