Jaggies again

04-02-2003, 02:52 AM

I have installed the new MA2, and love the new fish! And the starfish now seems to streak straight for the glass instead of going backwards into the coral for a quiet stationary sulk...!

I hate to whinge, but I am still getting the jaggies. It is a bit better in millions of colours rather than thousands, but still definite zig zags on the edges of fins and on the colour bands on the fish.

Is there anything I can do with my settings that would help this?

FishTacoAfficionado · 04-02-2003, 07:59 PM

Why, was version 2.0 supposed to include anti-aliasing?

I don't recall such but regardless, do you actually think the fish need it? Fish fins and other appendages are naturally jagged in one form or another and besides, because they are in constant motion, the jaggies are hardly noticeable. Anti-aliasing on all the fish would just make the screensaver chug on slower machines with less capable graphics cards.

Now the starfish... that's a different story. It would be nice if just the starfish was anti-aliased for obvious reasons.

mrtew · 04-02-2003, 10:45 PM

I think the Jaguar jaggies are something other than aliasing. The OS9 version looks perfect.... amazing.... stunning. You just don't realize how bad the OSX version looks until you boot into OS9. It's so frustrating to have the version for the ancient, dead, obsolete operating system look so much better than the version for the most advanced operating system on earth. And it's even more frustrating to have the guys that make the program say that they don't see the problem on their computers and wouldn't know how to fix it if they did. I see it on my old TiBook, on my new TiBook, on my roommate's old iMac and on the new G4's at the Apple store. I sure wish the Jaggies could be fixed. Apple had announced that Jaguar will be replaced by Panther pretty soon, and if that doesn't solve the prob at least we will have to give it a new name.... maybe the Panther fractures or something.

Tiny Turtle · 04-03-2003, 12:49 AM

And all this time I thought it was called jaggies due to the jagged edges, not the OS...

Shame about this problem, really. Not being a Mac user at the moment, I only follow this problem from the side, but I'd lloe to see a solution...

/Tiny AA

feldon34 · 04-03-2003, 02:40 AM

The screen snapshots I have seen posted of the Aquarium running in OS X exhibit this jaggies problem which has nothing to do with the Aquarium or any failure on the part of the development team at Order-N-Dev.

It is an Apple bug, pure and simple. I wonder if it can be worked around the way so much progress is being made on the PC side by working around Microsoft's countless bugs?

AKcrab · 04-03-2003, 03:25 AM

We've looked really close, and we just don't see any jaggies...

mrtew · 04-03-2003, 06:16 AM

Originally posted by feldon27
The screen snapshots I have seen posted of the Aquarium running in OS X exhibit this jaggies problem which has nothing to do with the Aquarium or any failure on the part of the development team at Order-N-Dev. It is an Apple bug, pure and simple.

I don't know how anyone can know whether the bug is Apple's or MA's, but then I'm not a programmer. How do you know where the bug is? The part of this story that bothers me most is that Jim says he doesn't even see the Jaggies on his computers. I obviously don't know whether it's his eyes or his computers or something that he put in his own version of the program that's not included with the release version, but it just seems weird since I've seen them on G3's and G4's and flat screens and CRTs from 3-years-old to brand new, with a very very wide variety of graphics cards. Jim has tried to fix it, and has even sent out a few test builds to see if he's solved the prob, but like I said, it's just frustrating that he doesn't even see the problem.

dsanfili · 04-03-2003, 05:18 PM

I'm another one that just doesn't see the "jaggies". I have a G4/933 running OS 10.2.4 on one partition and OS 9.2.2 on another. MA looks the same (excellent) with either OS. I DO see the jaggies, however, in your screenshot above.

ric · 04-03-2003, 06:00 PM

I did a quick check on the two images you posted and they are not at the same scale.

The coral should be identical in size between the two if the resolutions are set the same, yet the OS X version is smaller in relation to the OS 9 shot.

The coral piece I measured in the OS X shot was 68 x 25, where the OS 9 version was 73 x 26. The difference in size width wise works out that the OS X version is about 93.15% of the OS 9 one. The vertical height isn't really large enough to get a real precentage, but it's similar (93.15% of 26 is 24.2).

I think what you're seeing is that the scaling is causing the image to degrade, creating jaggies. In all likelyhood the image is being geneterated at the right size, but for some reason is being scaled down in OS X.

Hope this helps.

-Ric

feldon34 · 04-03-2003, 07:14 PM

Thanks for your analysis, but I don't think it completely explains the huge difference.

If you look at the picture on the left, the texture is sometimes THREE rows of pixels staggered.

The whole fish is literally being torn apart as it swims across the screen.

1. The snapshot provided by mrtew.
2. The snapshot, after I have shifted the "rows" back into place.

[img]../forumpics/mac-rip.gif[/img]

FishTacoAfficionado · 04-03-2003, 07:31 PM

Originally posted by mrtew
I don't know how anyone can know whether the bug is Apple's or MA's, but then I'm not a programmer. How do you know where the bug is? The part of this story that bothers me most is that Jim says he doesn't even see the Jaggies on his computers. I obviously don't know whether it's his eyes or his computers or something that he put in his own version of the program that's not included with the release version, but it just seems weird since I've seen them on G3's and G4's and flat screens and CRTs from 3-years-old to brand new, with a very very wide variety of graphics cards. Jim has tried to fix it, and has even sent out a few test builds to see if he's solved the prob, but like I said, it's just frustrating that he doesn't even see the problem.

I compared the same exact fish running on my macs and they look fine... they look like the "OS9" pic on the right and nothing like the "OSX" pic on the left. This is on a 17" iMac, 12" Powerbook, and an MDD G4 on a 20" Apple display, all running 10.2.4.

Not that I don't believe such a problem exists. Perhaps this is a machine specific thing? With older systems maybe? Because there are no jaggies here where I'm looking.

Maybe I'll try booting the iMac into OS9 and see how it runs then for the heck of it. I wonder if my registation code will work on the OS9 version....? Come to think of it, I wonder if this mac will even boot into OS9...... the powerbook doesn't

JimO'Connor · 04-03-2003, 08:19 PM

OS X and OS 9 keycodes are interchangable among products of the same version.

I've seriously considered giving everyone else the secret fixes I've been hoarding, but I changed my mind. Guess you guys will just have to wait until I'm feeling generous again.

Version 1.1.2/1.1.3 of MA doesn't exhibit the problem on OS X 10.1.5 and does on 10.2. The OS 9 product uses the same OpenGL calls in the same order and doesn't exhibit the problem. Therefore there are two possibilities: 1) Jaguar OpenGL code has a new bug or behavior change from what was standard before or 2) MA does something which was wrong but which 10.1.5 and 9 versions of OpenGL would accept.

I've asked Apple _again_ about this. The problem with this sort of thing is always creating a repro case for them that minimizes the number of things going on so they aren't overwhelmed with unrelated information. This is a problem for us as well with bug reports -- getting the necessary and sufficient conditions to reproduce is often more than half the work.

Later,
Jim

P.S. I was just kidding about secret fixes. I don't have any. Fish ranking is implemented but the UI isn't determined yet. That is the only "secret" feature. We usually bend over backwards to keep up with issues on this forum. However, there is only so much we can do -- rewriting OpenGL is NOT a paying proposition.

mrtew · 04-03-2003, 09:10 PM

Originally posted by ric
I did a quick check on the two images you posted and they are not at the same scale.
I think what you're seeing is that the scaling is causing the image to degrade, creating jaggies. In all likelyhood the image is being geneterated at the right size, but for some reason is being scaled down in OS X.
Hope this helps.

I thought scaling had something to do with it at one point too because in some screenshots I did it looked like the OSX fish were smaller, but as you can see in this new comparo everything is the same size. The fish near the back of the tank are smaller looking because they are farther away, but all of them look worse and jagged in OSX. The big horizontal rips in the OSX one are an effect of the screenshot, but you can see the jaggies clearly. When the fish are moving they are not nearly as obvious, but for those that don't see them all I can say is boot into OS9. I never really noticed them until I tried that...., so maybe if you don't want to ruin MA for yourself don't! I have a brand new TiGz and I've seen them on the even newer G4 dual 1.25GZ at the Apple store so it's definitely not 'older' Macs. I am glad to hear that you are still working on a fix though Jim!

feldon34 · 04-03-2003, 11:21 PM

The OS9 picture looks like you are getting full texture anti-aliasing. We don't get that on the PC without putting a great load on our video card.

Jim Sachs · 04-04-2003, 12:34 AM

The tearing on the OSX version looks like V-Sync is turned off.

mrtew · 04-04-2003, 06:12 AM

Originally posted by Jim Sachs
The tearing on the OSX version looks like V-Sync is turned off.

That's exactly what I was thinking! I turned my v-sync on and everything was perfect.... then I turned it back off and I got the jaggies again. Then I forgot how to turn it back on! Then I forgot was v-sync even is! Remind me how to turn it back on again? :-]

JimO'Connor · 04-04-2003, 10:42 AM

Last night I sent mail to Mike saying it looked like the double buffering was faulty. On OS X the entire screen is double buffered (how they get the transparent window effects). With Jaguar the way OpenGL is used by the system was fundamentally changed, which is probably related.

dpfenninger · 04-04-2003, 12:17 PM

Wow...just rebooted into OS 9 and there is most definitely a difference in quality. The fish (especially the ones with stripes, where it's most noticeable) are near real-life quality in 9, whereas they look much more like an animation (much more pixelated/jagged) in Jaguar.

Hopefully this can be fixed.

Keep up the good work guys!!

04-21-2003, 07:01 AM

I run a dual 1Ghz G4, Geforce 4Mx, 10.1.5 and 9.2.2 with an Apple flat screen studio display. There is a noticable reduction in the quality of the fish rendering with OSX - the most obvious being the stripes on the Koran Angelfish which definitely appear more "pixellated" under X.

I have yet to witness any "tearing" of the fish in X, just the overall reduction in quality.

Paul Dean
paul_dean@blueyonder.co.uk

mrtew · 04-21-2003, 07:08 AM

Originally posted by Unregistered
...the most obvious being the stripes on the Koran Angelfish which definitely appear more "pixellated" under X.

I have yet to witness any "tearing" of the fish in X, just the overall reduction in quality.

The tearing is only a side effect of the screen capture tools in OSX. You don't ever actually see that. And what looks like jagged lines in the screen captures looks more like an animated pixelated pattern moving across the stripes of the fish... not even that noticable until you see them without it.

I just hope that the Jims don't 'fix' MarineAquarium at the same time as Apple 'fixes' OpenGL with Panther effectively 'breaking' it again and forcing us to look at the Jaggies for another year! I really really really miss the perfect looking fish I used to know.

04-02-2003, 02:52 AM	#1
Rose Guest Posts: n/a	Jaggies again I have installed the new MA2, and love the new fish! And the starfish now seems to streak straight for the glass instead of going backwards into the coral for a quiet stationary sulk...! I hate to whinge, but I am still getting the jaggies. It is a bit better in millions of colours rather than thousands, but still definite zig zags on the edges of fins and on the colour bands on the fish. Is there anything I can do with my settings that would help this?

04-02-2003, 10:45 PM	#3
mrtew Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: michigan Posts: 109	I think the Jaguar jaggies are something other than aliasing. The OS9 version looks perfect.... amazing.... stunning. You just don't realize how bad the OSX version looks until you boot into OS9. It's so frustrating to have the version for the ancient, dead, obsolete operating system look so much better than the version for the most advanced operating system on earth. And it's even more frustrating to have the guys that make the program say that they don't see the problem on their computers and wouldn't know how to fix it if they did. I see it on my old TiBook, on my new TiBook, on my roommate's old iMac and on the new G4's at the Apple store. I sure wish the Jaggies could be fixed. Apple had announced that Jaguar will be replaced by Panther pretty soon, and if that doesn't solve the prob at least we will have to give it a new name.... maybe the Panther fractures or something. mrtew

04-03-2003, 12:49 AM	#4
Tiny Turtle is pleased Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Stockholm, Sweden Posts: 7,365	And all this time I thought it was called jaggies due to the jagged edges, not the OS... Shame about this problem, really. Not being a Mac user at the moment, I only follow this problem from the side, but I'd lloe to see a solution... /Tiny AA Thanks to Morgan, Tiny Snapshots is up and running again with "Tiny Järvafält" as the latest addition – Go have a look and tell me what you think. "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." /Robert Oppenheimer on witnessing the first thermonuclear detonation in history.

04-03-2003, 02:40 AM	#5
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	The screen snapshots I have seen posted of the Aquarium running in OS X exhibit this jaggies problem which has nothing to do with the Aquarium or any failure on the part of the development team at Order-N-Dev. It is an Apple bug, pure and simple. I wonder if it can be worked around the way so much progress is being made on the PC side by working around Microsoft's countless bugs? "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

04-03-2003, 06:16 AM	#7
mrtew Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: michigan Posts: 109	Originally posted by feldon27 The screen snapshots I have seen posted of the Aquarium running in OS X exhibit this jaggies problem which has nothing to do with the Aquarium or any failure on the part of the development team at Order-N-Dev. It is an Apple bug, pure and simple. I don't know how anyone can know whether the bug is Apple's or MA's, but then I'm not a programmer. How do you know where the bug is? The part of this story that bothers me most is that Jim says he doesn't even see the Jaggies on his computers. I obviously don't know whether it's his eyes or his computers or something that he put in his own version of the program that's not included with the release version, but it just seems weird since I've seen them on G3's and G4's and flat screens and CRTs from 3-years-old to brand new, with a very very wide variety of graphics cards. Jim has tried to fix it, and has even sent out a few test builds to see if he's solved the prob, but like I said, it's just frustrating that he doesn't even see the problem. mrtew

04-02-2003, 07:59 PM	#2
FishTacoAfficionado Registered Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Chicago Posts: 7	Why, was version 2.0 supposed to include anti-aliasing? I don't recall such but regardless, do you actually think the fish need it? Fish fins and other appendages are naturally jagged in one form or another and besides, because they are in constant motion, the jaggies are hardly noticeable. Anti-aliasing on all the fish would just make the screensaver chug on slower machines with less capable graphics cards. Now the starfish... that's a different story. It would be nice if just the starfish was anti-aliased for obvious reasons.

04-03-2003, 03:25 AM	#6
AKcrab Registered Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 233	We've looked really close, and we just don't see any jaggies...

04-03-2003, 05:18 PM	#8
dsanfili Registered Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Omaha, NE Posts: 22	I'm another one that just doesn't see the "jaggies". I have a G4/933 running OS 10.2.4 on one partition and OS 9.2.2 on another. MA looks the same (excellent) with either OS. I DO see the jaggies, however, in your screenshot above.

04-03-2003, 07:14 PM	#10
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	Thanks for your analysis, but I don't think it completely explains the huge difference. If you look at the picture on the left, the texture is sometimes THREE rows of pixels staggered. The whole fish is literally being torn apart as it swims across the screen. 1. The snapshot provided by mrtew. 2. The snapshot, after I have shifted the "rows" back into place. [img]../forumpics/mac-rip.gif[/img] "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

04-03-2003, 07:31 PM	#11
FishTacoAfficionado Registered Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Chicago Posts: 7	Originally posted by mrtew I don't know how anyone can know whether the bug is Apple's or MA's, but then I'm not a programmer. How do you know where the bug is? The part of this story that bothers me most is that Jim says he doesn't even see the Jaggies on his computers. I obviously don't know whether it's his eyes or his computers or something that he put in his own version of the program that's not included with the release version, but it just seems weird since I've seen them on G3's and G4's and flat screens and CRTs from 3-years-old to brand new, with a very very wide variety of graphics cards. Jim has tried to fix it, and has even sent out a few test builds to see if he's solved the prob, but like I said, it's just frustrating that he doesn't even see the problem. I compared the same exact fish running on my macs and they look fine... they look like the "OS9" pic on the right and nothing like the "OSX" pic on the left. This is on a 17" iMac, 12" Powerbook, and an MDD G4 on a 20" Apple display, all running 10.2.4. Not that I don't believe such a problem exists. Perhaps this is a machine specific thing? With older systems maybe? Because there are no jaggies here where I'm looking. Maybe I'll try booting the iMac into OS9 and see how it runs then for the heck of it. I wonder if my registation code will work on the OS9 version....? Come to think of it, I wonder if this mac will even boot into OS9...... the powerbook doesn't

04-03-2003, 08:19 PM	#12
JimO'Connor Mac Development Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Kenai, Alaska Posts: 678	OS X and OS 9 keycodes are interchangable among products of the same version. I've seriously considered giving everyone else the secret fixes I've been hoarding, but I changed my mind. Guess you guys will just have to wait until I'm feeling generous again. Version 1.1.2/1.1.3 of MA doesn't exhibit the problem on OS X 10.1.5 and does on 10.2. The OS 9 product uses the same OpenGL calls in the same order and doesn't exhibit the problem. Therefore there are two possibilities: 1) Jaguar OpenGL code has a new bug or behavior change from what was standard before or 2) MA does something which was wrong but which 10.1.5 and 9 versions of OpenGL would accept. I've asked Apple _again_ about this. The problem with this sort of thing is always creating a repro case for them that minimizes the number of things going on so they aren't overwhelmed with unrelated information. This is a problem for us as well with bug reports -- getting the necessary and sufficient conditions to reproduce is often more than half the work. Later, Jim P.S. I was just kidding about secret fixes. I don't have any. Fish ranking is implemented but the UI isn't determined yet. That is the only "secret" feature. We usually bend over backwards to keep up with issues on this forum. However, there is only so much we can do -- rewriting OpenGL is NOT a paying proposition. Jim O'Connor Order N Development

04-03-2003, 09:10 PM	#13
mrtew Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: michigan Posts: 109	Re: Possible answer... Originally posted by ric I did a quick check on the two images you posted and they are not at the same scale. I think what you're seeing is that the scaling is causing the image to degrade, creating jaggies. In all likelyhood the image is being geneterated at the right size, but for some reason is being scaled down in OS X. Hope this helps. I thought scaling had something to do with it at one point too because in some screenshots I did it looked like the OSX fish were smaller, but as you can see in this new comparo everything is the same size. The fish near the back of the tank are smaller looking because they are farther away, but all of them look worse and jagged in OSX. The big horizontal rips in the OSX one are an effect of the screenshot, but you can see the jaggies clearly. When the fish are moving they are not nearly as obvious, but for those that don't see them all I can say is boot into OS9. I never really noticed them until I tried that...., so maybe if you don't want to ruin MA for yourself don't! I have a brand new TiGz and I've seen them on the even newer G4 dual 1.25GZ at the Apple store so it's definitely not 'older' Macs. I am glad to hear that you are still working on a fix though Jim! mrtew

04-03-2003, 11:21 PM	#14
feldon34 Forum Administrator Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Rock Hill, SC Posts: 10,938	The OS9 picture looks like you are getting full texture anti-aliasing. We don't get that on the PC without putting a great load on our video card. "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." - Emma Goldman

04-04-2003, 12:34 AM	#15
Jim Sachs Developer Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Southern Oregon Posts: 9,774	The tearing on the OSX version looks like V-Sync is turned off. Jim Sachs Creator of SereneScreen Aquarium

04-04-2003, 06:12 AM	#16
mrtew Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: michigan Posts: 109	Originally posted by Jim Sachs The tearing on the OSX version looks like V-Sync is turned off. That's exactly what I was thinking! I turned my v-sync on and everything was perfect.... then I turned it back off and I got the jaggies again. Then I forgot how to turn it back on! Then I forgot was v-sync even is! Remind me how to turn it back on again? :-] mrtew

04-04-2003, 10:42 AM	#17
JimO'Connor Mac Development Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Kenai, Alaska Posts: 678	Last night I sent mail to Mike saying it looked like the double buffering was faulty. On OS X the entire screen is double buffered (how they get the transparent window effects). With Jaguar the way OpenGL is used by the system was fundamentally changed, which is probably related. Jim O'Connor Order N Development

04-04-2003, 12:17 PM	#18
dpfenninger Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 3	Wow...just rebooted into OS 9 and there is most definitely a difference in quality. The fish (especially the ones with stripes, where it's most noticeable) are near real-life quality in 9, whereas they look much more like an animation (much more pixelated/jagged) in Jaguar. Hopefully this can be fixed. Keep up the good work guys!!

04-21-2003, 07:01 AM	#19
Unregistered Guest Posts: n/a	I run a dual 1Ghz G4, Geforce 4Mx, 10.1.5 and 9.2.2 with an Apple flat screen studio display. There is a noticable reduction in the quality of the fish rendering with OSX - the most obvious being the stripes on the Koran Angelfish which definitely appear more "pixellated" under X. I have yet to witness any "tearing" of the fish in X, just the overall reduction in quality. Paul Dean paul_dean@blueyonder.co.uk

04-21-2003, 07:08 AM	#20
mrtew Registered Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: michigan Posts: 109	Originally posted by Unregistered ...the most obvious being the stripes on the Koran Angelfish which definitely appear more "pixellated" under X. I have yet to witness any "tearing" of the fish in X, just the overall reduction in quality. The tearing is only a side effect of the screen capture tools in OSX. You don't ever actually see that. And what looks like jagged lines in the screen captures looks more like an animated pixelated pattern moving across the stripes of the fish... not even that noticable until you see them without it. I just hope that the Jims don't 'fix' MarineAquarium at the same time as Apple 'fixes' OpenGL with Panther effectively 'breaking' it again and forcing us to look at the Jaggies for another year! I really really really miss the perfect looking fish I used to know. mrtew