What is Anisotropic Filtering?

[Charolotte Caxton]

Mmhm, I see it in my Graphics Hardware setting, why should I turn it on or off? What is it and what does it do? Thanks!

[Irene Muni]

See the Kb (and the link to Wikipedia) http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Graphics_Preferences_Layout :

Anisotropic Filtering (slower when enabled): Enables anisotropic filtering in order to improve texture quality. This setting may reduce your Second Life viewer's performance.

 

 

[Knowl Paine]

In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering (abbreviated AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of texture on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture (not the polygon or other primitive on which it is rendered) appears to be non-orthogonal (thus the origin of the word: "an" for not, "iso" for same, and "tropic" from tropism, relating to direction; anisotropic filtering does not filter the same in every direction). Like bilinear and trilinear filtering it eliminates aliasing effects, but improves on these other techniques by reducing blur and preserving detail at extreme viewing angles. Anisotropic filtering is relatively intensive (primarily memory bandwidth and to some degree computationally though the standard space-time trade off rules apply) and only became a standard feature of consumer-level graphics cards in the late 1990s. Anisotropic filtering is now common in modern graphics hardware and is enabled either by users through driver settings or by graphics applications and video games through programming interfaces. Quoted from Wikipedia

 

It helps to sharpen the edges of images when viewed from a distance or angle, I think.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Awesome! Thanks! Mystery solved!

[Charolotte Caxton]

You summed it up perfectly, I believe! (after I had read the links provided by Irene's link )

[Irene Muni]

You're welcome

[Opensource Obscure]

Here's a link to a photo that shows the difference between Anisotroping Filtering ON vs. OFF:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceobscure/3294204196/lightbox/

Watch the floor and look how the borders of the stones are more definite when Anisotroping is enabled.

[Kayla Walcott]

Great quote usage.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Oh, I was refering to that last sentence.