8800 series (at least top end models) have better anisotropic filtering algorithms than any other previous Nvidia cards (including 7900 GTX, etc.. Even with the same settings all using highest IQ possible, the 8800 will look better than the 7900 (or ATI x1900 etc). It especially affects filtering on angled textures.
SouthamptonFC, I tried those, mine were slightly different in the control panel - are you using the same drivers? Anyway, I've posted mine below.
> Did you change negative LOD to clamp?
Yep tried that.
Ok, here's a screenshot of the settings, this is everything I could find turned to max. Its worth noting that I've tried a few combinations of these settings also;
And here is the result of all those settings;
It looks horrendous. You can't see it in this screenshot, but when the screen is moving the patterns that emerge from those lines are incredibly distracting.
WHY can't the programmers of LFS put all this stuff into the game???
From your screenshot, it looks like you have Antialiasing enabled. However, from the in-game screenshot it is obvious that it's not enabled (or, at least, not working).
It would be nice if these settings were handled by LFS, but when you turn the settings on in your graphics driver, they should damn well turn on!
Unless you have a full-HD-display you should enable "half texture size", otherwise there'll be a lot of shimmering on the updated tracks. There is not enough filtering and this works well for me playing at 1368x1024 (except for the trees ).
Is this the quality that can be expected with 8800GT and with the settings on the post #1? This is anyways what I get, and honestly I think it's terrible. Especially lamp and flag poles do look bad, they are flickering like there was no AA at all.
I've had a HD3850 card, and there the quality was very smooth. ATI is good with adaptive and temporal AA. With this 8800GT I can get it nearly as good looking if I put heavy Supersampling AA, but then the performance is too bad. I've used drivers from 169.xx to 174.74.
There's a tool somewhere on the forums that makes it so that one screen shows your driver and wheel..etc, as if it were only 1 screen. Then the other screen shows whats to the right/left of that.
I believe he is referring to SoftTH. If you have any problems setting it up, then check their forum - they have pretty much discussed any of 'today's' games and how to set them up (and if it's possible).
Why does it seem so damn hard to configure a graphics card. The whole topic does not point to LFS nessesarily, but is all about the basic configurations of a videocard. It should be the first things you need to learn about graphics.
I also never had any difficulties to get Antialias ingame, or the right Anisotropic filtering. Why does is seem so much pain in the ass to get this right? Never configured these settings for any of the other games you have played? This is nothing new at all.
Btw, an SLI setup can draw really nice pictures when set to antialias-SLI modes. With 2x 8800GT i can set SLI32xQ, 16XAF and Supersampling all toghether without dropping out of a 60Hz framesync 1680x1050. Framedrops still happen though, but thats due to high amount of cars on track which necks my CPU. Only LOD ajustments could make that better, vid @ 640x480 results in same framedrops. Not really a big issue, a 5GHz C2D still suffers from the same drops, it has more to do with how LFS handles LOD and the fact cars are not evenly detailed. A track full of BF1's are quite the load on a CPU.
Anyway, i began playing LFS on a Radeon 9700 @ 1600x1200 2x AA 4X AF, that time no ploblems at all configuring this. After that i went to a 7800GS AGP, still no trouble at all. For one month i got a 7800GT PCI-e, still no hassle to get LFS running with AA/AF. Then a X2900XT, again no problem. 2x 3870, no problem. And now i got 2x 8800GT, and you'll figure, no problem whatsoever. The recent geforces render LFS at its best, certainly when using the SLI AA modes. It's quite overkill, but the card can handle it with ease and looks much better then ATi's wide/narrow tent and box filters and looks like it suffers much less from a performance hit.
LOD bias adjustments on the texture front could be somewhat personal, but i like the lod to be ZERO'ed cause in that case textures on road, far buildings etc. wont suffer from Moire and Aliasing effects.
Only when using a card that can't do AF or AA very well and has terrible MIP filters an option would be to lower the LOD to a negative value in order to get somewhat crisp textures. The downside though is mayor aliasing and moire as i explained before.
BTW, i do not prefer 3rd party graphics setting tools, although they seem quite helpful, i tend to miss full control of what is happening and i can't live with that idea. I change videosettings for each games manually every time i fire them up to be absolutely sure of it. But these called 'presets' I got in my head for every game i have. And for many games they are the same anyway. So changing some things now and then ain't very frustrating at all. Also when u do so, you are very aware of current settings and it's difference to performance impact. This could also help alot determing bugs or driver failures corresponding to certain AA or AF settings which do occur quite a lot on SLI set's. All in all, it gives u more insight of the whole settings tab thing. When changing drivers regulairly there is no other way than to know your settings very well, also the same settings could mean trouble on newer/older drivers. PC users should be all about trial and error. this gives u lots of insight. It's still ashame too many users just read stuff on how to do something and actually never understand what they did. That's the main flaw of so many users and probably why so many can't figure out how to set up their game the right way. Be eager to learn something for a change and you'll be proud of yourself for finally getting the hang of it.
It is hard if you don't know anything about PC's or you've got an nVidia graphics card running 169.xx drivers - the latter bug had me totally confused and made me even try re-installing my OS (the copy had only been on my PC a few hours though) before I hit Google and found out that actually a feature was totally broken.