Anti-aliasing stopped working in Nvidia/OpenGL

[j7n]

I've recently returned to playing Doom using GZDoom Windows version after reading a discussion about it. Then I discovered that I can't enable anti-aliasing anymore in Half-Life, GZDoom, or GLQuake. It worked before and oversampled the entire screen to calm down unfiltered textures in the distance and borders around pixels up close. This is the setting that should work. I also tried 8x and Sparse Grid, but not even edges of geometry are processed.

I have Windows Server 2003, GT 610 and driver 368.81, which is one of the latest. I previously played on XP with an older driver, and single CPU core.

I can't ask about this on gamer forums without being dismissed for using outdated stuff.

[Dixel]

2 hours ago, j7n said:

368.81

Is a very bad driver , in my personal experience. Would you consider trying out 347.25? One of the best drivers for XP ! 347.09 is very good too.

[UCyborg]

JFYI, GZDoom should have gl_vid_multisample setting. It's in your INI file and turns on basic MSAA at whatever level you set it. Never tried transparency antialiasing though, I read it works with MSAA regardless if set in-game or forced via driver.

I do have GTX 750 Ti though, never had major problems with 368.81 driver on any OS, probably 'cause the card is newer and better tested with that driver.

Edited October 19, 2021 by UCyborg

[j7n]

Thank you. Installing the 347.25 driver version returned this function. What makes the newer driver very bad? Most people wouldn't notice the missing feature for these old games. But 347.25 doesn't work with Euro Truck Simulator 2, which now crashes in nvoglnt.dll. I must decide what I want more.

[Dixel]

@j7n, you're welcome ! Well , the next driver you could try is 362.00. Expect some performance degradation , it is slower than 347.xx.  I would say , 347.xx was a major breakthrough after 321.xx . Then ,somewhat OK, was 362.00 or 361.91 (even better!) , then a whole lot of very poor drivers . The only good driver after that was 373.19 (OEM) . But no support for Server or XP in it , sadly. If you're not afraid for your card (some say it ruined their card) , try 364.xx as the last resort . I never had any problems with them . But I'm not responsible.

[Dixel]

Do not forget to save 347.25 and do not lose it , it's the one you can always revert to. 

[j7n]

I have found that the last iCafe driver version 368.91 works well. With the 368.81 I had another issue, where the video card would occasionally "break" while an OpenGL application was running and get stuck in its low power mode. Because it is a low end part, I was unable to play anything or decode extreme resolution videos without rebooting. This has not happened with the iCafe driver. I previously used a program called "PowerMizer" which put the GPU permanently in full power state, which also removed the problem. Curiously, it also disabled all GPU/memory/VPU usage counters.

To get anti-aliasing to work, New Moon browser must not be running. I do not use hardware acceleration in New Moon (it crashes, and I don't need it), but even then it must be closed.