Anarchy Online Settings & Performance Tweaks

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Anarchy Online Settings & Performance Tweaks

Postby Gridfan » Sun Jun 28, 2015 4:09 pm

First make sure you start the Anarchy Online Launcher.
Then click Settings.

Direct3D TL HAL
Make sure the Rendering Device is set to Direct3D TL HAL, this ensures that "TL" is done in hardware.

Resolution
Choosing 32bit is advised on modern systems.
As to the window/screen mode itself and if you should run i Fullscreen, Windowed fullscreen or WIndowed is up to your own wishes. On a modern system they all should have very similar performance. So choose what is convenient for you.
As to the width and height, if going fullscreen match what your display has as a native resolution. If windowed then choose what you want.
Needless to say the smaller a window is the less resources it will use.

FXAA
The FXAA setting does not matter much on a modern system. (you can also change this in-game so you don't have to do this here)
It hardly consumes any GPU power, but it's sadly more blurry than traditional Antialiasing so textures may loose some detail/sharpness.
Since FXAA is shader based, it can easily be tweaked/changed, maybe Funcom will add a alternative in the future.
Another method is known as SMAA about the same performance as FXAA but does not cause the blurring of textures that FXAA does.
Why not nicely ask Funcom for SMAA on the official AO forums, maybe they'll add it.

Texture Resolution
If you have a modern card with a GB or two of graphics memory then setting this to "Full" should be no problem at all.

Texture Filtering
Texture filtering can safely be set to Anisotropic Quality and 16x as pretty much all modern GFX card can do this with no performance drop at all.

In-game options
There are many in-game options you can tweak. Some of the video/effects options there should be obvious. Most should take effect immediately. If not then try to change locations/zone.
There is one option that at least on my (Gridfan's) own system gave a large FPS boost... "Smooth Animation", turning this off and the FPS increased by 10 at once.
Ironically the animation of the scrolling building text in the ICC area became smoother, with this option turned off. So it was a double bonus in this case.



If you have some info or tips you'd like to share, then feel free to post in this thread. This post will be edited with new or updated info and tips.
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Gridfan
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Game Engine Hacks

Postby Gridfan » Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:34 pm

Antialiasing
For those feeling adventurous you can turn off the FXAA in the new AO engine and use a SMAA injector instead.

This is the one I (Gridfan) have tried http://mrhaandi.blogspot.no/p/injectsmaa.html

Make sure to use the DX9 one (there are hacks for DX9 and for DX10/11 included with it, the new AO engine is DX9).

SMAA has similar performance to FXAA, but SMAA does not blur textures like FXAA does.

Until Funcom ads SMAA this is a easy way to use it.

Note: SMAA was created by Crytek (the guys behind the Crysis games) here's a video demonstration https://vimeo.com/31247769


A note to Technerds/Coders. By the looks of it it should be possible to take the SMAA shader and replace the FXAA one with it, I don't know the .fxh format but at first glance it should be possible to edit the game files to use the SMAA shader code intead (with no need for the injector hook).
AFAIC the license for the SMAA shader uses the MIT license, so there is nothing preventing Funcom from using it commercially.
I (Gridfan) wish I knew shaders so I could test if you can "plop" the SMAA code in place of the FXAA one or not.
If anyone crates a SMAA drop in replacement for the new AO engine, please holler and I'd be happy to link to it/provide it for download from here.
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Gridfan
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Location: Trondheim, Norway


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