Texture filter quailty..Bi Linear, Tri Linear etc etc

[Widjaja]

I have always been confused about the texture qualities and which is the best.

For instance in game settings we have say Linear, Bi-Linear, Tri-Linear and Anisotropic Filtering.
That may not be all either...

Every time I have change the setting I have not noticed any difference except for performance.

I know that in Need for Speed Carbon, Bi Linear makes the game perform the best but thats about it.

Can any people list which one has the best quality from best at the top to worse at the bottom plus what the visual differences are?

 

[hellrazor]

It depends on what level of anisotropic filtering you have, but anything above 2x anisotropic filtering looks better than bilinear or trilinear. However in a high texture resolution/high speed/high special effects game (say, NFS: Carbon), you would hardly notice the difference (except maybe on the road near the horizon).

 

[Widjaja]

Yeah I noticed when I cranked up anisotropic filtering on Assassin's Creed II it lagged pretty bad but it appeared a bit better than what I had it at.

At the moment I am playing Mass Effect I and using Linear noticing it's a bit ugly off in the distance but I have high fps.

 

[Benetanegia]

Here it is pretty well explained, but this image itself shows it easily:

Here too.

 

[Widjaja]

Thanks.
The image comparison is obvious enough for me.
Huge difference in the off distance texture quality with Anisotropic and exactly the reason why the distant textures in Mass Effect I look very blurry.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Yeah, great example shot, you don't notice it as much in all games but it will be blurrier in the distance generally.

 

[Widjaja]

Switched from Linear to Anisotropic and notice nothing in the way of detail increase Mass Effect 1 :/
If there is a difference, I noticed a little bit of a frame decrease.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

most likely its because mass effect was made for consoles first aka optimizations after all theres a reason it run well on just about every gpu in the last 5 years lol

 

[Over_Lord]

Switched from Linear to Anisotropic and notice nothing in the way of detail increase Mass Effect 1 :/
If there is a difference, I noticed a little bit of a frame decrease.

u wont notice just like that, take a snapshot, zoom it and do side by side comparision

 

[Widjaja]

After changing to Anisotropic I expected to see the back ground textures become a lot more detailed as there is an obvious difference between detail and low detail.
Sort of like the shadow detail in Assassin's Creed II.

Appears to depend on the game and possibly the quality of the console port as Crazy pointed out.