Freelancer Graphical Enhancement Series: Graphics Card Anti-Alias

[Lythrilux]

Freelancer is an old game that's really showing it's age. One of the most graphically jarring things about it is that unlike most modern games it lacks anti-aliasing by default.

What is anti-aliasing you ask? Anti-aliasing (or AA) in the context of video games is a processing effect used to smoothen out the edges of an obect, rendered as a 3D polygon or as an image. Without AA, an object or an object in an image will have a rough, slightly jagged edge that isn't very pleasing to look at.

Unfortunately, Freelancer does not have any native options for AA, and neither does Discovery. However, by tinkering with the graphical profiles for the Freelancer.EXE in your GPU settings, you can achieve great AA that - at least for me - makes a big difference in enhancing the default Freelancer graphics. This is a hardware-based AA solution. There are two types of AA you can have: post-processing/FXAA based and Mode/rendering based. This guide will cover both and their differences.

No anti-aliasing

FXAA

Mode 8x setting

So let's get started. First, you'll need to navigate to your GPU settings. You can do this either through right-clicking your Desktop and going straight there or right-clicking the icon for your GPU in your system tray and accessing its relevant control panel.

Once you're in your GPU settings, you want to navigate to 'Manage 3D Settings' and click the 'Program Settings' tab. In there you might have a drop-down list that will let you configure the Freelancer.exe.

If not, you can manually add it there by clicking the 'Add' button. A window should appear with a list populated with recently run programs. Look for your Freelancer.exe and click 'Add Selected Program'.

So let's go over how to configure post-processing/FXAA based AA. This one is light on performance impact, as it essentially just softens the entire image on the screen rather than individually rendered 3d objects. The only real downside of using this one is that it can make the text land UI ook a bit funny and over-feathered, although some people actually like the softening effect. To activate this, in the Settings pane click the drop-down menu next to 'Antialiasing - FXAA' and select 'On'. Click 'Apply' to save changes.

And now when you next launch Freelancer/Discovery, you'll see a noticeable difference (image is a thumbnail, click for full HD image).

Setting up Mode AA is just as easy. Mode AA only adds antialiasing to the edges of a 3D object, rather than the entire image, so you don't get any funny UI stuff going on. It is more intensive on your PC's performance, however.

To enable this, simply go back to the graphics settings for Freelancer in the same panel, navigate to the dropdown selection next to Mode AA and click 'Override Any Application Setting' (this is important).

Another section will have appeared underneath called 'Antialiasing - Setting'. In the dropdown menu in the pane next to it, you can apply varying levels of AA to the game - with 2x being the weakest but less performance-intensive up to 8x being the strongest but most performance-intensive. Click 'Apply' to save changes.

When you next load up Freelancer/Discovery the changes will be applied. (Click thumbnail for larger HD image).

Now you can actually have both of these on but imo it can look a bit overdone. It's personal preference I suppose.

My current machine has a NVIDIA GPU, so I will only be able to show a visual guide for doing this within the NVIDIA GPU settings - however, on my old PC I did have an AMD Card and I can briefly say that the process is very similar: you just need to go into your AMD GPU/Cataylst Control Center settings and either edit the existing Freelancer profile, or add it if it isn't there already, and enable AA similarly to the NVIDIA Guide. I think AMD has much more in-depth settings like Box-detect and Edge-detect AA.

I did have (past-tense) a working method for doing this with a graphical injector called FPSCounter that can be done on an Intel (or anything that isn't AMD/NVidia) GPU but when I tested it for this guide it doesn't seem to be working. Apologies. I'll investigate it and try to get it working. Funny story it was actually a mod meant for Witcher 1 and I experimented with it on Freelancer and it worked

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