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Multisample(FSAA) maximum samples...

When a graphics card supports multisampling, It is easy enough to implement the multisample environment. Nearly all cards that can do multisample support the 2x and 4x modes. There are 6x 8x and 16x modes. My graphics card supports these modes. It make the scenes look BEAUTIFUL.

Now, When my program runs on a machine that only supports a maximum or 4x, how can the program figure out that that is the highest supported multisampling?

Figuring out if multisample is available is easy, getting the max multisample supported is REALLY hard! I have scoured the web and found nothing on this topic. I don't want to code the max FSAA/multisample for each card and have to rely on that table for telling the user what their graphics card can support. I should be able to figure it out from some function, string, query, etc what the value is.

So here are my thought on how to obtain the info:
Best - call glGetInteger or get the extension string (if the value would be in there) or some function in CGL/AGL/NSOpenGLView
Decent but not great - Try to allocate a pixelformat with no recovery with the users wanted FSAA scale. If it fails, move to the next lower value 16 => 8 ; 8 => 6; 6 => 4 ; 4 => 2 ; 2 => FSAA turned off.
THIS DOESN"T WORK. The pixel format is allocated and the View does the Feedback problem spoken about in the other email on this topic specifically.
REALLY bad solution - though it would guarantee to work... Render a few frames of black to get the feedback problem. Then grab a 256x256 sample of the output from the rendering. Ensure that the entire thing is black. If it's not, then start to scale down the multisample values by closing the View, instancing a new NSOpenGLView with the next lower value of multisample/FSAA. This would absolutely work though. I REALLY don't want to resort to this, though it is looking like I might need to!!!
Worst - Code the Max supported into a table of graphics card


Let me just add the DOOM 3 allows the user to select their FSAA multisample value from [2, 4, 6, 8, 16]. How do they deal with this problem?

HELP!!!
Brad

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