Leopard - Advanced video options?

In windows I can of course change AA, anthropic filtering, etc.

How do I get to these settings in Leopard?

 

For videos, it would depend on the player you are using. QuickTime Pro has some AV controls, as does VLC Media Player.
If you are talking about games, then it will depend on the game in question.
If you mean graphics card drivers settings, then you will have to download Xcode. Although those settings don't really make any noticeable differences in Windows anyway (unless you force your graphics cards to use those settings instead of in-game settings).

 

They can make a huge difference in windows especially if you are trying to push a more demanding game with an older video card. But yes it's for the video drivers/software that I am interested in.

 

Well in general everyday use of applications and internet, you should be fine and not have to adjust much.

If you're talking about playing games, they should have the options in game to change the settings. Just like windows counterparts.

I don't think that there are global options like in windows, to force options on all programs and such.

 

That's a bummer. I wonder why they don't give more control to mac users with the drivers. You can change so many more options then what are in the games.

 

you know that aa and af are 3d graphics settings. there is no change on the 2d desktop. and windows does not have built in utilities to change 3d graphics settings anyway. nvidia, ati, and intel (companies who make graphics cards) release their own utilities. 3d applications (games) have their own graphics settings.

if you are talking about desktop settings, the most important one is correct color. windows does not have a built in utility for this (its possible your graphics card vendor does include such a utility) but it IS built in to mac osx. system preferences --> display --> color --> calibrate.

its easy to use and will give you very accurate desktop color (important for design and photo editing)

i have not found one that was easy to use in windows (although it can be done).

 

All graphics card companies make make software to change the video card settings. These can make very large differences including fix graphics errors with some settings. Each company releases different software and there are always 3rd party options as well sometimes. Games also don't let you change all the levels of settings. And even then you are limited to only a fraction of the settings from in game control.

Random examples of what is not in most games
Texture Preference & Mipmap Detail Level/progressive
32bit to 16bit

Are there good 3rd party controlers for this that will work in Leopard? My macbook with it's crappy video card can use all the tweaking I can give it.

ETA: I don't use the mac for gaming much anyways and when I do it's normally in the windows install. But it would be nice if I could change these settings.

 

in general, just avoid gaming in osx.

nvidia and ati (and intel) do not have 3d graphics control panels for leopard afaik. there just isn't that much of a gaming market on the platform.

 

Well in OS X, I believe the OpenGL pipeline is very deeply integrated into the operating system. Even in Vista DirectX is really only used in Aero. But in OS X, OpenGL handles Quartz for windowing, but is also used by Core Video, Core Image, and Core Animation among other things. Which means that if Apple allows users to force settings, it could potentially break not only the OS user interface and Apple applications, but break or introduce quirks in third-party applications too since the Core APIs are used by so many applications and must remain standardized and predictable. Which is why, Apple releases OS X graphics drivers themselves rather than letting GPU makers do it, to avoid problems.

In theory, Apple could probably still make an OS level OpenGL control but with profiles for individual applications. But realistically, there probably isn't that big a demand for them to put the effort into it. Plus, with OS X only running on Apple hardware, there are only so many models of Apple computers and when game companies port games to OS X, they can pretty much optimize and predict which computers the game will run on.

For ATI graphics cards, they use to have a ATI Displays utility which added a control panel that allowed some customization. However, I don't think they've updated it for Intel Macs much less Leopard.