Choppy movement with floats

[SoulSharer]

The footage pretty much shows the problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOKF3jj-sPI

When I move text slower than a pixel at a time, it doesn't move in subpixels, instead it jumps from pixel to pixel. How can I fix that?
I searched for days, still nothing that could help me with that.
Let me know if I need to show code of some part, I can upload everything, but it'll be a lot to fit in here.

Thanks for the help in advance, hope it will resolve.

[malexander]

Use a multisampled buffer. This will give you sub-pixel coverage, and smooth out the rasterization of your text. The higher the number of samples, the smoother it will become.

Alternatively, you can make the quad 1 pixel larger in each direction, compute the floating point position in screen coordinates where it should appear, and then compare that to the actual GL coords using gl_FragCoord.xy. Use the difference to adjust your texture coordinates.

[SoulSharer]

Thanks for reply, I'm a little concerned about multisampling (performance wise), because DirectX doesn't use it and it has smooth movement out of the box, but OpenGL is not?

[CRasterImage]

Can you explain what you are actually doing?
Is the text in that video a raster image that you are drawing as a textured quad?
Or are the letters a bunch of 3d geometric shapes?

[SoulSharer]

It is textured quads, I move this text by 0.01f each frame.

[CRasterImage]

I just did a test and while the edge of a textured quad is not anti-aliased and will pop pixel to pixel, the texture pixels move smoothly with sub-pixel accuracy.

Are you enabling bi-linear filtering?

glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
glTexParameterf(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR);

[SoulSharer]

I'm using GL_NEAREST, because GL_LINEAR is not what I'm looking for, it makes texture blurry. I want something like D3DTEXF_POINT (DX), it is smooth and have a nearest filtering. Exactly what I need for pixel art and stuff.
Thanks.

[CRasterImage]

Can you verify that GL_LINEAR gives a smoother animation? In spite of how you feel about the fidelity.

I don't see how something can use nearest-neighbor sampling and, at the same time, not pop.

[SoulSharer]

Yeah linear does look smooth, though blurry. =(

And in Direct3D9/10/11 it is nearest with smooth movements
I dunno if that will help, but here is documentation about it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(v=vs.85).aspx

[CRasterImage]

What I mean is: You are seeing an unsightly "pop" when your text image animates (moves). Because 1 pixel from the source image is being drawn at a particular destination pixel one second; then it is drawn in a neighboring destination pixel the next second. That is the "pop". You are moving the texture 1/100th of a pixel on every draw, but the results don't show until you have crossed a mathematical threshold.

That is the nature of nearest-neighbor sampling.
That is the point of it.
There is no sub-pixel distinction.
A source pixel can either live in one destination pixel, or it's neighbor. It can't live in both.

Living in both is what linear does.
(20% in the first pixel, 80% in the second pixel)