baka on 08 February 2007
There is a trick... somehow done in software. It isnt AA. But I think it gives a better effect than AA.
Perhaps you're thinking about interpolation? That could be done in software as well, it's basically just averaging adjacent pixels over the entire screen. Both AA and interpolation reduce the effective resolution to display information by using extra pixels however. A number of televisions with higher resolutions can do this in hardware, which is better than doing it in software at a given resolution - you don't waste the console's power or its pixels, and end up with a smoother image.
The only game on your list I've played was Zelda, along with Rayman:RR, Wii Sports, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Metal Slug Anthology, and Excite Truck. I haven't seen any noticeable aliasing in these games - of course my television is not HD, and is only 32". You might be better served with hardware interpolation, many televisions will do this in an upscaling phase. If they don't, you could probably get a hardware upscaling device to interpolate the signal at the higher resolution. Without interpolation, you can get a horrible mass of aliasing all over the place since the display's pixels do not map 1 to 1 with the resolution of the input.
Generally the difference with games you play at 640x480 on a computer vs. ones you play on a television is the size of the screen. If a larger screen is sharp enough yet doesn't provide interpolation, you'll see more jaggies simply because they are magnified. If this bugs you (I know the original PS1's aliasing bugged me, used to 800x600 as I was with my PC at the time) you probably want an image upscaler that does at least bilinear interpolation. Any time you see a line on a bitmapped display with square or rectangular pixels that is not perfectly horizontal or vertical, you will have aliasing. There's no way to avoid this with a sharp display, anti-aliasing only hides it. Higher resolutions make the aliasing less visible, but it still exists.
The Wii certainly does have enough power to do anti-aliasing. The GPU is about 1.6 times faster than the Gamecube's, and the CPU is about twice the clock rate. The system also has over twice the RAM. If the developers feel their game looks good enough, they may not apply it. If they get enough people complaining, they'll work it into their game engine. If you want to see anti-aliasing or interpolation, the best you can do is petition your favorite game developers (forums are probably the worst place to ask, too little signal to noise) to add it to their engines as at least an option. For the moment, they seem to be focusing more on using the remote functionality effectively in their games. Finding out whether anti-aliasing would perform well on the Wii with a modern engine would require implementing one on the system and determining if its average and worst case performance would suffice with it enabled - that would take quite a bit of work.
As for the remote itself, it doesn't use too much CPU power. Most of the power is used in processing the 1bpp image from the infrared camera for pointing purposes, but 1bpp images are about as lightweight as you can get. Drawing the pointer in software would be more intensive.
As for shaders - an antialiasing shader would be an antialiasing shader. Just as an interpolation or sharpening shader would be named after what it does. It's just a bit of code that runs on the GPU, examining the pixel's input and producing an output color.
I suppose my question would be, why do you want to hear how great the Wii is? It's a game console, and you apparently have one. I enjoy the games I have for it, and look forward to a number of games coming in the future. It also seems to be selling quite well, I'm personally attempting to help a few friends pick one up after they've played some of the games at my place and it's not an easy task. I'll be happy to answer your technical questions, but it's not my job (nor that of the others here) to change your mind about the console.
