It's a pity we did not carry on with the OP's subject. I think it could have led to a useful discussion covering such things as good basic lighting, and perhaps some techniques to improve the appearance of scene props and stuff that come with poor shaders or textures.

Oh well... he missed an opportunity there. We all did.

As an aside, that (very informative) article that bb linked to started off by saying that the Shader Rate is our number one image quality knob. I tend to disagree with that. I think that our number one image quality control is render pixel dimensions. I did a test on Stonemason's Streets of the Med, rendering at 1200x1200 with a shading rate of 0.25, and then at 2400x2400 with a shading rate of 1.0. I did not time the renders exactly, but they took about the same time. I then reduced the larger image in Photoshop Elements to 1200x1200 (using bicubic resampling) and did a close up comparison. The larger render was far and away the better quality image, particularly in respect of anti-aliasing and more accurate reproduction of finer details such as the ivy leaves.

There are probably clear technical reasons why that should be the case, but this empirical evidence is more than enough for me to start doing larger renders in preference to reducing the shading rate.

MikeJ... I hope your bug eases off tonight, so you can get some good sleep and enjoy the weekend.

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)