What do sharpen and proxy visuals do?

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear

It's just one of those things that's been bugging me for awhile. I can't tell a bit of difference with either of these changed. I've seen recommendations to turn on proxy visuals for better performance, but that's the most I can find out about either setting. What does each actually do?

LifeHunting - Heavens Tear

idk for sure about proxy, but basically all I know it does is increase preformance.

As for sharpen, it basically increases the "sharpness", sorta like making them "pop" more, all the graphics. Not really good if your computer is slow already.

Evict - Heavens Tear

Sharpen defines the texture of everything more clearly. You won't notice it unless you have Textures maximized.

Proxy Visuals, as Life Hunting said, are there to increase performance. "Distances" is the range you can see other players (excluding Cat Shops). "Effects" are the visual effects of everything in the game (skills, genie, weapon glow, etc). The bar is divided into sections that turn off visual effects from largest and most laggy to the least laggy.

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear

Proxy visuals: yes, but what is it actually doing?

Sharpen: textures are maxed (as are all other sliders...well, not gamma), along w/ 4xMSAA and 4xAF (also trilinear filtering forced on, and driver-specific AF sample and mipmap optimizations on).

If a take a screenshot of it on, then off, add the on one as layer on top, 50% opacity, invert colors, and merge...everything not animated is easily within error from rounding, and game lighting changes occurring within a few seconds (127,127,127 to 128,128,128), with most being 128,128,128.

Performance is fine (C2D 3.2GHz, 8GB RAM, underclocked 7800GT); curiosity is what's killing me. b:puzzled

P.S. figured out sharpen. It changes a setting called MipMapBias. My driver-set options probably make the difference all but invisible.