ATI has delivered a new patch which enables the use of Anti-Aliasing and High Dynamic Range lighting simultaneously on Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
As we noted in our review last week, the game is coded to prevent the two being used together. There have been many reasons thrown about as to why this is (Note: none of them confirmed!). One is that no hardware around is capable of doing it. Another is that because NVIDIA hardware is less capable than ATI hardware when it comes to doing AA+HDR, the Green Team leaned on Bethesda to make it a non-option. The final one is that Microsoft leaned on Bethesda to make AA+HDR an Xbox 360 only feature - the ATI hardware in the 360 provides 'free' AA to all titles on the system regardless of other features.
However, an ATI developer we know only as 'Chuck' has delved deep into the code and enabled the functionality for users of ATI cards. You can go grab the patch from here and install it. The patch enables AA at a driver level enabling you to select HDR in game and get both.
We're doing so right now, and we'll be sure to let you know how we get on.
The patch also enables CrossFire support which was lacking on release, making for extra performance if you happen to have two ATI graphics cards in your system.
Go check out the patch, then let us know your experiences of it over in the forums.