» Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:26 pm
Antialiasing does no such thing and has absolutely no reliance on the monitor's native resolution or lack of.
It is a means to get more accurate rendering. Each pixel is represented in 3d space as a dimensionless point, so if something is thin enough, it will occasionally miss the pixel, even if it is a continuous line.
An example is the power lines from pylons in Fallout 3. At a moderate distance, without antialiasing, they appear broken and dashed, this is where the point of the pixel does not see the power line, but sees the sky, the line goes "between points".
By adding antialiasing we don't use just one point for a pixel, we use two (2x) or four (4x) or more. These points are arranged over the area of the pixel in a grid. If some see the line and some do not, the pixel will be partly the background sky and partly the line. This makes the pixel more accurate.
The end result is in things looking far, far more realistic.
Edit:
For you guys, here's a demonstration of how AA works:
http://upload.hattix.co.uk/files/antialiasingoff.png
http://upload.hattix.co.uk/files/antialiasing4xrg.png