32x Anti Aliasing, and why it's dumb.

Someone on twitter recently mentioned running Battlefield Bad Company 2 on a PC, settings being at "max", resolution being "1080p" (1920 x 1080) and the anti-aliasing being set to 32x (whether MSAA or CSAA is unknown).

Let me explain why doing that is completely retarded.

1. Gameplay.
Assuming this person actively plays the multiplayer and has any sort of sense for survival, it is good to assume that they are generally focusing on the gameplay aspect, rather than how pretty the game looks. Let me ask you a question. If you are someone who plays with settings ridiculously high, do you really notice it during the heat of gameplay? I know I don't.
Yes, there are games out there that will hurt your head if you play on anything below medium or high (see: Source Engine, or any game prior to 2007), but for the most part, modern games don't have this drawback so it's perfectly reasonable to scale a couple of things back.

2. Resolution.
1920 x 1080. It's a common resolution these days, most home entertainment devices support it, it is the resolution of the (as of current) HD standard and it has a ratio of 16:9. Most monitors that run at this resolution are between 20" to 23" diagonal. At this physical size, can you reasonably determine with the human eye a difference between something at 32x AA and something at 8x AA? I don't think so. If you're outputting to a 42" TV, it may or may not have an effect (assuming resolution is the same). I reckon to have any affect whatsoever, you'd have to be running at some offensively large resolution, but that to me seems unlikely, since not only are monitors for this few and far between, but with the sheer cost of the monitor and the hardware to run it (monitor and GPU combo probably in the region of £700 to £1500), you have to ask yourself is it worth it, especially considering my previous point.

So, Kyle, perhaps next time before you brag about your super abilities to run something like this, might want to reconsider for those who are computer literate, because we'll just laugh at you.