The Basic tab's settings define the effects should be used when the scene is rendered and the Filter tab's settings define what exactly will be shown.

Effects

Use this setting to enable or disable effects in the Filter tab. Note that several effects also have settings in the Viewport's Effects menu (Options / Configure) that are also included by the Viewport Renderer.

Transparency

See Transparency.

Shadows

Shadowmap Size[32..4096]

Alternative Shadow Filtering

Details pertaining to shadow display in the Viewport can be found under Shadows.

Post Effects

See Post Effects.

HQ Noises

See HQ Noises.

Use this option to enable or disable tesellation for the respective objects (see also Viewport Tessellation).

SSAO

Use this option to enable or disable an fast approximation of Ambient Occlusion (see also SSAO).

Reflections

Defines whether or not reflections should be output. See Reflection Preview for details.

Depth of Field

Defines whether or not depth of field should be rendered. See Depth of Field for details.

Anti-Aliased DOF

Defines if the depth of field should only affect the pixels or the sub-pixels required for anti-aliasing (for details see Anti-Aliased DOF).

Ignore Hidden Polygon Selections

You can use Hide Selected to hide polygons that will then be hidden in the Viewport. This is often desired while working on the scene but not when the scene is rendered. If this option is enabled, these hidden selections will still be rendered (as is the case with the other renderers as well).

32-bit Framebuffer

If this option is disabled, a 16-bit frame buffer will be rendered internally, which can result in imperfections (color jumps in slowly changing color gradients, i.e., banding, among other things) in the display. In such cases it can be useful to enable this option (which will also require additional render time and graphics card memory).

Anti-Aliasing

Depending on the graphics card and driver used, different levels of anti-aliasing are available here (see also Antialiasing). .

Supersampling

If Transparency is enabled, the Viewport antialiasing will not work on some systems. To make sure that the Viewport Renderer still delivers acceptable results (or if the anti-aliasing settings are not far-reaching enough), Supersampling can be used to render the respective sub-pixels. Note that higher values will slow the process down accordingly because the sub-pixels will be rendered per pixel, regardless of any transparency. Why Brute Force? Because rendering is done straightforward without any attempts to save render time. With a setting of 4x4 at 100 x 100 pixels, an image will be rendered internally at a resolution 4 times larger (i.e., 400 x 400) and will in the end be compressed to 100 x 100 via a filter.

Copy Effects from Viewport

There is a series of effects that can be used to influence the Viewport display quality (e.g., transparency and Shadows): You can find these in the Viewport's Options/Effects menu (or in the Viewport Configure menu's Filter tab.

The Viewport Renderer also has these (and more) settings in its Basic menu. Click on the Copy Effects from Viewport button to copy these settings over instead of having to set them all again manually.

The Basic menu's settings can be used to define the effects with which the scene should be rendered, and the Filter menu's settings define what will be shown.