Anti-Aliasing article revamp

[Fifteen 2]

Did you mean multisampling? I see no specific mention to SSAA.

 

There are the usual 3 families for everything I think people care.

Well, you can't arbitrarily sample parts of your scene and then blend the results together with deferred rendering because they're stored in a normal framebuffers that are composited together later on. Any of the fancier sampling patterns can only be used on single buffers at a time (Color, Depth+Stencil, etc.), but you'll have lost that information by the time it gets mixed with the others. From what I've read, that makes MSAA and CSAA almost impossible to pull off, which might be why Nvidia pulled the plug on CSAA with their Maxwell and Pascal architectures, why Temporal AA and Post-proc AA have been getting more and more attention as of recent years and why downsampling is making comeback lately even though it's technically inferior to proper spatial antialiasing.

[BONKERS 32]

AA is a can of worms. Honestly, I could come up with a lot of ideas on how to deal with this page and article. (Notes about practical upsides and downsides to different techniques that are appreciable to the user)

 

Especially when it comes to forcing AA on Nvidia cards (NVCP is USELESS for this!) considering i've been managing http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=357956 this thread's list for years.

(Super Sampling DOES work in Deferred lighting/rendering/shading when forcing. Even MSAA can be forced in Deferred games. Not all, but many)

 

Someone mentioned splitting up techniques by family, which is a good idea. Though some entries can be listed in multiple if they use multiple techniques, with a secondary description of why it's there.

Such as TXAA (Uses MSAA+custom resolve and temporal filter), SMAA S2x(Spatial Multisampling+SMAA1x),SMAA 4x(SMAA 1x+Spatial Multisampling+Temporal Multi+SuperSampling).

Such as.

 

*Hardware Multisampling

EQAA,CSAA,MSAA,TXAA

 

*Super Sampling

OGSSAA(Driver,DSR,VSR,custom resolutions,Resolution Scale in many games),SGSSAA,FSAA,RGSSAA

 

*Post Processing Anti Aliasing

MLAA,FXAA,SMAA1x,EdgeAA(Generic)

 

*Temporal Post Processing Anti Aliasing

UE4-TAA,Temporal-FXAA(Ethan Carter),SMAA T2x,SMAA 4x,TAA(Generic)

 

 

It would help to have a section for suggesting creative choices that involve combination of techniques, or in the case of DSR;Registry Editing or DSRTool for higher than 2x2 OGSSAA.

 

 

A big thing about AA though too, is that it varies very much game to game when it comes to stuff forced, creative hybrid solutions and even stuff built into the game.

One game's implementation of MSAA or OGSSAA might not be as good (Cough* Frostbite games *cough) as others. And the same goes for Temporal Solutions as well.

 

I've been meaning to turn the Nvidia Inspector page into a wiki like entry based on my thread here http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=5183388 , but have not done so.

 

Another point, should only be adding information that is relevant to PC gaming. There are a lot of PPAA methods that aren't used on PC games, like HRAA or DLAA or a myriad of others.

[Mirh 103]

ELI5 why temporal post processing needs to be considered different?

 

And again, are we talking about separating/splitting [in sections] just the page about acronyms, or are we talking about the very noob-proof how-to in antialiasing page?

Because that should just be about "use supersampling if you can", otherwise MSAA and derived [link to gpu settings/drivers] if you can (meaning no bugs or slowness), otherwise -some- PPAA.

Which I'll ask again: is SMAA better than all the others?

 

 

Btw, HRAA is more than what you think. And by the very "nature" of code.. It's not like being developed on console is of any limitation.

This is why the table should just talk about AA, regardless of where it's implemented (as long as they are relevant).

 

[DrCat 11]

I'd say SMAA and CMAA are on par in terms of quality, but given how rarely CMAA is used I don't think it would be wrong to simply say "use SMAA whenever you can, whenever post-rocess AA is the only solution". Then we could link to injectSMAA, which is very handy.

[Mirh 103]

Interesting.

But correct me if I'm wrong.. CMAA is not forceable anywhere. Either is supported by game, or not.

So.. in the hypothetic noob fixbox.. I wonder if we could just mention, in the end: SSAA, MSAA -with links to gpu- and SMAA.

 

 

Assuming of course somebody doesn't consider SMAA 1x performance impact still too high?

 

[DrCat 11]

But correct me if I'm wrong.. CMAA is not forceable anywhere. Either is supported by game, or not.

Yes. As far as I know it can only be activated when it natively exists in the game, and I'm guessing that's due to the fact CMAA is proprietary Intel technology.

[Fifteen 2]

AA is a can of worms. Honestly, I could come up with a lot of ideas on how to deal with this page and article. (Notes about practical upsides and downsides to different techniques that are appreciable to the user)

 

Especially when it comes to forcing AA on Nvidia cards (NVCP is USELESS for this!) considering i've been managing http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=357956 this thread's list for years.

(Super Sampling DOES work in Deferred lighting/rendering/shading when forcing. Even MSAA can be forced in Deferred games. Not all, but many)

Oh, right, supersampling and hardware multisampling are actually different approaches, that makes sense! I really like the way you're splitting up the various families. MSAA working with defertred rendering, though? I'm clueless as to how it would work.

[Mirh 103]

I'd guess compatibility profiles.

It's no secret that most UE3 games that once were the symbol of "backward progress" (no MSAA) are now perfectly working.

[Mirh 103]

Nice presentation about the advances of the last decade (too bad talk pages are broken)

http://www.iryoku.com/research-impact-retrospective-mlaa-from-2009-to-2017