Anti-Aliasing Analysis, Part 1: Settings And Surprises

[jemm]

Excellent article! Congrat!

 

[ubercake]

I have never seen AA and the different types of AA explained better anywhere else. I learned a lot. I could refer anyone to this article and they'd have a good understanding of what AA is about after reading it. Great job!

 

[cleeve]

I have never seen AA and the different types of AA explained better anywhere else. I learned a lot. I could refer anyone to this article and they'd have a good understanding of what AA is about after reading it. Great job!

Thanks ubercake, and everyone else who posted positive feedback. Much appreciated!

 

[sticks435]

[citation][nom]Ikaruga[/nom]it's 2011........ nHancer[/citation]
Too bad it doesn't work with Nvidia drivers made in 2010 or newer. When they went to the 26x drivers, it broke nHancer.

 

[sticks435]

There is actually an AA FAQ over at Anandtech forums that was started some time ago that tried to explain all this, since as you said, there is a bunch of different types and the naming scheme for Nvidia sucks. I spent 3.5 hours the other night trying to figure out exactly what the color coverage split was for 16X Nvidia AA, since Nvidia said it was 4+12 when the G80 came out, and an article at Guru3d said it was 8+8 when Fermi came out. Then this comes along and lays it all out and sends my research down the crapper .

 

[warhammerkid]

Too bad it doesn't work with Nvidia drivers made in 2010 or newer. When they went to the 26x drivers, it broke nHancer.

Nvidia Inspector is what you should use now. The download link is at the bottom: http://blog.orbmu2k.de/tools/nvidia-inspector-tool

 

[bit_user]

What is anti-aliasing? The prefix “anti” can be defined as counteracting or neutralizing, and “aliasing” is a jagged, stair-step effect on curved or diagonal lines.

What?? That got off to a good start, but why didn't you dig around on the interweb for an explanation of sampling, the frequency-domain, and low-pass filters?

There is general ignorance in the mainstream about aliasing really is, and an article explaining various anti-aliasing techniques ought to start with a proper explanation. The best treatment I've seen from a CG perspective is in Jim Blinn's Corner: Dirty Pixels (now out of print, sadly).

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]bit_user[/nom]Why didn't you dig around on the interweb for an explanation of sampling, the frequency-domain, and low-pass filters?[/citation]

Wasn't my intent to dig that deep. My objective was to make a simple top-down guide that covers the major points and real-world implications, and based on most of the feedback I think I accomplished that.

 

[ojas]

great guide, helped me understand the sampling modes for my GeForce card. Though i have the Lego Indiana Jones game (demo) [which i downloaded for passing time ] but it has strange anti-aliasing settings. It says FSAA: Edge AA. now that doesn't make sense, because from what i read on wikipedia,FSAA and SSAA are the same thing. but then, you say that edge AA is a type of MSAA. i tried both (in the nvidia control panel), and neither do much to it,even at 16xQ.

And what's the best AA setting for Halo 1? nothing seems to work on it...

For some reason CoD MW2 seemed to perform better with 16x MSAA set to enhance the app setting. I've nvidia, so 16x would mean 4+12, so it does work. That performance thing may be psychological though . The min fps did drop to 38 or something, instead of 43 with 4x (overclocked to 700MHz from 600, highest detail settings, 1024x768)

 

[ojas]

and battlefield bad company 2 seems to have a mind of its own, when it comes to AA. It would randomly happen or not happen, depending on the maps. I wonder if it's a prob with the game.

 

[Reynod]

I hope Don gets a payrise out of this one.

This should be linked as a useful reference document for the site.

Lots of users wanting to get the best out of their graphics cards (in terms of performance vs visual quality) would benefit from reading this article.

Well done.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Nice, fairly easy to understand explanation.

 

[bit_user]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Wasn't my intent to dig that deep. My objective was to make a simple top-down guide that covers the major points and real-world implications, and based on most of the feedback I think I accomplished that.[/citation]Fair enough, but I still think it would have been easy enough to simply say that aliasing is a concept that originated in digital signal processing. That way, anyone who wants to probe deeper has an important keyword they can use to read up on their own.

Thanks for the article, BTW. I was just frustrated to see another prime opportunity get missed, as ignorance about this subject is extremely pervasive.

 

[Guest]

I run with 30-60 fps with 4xSSAA on ATI 5870 in WoW.

 

[ikaruga]

Too bad it doesn't work with Nvidia drivers made in 2010 or newer. When they went to the 26x drivers, it broke nHancer.

Right, but my point was that no serious gamer will mess around with the official driver panel when you have awesome tools available for the specific problem.
I use NV-Inspector to set my OC and Nhancer to set my visual tweaks. (I would love to use NV-Inspector only, but I have a 9800GTX+, and anything newer than 197.xx gives me no s-video output at all (which I need:/), and Inspector can't access the registry entries of the 26x driver series)
I use an Eizo CRT @ 1600x1200@125Hz and my card is perfectly enough for that kind of resolution, so I wont need a new card until I find a better monitor (hope OLEDs will be better and I can get rid of this heavy bastard what I love tbh), but anyway, I don't really care because the new drivers mostly make my good "old" card slower )

 

[cleeve]

Right, but my point was that no serious gamer will mess around with the official driver panel when you have awesome tools available for the specific problem.

I wouldn't think a serious gamer would bother with SSAA at all, considering the associated performance hit.

 

[ikaruga]

I wouldn't think a serious gamer would bother with SSAA at all, considering the associated performance hit.

I consider myself a serious gamer, and in SP I still play with the highest possible visual settings (btw I mostly prefer combined or SS) (It like with the movies, I play for the entertainment and for the fun)

In MP, I play with a config what gives me the best performance / visibility, and indeed, AA is not an option there

 

[verbalizer]

and the overall victory goes to nVidia..

 

[Guest]

I think the reason some new games don't work with forced AA on the drivers is because they use a new type of game lighting rendering called Deferred Rendering, this technique is incompatible with some AA techniques.

 

[prabal34]

Thank you for taking your time to write such an informative article. I've learned a lot. I usually run nvidia cards and I was very confused as to why certain anti-aliasing settings were not producing accurate results, reading this article explained exactly why. Thanks again! Keep up the good work!

 

[waikano]

Great read, learned a ton.

 

[Guest]

"But our test results show it most often works in DirectX 10 and 11 game engines. TrMSAA, on the other hand, is limited to DirectX 9, and we’ve found that, in practice, it rarely works."

and this is why i consider Toms to be a bunch of idiots.

TrMSAA is linked to the MSAA value, if you apply 8xMSAA (and not the shit 4x+8xCSAA) you get perfect antialiased transparency.

 

[Guest]

also.. driver aa unreliable?

that depends on the application, and api.

You retards didn't even bother examining the xS modes so your results are ultimately ignorable.

 

[virtualban]

Just wanting to join the praises for the article. It is one of those articles that I saved to savour when actually attention and time are at a proper high level. And I enjoyed it very much. Thank you. Looking forward too, for the next article.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Diceman2037[/nom]...and this is why i consider Toms to be a bunch of idiots.TrMSAA is linked to the MSAA value, if you apply 8xMSAA (and not the *** 4x+8xCSAA) you get perfect antialiased transparency.[/citation]


...and this is why I have a low opinion of people who criticize without actually reading the article.

We know TrSSAA is linked to MSAA: "Nvidia’s driver settings allow you to choose between anti-aliasing the transparent texture at the same level that MSAA is applied to the rest of the scene, or to supersample the transparent texture with two, four, or eight samples."

Surprise! We tested it and it usually doesn't work. You should actually try it and test it out yourself before making assumptions and trash talking without knowing anything you're talking about.

Read the article properly before knee-jerking a response or you might find your accusations of idiocy turning around on you.