Anti-Aliasing Analysis, Part 1: Settings And Surprises

[TitusFFX]

Some games it's better to turn down the settings on when it doesn't matter as much like GTA IV you can afford to turn down the AA to about 2X since the difference isn't that dramatic however some games I've noticed like Metro 2033 and Call of Duty Black Ops I've actually noticed a large difference between the settings of each. Sometimes it's best to set it denpending on the balance of power and playability without framedrops, instead of setting to setting to a default full max or whatever like I've noticed under the videocard settings instead of leaving as checked for application controlled so each can be set individually.

 

[Guest]

Morphological AA is pretty sweet in FPSes. Though You really notice the blur on text.

As a side note, be sure to turn it off before you start up Media Center! It does strange things...

 

[Guest]

Concerning Mass Effect 2 - you can trick the Radeons into thinking it's Unreal Tournament 3 (which is properly supported)and then set the anti-aliasing in CCC : D

 

[nuwandilantha]

Really nice article. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Krusher]

Good info. I just turned off "Enhance the Application Setting" (I was forcing 8x, so I thought) on my GTX 580 as a result of this article. All of my games are set to 4x in the menus so I should see no change. I'm going to switch from TrMSAA to TrSSAA as I'm getting more DX11 games recently and when TrSSAA works, it looks drastically better. It'll be nice to see what the results of TrSSAA actually do to various video cards in the next article although I doubt the high-end cards will care much on single monitor setups. Hopefully Tom's can get this new article out shortly!

 

[BigMorgan]

Nvidia Inspector (http://blog.orbmu2k.de/tools/nvidia-inspector-tool) is like the Nvidia control panel on steroids. It gives access to many more of the configuration options than the Nvidia control panel, like SSAA, several settings for transparency anti-aliasing, and a whole bunch of other advanced configuration options. I prefer it over nHancer (http://www.nhancer.com/), as I've had better luck with it in the past, but both should work. I'm somewhat surprised, though, that no one at Tom's Hardware actually used it to test out Nvidia SSAA, as I've had quite a lot of success with it.


I used Nvidia Inspector on Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to play the game with 2x2 SSAA (2x horizontal and 2x vertical), and it definitely works if you set it to force the game to use those settings. Forcing MSAA in those games didn't seem to work though, or if it did the effect wasn't noticeable enough to be worth it, not surprising considering some of the issues Unreal Engine games have with anti-aliasing. I didn't bother trying this with Batman because the built-in AA for the game looked fine.

This.

Most games I play now I have an Inspector profile set up for. The only times I've found where it couldn't force AA settings on a game the problem was easily resolved by turning off AA settings within the in-game options then using Inspector to set AA however I'd like it.

I wish that this article had been written with powerful 3rd-party tools like Inspector in mind, as it has greatly expanded the opportunity for users to fine-tune their AA settings in order to achieve the ideal balance between visuals and performance. Especially in this era of console ports and grossly simplified in-game settings.

 

[footman]

Where is the next article in this series, I have been waiting weeks to read it. Great examination of FSAA.....

Come on publish next article......

 

[DSpider]

Antialising is overrated. Look at the PSP for instance, especially the PSP 3000 model where the pixels are positioned vertically (so there are some visible scanlines). Your brain fills out the rest and completes the rendering!

For higher resolutions like 1920x1080, you may not even need AA. I see this as more of an optional feature for which you pay through the nose for. Doom 2 FTW!!! Well, no, not really, but still, people have been gaming without it for decades. While it's nice to have, it's not something you "need". Heck, you could lower the resolution to 1280x720 on a Full HD screen and still enjoy the game just fine. It's all still very subjective, of course.

 

[AshX213]

This article really did help me know what is happening behind the scenes when I put on AA since I don't know a whole lot about graphics.

 

[footman]

Still waiting for part 2 guys....

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]footman[/nom]Still waiting for part 2 guys....[/citation]

It's coming, hopefully soon. The amount of benchmarking is absolutely enromous because of all the different settings, easily 10x one of our usual articles. It's taking time, but it's coming.

 

[SmaugTD]

at the end of the day super-sampling still wins the day