No/Bad anti-aliasing in every game

[lilium_bosniacum]

Hello,

I've just built a new PC and realised that the anti-aliasing is almost non existent. I've tested it with a couple of games to see if the game is the issue and it turns out that the problem occurs in every game. For example, I've played Rising Storm 2 and even though the game has bad anti-aliasing modifications, comparing it to other screenshots mine is definitely the worst. I've even tried Minecraft just to see if the problem occurs even there.

Screenshots:

1. https://imgur.com/a/wxgOv
2. https://imgur.com/a/tNhhK
3. https://imgur.com/a/8ZNqn
4. https://imgur.com/a/XHXEj
5. https://imgur.com/a/qkOHF

Specifications:
CPU: Intel i5 6400
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition 4GB
RAM: Crucial 2133Mhz 2x4GB DDR4
MOBO: ASUS H110M-D
HDD: WD Blue 1TB 7200 rpm
PSU: Seasonic S12II 520W
Monitor: LG 24GM77

I'm currently using a 2m DisplayPort cable that I bought from the tech store.The cable is called Assmann: http://www.assmann.com/en/

Seems like a german company so the cable shouldn't be bad. The one thing that concerns me is the monitor. I bought it used but it seems like in a really good shape. I have to remind everyone that this was also my first PC build that I did myself so I could have screwed something up. Also the graphics card was bought used but it was literally minimally used and I have a 4 year guarantee that the previous owner gave me. He said that the only thing he used it for was some 3D stuff at his company.

I've been also messing around with the Nvidia Control Panel but nothing much helped. I'm a rookie in all of this and don't know much about most of the Nvidia Control Panel settings so I haven't changed much.

Any kind of help is really appreciated since this issue is making gameplay really miserable and non enjoyable.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Imgur lowers the image quality making it look worse than it actually is. I hope that you can see the AA issues.

 

[Dunlop0078]

I am having trouble understanding what you are saying here. None of those screenshots look to me like they have heavy aliasing. Aliasing is jagged edges around the border of textures, I dont see much of that in any of your screenshots. Anti aliasing is various different types of techniques that help to reduce or eliminate aliasing.

One of the rising storm screenshots looks like it's running either FXAA or TXAA and the other looks like maybe MSAA or no anti aliasing at all, but still not abnormal.

If you are running your monitor below it's native resolution aliasing will look worse, it looks worse the lower the resolution regardless of the monitor. A monitor in and of itself could not cause aliasing.

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

I am having trouble understanding what you are saying here. None of those screenshots look to me like they have heavy aliasing. Aliasing is jagged edges around the border of textures, I dont see much of that in any of your screenshots. Anti aliasing is various different types of techniques that help to reduce or eliminate aliasing.

One of the rising storm screenshots looks like it's running either FXAA or TXAA and the other looks like maybe MSAA or no anti aliasing at all, but still not abnormal.

If you are running your monitor below it's native resolution aliasing will look worse, it looks worse the lower the resolution regardless of the monitor. A monitor in and of itself could not cause aliasing.

I'm running the native resolution of 1920x1080. I have to say that I don't have much knowledge in all this but AA is all that was popping up when I was doing research before posting here. On my previous setup I was also running 1080p with much lower settings but something like these edges in Minecraft never occured. If it isn't AA what else could it be?

 

[Dunlop0078]

Could you try to describe what you are seeing in those screenshots that you don't like? Like I said I see very little aliasing in that minecraft screenshot.

I don't know what else it could be because to my eyes that looks fine. Maybe try to post a minecraft screenshot that looks right to you and I will compare them.

 

[Solandri]

As Dunlop0078 says, the screenshots look fine to me too.

If you're sure you're running at the monitor's native resolution, check the monitor settings (in the monitor's on-screen display) to make sure isn't in video mode. It will overscan (enlarge the image slightly) if it thinks it's displaying video.

The Nvidia drivers can also scale the screen image. Open the Nvidia control panel, select "Adjust desktop size and position". Then play around with the scaling options. I'd suggest starting with "No scaling" and working from there.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=492464711

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

I don't know how to describe it but it just looks so broken kind of. I can play most of these games at atleast high or even ultra but the textures don't seem smoth. For example, in RS2 the leaves and fences don't seem smooth no matter what settings I choose. They are so spikey-ish and aren't detailed. It's like I'm running the game at the lowest settings even though the graphics are at high or ultra. I'll check out those setting in the Control Panel Solandri and will inform you both how it goes.

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

I've tried what you suggested Solandri but no use.

Screenshots:

1. https://imgur.com/a/uwydw ( ZOOM IN )
2. https://imgur.com/a/CxQNh ( ZOOM IN )

These are a few more screenshots. As I've said, Imgur lowers the image quality so it makes it a little bit hard to see but I'll try to describe it the best I can.
What bothers me is that there are these lines for every block, these white lines that make the game seem broken. The water in the distance also seems bad. These lines are what bother me,at least in Minecraft but in RS2 the fences and grass seem really low textured and the detail level seems so low. It has this fuzzy effect on fences when walking around the map but keeping eye on them. The lines aren't straight, they have these jaggies and nothing can make it go away. I've seen gameplays on YT with people using the same game settings as me but these objects look much more smooth and better rendered.

Sorry I really cannot describe it better than that.

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

As Dunlop0078 says, the screenshots look fine to me too.

If you're sure you're running at the monitor's native resolution, check the monitor settings (in the monitor's on-screen display) to make sure isn't in video mode. It will overscan (enlarge the image slightly) if it thinks it's displaying video.

The Nvidia drivers can also scale the screen image. Open the Nvidia control panel, select "Adjust desktop size and position". Then play around with the scaling options. I'd suggest starting with "No scaling" and working from there.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=492464711

I think that I've figured it out. When Anisotropic filtering isn't set to "Application controlled" causes these issues. I guess I just have to play around with Nvidia Control Panel setting more. What else can I do to smooth out the in-game items/textures that are far away ?

 

[Solandri]

What bothers me is that there are these lines for every block, these white lines that make the game seem broken. The water in the distance also seems bad. These lines are what bother me,at least in Minecraft but in RS2 the fences and grass seem really low textured and the detail level seems so low. It has this fuzzy effect on fences when walking around the map but keeping eye on them. The lines aren't straight, they have these jaggies and nothing can make it go away.

The lines in the water are moire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern

As you've already figured out, tweaking anisotropic filtering can help reduce moire. It (and MIP Mapping) pre-blurs these textures when they're displayed at a distance, instead of merely scaling them.

I *think* I see what you're talking about in the 5th screenshot of your first post. In the middle right side, there's a very thin wire fence, which has a bunch of white blotches around it. That's an issue whose name I don't recall at the moment. It has to do with transparency in textures not scaling properly to match the texture (basically the transparency map suffers aliasing). Most often you see it in ferns, grass, leaves, and bushes at a distance. Instead of cleanly showing the background objects through (via transparency), you get blotches of solid color along the edges. Wish I could remember the name for this because there is a setting which lets you improve it.

Edit: Found it. (Instructions for enabling it are on the second page.)

https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/transparency_adaptive_aa_explained/1/

Here's an example. The top leaf is rendered with the transparency map anti-aliased. its edges look reasonably smooth. The bottom leaf is rendered with just a scaled transparency map. Its edges look ugly and jagged, and if there were a background behind it you'd notice some pretty bad color clipping.

http://wiki.polycount.com/w/images/1/15/Alphatest_8bit_vs_1bit.jpg

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

What bothers me is that there are these lines for every block, these white lines that make the game seem broken. The water in the distance also seems bad. These lines are what bother me,at least in Minecraft but in RS2 the fences and grass seem really low textured and the detail level seems so low. It has this fuzzy effect on fences when walking around the map but keeping eye on them. The lines aren't straight, they have these jaggies and nothing can make it go away.

The lines in the water are moire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern

As you've already figured out, tweaking anisotropic filtering can help reduce moire. It (and MIP Mapping) pre-blurs these textures when they're displayed at a distance, instead of merely scaling them.

I *think* I see what you're talking about in the 5th screenshot of your first post. In the middle right side, there's a very thin wire fence, which has a bunch of white blotches around it. That's an issue whose name I don't recall at the moment. It has to do with transparency in textures not scaling properly to match the texture (basically the transparency map suffers aliasing). Most often you see it in ferns, grass, leaves, and bushes at a distance. Instead of cleanly showing the background objects through (via transparency), you get blotches of solid color along the edges. Wish I could remember the name for this because there is a setting which lets you improve it.

Edit: Found it. (Instructions for enabling it are on the second page.)

https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/transparency_adaptive_aa_explained/1/

Here's an example. The top leaf is rendered with the transparency map anti-aliased. its edges look reasonably smooth. The bottom leaf is rendered with just a scaled transparency map. Its edges look ugly and jagged, and if there were a background behind it you'd notice some pretty bad color clipping.

http://wiki.polycount.com/w/images/1/15/Alphatest_8bit_vs_1bit.jpg

I think that you're right on about my issue.

SS1:https://imgur.com/a/ScaXa
SS2:https://imgur.com/a/pqoLA

These have been like this, I haven't changed them. They've been set at 8x (supersample) at all time.

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2620399/flickering-bad-anti-aliasing-entire-household.html

Am I facing this problem too? The poster also shares links of more people having that kind of issue that only people WITH that problem can see.

 

[Solandri]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2620399/flickering-bad-anti-aliasing-entire-household.html

Am I facing this problem too? The poster also shares links of more people having that kind of issue that only people WITH that problem can see.

The problem he's having is because he's using FXAA. Basically the game is rendering the frame at the monitor's resolution with no anti-aliasing, then FXAA is smoothing out the aliased edges. This works when there's a diagonal line between two solid blocks of colors (e.g. a staircase viewed diagonally, or the edge of a building).

It doesn't work on extremely thin objects like radio antennas. Because there's no anti-aliasing in the original render, an extremely thin diagonal line like an antenna gets rendered as either there or not there (i.e. a dashed line). The FXAA algorithm then has nothing to work with to "smooth" in the areas where the antenna simply isn't rendered (in between the dashes). To anti-alias objects like this, you have to use some form of supersampled anti-aliasing. The game must render the scene at a higher resolution than the monitor - high enough so the thin antenna is completely visible along its entire length, then downsample it in the anti-aliasing step.

One trick to get around this problem is to replace thin objects like antennas (or grass, or tree branches) with a texture, You then blur the texture in the MIP map and with anisotropic filtering. An anti-aliased transparency map is used as well to overlay this texture over the background. Then as the antenna gets further away, it gradually fades from view instead of parts of it flashing into and out of existence due to aliasing in the underlying render. Basically the transparency anti-aliasing explanation I linked to. Apparently GTA V at the settings he's using doesn't do that. Or it's doing it but without anti-aliased transparency maps (causing the problem I explained in the earlier post). And I didn't see any options for 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x FSAA which is what you'd need to overcome this problem directly.

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2620399/flickering-bad-anti-aliasing-entire-household.html

Am I facing this problem too? The poster also shares links of more people having that kind of issue that only people WITH that problem can see.

The problem he's having is because he's using FXAA. Basically the game is rendering the frame at the monitor's resolution with no anti-aliasing, then FXAA is smoothing out the aliased edges. This works when there's a diagonal line between two solid blocks of colors (e.g. a staircase viewed diagonally, or the edge of a building).

It doesn't work on extremely thin objects like radio antennas. Because there's no anti-aliasing in the original render, an extremely thin diagonal line like an antenna gets rendered as either there or not there (i.e. a dashed line). The FXAA algorithm then has nothing to work with to "smooth" in the areas where the antenna simply isn't rendered (in between the dashes). To anti-alias objects like this, you have to use some form of supersampled anti-aliasing. The game must render the scene at a higher resolution than the monitor - high enough so the thin antenna is completely visible along its entire length, then downsample it in the anti-aliasing step.

One trick to get around this problem is to replace thin objects like antennas (or grass, or tree branches) with a texture, You then blur the texture in the MIP map and with anisotropic filtering. An anti-aliased transparency map is used as well to overlay this texture over the background. Then as the antenna gets further away, it gradually fades from view instead of parts of it flashing into and out of existence due to aliasing in the underlying render. Basically the transparency anti-aliasing explanation I linked to. Apparently GTA V at the settings he's using doesn't do that. Or it's doing it but without anti-aliased transparency maps (causing the problem I explained in the earlier post). And I didn't see any options for 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x FSAA which is what you'd need to overcome this problem directly.

Your example with thin in-game objects like antennas explains my issue. I've ran Far Cry 3 last night and noticed that car antennas are doing that flashing thing (fences, grass, leaves... also). When close to the car everything is fine but when there is some distance between the car and the player - the flashing appears and the car antenna eventually disappears.

Since my screenshots were bad, I've found a video and a couple of screenshots online that describe my issue.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVVCwuxpyTc
Screnshots: https://imgur.com/a/I3EAy / https://imgur.com/a/aEmVi

In the video, pay close attention to those white parking lines, fences and edges of the buildings.

The flashing/shimmering that appears in the video, happens to me to in games like GTA, FC3, RS2...
The moire effect appears in games like Minecraft especially on tree leaves and stuff in the distance.

Regarding your last post, about the antennas flashing in and out of existence - is there some kind of setting in the Nvidia Control Panel that could prevent that? And also, should I keep FXAA on in the future?

EDIT: Only setting that does what you were talking about is DSR ( Dynamic Super Resolution). Would this solve the shimmering/flashing?

 

[Solandri]

Regarding your last post, about the antennas flashing in and out of existence - is there some kind of setting in the Nvidia Control Panel that could prevent that? And also, should I keep FXAA on in the future?

One of my earlier replies already gave you a link with instructions on what settings to enable to fix this (as long as the game uses the trick of converting thin objects into a texture). Do not ignore links just because they lead to a wall of text. That wall of text was the instructions on how to enable transparency anti-aliasing.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3634218/bad-anti-aliasing-game.html#20665328

You should keep FXAA on if you don't have any other form of anti-aliasing enabled, and aliasing bothers you.

EDIT: Only setting that does what you were talking about is DSR ( Dynamic Super Resolution). Would this solve the shimmering/flashing?

That could solve it, but I haven't used it so can't say for sure. From the description, it sounds like it will have a severe performance cost.

 

[lilium_bosniacum]

Regarding your last post, about the antennas flashing in and out of existence - is there some kind of setting in the Nvidia Control Panel that could prevent that? And also, should I keep FXAA on in the future?

One of my earlier replies already gave you a link with instructions on what settings to enable to fix this (as long as the game uses the trick of converting thin objects into a texture). Do not ignore links just because they lead to a wall of text. That wall of text was the instructions on how to enable transparency anti-aliasing.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3634218/bad-anti-aliasing-game.html#20665328

You should keep FXAA on if you don't have any other form of anti-aliasing enabled, and aliasing bothers you.

EDIT: Only setting that does what you were talking about is DSR ( Dynamic Super Resolution). Would this solve the shimmering/flashing?

That could solve it, but I haven't used it so can't say for sure. From the description, it sounds like it will have a severe performance cost.

I've actually read the information on the site from the link that you provided me with and enabled the setting in the Nvidia Control Panel but the problem is still persisting. Shimmering/vibrating (whatever you call them) textures are still there.

I've even tried the DSR setting in the Nvidia CP but with no success. It actually feels like that the settings from the Nvidia CP aren't actually having any impact on the game.

EDIT: Could the issue by caused by some of the components? Could some of the settings in the Nvidia Control Panel be intefering with each other?

 

[RobOhm]

Can we revive this issue?

I have no visual difference between any AF and AA setting in most/all games, I have shimmers on all textures in motion, LOD is perfect within 5m distance in ALL games, beyond that it degrades the visual quality like crazy to the point of a ps2 game.

My PC/GPU literally has lost the ability to render a proper image, tell me why?! Everything from browser videos to games look like shit.

I have a beast pc btw, 8ish months old. gtx 1080ti, i7-7700k, 16gb ram, ssd, all that good stuff, its not my pc. its not my drivers. its not my wires or cables. its not dust in my pc or a loose GPU. At this point im literally too dumb and unexperienced to FIGURE it out, we/I need smarter people on this, you guys!
I'm almost convinced my GPU is hacked somehow and the "processing" or "power" that goes to use AA/AF is used somewhere else to mine bitcoins off my hardware or whatever.
I just know it's not just me, it's hundreds to thousands of people suffering from bad AA/AF, low draw distance/LOD etc etc etc for NO reason.
It's as if harry potter came and VINGARDIUM BADGRAPHICS-AAA and there you go cus it's like magic.

One day everything was fine, and then one day this shit began and my PC experience is ruined.

Please get me a solution for this!

PS: Sorry for all the swearing <<Multiple deletions of inappropriate language by moderator>>