NVidia Anti-Aliasing Guide (updated)

[Anarion]

Just out of pure curiosity... Why people say MSAA+SGSSAA when NVIDIA does not offer mixed mode for SGSSAA?

[Darren Hodgson]

@ MrBonk - 16QxCSAA seems to be working great for me in Inversion. The default Inversion profile only contains Gravitas (or whatever) executables so you'll need to add the correct Inversion.exe executable in order for both SLI and forced AA to work. Game is certainly no graphical stunner but it looks very pleasant with working AA. And the gameplay might be little more than Gears of War with gravity toys but it is still enjoyable.

[Darren Hodgson]

Here are some screenshots:

 Click to show spoiler

[PowerK]

Originally Posted by Anarion

Just out of pure curiosity... Why people say MSAA+SGSSAA when NVIDIA does not offer mixed mode for SGSSAA?

http://naturalviolence.webs.com/sgssaa.htm

[Cyrosis]

Why are people using SGSSAA anyway? It always looks so much blurrier than traditional SSAA, and I've seen no advantage in it's anti aliasing capabilities. Does it offer a performance benefit compared to SSAA? I admit I've never compared them in the performance department because it always looked so much worse I didn't want to bother with it.

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by PowerK

http://naturalviolence.webs.com/sgssaa.htm

And?

Originally Posted by Cyrosis

Why are people using SGSSAA anyway? It always looks so much blurrier than traditional SSAA, and I've seen no advantage in it's anti aliasing capabilities. Does it offer a performance benefit compared to SSAA? I admit I've never compared them in the performance department because it always looked so much worse I didn't want to bother with it.

If it blurs, you're doing it wrong (though, it may bot be possible to get it to look right in all games). It makes a massive difference in UE3 games where shader aliasing is rather bad and MSAA doesn't work correctly.

This is 4xSGSSAA:

 Click to show spoiler

[Cyrosis]

Originally Posted by Anarion

If it blurs, you're doing it wrong. It makes a massive difference in UE3 games where shader aliasing is rather bad and MSAA doesn't work correctly.

This is 4xSGSSAA:

I never compared it to MSAA, I compared it to SSAA, which will have the same affect on shader aliasing. I also realize there are games that don't blur as much as others, but blurring is inherent to all forms of super sampling, so it has nothing to do with doing it wrong. Regardless, in the games I've tested, SGSSAA produces a blurrier image than SSAA, and offers no advantage in anti aliasing. It also seems like a large part of the gaming community discovered super sampling just recently now that SGSSAA has become popular, and hasn't realized that super sampling has been around since the late 90's.

I'm still curious if it offers a significant performance advantage however, as that's the only reason I can think of that it's made a huge splash like it's some brand new technology.

[PowerK]

Originally Posted by Anarion

And?

What do you mean by "And?"
The answer to your question is there. Perhaps, you're not comprehending the article.

Simply put, for SGSSAA, working MSAA is always the prerequisite with nVIDIA cards (I heard that AMD cards use rotated/jittered grids for their SSAA.. but I'm not sure though)
When SGSSAA is selected, it "overwrites" the MSAA but uses the same sample positions. Best use matching sample numbers, so 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA = 4xSGSSAA.

[Anarion]

Originally Posted by Cyrosis

I never compared it to MSAA, I compared it to SSAA, which will have the same affect on shader aliasing. I also realize there are games that don't blur as much as others, but blurring is inherent to all forms of super sampling, so it has nothing to do with doing it wrong. Regardless, in the games I've tested, SGSSAA produces a blurrier image than SSAA, and offers no advantage in anti aliasing. It also seems like a large part of the gaming community discovered super sampling just recently now that SGSSAA has become popular, and hasn't realized that super sampling has been around since the late 90's.

I'm still curious if it offers a significant performance advantage however, as that's the only reason I can think of that it's made a huge splash like it's some brand new technology.

The SSAA option (ordered grid) for NVIDIA does worse job most of the time since it is ordered grid SSAA which does pretty bad job for near vertical and horizontal edges.

Originally Posted by PowerK

What do you mean by "And?"
The answer to your question is there. Perhaps, you're not comprehending the article.

Simply put, for SGSSAA, working MSAA is always the prerequisite with nVIDIA cards (I heard that AMD cards use rotated/jittered grids for their SSAA.. but I'm not sure though)
When SGSSAA is selected, it "overwrites" the MSAA but uses the same sample positions. Best use matching sample numbers, so 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA = 4xSGSSAA.

You didn't understand my question. It uses it to get correct samples but it is not a mixed mode. In other words, it's just SGSSAA quality wise and not some kind of MSAA and SGSSAA.

[MrBonk]

Originally Posted by Darren Hodgson

@ MrBonk - 16QxCSAA seems to be working great for me in Inversion. The default Inversion profile only contains Gravitas (or whatever) executables so you'll need to add the correct Inversion.exe executable in order for both SLI and forced AA to work. Game is certainly no graphical stunner but it looks very pleasant with working AA. And the gameplay might be little more than Gears of War with gravity toys but it is still enjoyable.

You know, I did add the Inversion.Exe to the profile and that's what I was getting. :/ I guess i'll have to try again


Also: If you don't like SGSSAA and you think it's too blurry even when you do it right. You might as well use FXAA+200%sharpening. /sarcasm.


Traditional SSAA like Downsampling(OGSSAA) doesn't always work as well as you would think. And the performance can be killer because of how much you are bumping the resolution (And if you dont' have a lot of VRAM)

Using nothing but OGSSAA depending on the game still isn't enough to rid of all aliasing in a smooth way.

Like in inversion, even at 1.7x1.7 SS my monitor resolution with both in-game edge AA and FXAA wasn't enough to get rid of shimmering.


Just look at Hard Reset, the game uses SuperSampling in the form of FSAA (Which is hard to tell if it actually is because it fails to do away with aliasing well) But it fails to produce good results with good performance even on it's highest setting. Which is why people recommend OGSSAA+SMAA/FXAA
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...90867&page=150



That reminds me, does anyone know exactly what games other than Source engine games support Transparency Multisampling?

[draegunstrife]

With a tech demo I got from one of the creators of SMAA. Here's what I got:

MSAA 1x


MSAA 2x


MSAA 4x


CSAA 8x


CSAA 16x


And even CSAA 16xQ


These compared to SMAA T2x



Maybe this was shown here on 3d Guru before, but oh well.
I would really like to see SMAA T2x implement in games starting today =D

[MrBonk]

Originally Posted by draegunstrife

With a tech demo I got from one of the creators of SMAA. Here's what I got:




Maybe this was shown here on 3d Guru before, but oh well.
I would really like to see SMAA T2x implement in games starting today =D

That along with TXAA and i'd be a happy camper. Unfornately it looks like these things will be soley limited on a developer implemented per game basis >

If they dont' use this stuff for example on Next Gen Consoles. I'm going to be SAD PANDA.

[MrBonk]

I discovered something incredibly interesting with The Last Remnant's Default flag 0x000100C5 (or maybe with any flag)

If you leave the [Maximum Framerate] option in the menu to "None" (/"0")
AA won't work.
But if you set it to "30" or "60" it DOES.

 Click to show spoiler

EDIT:

WTF

I just figured out, that when you have it limited. If you can't maintain the cap (60/30) it will turn AA off.

What the hell...

It must be the flag that causes this I would think
(EDIT: It does the same thing with the ME 2,3 Flag 0x080100C5 , is there a setting in one of the config files that does this??)


/Forcing more than 4XMSAA destroys performance too... Hm..
Maybe I should just downsample+MSAA+FXAA/SMAA...



EDIT2:
Diablo III flag 0x004412C1 seems to work without it flickering ON/OFF if you don't meet the target Framerate.(IE with ME/TLR flags if you dropped to 59 from 60. It would go off. With this it doesn't)

Strangely the performance is the same though.(Which is not great for whatever reason)

 Click to show spoiler

4XSGSSAA

[yosef019]

dark siders 2 and the amazing spiderman ???

[Darren Hodgson]

The AA flag from Darksiders should work fine with the sequel considering it seems to be using the same engine - 0x00001201.

As for The Amazing Spider-Man, I'm hoping my copy has arrived today from Amazon so if it has and I find a working AA flag then I'll post it here. You could start with 0x004110C1 (from Spider-Man: Shattered Dimension) to see if that works?

[scitek]

Darksiders II's actually slightly different.

0x00001241

It's included in the latest beta drivers.

[MrBonk]

Try forcing AA in Spiderman without bits

[bloodindark]

you cant see the character in the character menu in the middle (its like it isnt even there) with any aa bits! and i dont think you can see it with any other aa bits because its pixelated

[MrBonk]

Ok well at least you tried.

You could always test each bit one at a time in inspector and see what results it gives you. As well as the bits listed on Page one and over at 3D Center.


If I had the game or there was a demo> i'd do it myself.

[bloodindark]

i now use 0x000012C1 aa bits (sgssaa)...i decided i prefer playing it in great quality and i dont care about seeing the character in the item menu

[Darren Hodgson]

I've found an anti-aliasing flag that seems to work OK and still gives me 60 fps with 4xMSAA and 4xSGSSAA:

 Click to show spoiler

[Darren Hodgson]

P.S. The in-game AA setting, even on High, is the poorest anti-aliasing I've ever seen and is about as effective as 0xMSAA in my opinion, i.e. no AA at all!!!

P.P.S. When you create a profile for this game, you'll need to use SLI Profile Tool to edit the path so that it reads 'the amazing spider-man/game.exe' as there's already a game profile that uses the game.exe executable.

[Darren Hodgson]

The SLI flag I used for Spider-Man causes some very weird framerate behaviour so I wouldn't recommend using it. The game runs better (unsurprisingly) on one GPU. The 0x00401045 flag does work and makes the game look lovely IMO but it is glitchy. Performance is erratic and the graphics go all untextured and psychedelic *only* when swinging through the city.

I've a feeling that the flag I'm using is close but I don't know enough about how they work to tweak them. Anyone else want to try?

[GanjaStar]

Originally Posted by Anarion

T
You didn't understand my question. It uses it to get correct samples but it is not a mixed mode. In other words, it's just SGSSAA quality wise and not some kind of MSAA and SGSSAA.

becuse when someone who doesn't know/care about the tech behind it only cares about the practical aspect of it, which is just how to turn it on.

[psyside]

How to use SSAA in Crsysis Warhead DX10?