Epic Games Shows New Anti-Aliasing Tech

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Aug 21, 2014.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    Epic Games has revealed a video for its new anti-aliasing technique that was first used in its Infiltrator Tech Demo. Epic's AA solution is called Temporal AA, is supported by Unreal Engine 4.4, and ...

    Epic Games Shows New Anti-Aliasing Tech
     
  2. Dictator93

    Dictator93 Master Guru

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    imo, its lack of real spatial subsamples make it waaay too blurry. Sure it is cheap and my aeliminate a number of specular aliasing, but running a 1080p image i UE4 makes it look more like a 720p upscaled image in terms of fine detail.
     
  3. Ven0m

    Ven0m Ancient Guru

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    That's one thing. Other is how do I set up video config in order to make it look ok while preserving maximum possible image clarity, eg for shooters.

    When I was testing Battlefield 4 settings, both FXAA looked really good in single-player, but for multilayer I had to disable it. MSAA is sometimes good, sometimes bad. However, setting image scaling to 200% (UHD downscaled to FullHD) resulted in the best quality (as "prettiness") and clarity at the same time. Too bad that my 680 is way too slow for that.

    I guess that when 4k catches up, antialiasing like FXAA or shown in this video will be common and acceptable for competitive online play.

    Also, by the fact that the human eye can see sharp only a small portion of image, I think it would be good to render only the center part of screen at full quality, and the rest at lower. That might result in performance boost in 4k in some kinds of games, like shooters, where you need clarity just around the center.
     
  4. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    Only spotted that the lights looked much better with AA. On the other hand I just woke up and am using 10" 1080p screen to watch.

    ATM it seems that I will be building a new PC at the end of this year or at January. Yay!

    Whats the performance hit with that vs real AA ?
     

  5. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    Well, this is real AA. :p Also this is going to be pretty epic for 4K resolution. I so hate unrealistic sharpness (or obvious sharp pixel borders) and shimmering.
     
  6. Lane

    Lane Guest

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    Huum AMD Temporal AA Super Sampling ?

    I will look on the whitepaper, it but just the name remind me the AMD AA setting.

    It will be excellent if they had success to bring temporal AA + supersampling quality with reduced cost on performance.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2014
  7. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    I still think that SSAA (Supersampling) is the real AA :)

    EDIT: Wait a seck... So this is just SSAA with a different name ?
     
  8. Lane

    Lane Guest

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    No, well, i dont know, i need to read the whitepaper.

    AMD was providing Temporal AA + Supersampling in CCC, but you need to force it, problem is not all games like when you force it.

    There i think Epic use a similar principle but use a different formula who reduce the cost in performance.

    The formula remind me some work allready shown, so, well i should get more info later.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2014
  9. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    I should not comment on stuff I know little (or nothing) about, but this temporal AA is related to post processing while SSAA is traditionally done while the image is being drawn, I think ?

    So thats kinda what I want to know, perfomance difference there in "usual use case".
     
  10. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    What's the deal with all these new types of AA, they suck! FXAA, TXAA, and the new one in this video: they all make everything blurry & lose the sharpness, x8CSAA or x4MSAA FTW! Didn't notice any jaggies in the non AA version of the video anyway!
     

  11. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    That sounds like a rubbish idea! Since when do you play a game just looking at the centre of a screen - your eyes dart all over it, I don't want just the centre to look sharp and the rest sh*t! ;-)
     
  12. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    I noticed that the lights and (mostly) reflections looked bad in non AA version but I did like what I saw in AA version.
     
  13. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    I think I know what you mean, especially the reflections off the floor towards the end. I don't know, I think the lighting loses detail with the AA, I kind of think it's supposed to have that slightly shimmering edge to it, rather than being dulled out. Personal preference I suppose, but I hate losing detail, which is why I'm a fan of MSAA, CSAA, and using x16 anisotropic filtering in the NVidia Control Panel on games that don't have anisotropic filtering options - Batman Arkham City & Arkham Origins benefit a lot by x16 anisotropic forced through NVidia control panel. Yep, so I'm particularly fussy about losing clarity, and jaggies don't bother me as much (x4MSAA is adequate for me, even on my low res 1600x900 laptop screen!).
     
  14. Ven0m

    Ven0m Ancient Guru

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    The rest isn't supposed to look like ... poo. The point was to have the max possible clarity around the center, where where you're aiming. If you play shooter games, you usually don't pay that much attention to the rest of the screen. It's still important, but not as looking for that 1 pixel sticking out from behind crates/rocks.
     
  15. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    I see what you mean, but I think in reality it could end up looking like a subtle but broken depth of field effect. That's why I don't think it would be a good idea.
     

  16. Xendance

    Xendance Guest

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    As someone who's using UE 4 SDK, I have to say that the temporal AA method does wonders for material aliasing. Gone are the shimmering specular artifacts when looking at surfaces at a shallow angle.
     
  17. Smooth Operator

    Smooth Operator Guest

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    Whilst I agree they suck, you must have seen how much shimmering there was on everything, it looked horrendous with all the white specs flickering everywhere.

    Whilst I'm sure it will blur the image just as much as TXAA, it's really impossible to tell in that comparison because there is so much post-processing blurring the image to begin with.
     
  18. Robbo9999

    Robbo9999 Ancient Guru

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    I know, it was weird with all the white specs flickering everywhere. I've not noticed that on other games, I wonder if something in the UE4 engine creates this unwanted effect, thereby making the inclusion of this AA technique necessary?
     
  19. Xendance

    Xendance Guest

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    There's nothing inherent in UE 4 that does it. It happens in all games when you get to sub-pixel levels.

    Fyi, in UE 4 this method of AA can be disabled on a per actor basis. For example you can disable it on some particle effects, or on characters or whatever.
     
  20. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    The UE4 SDK has a number of console commands / settings for fine tuning temporal AA although I haven't experimented that much with them myself, though yeah it does get a bit blurry with the default values. :)
     

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