NVidia Anti-Aliasing Guide (updated)

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by Cyberdyne, Jan 29, 2012.

  1. MrBonk

    MrBonk Guest

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    It's not truly terrible as it is better than nothing. (And from what i've seen of the MLAA from PNG lossless shots on Eurogamer, it doesn't work too badly with Dishonored. On both the PS3 and PC)

    Using one of those at the end of a chain though gives you results on par if not better than SGSSAA at much less performance hit. And many times, less blur as well so no need for negative LOD bias.

    Binary Domain 4XSGSSAA
    http://i.minus.com/ibmxoQ7gcukgZz.png
    Binary Domain 4XMSAA+4XTrSSAA+in game FXAA
    http://i.minus.com/iuP7qWczQoVHP.png
    Both cropped and zoomed from 1080p PNG screenshots.
     
  2. Iruwen

    Iruwen Guest

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    I can only repeat that you cannot judge the quality of AA by stills.
     
  3. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    Agreed.

    LOD bias is not always able to defeat blur due to oversampling, regardless of the flag used.
    And basically it's a hack, plus it's a liability - the higher SSAA value used - the higher LOD bias is needed, which again doesn't play nicely always.

    Don't be snob ;)
    PP AA can get rid of edge aliasing with just a portion of GPU load that SSAA will need. Too often the amount of SSAA needed is impractically high.
    And I don't care if you have GTX 690 - the more GPU horsepower is needed, bigger the latencies/lag.

    4xSGSSAA tend to show improvements when hit with post-processing AA on the end of the rendering queue. What then? Are you gonna use 8x SGSSAA?
    For those few games where that's practically possible (Dishonoured included) - you might. But why would you, if pixel crawling is already dealt with, and only a touch of PP-AA would do the trick?

    No doubt. And that's why, ie because of PP AA doing nothing for temporal aliasing, portion of SSAA is needed.
    I'm not arguing that 8x SGSSAA is bad. Go for it if you can. You might be better with lower SSAA value + PP-AA, is what I''m saying.
    Depends on everyones taste I guess.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2012
  4. Iruwen

    Iruwen Guest

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    My major concern about this kind of AA is that it's considered an easy, zero-effort implementation approach to AA instead of working out ways to make "real" AA work with all kinds of renderers and APIs. Microsoft should really do something about that with a future version of D3D.
     

  5. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    Well there are improvements of 4x SGSSAA over 2x, no doubt.
    Just not much in Dishonoured, if used with FXAA/SMAA.

    MLAA does look awful on that screenie.

    EDIT: I yield :p
    There are certain parts (transparent textures mostly as mentioned by kakkoii) where 4x SGSSAA is significantly better than 2x.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2012
  6. MrBonk

    MrBonk Guest

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    Even with OGSSAA, that alone doesn't combat Temporal aliasing well. It does it about just as badly as PPAA by itself. Which is why chaining your preferred form of PPA over MSAA helps with temporal aliasing.
    (And TrSSAA depending on the game. I actually just discovered a bug with Binary Domain with TrSSAA/SGSSAA w/ "0x00400046" and "0x00401246"
    Arg, I wish I knew how to edit these bits. I really want to be able to help out more)

    The Glitch
    No AA [​IMG]
    0x00400046 TrSSAA +FXAA [​IMG]
    0x00400046 4XSGSSAA [​IMG]
    0x00401246 4XSGSSAA [​IMG]

    Seems like Motion Blur velocity vector or whatever it is right there is being treated as a transparent object and the result is that it's been AA'd and outlined or something. (This explanation is probably completely wrong.)

    Just look at the weird outline around the pistol and lights. I'm gonna try and mess around with the numbers in the bits to see if I can fix it at all. Will try other flags as well.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2012
  7. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    SSAA actually does rather well with temporal aliasing.
    (That's why you'll often hear ppl asking for judging of (SS)AA quality in motion)
    OGSSAA is just a special case of it which doesn't do that well with horizontal, vertical lines.

    And PP-AA mostly does the job of smoothing the edges in stills. It might help some in conjuction with SSAA, but nothing breathtaking regarding temporal.
    If SSAA did not get rid of it, forget about PP-AA doing it.
    And how could it. It has no information on the next frame causing the temporal. Neither does SSAA, but it has more samples to begin with, ie less information loss.


    From Timothy Lottes:
    FXAA and SMAA 1x won't ever be able to fully solve the pixel crawling problem, you need multiple samples (MSAA or *SSAA) to solve that problem. Even SMAA 2T (or the 1x + the temporal) isn't good enough to solve the pixel crawling problem.


    Read his blog on TXAA. Nothing can get rid of temporal all together, not even SSAA.
    You need reduction of detail density, ie ultra fine/sharp content will always shimmer.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2012
  8. Iruwen

    Iruwen Guest

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    OGSSAA can be a better form of SSAA in some rare cases where it provides good AA and no blur (general advantage of OG), but most of the time SGSSAA's grid pattern used for sampling is superior and OGSSAA is the worst SSAA mode. And it's inefficient. I don't know anybody who would prefer downsampling (basically OGSSAA) when SGSSAA could be used (without blur), which may also not be perfect but damn close. It's not like anybody would stand in front of a fence and say "whoa, look at those aliased edges", it's more like "hell, what's wrong with that fence, it's flickering like hell". And this tends to get worse with more advanced graphics where everything is covered with shaders (and less experienced developers that don't care about aliasing).
     
  9. Darren Hodgson

    Darren Hodgson Ancient Guru

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    Are there any alternative AA flags for Dishonored that worked with MSAA/CSAA (and TrMSAA/TrSSAA)?

    The 0x004040C1 flag works well with 4xMSAA/4xTrSGSSAA but has a white line artifact in cutscenes so I was hoping for an alternative non-TrSGSSAA flag just for forcing MSAA or CSAA as I'm happy to also use the game's FXAA as well.
     
  10. MrBonk

    MrBonk Guest

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    Yes, I already know ALL OF THIS.

    I was just saying that that using PPAA on top of stuff like MSAA + TrSSAA (Both of which will handle combating temporal aliasing) can lead to excellent results IN MOTION on par if not better than SGSSAA, depending on the game. And that OGSSAA by itself sucks at resolving temporal aliasing.
     

  11. sparrow1911

    sparrow1911 Guest

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    Im using 0x080000C1 flag with -1.375 LOD in Dishonored. Good perfomance, good image, no bugs noted.
     
  12. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    When it comes to UE3 based games, 0x200202C3 had never failed when I want to use SGSSAA.
     
  13. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    Well yes. I'm all for PP-AA on top of the things :)

    Not sure why you're this much against OGSSAA though.
    Because when I'm downsampling and chaining FXAA, it the OGSSAA part that helps with temporal.

    And the best part of it - no headaches due to AA driver support. Yes it has it's deficiencies, but it always works.
     
  14. Dcrawler

    Dcrawler Member Guru

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    Doesn't appear the flags are working now for Borderlands 2? Using the new whql 306.97's.
     
  15. MrBonk

    MrBonk Guest

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    It really depends on the game and engine. A lot of times it sucks. Failing to help at all. A lot of times it works very well (Such as in Binary Domain)


    ANYWHO, after endless testing for what feels like forever. I feel like i've finally found the perfect flag for
    The Last Remnant 0x080000C1(SGSSAA only. MSAA and TrSSAA do not work. Have not tested other methods with this flag)

    I tested flag after flag, then I found this flag from http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=9227370&postcount=2282
    So I gave it a try and what beauty! Good performance, great IQ and no stupid FPS cap that causes the AA to turn on and off.
    4xSGSSAA/4xSGSSAA -1.0LOD Comparison http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151185
    4xSGSSAA/NoAA comparison http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151186
    4xSGSSAA/4xSGSSAA -1.0LOD Zoomed Comparison
    http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151188
    4xSGSSAA/NoAA Zoomed Comparison
    http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151189


    SGSSAA really is the only method of AA that can tame the aliasing in this game. I've tried OGSSAA, OGSSAA + MSAA,MSAA + TrSSAA + FXAA,OGSSAA + MSAA + TrSSAA,OGSSAA from 3008x1692 down to 1600x900 + FXAA and Inspector's 2x2-4x4 modes. And none of them gave satisfactory results.
     

  16. GanjaStar

    GanjaStar Guest

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    for Dishonored MSAA im using this one. better then fxaa alone, much faster then flags that end with c1.

     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2012
  17. TheWahoo

    TheWahoo Guest

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    0x200012C1 works for SGSSAA.
     
  18. kakkoii

    kakkoii Member

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    The only reason you're getting more FPS with this is because it disables MSAA and SGSSAA. I'm guessing you have FXAA on, so you aren't noticing that that happened as much.

    But the funnier thing is, it's only a bit of an FPS increase, it's not an increase like if you actually disabled MSAA and SGSSAA, it's just not supporting it and also decreasing your FPS by a tonne to that level XD

    0x000000C1:
    [​IMG]

    0x000100C5:
    [​IMG]
     
  19. Marcel

    Marcel Guest

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    i try many settings for Dishonored but for me best working 0x000010C1

    working CSAA(only 16xCSAA) and MSAA with SGSSAA. With CSAA i have more FPS sometimes.

    16xCSAA+4xSGSSAA

    [​IMG]

    4xMSAA+4xSGSSAA

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2014
  20. GanjaStar

    GanjaStar Guest

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    you are right. my mistake.these 2 work. its possible that all that end with "45" would.

    Checked them both without FXAA on.

    for my ageing gtx260, that is much faster since the c1 flag and SGSSAA are unplayable on my card.
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2012

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