Best AA

I'm surely noob... I don't understand wich is the best AA for quality... And how I can turn it on...
Thank you everybody?

 

Sparse grid !!!!

 

I've done some reading on Sparse Grid, and it seems to say that to get the most out of it you should adjust your mipmap LOD bias.

I hadn't messed with texture LODbias in a while, so I forgot where those controls can be found. Skyrim looks stellar with 4xMSAA and 4xSGSSAA but i'm curious as to how it looks with the LOD bias tweak applied.

If anyone can help me out, it'd be appreciated.

 

Morphological is quite good (efficiency wise) but it makes text look hideous.

Supersample is best quality as it refines textures too.

Edge detect is best balance.

 

use Nvidia inspector for these settings..its fairly easy to use...

wait a sec and i make a screen of teh settings i use and mark the ones that u want to know



there ya go..u can like me enhance the aa settings or override them. but make shure u have the right BITS aktiv on top..u see on teh screen..

i use supersample 2x...4 x was better but the perf drop was too much..supersample makes the game look awesome...

hope that helps..

 

yeah common mistake not to change negative lod bias from clamp to allow

BTW, Ordered Grid SSAA is the best looking, Sparse-Grid SSAA is just a sub level of OGSSAA.. also you need to use right bits to use SGSSAA(for nvidia) or else you get blurred picture..

 

Thanks for the assistance, i'll try that out when i get out of work.

 

I've found this to be the best guide on AA I've come across:

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

Also an ATI version here:

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

The Best BFBC2 settings on there too:

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

 

Thanks, so Sparsed Grid SSAA seems to be the best for quality...
There's an nVidia utility to apply it everywhere, it lets selects it till 8x.
Is that the max available and how may I know if it applied correctly? :nerd:

 

No, as was mentioned earlier, OGSSAA (aka just plain old Super Sampling) is best for quality. Having played with these settings ENDLESSLY for nearly a year now, I can confirm that ONLY 8x SGSSAA comes close to (if not surpasses) 2x2 SSAA.

I've argued this back and forth, using screenshots as proof, in German language forums for some time.

BTW, RE: Natural Violence- OGSSAA " It only works with some d3d9 graphics engines."
Nope, that's bollox.

OGSSAA can be forced on just about *EVERYTHING* particularly if mixed with a multisampling technique, ie; 2x2 SS + 2xMS
Indeed, that's the *PERFECT* sweet spot for me in terms of quality and performance trade-off.

If I can afford to add SGSSAA *on top* of that, then I do so, but it's expensive.

Mass Effect 2 made for a great test tube for all this stuff. A wee bit of Downsampling + 2x2 SS +2xMS + 2xSGSSAA = This ->


(apologies if pic is too large, but wanted to retain original res to show AA)

Beren:
You may find this of some use...
http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/rep...ktool/profileditor-supersampling-antialiasing
bias = -0.5 * log2 (samples)
2x SGSSAA: -0.5
4x SGSSAA: -1.0
8x SGSSAA: -1.5

Keep in mind that AFAIK in order to use SGSSAA, you must also enable a level of multisampling equal to or greater than the level of SGSSAA.

 

Grahf you should start posting some of your AA settings in the AA thread. That looks good for ME2.

 

$hit I didnt know that !!! now I changed all of my SG proflies to - lod bias: allow

 

4x SGSSAA provides great quality on my Dell UltraSharp U2711 2560x1440 monitor, only downside is the fact that it eats performance, so in most games I have to settle with 2x SGSSAA and in some others I can push it towards 8x SGSSAA.

OGSSAA seems to cripple performance so much that I can forget any decent framerate in any games running 2560x1440 on a single GTX580.


To be completely honest I can't really tell the difference between 4x and 8x SGSSAA, neither is the move towards OGSSAA barley any noticeable on such a high resolution monitor with such high pixel density.


PS: I always use the same amount of multisampling as I' am using SGSSAA, seems to provide the best quality and the least fuzz on my system.

 

I use good ol' MSAA.. i tried morph AA on release... and to be honest i hate it... things are to blurry.. text is crappy..

im not keen on new aa tech these days.. but i have to suggest Msaa... it always works. and looks fine

 

Yeah, MLAA is horrible as it blurs text and suffers from sub-pixel crawl plus has a large performance hit. FXAA is much better with less blur, a lower performance hit and fewer artifacts but FXAA/MLAA are not decent substitutes for good old-fashioned MSAA/CSAA as the former are applied AFTER the image has been fully rendered whereas the latter is applied DURING the rendering process, which means any text or HUD is overlaid afterwards and unaffected. FXAA is great to have where traditional AA doesn't work but they are always my last options.

IMO, the best image quality is MSAA + Transparency Multi- or Super-sampling AA. MSAA isn't applied to alpha/transparent textures so this is where TrMAA or TrSSAA comes in handy. Neither blur the image or textures either like FXAA/MLAA do.

 

General notions about AA quality like
XyZ anti-aliasing gives best picture quality
are not exactly obvious, so giving at least some examples would be in order.

And when doing so how about posting more then just one freaking screenshot.
Like you know... BEFORE and AFTER. So there actually is something to compare.

Because as you can see in your great test tube ME2


OGSSAA looks pretty much like crap compared to SGSSAA,
and it does a lousy job on vertical and horizontal lines.

 

Well imagine this - it depends!

Even if you had loads of GPU power to spare on AA,
it still depends, and there is no definite answer.

Because you will not always get expected results and/or this sweet AA mode of yours simply wont work with your game.

I generally try to use 4x MS + 4x SGSSAA, 16xS, 4x MS + 4x TrSSAA.
In that order.
Downsampling 3200x1800 if none of the above works.

And nowadays we have all these post-processing AA which you can combine with above modes, so it's even more complicated.
In any case you should do game screenshots and see for yourself what works best for you.

 

Best AA is the bigger one.

 

it's not

you can often see 8x MSAA being better then 16x CSAA, even better then 32x

 

Umm...

Not sure which part of that you didn't catch. As you've definitely shown only the very highest level of SGSSAA beats the lowest level of OGSSAA.

Whether or not you're willing to trade the loss of jaggies for the loss of fine detail is obviously a subjective matter. As I mentioned before (if you actually read my post), 8x SGSSAA either comes close to or surpasses 2x2 SSAA reduction of jaggies...though it is significantly more expensive in framerate (at least in ME2).

Here's a closer comparison that I posted a while back on the 3DCenter forums (since you asked for it)




...as you'll notice, I had to use alternative compatibility bits in order to produce a superior result with 8x SGSSAA in at least one area; FemShep's hair. I also used the Cerberus console screen in the opening menu for comparison.

As a whole, OGSSAA is indeed better for quality (since anything beyond 2x2 would blow 8x SGSSAA out of the water); the fact that the right compatibility bits often have to be found (and even then, it's often a stopgap measure until a better solution is found) is another mark against SGSSAA IMO.

IMHO, for the performance cost of 8x SGSSAA, I'd advise most to stick with the slightly cheaper 2x2 SSAA.

The best solution for those with the most powerful hardware is a combination of methods (as shown in my previous screenshot). Like I said, I achieved the best results with 2x2 OGSSAA + 2x MS + 2x SGSSAA + mildly downsampled resolution (the screenshot is in its original res but was played on a 1920x1080 screen).

It all depends on the game of course.
Right now in a heavily modded Fallout 3, I'm finding that the best solution is 2x MSAA via the in-game options + 2x SGSSAA + a higher resolution than I used in ME2; with the appropriate LOD, it allows for good distance detail and reasonable reduction of jaggies.