NVidia Anti-Aliasing Guide (updated)

Yeah, I think PCSX2 will probably more than likely run into issues with a lot of games. ESPECIALLY since most of the PS2 library are interlaced games. That's a can of worms. And DX11 has no flags.

Game had issues with the hair rendering before causing a similar outline set up. Perhaps they just made more changes that made it worse and broke AA in the process. *Great* Try the AA fix maybe.
The game had FXAA before didn't it? Maybe the new preset enables something like that by default. (Edit the .ini to disable it iirc)

If Sega implemented a good PPAA solution like SMAAT2x or 4x and a native downsampling solution, you wouldn't need this.

Did they add AO to the benchmark too? Looks like they did for the PS4 version of the game but it looks like ****.

****, Sega. Why won't you just release this game in the west yet?

 

Let's see, yeah, the game has some form of post processing AA, but it just isn't good. Apparently people found out how to use reshade with the game without gameguard throwing a fit though, I should check it out with SMAA.

The game's settings, there's resolution options up to 1920x1200 (can manually edit the config file for higher), settings to change the size of the UI (720p mode, 900p mode, 1080p mode, never looked into it in the config file, dunno if it can be changed for higher resolutions), window mode, fullscreen, virtual fullscreen (their name for borderless), and then a bar that controls several different settings, current game goes up to tier 5, new benchmark goes up to tier 6.

Tier 5 sets texture resolution to high, shader quality to standard, shadow quality to 5 (out of 5), reflection quality to 5 (out of 5), and enables a bunch of on/off settings, their config file names are blur, depth, light effect, light geography, reflection, light shaft, bloom, anti-aliasing.
There's another tier 5 setting, this one is off by default but it can be enabled in-game or in the config file, soft particles.

Tier 6 sets the shader quality to high, enables a bunch more of on/off settings, which are color tone curve, camera light, ambient occlusion and edge light.
In game there's another setting that is off by default that can be enabled in-game or in the config gile, vignetting, and there's one that is also off by default but has no option for it in-game, I have no idea what it does but it's called auto resolution.

Took a bunch of pics for comparison, took them in the Tokyo city scenery instead of the default character creator background since this scenery better shows the issues with SGSSAA with the new shader quality setting. All shots were taken with forced x16 AF too.

Screenshot taken with 4x SGSSAA with the 0x004010C5 flag, AA fix on, -1 LOD Bias, tier 5 with the in-game blur and anti-aliasing settings turned off.
http://i.imgur.com/cjkq92a.jpg

Tier 6 with the same SGSSAA, blur, anti-aliasing and vignetting turned off.
http://i.imgur.com/AFZZbCZ.jpg

Tier 6 with blur, vignetting, bloom and edge light turned off (the game just looks better on tier 6 with bloom and edge light off, imo).
SGSSAA and AA fix on - http://i.imgur.com/psl8U0i.jpg
SGSSAA and AA fix off - http://i.imgur.com/Uw399mK.jpg
In-game PPAA - http://i.imgur.com/nm8EYSp.jpg

Tier 6 with SGSSAA, all on/off settings turned off, shadow quality and reflection quality down to 1, only kept texture resolution and shader quality on high.
http://i.imgur.com/kHThMN3.jpg

My guess about this issue, I think it's whatever method they're using for the character's hair to cast shadows.

 

See if you can find out which setting, even if it's in the .ini if turned down/off that causes the issue.

Try these flags maybe
0x084012C3
0x004110C1
0x004110C5

I might have to redownload the benchmark I guess and tinker myself maybe.
Game still doesn't look really all that impressive, like a mid-tier mid-generation PS3/360 game. Shame it has to be such a pain in the ass since the developers don't seem to care about AA and are adding potentially more aliasing thanks to the new effects.

The original PSO was top notch for it's time in graphics.

Also: Did they add that school setting from the Anime? (Sega, por quoi!)
What the heck were they thinking with that?

 

Yeah, the new effects turn the contrast way up.(To the point where characters with Black skin are almost pure black)
The SSAO is garbage.
The new textures and normal maps are only ok. They don't solve any of the real core issues with the original ones.

The new shader adds a lot of aliasing.
It's cleaned up pretty well with 8xSGSSAA but performance is way costly (Getting sub 100FPS in the bench at 720p with a GTX 980 with a bunch of the new settings disabled. That's insane)

It also somehow it introduces a ton of banding on character models that doesn't exist with the original shaders. (And the banding only happens with Shader=2. With all the other effects disabled. It still exists)
In motion it looks even worse and runs significantly poorer as well.

Comparison
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/164384
Finally, it's the new Shader that is the problem with the hair.
Change Shader=2 to Shader=1 even with the Level 6 preset and it fixes the problem.
But you lose a lot of the new stuff.

Comparison with 4xSGSSAA and 0x004012C1 with the AA Fix.(C5 makes AA quality worse. And the AA fix improves it a little bit, like before with the line through the hair on Shader=1 Comparison http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/164392)
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/164401



Everything breaks hair in one way or another. TrSSAA,SGSSAA and even OGSSAA

The new shader even breaks HBAO+. (Only works with Shader =1)

 

It's a bummer that the in-game PPAA is so bad, was hoping they'd implement something at least a little bit better with the tier 6 setting, but of course not...
The in-game AA and the very poor object draw distance are the two things I hoped they'd improve the most (no idea if there'll be any changes to the draw distance, early PS4 version videos and screenshots seemed to imply that it'll be improved).

And yeah, they added Earth/Tokyo as an area to the game, they're doing a tie-in with the anime, with the current "Episode 4" story taking place a year after the anime... :|
At least there's a possibly interesting boss fight coming out of this setting, based on the new CG intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZEfHDVWBwQ

 

Yeah, it's puzzling considering apparently the game was in development for 5 years before release and they "Pulled out all the stops".

At least the new shader seems to fix some of the crazy shadowmap flickering with the original one. Or rather improve it, the SSAO on the other hand flickers a **** ton in it's place.

The anime and the addition of things from it just seem so out of place. It's generic anime trope crap. It's not Phantasy Star at all, and obviously the Anime is an advert for the game. But I can't understand the mindset at all, either they are desperate or there is a certain crowd of people that love that crap that they are going for.


At this point, i'd almost wish they'd make an entire new game just for the rest of the world that builds on both PSO1&2 and PSU. At this point if we ever got PSO2, in typical SEGA fashion, we'd probably be so far behind Asian servers in content.

 

They're going after the otaku crowd of people, I guess.
Though thinking back, with all the anime collaboration outfits they've been doing, I guess it's not that surprising that this is the route they're taking.
Ah well, at least the story can be ignored outside of the first episode 4 story quest (which is needed to unlock the Tokyo area).

And yeah, unless they were to launch the western version with content matching the start of EP4, a western version would be way too far behind in content at this point. Even the Southeast Asia version of the game is far behind at this point, they're still on Episode 2 content, they're pretty much over a year and half behind.

 

*Sigh* Sega....

 

364 drivers have a note on stutter with AA in dx9 fixed being fixed.

for those that had that issue might be worth testing.

 

Which stutter is that? Haven't seen it.

 

no idea myself either, but I do recall Mr.Bonk talking about it some months back.

 

In regards to PSO2, I feel the need to point out that their graphical choices feel odd all over. The tonemapping causes heavy, really noticeable banding everywhere. I always felt the post AA in PSO2 worked well enough except in certain worst case scenarios, but the high contrast in the benchmark area makes it fail completely. (In fact, the tonemapping induces higher contrast across the board.)
Considering the low quality of the AO, perhaps you should compare SGSSAA with downsampling? That might have a greater overall improvement to image quality (considering how often AO is done at a fraction of screen resolution).

 

AA STUTTER BUG IS GONE. HUZZAH!


For those who don't know what it was. With certain games, if you attempted to force AA of any kind. Even from NVCP. The game would stutter every half a second or so. It made games unplayable.

The strange part was that if you had any kind of on screen display or framerate counter. The stuttering completely disappeared!

Here is a list of known titles that this happened to.

PinballFX2
Dragon's Dogma
Dragon Ball Xenoverse
Dead or Alive 5
Sonic 4 Episode II
Silent Hill Homecoming
Ducktales Remastered
Batman Arkham Asylum
Mass Effect 1-3
Metal Gear Rising Revengeance
Dead Space 1
Crysis
Crysis Warhead
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Alien Colonial Marines
Red Orchestra 2

The easiest way to see this yourself if you are still on a lower driver is to use the AntiAliasing compatibilty flag 0x000020C1 with PinbalFX2 (Allows free demoing of any table http://store.steampowered.com/app/226980/) with Nvidia Inspector
and enable any forced AA like SGSSAA.
Play any table without any OSD enabled (such as MSIAfterburner's RTSS, EVGA Precision, Fraps, or Steam frame rate counter), the game should be stuttering every half second or so.
Now enable one of the OSD's above and watch the stuttering disappear.

 

The AO I don't feel would be improved by resolution much. There are just too many problems inherent in how it is done.

As for AA, you probably could get decently good AA with FXAA+Downsampling. The problem you'd run into though is UI Scale and readability.

The UI Scale seems to be editable in the cfg file. But I don't know if it works arbitrarily. And the game only supports 3 settings.

From what I remember and what I tested up to 1260p. Is that the lower the setting. The smaller the UI gets at higher resolutions.

So, undoubtedly you'd run into issues at some point. Especially if you pushed beyond 4k resolution.


FFIXV:ARR is another game that suffers this problem too. To the point where the game was unplayable for me when I used to play.
I always kept asking for them to implement native downsampling pre-UI pass and SMAAT2x or 4x. It would solve the problem entirely. And FFXIV is another game with a metric crap ton of aliasing of every variety.

Because of DX9, a mechanical HDD,my slightly bottlenecked 980 and my first generation i7@4Ghz. I couldn't get a completely drop free 60FPS at only 1366x768 with 4xSGSSAA at max settings in FFXIV. (Or even without AA in specific locations)
Performance is way better in the DX11 client, even on my system. But there is no AA.

 

In the past, I was able to set arbitrary UI scales for PSO2 through changing the values in the setting file. You could define a target resolution at which the UI would be drawn to and then expanded to fill the screen, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Running the benchmark at 4k, I don't see many of the obvious AO artefacts visible in some of the lower res shots I've seen.

In regards to FF14, it's worth noting that setting a positive LOD bias in the driver clears up almost all the heavy texture aliasing it has. They also added in a bit of support for higher resolution scaling.

 

Nice, at last they fix it!
Also Alpha Protocol.

 

Just tried Mass Effect 1 and 2 with SGSSAA (latest Nvidia driver) and I don't like how they feel. They feel juddery, whereas back before Nvidia broke SGSSAA they were smooth as butter.

Anyone else in a position to test them?

EDIT: juddery in borderless windowed but smooth in fullscreen. Silly me!

 

I'm curious, what Windows version are you using?
Everything after W7 forces Vsync in BW. Might play a part. If using W7 with Aero disabled. It's entirely possible it's just typical tearing/torn frame causing image instability that looks like judder.

 

W7 with Aero. I don't mind going full screen though. Also glad Nvidia finally fixed this.

 

Yeah that's probably the problem. Aero is crap.

Which sucks when some games stupidly only support BW.