*merged/spinoff* for the Neverending Killzone Discussion on Graphics

People who haven't played GOW3 game should not be commenting on MLAA flickering issues, they are minor in GOW3.

There are no AAA shooters with 720p 4xMSAA on consoles.
Therefore, for this gen shooters, MLAA is the best compromise on the PS3, and it seems 1152x720p TAA is the best compromise on the 360 so far.
 
Let's not get personal, my friend

I'm sorry for not realizing that the game has flawless IQ beyond every 4x MSAA game. How silly of me. Please accept my apology as I move elsewhere. Probably to the tech forums, where I have never seen you post.

Instead let us marvel at the amazing IQ of MLAA.

There is no 4xMSAA game I have seen (maybe you have and if so I would like to see) that can match IQ of Cell-based MLAA games.

Apart from performance benefits, for IQ alone, MLAA is the best choice for KZ3.
 
There is no 4xMSAA game I have seen (maybe you have and if so I would like to see) that can match IQ of Cell-based MLAA games.
You haven't seen very many games then? These are both 4xMSAA.

metro4xmsaa4z49.jpg

deadspace-4xmsaaabfv.jpg
 
Metro uses analytical antialiasing and this screenshot (bullshot?) obviously isn't from 360 ver. :D

Yeah it is PC. It does look pretty much as clean as that with 4xMSAA (see my shots in PC screenshot thread). The gran majority of games have all nice and clean edges with MSAA but there are some exceptions. BFBC2 is one good example where HDR breaks MSAA on lots of edges. Point though is that when it works near perfect or mostly good 4xMSAA+TSAA is just plain better than any postprocess AA that dont affect subpixels and MSAA wont give you motion artifacts or crawling pixels.
 
Yes MLAA on GOW3 is absolutely brilliant, the first time on these forums I saw the ingame screen shots with it, I accused them of doing highres supersampled bullshots!
I was wrong
Turned out they were actually ingame!!
I wouldnt make that mistake with 4xAA
 
4xMSAA can produce very good IQ if it is properly implemented with HDR. And like Nebula said, MSAA won't produce the odd motion artifacts that appear with post-process AA.

But the PS3 is obviously limited in its MSAA capabilities and MLAA type solutions are certainly better than nothing.

Also I've been wondering, regarding the game Killzone 3 - does anyone know why it isn't available yet to non PS+ subscribers?
 
We're discussing it because it uses the same AA technique that was chosen for Killzone 3.

And if you really think that there's no substantial flicker in these backgrounds and on the floor then one of us must have an eyesight problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR6cgsgmw8w#t=06m30s (switch to 720p)

People here have actually played GOW3 themselves instead of looking at compressed videos. It does not flicker like that when you're playing.
 
For non-HDR games at least.
MLAA is still new, there haven't been too many games using it yet. But don't worry, UC3 will provide the HDR + MLAA in a shooter.
Still, there is no better AA that's doable in a console. If you want a FPS with cutting edge graphics, you use MLAA on PS3 and TAA on 360.
 
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4xMSAA can produce very good IQ if it is properly implemented with HDR. And like Nebula said, MSAA won't produce the odd motion artifacts that appear with post-process AA.

But the PS3 is obviously limited in its MSAA capabilities and MLAA type solutions are certainly better than nothing.

It's not a simple comparison because MLAA can produce cleaner images than 4xMSAA. They also have different performance profile. e.g., on PS3, you can do MLAA on the SPUs and leave the GPU free for other tasks. On PC GPUs, the MLAA implementation is different but they can be turned on in ATI GPUs at the driver level ? nVidia is said to be working on MLAA improvement too. It sounds like MLAA type solution is getting recognition and attention. I wouldn't be surprised if some devs pick MLAA over MSAA since some games already do custom/different AA themselves.

I didn't see the motion artifacts in GoW3. Do you have to walk/play the game differently to notice ? Can a layman see it at first glance ?

Also I've been wondering, regarding the game Killzone 3 - does anyone know why it isn't available yet to non PS+ subscribers?

They are probably busy with fixing the servers ? The PS+ closed beta identified some issues. GG should fix them first before opening the environment up to more people !
 
MLAA is still new, there haven't been too many games using it yet. But don't worry, UC3 will provide the HDR + MLAA in a shooter.
Still, there is no better AA that's doable in a console. If you want a FPS with cutting edge graphics, you use MLAA on PS3 and TAA on 360.

Just to be clear, MLAA is perfectly compatible with HDR. The two have nothing to do with each other since MLAA is a post-process and happens after all the HDR magic is over.
 
The IQ of Dead Space 2 on 360 is awful and post process filter found in Metro 2033 is inferior to MLAA. Which 4xAA console game are people referring to? A high profile game like Alan Wake? Heavenly Sword? God of War smooths edges better than those two and the amount of jitter and pixel popping is grossly exaggerated. The IQ is phenomenal and there are few artifacts. Games like HS can have harsh edges at times whereas aliasing in GoW3 is all but eliminated entirely.
 
There is no 4xMSAA game I have seen (maybe you have and if so I would like to see) that can match IQ of Cell-based MLAA games.

All mlaa based games are less sharp due to the simple nature of current mlaa, it will soften texture details to an extent. Note that if you are using a 1080p tv with a ps3 and relying on it's upscaler then you probably won't notice because tv upscaling is generally crappy and will already blur the image. If you have a good quality upscaler, or have a 360 to compare to since it has a quality upscaler, then the sharpness difference between any game with mlaa and a game with msaa (or no aa) can't be missed. Mlaa is no where near as appaling as qaa which totally decimates image quality, but mlaa still does soften it. How much depends on the nature of the games art.

Look at the Bones Forest level in Castlevania for example. That game looks very sharp and has lots of fine texture details. It's art style means mlaa would be a horrible choice for that game because it would soften those details. Whether or not people actually notice is another debate, but the softness is there. There is no way around it, it's due to the way present mlaa tech works.

Remember that much of the shock, at least to me, came from early claims that mlaa was equal to 32xMsaa. So like many other people I was eager to see it in action, and like many other people I was shocked to see that in reality it often isn't even as good as 4xMsaa, and it affects final image quality negatively in some ways. The problem is when people make bold and rediculous claims, when that happens don't be surprised when others come out and openly wonder what in heck people are talking about.

In the end just read the papers on mlaa to get a feel for why it can't fix edge shimmering and texture softening in it's *current* form. That will at least give people a better understanding of it's limits. Then play a game with 4xmsaa on 360 or pc and compare it to any mlaa based game on ps3. Note, do *not* compare mlaa to a ps3 game with 4xMsaa because that will not give you a proper comparison unless you know for a fact that your tv has an excellent upscaler. That's because as mentioned on ps3 + 1080p tv you are dependant on the tv to upscale the final image, and like it or not most are not of very good quality. So compare any mlaa game to 4xMsaa games on 360 or pc if you want to get a feel for how much mlaa is softening the final image. The new Castlevania will make that point staggeringly clear regarding texture sharpness, in particular on the Bones Forest level.

Note that mlaa is a moving target and evolving so all these issues might be fixed over time. But right now they aren't. Also note that much of this is academic since msaa isn't compatible with many deferred renderers out there. So the choice comes down to mlaa, taa, or no aa (currently). Mlaa is better than the taa implementations I've seen so far. When comparing to just going with no aa, it depends on the art style. With God of War art style there aren't as many fine details so maybe it's worth living with slight softening of the image. With a game like Castlevania though I would hate to have all that sharpness and fine detail lost. For KZ3 which is a fast moving shooter, mlaa is fine since you aren't really hanging around looking at details, if you did you'd likely get shot in the head.

Finally to throw in a more on topic question, where are you guys getting the single player demo that I read about here and there? I've only been able to play the mp demo.
 

You'll need to elaborate. How does it know when a given pattern is part of a texture (and hence leave it alone) or part of a triangle edge (and hence soften it)? Or worded another way, imagine any pattern that mlaa would think to be an edge and it would soften it. Now take that pattern and put it in the middle of a flat polygon that is facing the camera. How does mlaa know to not soften that one?
 
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