Image Quality and Framebuffer Speculations for WIP/alpha/beta/E3 games *Read the first post*

[jlippo]

Most of the detail in the trees in Crysis 1 come from textures, not polygons, and textures have filtering instead of AA, so that solves that problem. They also don't have branches as thin as the ones you see in Tomb Raider. It's not entirely about amount of detail, but the size of that detail as well. The branches are often 1 pixel or less in thickness, so without AA, the detail can't be rendered very accurately, so it appears to jump substantially and even pop in and out of visibility on some pixels. Post AA then makes the problem worse by assuming it knows about the edges, when what it's seeing is mostly noise, so it alters the image in a way that makes the shimmering even more noticeable.

Indeed.
From traditional post AA solutions FXAA is actually best for such flickering mess as it has option to reduce brightness of single pixel detail and thus reduce the flickering a bit. (1x MLAA/SMAA doesn't do a thing to a help with a single pixel detail.)

Not sure what they could have done to improve trees as they apparently did use deferred renderer for opaque geometry, could be that TAA would have been the only 'easy' solution. (Or something like adding extra bit or two for a pixel which tells post AA that blur this pixel to hell and back when it gets too lonely or far away.. (Perhaps do part of this blurring G-buffer?))

 

[Gitaroo]

On pc at lease, TXAA from fallout 4 + sweetfx lumensharpen is the best way to go. Some of the cleanest + sharp image. Even with SFV, max AA + sweetfx is the perfect balance. Almost as sharp as PS4 version and almost shimmering free.

 

[chobel]

So a bunch of Gears 4 screenshots was posted in Neogaf http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1211645.

Any idea about the resolution?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They're PR shots. That one you've embedded is 3300x1856!

 

[Michellstar]

They're PR shots. That one you've embedded is 3300x1856!

Xbox Ultra confirmed



Anyway, was it 1080P? no matter the cost

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There are gameplay shots in the G4 thread. At first glance the latest single-player shots look genuine ~1080p (that's literally a glance, no counting at all!).

 

[Globalisateur]

Indeed.
From traditional post AA solutions FXAA is actually best for such flickering mess as it has option to reduce brightness of single pixel detail and thus reduce the flickering a bit. (1x MLAA/SMAA doesn't do a thing to a help with a single pixel detail.)

Not sure what they could have done to improve trees as they apparently did use deferred renderer for opaque geometry, could be that TAA would have been the only 'easy' solution. (Or something like adding extra bit or two for a pixel which tells post AA that blur this pixel to hell and back when it gets too lonely or far away.. (Perhaps do part of this blurring G-buffer?))

Sure, as a vaseline filter (or high frequencies destroyer), it's quite effective. FXAA has too much cons IMO, particularly when there are lots of details. The more details you have, the worst FXAA is as a solution. Better to have no AA at all in many cases instead of FXAA.

For vegetation and when there are lots of geometry details the best AA I have seen is the one used in FC4: FlipQuad TAA. It's better even than MSAA or SMAA IMO.

 

[jlippo]

Sure, as a vaseline filter (or high frequencies destroyer), it's quite effective. FXAA has too much cons IMO, particularly when there are lots of details. The more details you have, the worst FXAA is as a solution. Better to have no AA at all in many cases instead of FXAA.

For vegetation and when there are lots of geometry details the best AA I have seen is the one used in FC4: FlipQuad TAA. It's better even than MSAA or SMAA IMO.

Yup, HRAA was quite nice indeed.
For vegetation they used combination of SMAA and Analytical AA.

 

[nightshade]

So FXAA blur bugs you but HRAA's artificial sharpening and immense ghosting doesn't ?
Infact foliage is one place where HRAA's flaws are well apparent, you won't be able to find a screenshot where even a single leaf is not suffering from ghosting.

 

[Globalisateur]

So FXAA blur bugs you but HRAA's artificial sharpening and immense ghosting doesn't ?
Infact foliage is one place where HRAA's flaws are well apparent, you won't be able to find a screenshot where even a single leaf is not suffering from ghosting.

I haven't being able to see any sharpening filter artifacts in FC4. I don't say there isn't such a filter but I have searched for it and I haven't found any clues of its presence, and I can usually notice such a filter...pretty easily. IMO they didn't activated it in the final build even if it's there in the HRAA slides. But I could be wrong.

The ghosting is nothing at all and a completely negligible image quality problem compared to for instance excessive motion blur (or excessive CA) displayed in others 30fps games, notably UC4, Shadow of mordor, Batman, Dying light, Alien's isolation or Bloodborne.

On my LCD TV, the 30fps framerate (even without excessive moblur in a case of FC4) creates so much natural ghosting blur that the ghosting problem of HRAA is really hard to notice when you play the game. But maybe on others screens it could be more visible, like on a plasma? I dunno. I need to see it.

In the end it's only my opinion on the matter. Every AA solutions have their Pro and Cons. On the console market, where you can't really have 4xSSAA or higher, the HRAA implementation used in FC4 is still the best solution... on my screen.

 

[Starx]

Ni oH @30fps

@60fps

 

[Clukos]

1080p30/900p60? Game doesn't hold the framerate well when at 60 but it's still in alpha.

Edit: maybe i should post that in the other thread.

 

[AlNom]

Should just be 1080p vs 720p here.

 

[Nesh]

I didnt like the game's graphics, framerate on animation. The IQ is mediocre in general

Btw this game is probably harder than Dark Souls! Oh my!

 

[VGA]

The Nioh alpha seems to use a dynamic resolution in both action and movie mode. Action mode seems to normally run at 1280x720, but can occasionally run at roughly 1660x935. Movie mode seems to normally run at 1920x1080, but can also change to something in the region of 1660x935 too. The resolution change is very abrupt as there doesn't seem to be any intermediate resolutions.

Action Mode http://imgur.com/a/53y3e
Movie Mode http://imgur.com/a/kAkKA

 

[Rangers]

Dynamic resolution really is gaining steam (I'm on record disliking it, seems I'm losing)

 

[Gitaroo]

Quite surprise with nioh, the need to downgrade so much even in 30fps mode. Given team ninja technical background and the games doesn't even come close to bloodborne.

 

[Allandor]

Dynamic resolution really is gaining steam (I'm on record disliking it, seems I'm losing)

Well, in a time where everything seems to get blurred down in motion, there is no point of using full res if everything gets blurred. I think dynamic res is a really good thing. At least you get stable performance while image quality is still high.
As I said before this console-gen, those consoles aren't ready for full-hd their entire lifecycle and PS4k proves that. Dynamic res combines the best of both worlds (image quality in slower action and stable performance when the game get's faster). Well, at least if it is implemented well (e.g. Halo did this really well).

 

[Sigfried1977]

Quite surprise with nioh, the need to downgrade so much even in 30fps mode. Given team ninja technical background and the games doesn't even come close to bloodborne.

Well, it's a game that's most likely been through the worst kind of Japanese development hell there is. It was announced in 2004 and was supposed to be PS3 launch title in 2006. Cannot think of a single game with that kind of history that didn't end up underwhelming in some form or another. Seems like a really cool game, though. Probably the first Dark Souls-like game that feels like a lot more than a mere homage.

 

[London Geezer]

You know there is another game that has been through a similar development hell but I won't name it as it will turn this thread into a Last Guardian thread. Again.

Oh.