16x supersampling (4xSS x 4xMS) amazing

[Nite_Hawk]

Heya Guys,

So I got my new system together with a 7800gtx. After playing around with some of the antialiasing settings in world of warcraft and the control panel, I felt a bit disappointed by the amount of shimmering I was getting on textures. I then decided I might as well give 16x AA (4xSS x 4xms) a try which you can set in riva tuner. Oh my god... I forgot how nice 4x super sampling was. It's like playing a different game.

Theres definately some compatability glitches with the way it works. It seems that the full screen glow effect has to be on to get supersampling working. Also, if you choose 1x MSAA in the game, you don't seem to get supersampling or multisampling. Oddly enough, you seem to be able to change the amount of MSAA you get by changing between 2x and 4x msaa in game even if you have 16xAA specified as a forced value. (though this causes screen corruption issues, so you have to quit the game and log back in). Right now I've set it to 2xmsaa in the game and have managed to get a couple more fps on average than 4xmsaa.

Right now, I'm trying to eek out a bit more performance as framerate usually hovers around 30fps and sometimes drops down closer to 20fps in specific areas. I changed texture quality settings from highquality to "Quality" figuring that it probably doesn't matter as much with full screen supersampling.

Any other suggestions guys? I'm not sure I can go back to only using MSAA again.

Nite_Hawk

 

[Moloch]

Heya Guys,

So I got my new system together with a 7800gtx. After playing around with some of the antialiasing settings in world of warcraft and the control panel, I felt a bit disappointed by the amount of shimmering I was getting on textures. I then decided I might as well give 16x AA (4xSS x 4xms) a try which you can set in riva tuner. Oh my god... I forgot how nice 4x super sampling was. It's like playing a different game.

Theres definately some compatability glitches with the way it works. It seems that the full screen glow effect has to be on to get supersampling working. Also, if you choose 1x MSAA in the game, you don't seem to get supersampling or multisampling. Oddly enough, you seem to be able to change the amount of MSAA you get by changing between 2x and 4x msaa in game even if you have 16xAA specified as a forced value. (though this causes screen corruption issues, so you have to quit the game and log back in). Right now I've set it to 2xmsaa in the game and have managed to get a couple more fps on average than 4xmsaa.

Right now, I'm trying to eek out a bit more performance as framerate usually hovers around 30fps and sometimes drops down closer to 20fps in specific areas. I changed texture quality settings from highquality to "Quality" figuring that it probably doesn't matter as much with full screen supersampling.

Any other suggestions guys? I'm not sure I can go back to only using MSAA again.

Nite_Hawk

What resolution you runnin at?

 

[wireframe]

Night Hawk,

I agree that it is very nice. It is a pity about the performance hit. I am glad to see this thread because I was recently thinking of starting my own on the subject. It would have been very controversial because, get this: I was going to say that gaming at 640*480 can be a pleasurable experience with combined multi and super-sampling. I kid you not. This is on a 21" monitor too.

Having played around a bit I came to the conclusion that I would probably really (as in REALLY) enjoy games at 1024x768 with super/multisampling. This puts a whole new twist on how to gauge hardware performance. I recommend that anyone who hasn't tried it, been too busy upping the res and MSAA a la benchmarks, do so now. It is a matter of personal taste, but how can you know what your taste is until you've tried it?

BTW, I played through all of Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil this way (High Quality, 8x combined AA and 16x combined AA). 16x was a bit much for my single 6800 Ultra, but 8x ran great and looked good. Some games may not look good in this resolution so your mileage may vary and unfortunately some games do a poor job of scaling the interface/HUD.

Edit: I should add that I think frame rate is extremely important for perceived quality. This is the reason I went with such a low resolution and didn't even bother looking at higher resolutions much either because still frames don't convey the experience well. So, I'd rather have low resoliution and MSAA/SSAA with high frame rates (that's my personal optimum).

 

[Nite_Hawk]

What resolution you runnin at?

1280x1024, the native resolution of my panel...

It also seems as though "quality" mode still shimmers even with 4xSS going. I ended up re-enabling high quality and everything is good again. Playing a 20-30fps isn't so bad for world of warcraft, but it's about the minimum one can reasonable do. Still, with these newer and faster cards coming out, I'm starting to think these mixed modes are going to become more popular. It really enhances the game.

Just to show you guys what I'm talking about...


Edit2: Uploaded the image to imageshack and made it into a jpeg, couldn't handle the load on my DSL.

Nite_Hawk

 

[Moloch]

1280x1024, the native resolution of my panel...

It also seems as though "quality" mode still shimmers even with 4xSS going. I ended up re-enabling high quality and everything is good again. Playing a 20-30fps isn't so bad for world of warcraft, but it's about the minimum one can reasonable do. Still, with these newer and faster cards coming out, I'm starting to think these mixed modes are going to become more popular. It really enhances the game.

Just to show you guys what I'm talking about...
[IM]http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2584/wowscrnshot27jt.th.jpg[/IMG]

Edit2: Uploaded the image to imageshack and made it into a jpeg, couldn't handle the load on my DSL.

Nite_Hawk

The reason I ask is because I've done some experements with my 6600GT with GT legends and other racing sims and found that even 4x SSAA at 1024 doesn't begin offer the same overall quality of 1600x1200 with no fsaa.
The aliasing that bothers me isn't getting reduces that much, it's affected, but it's still bad.
With 2x2 SSAA at 1024 it's still a jaggie mess
The paint lines bug the hell out of me!

http://i2.cashmoneyuploads.com/img/GRAB_0089f2.jpg
http://i2.cashmoneyuploads.com/img/GRAB_009e52.jpg

1600x1200 looks tons better

1024 with SSAA looks alot worse in motion...

 

[Guden Oden]

WoW looks great with SS because it uses so many alpha-test textures that just turn into a mess at certain angles. SS cleans them up wonderfully, it's such an amazing difference. Unfortunately the game becomes unplayable on my GFX card in that mode, which is a major bummer. 15-20FPS, maybe as low as 12 or so in busy areas with lots of trees and such is no fun. I run a 6800 vanilla clocked at 420/820.

 

[incurable]

The last time I used 16xAA was with GTA:San Andreas, worked wonders there, too.

Unless, of course, there was smoke on the screen, then it became a messy slideshow.

 

[Ailuros]

In the case of shimmering due to filtering optimisations, supersampling doesn't exactly cure the problem it just pushes the problematic MIPmap into the further clipping distance by the degree LOD is being offset by SSAA itself.

The usual causes of shimmering are the two anisotropic texturing stage optimisations; it rarely appears with just "brilinear" and the LOD of course forced to "clamp".

The reason I ask is because I've done some experements with my 6600GT with GT legends and other racing sims and found that even 4x SSAA at 1024 doesn't begin offer the same overall quality of 1600x1200 with no fsaa.

Let me guess you're using a =/>19" CRT. If yes 1024 and 1600 are worlds apart on that screen space (probably twice as high dpi values for the latter) and secondly if it's just a 19" the monitor is stretching content in the vertical resolution which resembles to a form of "oversampling".

If you'd compare 1600 with no FSAA and 1600 with 4xSSAA it would be a totally different story.

 

[Mintmaster]

The other problem with radeonic's comparison is that 4xSSAA is regular square grid. Rotated grid is a world of difference.

Even on a 19" trinitron, I find 4xMSAA @ 1024x768 to be notably better than 1600x1200 without AA, provided that the former is gamma-corrected rotated grid. AF is a must for me also.

 

[DemoCoder]

The fixed 2.2 gamma correction however doesn't work wonders neccessarily on LCD displays.

 

[Moloch]

I have used 4x msaa at 1600x1200 also you guys... but it didn't have an adverse affect so I tried out plain SSAA since it hits textures and the like.
I was trying out SSAA since it does everything...
My crt only has a dotpitch of .26mm

And yes I'm aware of the over sampling deal but I still get the same aliasing as i do with lower res it's just less pronounced but it's still quite ugly.
You really have to play the game to see.
If you look at the white lines on the track you can see how close by it's quite alised(a case for ssaa no?) but in the distance its nice (mip map??).
The sshots are with every optimization turned off with 16AF.. just like how I game.
You can download the GT legends demo... great game
I dont have the pro version of fraps... so I cant record a recent video of it.

 

[Ailuros]

All I'm saying is that you're describing natural syptoms of your monitor according to the resolutions/settings you use. How good a resolution looks whether with antialiasing or without, depends on the size of the monitor and the dpi value.

1024 on a 19" monitor will inevitably look inferior compared to 1600 and any form of 4x sample antialiasing used; would it be a 17" or smaller monitor it would be a different story or =/>16x sample SSAA (which isn't of course feasable due to fillrate/performance restrictions).

It also should be noted that it's wrong to think that antialiasing replaces in a relative sense the need for higher resolutions. Antialiasing (any form of it) are there to attempt to cure frequency problems that show up as aliasing; thus ideally you'd have a high resolution and antialiasing if possible.

Even on a 19" trinitron, I find 4xMSAA @ 1024x768 to be notably better than 1600x1200 without AA, provided that the former is gamma-corrected rotated grid. AF is a must for me also

Can't say I agree; do the math for the dpi values for 1024 on a 19" screen. Yes you will get an EER value of 4096*3072 in such a case with 4xMSAA, yet it's not only a theoretical number, but since EER stands for edge equivalent resolution, it stands only for polygon edges and intersections. The polygon interior data - of which still by far consists the majority of each scene - will remain at 1024*768.

With 4xOGSS the EER might only be at 2*2, but the entire scene gets upsampled to 2048*1536, filtered and downsampled again to 1024.

***edit: 16xS reaches an EER of 8*8. With the exeption of textures receiving only 4xSSAA, the EER is equivalent to the mythical V5 6000's 8xRGSS (for those few nostalgics still out there).

 

[fallguy]

Heya Guys,

After playing around with some of the antialiasing settings in world of warcraft and the control panel, I felt a bit disappointed by the amount of shimmering I was getting on textures.

You and me both buddy. Its getting VERY annoying.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

You and me both buddy. Its getting VERY annoying.

If you have the resources for it, try 16xAA. Shimmering was nearly non-existant. Much better than my 9700pro even (and certainly nicer looking AA and textures with the extra sampling!).

Otherwise, you may want to try a 8xs, 6xs, or even 4xs mode. It seemed to be enough to get shimmering back to around r300 levels for me (which isn't amazing, but probably good enough most of the time). Still, I'm probably going to play 16x AA from now on. I like the quality more than I dislike the performance hit (so far at least).

Nite_Hawk

 

[martrox]

I'm in same place with WOW.......However, I am able to deal with it with thses settings:
4X FSAA, 16X AF , HQ, LOD clamped, Gamma corrected, MS transparency,and using RivaTuner to set LOD to +1. Getting excellent framerate on my 2005 Dell LCD @ 1680x1050. While I have reduced the shimmering to a point where it's seldom noticable, the +1 LOD has softened the picture a touch and does affect FPS a bit.....

PNY 7800GT@451/1.2, Albatron K8SLi MB w/ 2x512 TCCD
BTW, running on my new Opteron 146 clocked at 2.8; stock voltage........ This processor is a real steal!

 

[fallguy]

If you have the resources for it, try 16xAA. Shimmering was nearly non-existant. Much better than my 9700pro even (and certainly nicer looking AA and textures with the extra sampling!).

Otherwise, you may want to try a 8xs, 6xs, or even 4xs mode. It seemed to be enough to get shimmering back to around r300 levels for me (which isn't amazing, but probably good enough most of the time). Still, I'm probably going to play 16x AA from now on. I like the quality more than I dislike the performance hit (so far at least).

Nite_Hawk

I really doubt I can, since my native res is 1920x1200. A double edged sword..

 

[Moloch]

All I'm saying is that you're describing natural syptoms of your monitor according to the resolutions/settings you use. How good a resolution looks whether with antialiasing or without, depends on the size of the monitor and the dpi value.

1024 on a 19" monitor will inevitably look inferior compared to 1600 and any form of 4x sample antialiasing used; would it be a 17" or smaller monitor it would be a different story or =/>16x sample SSAA (which isn't of course feasable due to fillrate/performance restrictions).

It also should be noted that it's wrong to think that antialiasing replaces in a relative sense the need for higher resolutions. Antialiasing (any form of it) are there to attempt to cure frequency problems that show up as aliasing; thus ideally you'd have a high resolution and antialiasing if possible.



Can't say I agree; do the math for the dpi values for 1024 on a 19" screen. Yes you will get an EER value of 4096*3072 in such a case with 4xMSAA, yet it's not only a theoretical number, but since EER stands for edge equivalent resolution, it stands only for polygon edges and intersections. The polygon interior data - of which still by far consists the majority of each scene - will remain at 1024*768.

With 4xOGSS the EER might only be at 2*2, but the entire scene gets upsampled to 2048*1536, filtered and downsampled again to 1024.

***edit: 16xS reaches an EER of 8*8. With the exeption of textures receiving only 4xSSAA, the EER is equivalent to the mythical V5 6000's 8xRGSS (for those few nostalgics still out there).

But I'm trying to get rid of the aliasing but noted that fsaa doesn't do a good job of getting rid of the aliasing

 

[ondaedg]

I'm in same place with WOW.......However, I am able to deal with it with thses settings:
4X FSAA, 16X AF , HQ, LOD clamped, Gamma corrected, MS transparency,and using RivaTuner to set LOD to +1. Getting excellent framerate on my 2005 Dell LCD @ 1680x1050. While I have reduced the shimmering to a point where it's seldom noticable, the +1 LOD has softened the picture a touch and does affect FPS a bit.....

PNY 7800GT@451/1.2, Albatron K8SLi MB w/ 2x512 TCCD
BTW, running on my new Opteron 146 clocked at 2.8; stock voltage........ This processor is a real steal!

I heard about this new Opteron. Are all the SLI boards compatible with that cpu?

 

[Ailuros]

But I'm trying to get rid of the aliasing but noted that fsaa doesn't do a good job of getting rid of the aliasing

Because the resolution to viewable screen space analogy is off base. A sensible resolution for a 19" CRT is anything >1152*864 IMO. What looks better or has way less aliasing? 1280*960 w/o any kind of AA or 1280*960 with any kind of AA?

 

[Moloch]

Because the resolution to viewable screen space analogy is off base. A sensible resolution for a 19" CRT is anything >1152*864 IMO. What looks better or has way less aliasing? 1280*960 w/o any kind of AA or 1280*960 with any kind of AA?

Well I can see the anti aliasing blurring the edges at 1024 but 1600x1200 with no aa looks better imho.
2x aa helps a tiny bit also with not much of a performance hit in this game.
AA helps but it doesn't help a lot.
I'm so glad xmas and my bday is coming up.. x800 time.
Btw which version is the one you can unlock to 16 pipes with good memory chips (x800xt specs?).