Could there be any PS3 games with no AA?

[London Geezer]

Some fighting games actually let you turn off the AA to give a crisper image. Apparantly, they turn it off in official tournaments. I'm guessing it would just look easier on the eyes to not have AA if you have HDR.

You mean like Tekken4? That's not AA, it's a flicker filter, it tries to overcome interlacing artifacts, in fact it doesn't work if you run the game in progressive scan. If it really were AA, it would also make the progressive scan image look better. God of War also had it, among others. I keep it off cause it makes things too blurry for my taste.

 

[nintenho]

You mean like Tekken4? That's not AA, it's a flicker filter, it tries to overcome interlacing artifacts, in fact it doesn't work if you run the game in progressive scan. If it really were AA, it would also make the progressive scan image look better. God of War also had it, among others. I keep it off cause it makes things too blurry for my taste.

Not Tekken, I actually only know one game that uses it and it's Super Smash Brothers Melee. I'm guessing that with the way the gameplay requires a lot of focusing on different parts of the screen, AA can make it more disorienting.

 

[London Geezer]

Not Tekken, I actually only know one game that uses it and it's Super Smash Brothers Melee. I'm guessing that with the way the gameplay requires a lot of focusing on different parts of the screen, AA can make it more disorienting.

It's a flicker filter. :smile:

 

[nintenho]

It's a flicker filter. :smile:

Are you sure, the demonstration it shows on the option screen is it has a picture of the start screen background and when you turn it off, it looks like there are two pictures with one slightly diagonal to the other.

 

[London Geezer]

Are you sure, the demonstration it shows on the option screen is it has a picture of the start screen background and when you turn it off, it looks like there are two pictures with one slightly diagonal to the other.

Well, it's semantics really, if you want to call it AA cause it kinda washes out the jaggies, go for it. But it's really a flicker filter. Most GC games use it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I thought AA isn't noticeable if you have HDR.

Jaggies are caused by contrast between adjacent pixels. Pixels of similar intensity/hue 'blend' together. HDR is likely to increase jaggies because areas of bright versus dark should increase based on the camera's virtual exposure. Some TV programmes show nasty jaggies due to this. Car programmes quite often show it from interior views around the window frame where the outside is overexposed.

AA will still be noticeable on HDR images where intenstiy is within the normal range, but you should see more jaggies of light against dark. I think in MSAA espcially it can't resolve that huge descrepency between intensities so has no effect. That is, in an image scaled from 0 = black to 100 = white, if a left polygon is intensity 1000 and rendered white, and next to it another polygon is intensity 10 rendered dark grey, where the edge is an interpolation that should be say mid-grey, actually it's intensity (1000+10)/2 = 505, rendered white. I don't think MSAA works on scaled data. SSAA can be applied on the scaled image and work effectively.

 

[nintenho]

Well, it's semantics really, if you want to call it AA cause it kinda washes out the jaggies, go for it. But it's really a flicker filter. Most GC games use it.

Thank you kindly....

 

[London Geezer]

Jaggies are caused by contrast between adjacent pixels. Pixels of similar intensity/hue 'blend' together. HDR is likely to increase jaggies because areas of bright versus dark should increase based on the camera's virtual exposure. Some TV programmes show nasty jaggies due to this. Car programmes quite often show it from interior views around the window frame where the outside is overexposed.

AA will still be noticeable on HDR images where intenstiy is within the normal range, but you should see more jaggies of light against dark. I think in MSAA espcially it can't resolve that huge descrepency between intensities so has no effect. That is, in an image scaled from 0 = black to 100 = white, if a left polygon is intensity 1000 and rendered white, and next to it another polygon is intensity 10 rendered dark grey, where the edge is an interpolation that should be say mid-grey, actually it's intensity (1000+10)/2 = 505, rendered white. I don't think MSAA works on scaled data. SSAA can be applied on the scaled image and work effectively.

Technically you're kinda right. The only thing is that all HDR images i've seen also have a blur pass, and most also vastly overused bloom effects which blur and generally makes areas of high contrast quite blurred and "bleedy", therefore taking jaggies away.

 

[Titanio]

That's what some people want you to believe. It can be less noticeable, but it really depends on the situation.

I think what this thread demonstrates more than anything else is that how noticeable aliasing is is going to be very dependent on the person, their viewing conditions etc. Evidently some are a lot more aliasing-sensitive than others, and if you're not sensitive to it, it's certainly not a sensitivity you want to acquire

I think generally, though, no AA next-gen won't be as much of a problem for as many people as no AA was this gen. The threshold determining when someone will be sensitive to it has probably been raised because of all the "next-gen factors" that contribute to less noticeable aliasing asides from explicit FSAA.

 

[London Geezer]

I think what this thread demonstrates more than anything else is that how noticeable aliasing is is going to be very dependent on the person, their viewing conditions etc. Evidently some are a lot more aliasing-sensitive than others, and if you're not sensitive to it, it's certainly not a sensitivity you want to acquire

I think generally, though, no AA next-gen won't be as much of a problem for as many people as no AA was this gen. The threshold determining when someone will be sensitive to it has probably been raised because of all the "next-gen factors" that contribute to less noticeable aliasing asides from explicit FSAA.

Certainly, the higher the res, the less aliasing is noticeable, but you'll always find kids on here and other forums bashing either company for not having a checklist feature the other company does.

 

[nintenho]

Certainly, the higher the res, the less aliasing is noticeable, but you'll always find kids on here and other forums bashing either company for not having a checklist feature the other company does.

*whistles softly*

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think what this thread demonstrates more than anything else is that how noticeable aliasing is is going to be very dependent on the person, their viewing conditions etc. Evidently some are a lot more aliasing-sensitive than others, and if you're not sensitive to it, it's certainly not a sensitivity you want to acquire

Pro Evolution Soccer is a good example of where TV affects aliasing. On a CRT the nets are fairly 'soft-focussed'. On an LCD TV they are eye-watering shimmering collections of square pixels! I had no idea how bad it looked on LCD until playing round a friend's who's ditching his CRT for a HDTV and has his SD LCD in it's place downstairs for the time being.

 

[Xmas]

You're gonna pretend that this has 0AA?
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/317/reviews/516505_20051114_screen034.jpg

" So just to put the matter to rest, Kameo has no AA."
That is so blatantly wrong it's almost sig worthy....

I thought with a SDTV attached Xbox360 will downscale the image from 720p so there will be some supersampling. So for SDTV resolutions every Xbox360 game should have SSAA, but MSAA could still help a lot.

 

[Mmmkay]

I thought with a SDTV attached Xbox360 will downscale the image from 720p so there will be some supersampling. So for SDTV resolutions every Xbox360 game should have SSAA, but MSAA could still help a lot.

That's not universally true. Some games exhibit better performance when run in 480i/p modes than their hi-def counterpats. This is because they use a 640x480 framebuffer instead, so as to not break the aspect ratio and HUD when displaying in a 4:3 environment. I'm not sure if it is a system employed by every game but Quake 4 and Full Auto definitely do this.

It caused quite a bit of controversy with the reviews for Full Auto, as it became quite apparent that several review sites only played it in SD resolutions. Performance in 720p is sketchy at best for the game, with some serious framerate issues, none of which were reported by a handful of reviewers.

 

[scooby_dooby]

That downsampled image (not 1280x720) isn't an accurate show of jaggies in game. Mmmkay's close up shows the difference between edges very clearly.

A slightly downsampled direct capture can't show jaggies, but a close up extremely low res shot, upscaled timex 10 is accurate?

This is ridiculous there are plenty of games with notieceable jaggies at higher resolutions, PD0 is a big offender, COD2 in some places, PGr3. Kameo is absolutely flawless, and to even contend it has 0AA is complete and utter nonsense.

Anyone who says AA is not noticeable at higher res, I suggest you fire up COD2 at 1280x720 and set it to no AA, there's jaggies everywhere and it looks horrible.

As soon as my battery is charged I'll show you a REAL shot of stairs in kameo, that shot is a load of nonsense.

Edit, here's what some steps in Kameo ACTUALLY look like:

The close up is native capture from my camera, no scaling whatsoever, that is what you see on screen.

 

[Titanio]

This is ridiculous there are plenty of games with notieceable jaggies at higher resolutions, PD0 is a big offender, COD2 in some places, PGr3. Kameo is absolutely flawless, and to even contend it has 0AA is complete and utter nonsense.

Anyone who says AA is not noticeable at higher res, I suggest you fire up COD2 at 1280x720 and set it to no AA, there's jaggies everywhere and it looks horrible.

The suggestion I was making earlier was that it was not as big an issue as it was last gen, not that it goes away. Automatically a 720p image without AA is going to look better than a 480p image without AA. That, in conjunction with offer effects depending on the game, can help reduce the significance of aliasing in an image.

Beyond that, whether someone notices or not, or how much they notice, is probably a function of their viewing setup*, and how sophisticated their eye is for this kind of thing (and/or how picky they are).

* which is possibly why, also, when comparing photographs of screens, one should include screen size, viewing distance, camera resolution etc..(not that this Kameo comparison is my argument! ).

 

[cloudscapes]

You're gonna pretend that this has 0AA?
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/317/reviews/516505_20051114_screen034.jpg

It's a fact that many (dare I say most) screenshots for newish titles are doctored and antialiased. Either through photoshopping or through resampling. My point is don't trust Gamespot screenies. Trust framegrabs from the hardware itself.

and for the record, a x10 upscaled celphone picture should still show AA if the source has it enabled, no matter how pixelated it is. we should still see blending between the green ground pixels and the blue stone pixels even if they're huge.

EDIT: I just saw scooby_dooby's own picture.

the only thing I can come up with is AA disables or enables itself depending on output resolution. it's only a guess though

 

[Mmmkay]

The close up is native capture from my camera, no scaling whatsoever, that is what you see on screen.

Scooby, you understand that aliasing is present most noticably on near vertical and near horizontal edges right? Showing me an edge at a near 45 degree angle is not helping. Again, look at the reference AA wheel on page 2 and see how they're virtually indistinguishable at those kinds of angles you presented. Take a shot of Kameo with an edge at the same angle as the one I presented, to show that there is AA.

Why do you persist in your belief that I 'blew up' the picture I took. I already explained that it is untampered and the file properties clearly show this.

How about I demonstrate it again myself? I just took a snap of NFS:MW which features anti-aliasing, and COD2 which does not.

NFS:MW

Notice the edge blending?

COD2

 

[London Geezer]

A slightly downsampled direct capture can't show jaggies, but a close up extremely low res shot, upscaled timex 10 is accurate?

What nonsense... A zoomed in picture of a AAed screen will certainly show the AA level of the screen, because the "in-between" pixels will show, and it would look much different from a non-AA picture. In the zoomed in AA pic you see big pixels, but u see the blurred ones. A zoomed in non-AA picture will show you the jaggy steps properly, like they should. Read any of the reviews Dave does and you'll see zoomed pictures of AA screens he uses to compare AA levels of different cards or different levels of AA on the same card.

Anyone who says AA is not noticeable at higher res, I suggest you fire up COD2 at 1280x720 and set it to no AA, there's jaggies everywhere and it looks horrible.

No one said that. We were saying that logically, a higher res picture will show less aliasing than a low res one: COD2 at 640x480 without AA will show a lot more aliasing than a 720p picture with no AA. Simple really.

As soon as my battery is charged I'll show you a REAL shot of stairs in kameo, that shot is a load of nonsense.

The shot you posted shows absolutely NO aliasing, which is downright impossible even on a game that uses 4xAA as we all know even 4xAA doesn't completely erase jaggies. You'd see the "in-between" pixels generated by the AA, not a completely smooth line.

Thanks Mmmmkay for the pictures, they explain what i'm saying, on the NFS picture you can see the "in-between" pixels trying to smooth out the aliasing, on the other one there is nothing to smooth out the jaggies and it shows.

This might help too, among other articles on this very site:

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/ssaa/index.php

 

[cloudscapes]

also, if people are going to take pictures of their TVs/monitors, I suggest you use a high ISO value or a fast shutter, if you can. I understand that on a cel phone you may not be able to, though by default (since it isn't a real camera) I'm guessing it attempts to take a fast shutter shot, due to usual poor performance in the dark.

moving the camera slightly (if not taken from a tripod) may introduce the appearence of AA if the shutter is slow enough.

so screendumps are best, I guess

EDIT: my guess is this is exactly what's happening in scooby_dooby's screen above. either that or the TV does some kind of blurring/interpolation to help smooth out jaggies. TVs nowadays have a smooth/sharpen feature. may be itneresting to see the results by playign around with that as well

I'm not taking sides, just pointing stuff out