Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]

Great and very interesting article, thanks grandmaster!

 

""MLAA has only been shipped on PlayStation 3 at the moment and some advanced implementations take about 4ms on 5 SPUs. There are some attempts to implement it on Xbox 360 but they start at 3.75ms and up."

It is really intersting that developer started to do MLAA on 360,3.75ms is not bad though.

However,I still assume it would be on lower performance than what Gow 3 did with regard to same degree of quaility.

 

Boo don't patch out the fatter lightsabers I like those.

 

It's a pretty heft chunk of total frame time. At least with SPE's, the process can run concurrently with the the GPU tasks.

 

To be honest that AA looks mostly like blurring the image... I realize that it's still a great result when you consider the costs, but I'd still prefer to see proper sampling instead of 2D image processing techniques on next gen hardware.

 

Yeah, you can see some of the worse parts about it in the second image where the stormtroopers are in the drop ship. They just get completely blurred there (not that the stormtrooper helms are particularly high res to begin with, so it makes it look even worse).

The edges that don't get AA'd seem to be between low-contrast objects as well, so perhaps luminance is used.

 

How does it compare to the rendertimes of MSAA @ 720p with a deferred rendering solution though? I remember Sebbi alluding to the fact that the ~4ms render-time for MLAA on 360 demonstrated here was actually faster than even simple 2xmsaa for deferred rendering solutions. The AA quality in God of War 3 is clearly better than 2xmsaa (especially in games with HDR) so it seems like it could even be a win on that platform, just not as pronounced as it is on PS3. There's the memory saved as well.

The rendertimes for DLAA look very impressive on both the PS3 and 360 for a deferred rendered game. Subjectively the quality seems similar to 4xmsaa to me, its clearly having a slightly destructive effect, but its a worthy tradeoff in my eyes given how smooth edges are. I assume that this DLAA technique doesn't 't incur a harsh memory penalty like msaa does, right?

 

Is it me or does DLAA blur the image a bit? It reminds me of Quincunx AA only this time because both platforms use it nobody seems to give a particular notice

 

The blur is not ideal, for sure.

 

I thought the DLAA was great until I see those screen shots, anyone have camparison shots for games using temporal AA? I wonder how much blur that creates. GOW3 MLAA doesn't have any blur like that.

 

But didn't the dev in the interview states that MLAA is strong in still shots, but looses some during movement.
And he also states that this is the strength of DLAA compared to MLAA - and after all, this counts much in my book...because I typically prefer to move around in games and not to stand still
Although I admit that in GOW3 I did not see any problems with respect to movement during gaming...in KZ3 demo, it was a little bit more pronounced IMO, not sure if they can fix this for until release - I wonder if it already has improved in the beta?

 

DLAA with blur is still certainly better then no AA at all, I'll never argue with that. I'd just like to see other alternatives...

Especially as game engines start to introduce more advanced rendering techniques that also rely on sampling. SSAO, various global illumination techniques, and then there's the issue with shadows... As far as I know devs have to deal with each of these separately, writing new code for every single case. If they could be unified somehow it'd be a lot easier to build advanced rendering engines and still get good hardware support. Strangely, this makes raytracing a little more appealing...

Then again it's still more likely that we get huge and complex renderers for next gen, dealing with these separate issues individually. It still offers the best performance and that's where everyone's gonna go eventually.

 

Force Unleashed 2 demo has much more aliasing artifacts in motion than GoW 3, for me. Especially its apparent on floor. And game looks really blurred, but it could be just Kamino.

Ps. I would like to have an option in menu with DLAA on and off. Lack of customization on consoles always bothered me, especially in controls regards ;\

 

I would really like to know how DLAA works.

Would it be possible to use it adaptive, i.e. combine it with an edge detection algorithm to keep the image blur at a minimum?

I guess that DLAA has the same issue as MLAA with high frequency shader aliasing, right? Although it seems that due to the overall blur of the image, this could reduce texture shimmering as well?

@Laa-Yosh: I am not sure if DLAA is always better than no AA at all? I am currently playing the new Castlevania game. For me edge aliasing in this game is not a big problem. The overall crispness of the image is a big plus, but due to the high amount of details everywhere, you get a rather "noisy" image with lots of texture shimmering sometimes. Would DLAA or MLAA improve the overall looks of the game - I am not sure!?

 

What issue are you referring to ?

 

http://www.videogameszone.de/Killzo...es-Video-aus-dem-Beta-Test-erschienen-795124/

KZ3 beta screens, looks pretty clean with MLAA so far.

 

People here on the forum explained that MLAA, being postprocessing only, does not take sub-pixel info into account, and thus it cannot de-alias high frequency noise in shaders for instance.
Remember in GOW3, when you fall into Styx, swimm to its end and leave it. The ground textures there at this place have a lot of aliasing and shimmering - and MLAA did not (vastly) improve it.

 

I thought Force Unleashed 2 had a soft look to it. I'd prefer if it was a little sharper, but the results in motion are quite good. I didn't really notice any aliasing while I was playing, and I though the image quality was still very good. The water pouring down those big windows looked very nice and detailed, going from memory. However this works, I don't think it would be an appropriate solution for a sub HD game. I'm wondering how resolution would affect this solution. Maybe with a higher resolution game, the blur wouldn't be noticeable.

 

Vanquish Face-Off http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vanquish-face-off