Nvidia's TXAA for Kepler
- Thread starter Paran
- Start date
The biggest difference is in a movie ( as someone have soulign it for me in another forum ), is the number of details.. we are far in a game to match this level of details and object right now. ( the street in Inception movie is a good example of it)...
You dont have the same details on a texture of what you have looking at a real wall, or a photo of a street.. On a movie, this is not so much of a problem ( it give a little aspect like if a filters was used or focal), but on a texture who is allready poor in details, the impact is big.
I dont say the method is bad, i like the idea. But it need yet a lot of work. ( who know maybe with Higher res textures the problem will be less visible too, its not like TSW have extra high res textures ).
Last edited by a moderator:
Billy Idol
Legend
Just what I have predicted in the TSW thread, the 'too blurry' moaners 
I can't stand jaggies and shimmering! This is the most fundamental flaw in game graphics imo.
I am looking forward to see TXAA in a more complex game to see its impact.
Consider me as a TXAA fan so far...
Billy Idol said:
I can't stand jaggies and shimmering! This is the most fundamental flaw in game graphics imo.
I am looking forward to see TXAA in a more complex game to see its impact.
Consider me as a TXAA fan so far...
I hope you have do the test yourself about performance in TSW; cause yet, peoples dont report the same Nvidia does.. and with 680 ofc . I cant check myself so i cant say the figure is right or not.
But peoples of different threads report 2x more performance lost.
But peoples of different threads report 2x more performance lost.
Last edited by a moderator:
How is it "artificial" to implement MSAA in the way that almost all games implement it? Hardly anybody does post-tonemap resolve, and you're making it sound like it's ubiquitous and they had to go out of their way to make it look it worse. Producing better results with a pre-tonemap resolve is one of the advertised features of TXAA, so I don't see what's so wrong about showing off that advantage.
Because doing pre-tonemap or post-tonemap resolve is completely independent of MSAA itself as a method. Yes, initially MSAA resolve used purely fixed function hardware and this happened pre-tonemapping, so in the DX9 era you would have fundamental problems with MSAA and HDR, but that hasn't been a limitation for a large number of hardware generations now, so the quality constraint is largely artificial.
If I went away and created, say, a new texture compression technique, and then I wrote a paper for publication comparing the results of my new technique with a set of results that I obtained by running the worst available compressors for existing techniques, and then claimed victory, then during the review of my paper someone would (hopefully) point out that my methodology was fundamentally flawed, and that perhaps a fairer comparison would be in order if I wanted to be taken seriously.
If I then pointed out as justification that a lot of games had used the useless compressors, even though better ones had been available for 5 years then I would also sincerely hope that such an explanation would not hold any water with the reviewers.
I don't see that this is any different, and I don't see why poor comparisons of this nature deserve to get a free ride. In some ways it seems worse if such a comparison is made in a more public, less technical arena like a blog, where people may be less likely to understand what is really going on, and are therefore more likely to take the presented information purely at face value.
I would perhaps not be feeling so critical if it was pointed out in the context of the comparison that it was completely unnecessary for the MSAA shot to look anything like as bad as it does, but there is nothing of this nature.
It wouldn't make much of a difference (any difference at all?) as far as HDR + MSAA is concerned.
I summon repi to this thread, since he is very knowledgeable and influential in the area of realtime 3D rendering and he still chose to implement non HDR correct MSAA in BF3. Must have had a damn good reason to not even give the option. Is it really that expensive ?
Last edited by a moderator:
They used supersampling, but not a simple box filter. I believe they rendered the image in 1,5×1,5 higher resolution and downsampled it to 1×1. The real problem weren't textures, but very "soft" edges, just like with this TXAA.
Yes, that's why I used definition and resolution - you simply cannot apply movie-style techniques to interactive game content except maybe in narrative cut scenes. Movies and Games are two entirely different beasts, like books and a debate - one being static, the other interactive. If you would use writing-style language throughout a discussion, chances are people would consider you quite odd.
Take for example the defocus/depth of field that directs your attention to or highlights a particular part of a scene. In movies, that works well, since it's literally a rigidly scripted sequence of events that the writer and director laid out that way deliberately. In a game trying to create a convincing environment, however, all this focusing stuff did not yet work (of course I can only speak for my personal impression) quite nearly as well, since the game cannot know where you're looking with a few exceptions.
That being only an example for my point which is: A game is not a movie.
In a game, you use tricks to convey a high definition of detail but your source material is limited in resolution - even the multi-million polygon-models in 3D-modelling programs are. Normally, you derive a fairly convincing overall representation of your object from that plus normal and whatnot-maps, which you apply later on in order to increase detail perception. This in conjunction with a sensible LOD system leads to more details in the foreground than in the background of a scene - but it costs you. Neither the creation of that system itself, it's management overhead nor it's actual application is free. Now you have a scene, that's (hopefully) as detailed as the programmer envisioned it, who - again hopefully - had Nyquist in mind at least a bit. That would give you maximum details with little or no texture aliasing. When you upsample this, Nyquist shifts in his grave as does his theorem and you have more detail available until shimmering starts. You already paid for that through upsampling, remember. And now you downsample again without adjusting the possibly higher level of detail first, that is, you're using inferior source material.
And that's what "too blurry moaners" - at least I - do not like about this.
With regard to TXAA and the screenshots posted in the opening posts: Assuming they are legit, it seems to me, there's neither super- nor (A2C-) multisample-AA going on, otherwise those fences would not look as broken as they did. As it stands, for me those shots look like there's only an FX/MLAA-like filter and no higher resolution, aka higher quality source material from which the downsampling took place.
I compiled two different parts of the scene from the shots in the opening post to show what I mean - they are enlarged by a factor of 2 with no resampling.
http://imgur.com/TgFL2
Simple: in order to do that, you would need to manage your resolves (as AMD hinted at and Humus implemented fours years ago). When you're doing that, it would work for MSAA in the first place as well. *puff* advantage gone.
Gosh that's worse than I remembered it.
How about someone uses just 2xMSAA (where the performance penalty is usually small these days) and just combine it with a +1.0 LOD offset. On average it might even end up faster than TXAA.
Does he not also say that he did the basic implementation for TXAA and has no control over what each developer makes of it? Be that as it may, the shots from TSW in the opening post speak for themselves - if they're legit. There's definitely a certain amount of detail lost that is present in the non-TXAA shots. *shrugs*
That reminds me: Holy Quincunx-resurrection Batman!
Here you go:
http://timothylottes.blogspot.de/20...howComment=1344551254837#c6505334217486553840
(the 15:27 post)
„I just build the TXAA algorithm and sometimes help in integration. I'm not involved in any non-TXAA options in the games.
Developers can selectively super-sample alpha-test with TXAA if they wanted to improve quality, and this would actually have higher performance than the TrSSAA driver option. There are also other areas which would benefit with selective super-sampling. Developers could also fully super-sample (like SGSSAA) if they want to with TXAA, offering even higher IQ.“
Just to add one thing since I just noticed that you specifically mentioned FXAA/MLAA: Please note that I did say „for me those shots look like there's only an FX/MLAA-like filter“.
http://timothylottes.blogspot.de/20...howComment=1344551254837#c6505334217486553840
(the 15:27 post)
„I just build the TXAA algorithm and sometimes help in integration. I'm not involved in any non-TXAA options in the games.
Developers can selectively super-sample alpha-test with TXAA if they wanted to improve quality, and this would actually have higher performance than the TrSSAA driver option. There are also other areas which would benefit with selective super-sampling. Developers could also fully super-sample (like SGSSAA) if they want to with TXAA, offering even higher IQ.“
Just to add one thing since I just noticed that you specifically mentioned FXAA/MLAA: Please note that I did say „for me those shots look like there's only an FX/MLAA-like filter“.
He refers to AA solutions other than TXAA. I'm sure he knows what the first TXAA game exactly does and Nvidia used this game for their TXAA presention. The blur is intended according to him. And some parts of the images are better smoothed with just FXAA enabled compared to TXAA, this would be highly unlikely if TXAA+FXAA was used together and plain stupid. It makes no sense.
You conveniently left out the second part of Timothy's statement thankyouverymuch.