Unimpressed by Antialiasing

[BoddoZerg]

Am I one of the few people who are unimpressed by antialiasing?

Given a choice between running a game at 1600*1200, 1280*960 with 2x FSAA, or 1024*768 with 4x FSAA, I'd almost always choose 1600*1200. (with the exception of Homeworld/Cataclysm, which looks much better with AA)

The problem, IMHO, is that in most games I can't even tell the difference between aliased and antialiased unless it's a still screenshot; when things are moving, jaggies are much harder to see. At resolutions 1280*960 and higher, jaggies are too small to even notice. Moreover, 2x antialiasing really doesn't do much, while Quincunx is really blurry and 4x is slow. On the other hand, the increased detail of a higher resolution is obvious whether it's a screenie or in-game.

When jaggies are really only a problem in a small subset of games (driving and flight sims, Homeworld), why do videocard makers spend so much effort making improved antialiasing schemes? Perhaps antialiasing will be worthwhile on the R300/NV30 generation of hardware, simply because they'll have plenty of framerate to burn, but on a GF4Ti4400 OC'ed to -Ti4600 speed, antialiasing is a rather severe hit to framerate in newer games. Sure, you can turn on the 4xS for Half-Life and Quake 3, but when you get to Max Payne or America's Army, turning on antialiasing means an ugly choice between unplayable framerate and lowering the resolution. And considering R300/NV30, I doubt that even they will be able to play Unreal 2 or DOOM 3 at maxed out settings and FSAA, while maintaining 60+ fps.

Most of the time, it's texture aliasing that annoys me. 4xMSAA in HW:C makes ship edges look wonderful, but it does nothing to get rid of the incredibly annoying crawly textures on the mothership. Why do some games set their LOD bias so aggressively? Grrr...

 

[KimB]

Most high-end video cards today can already enable 4x AA at 1600x1200x32. There's just no reason to run without AA on most games with a GeForce4 Ti 4600.

Why would you want to run without AA on a next-generation video card, which should undoubtedly do even better?

Besides, AA is just one of those things that is more subtle, and you're more likely to notice the lack of it if you turn FSAA off after playing with it for a while.

 

[BoddoZerg]

Depends on what game you're talking about. On Max Payne and Jedi Knight 2, the framerate occasionally slows down even without AA. Warcraft 3 runs fine with 2x FSAA at 1600*1200, until you get into a 8 player game, then you're screwed.

 

[Ante P]

Gimme RGSSAA and I'll shut up.
Current implementations are flawed and unimpressive.

Maybe the "improved" sample patterns, Z-buffer sampling and gamma correction of the Radeon 9700 will make me appriciate MSAA more but I kinda doubt it.
I'm hoping that they will make RGSSAA availible in their drivers as the card should have enough horsepower to pull it off. A combination of the two would be even better.

Some RG SSAA and MSAA combination at ~4-6x combined with the new "High Quality" Aniso mode.. hmm who knows

 

[Tahir2]

http://www.tk.dsl.pipex.com/b3d/1.jpg

http://www.tk.dsl.pipex.com/b3d/2.jpg

Which one looks 'better.' The reason why I like AA is because when certain bit of the scenery are only one pixel in size it doesnt matter how high your resolution is.. you still get a shimmering effect. AA removes this to a large degree. Also I find that AA helps make the static background bond with the moving objectives more. In this case it is F1 cars. In another instance it could be Mental's agents (in Serious Sam).

16*12 compared to 8*6 and 6xAA quality mode with my Radeon nets me about the same performance in GP4. Unfortunately with all graphical details turned on neither are very playable (both are smoothish but you get stutters at times). On a P4 (which I have now sold) the game ran a LOT smoother than my AthlonXP system.

I don't know which I would prefer to play in.. but at the moment I am leaning towards AA at 800*600 or lesser quality AA at 10*7 (something like 4x performance AA - with some graphical effects turned off in this particular game).

It is an interesting point you made though BoddoZerg. IQ is by and large a subjective subject.

 

[Xmas]

misae, i can't access that second screenshot.

edit: ah, now it works but for a fair comparison, you need to look at them full screen.

There's a simple reason why I would always choose 1280x1024 with any kind of AA over 1600x1200 without AA... I have a TFT display

And I wouldn't even dare to use 1600x1200 on a less-than-120kHz CRT.
With upcoming chips AA will only have a small impact on performance. So why disable it?

 

[Tahir2]

Yep.. run them both at full screen

I think running the game with 6xQualityAA at 800*600 and when in motion gives a better visual experience than running at 1600*1200 with no AA.

I'm going to experiment more with AA to see what the 'sweet spot' (a euphemism for compromise) is for this particular game. I cant play Giants without AA on anymore.

 

[Ailuros]

Of course is FSAA a subjective matter of taste.

Yet it also comes down to a couple of other factors too:

a) How trained the eye is to detect aliasing or not

b) Quality and size of the monitor (1x7 isn´t the same on a 15" as on a 19")

c) FSAA algorithm

d) Games/applications used


just to name a few. While I can live w/o AA in a couple of FPS games, racing and flight sims have become unbearable for me w/o AA. Here´s a 4xS example with 2x Level aniso:

http://users.otenet.gr/~ailuros/NFS5a.jpg

PS: Boddozerg,

4xS in HL and q3a???

 

[multigl2]

i find that its really worth it to try to balance a game's settings out to run w/ at least 2x AA. Sometimes, in newer games i'm forced to run no AA, but in the games I play most frequently (Rune, Half Life mods, Oni, etc) I find its not to difficult to leverage it out to run with AA. Although ATi's current SV implementation leaves a lot to be desired

 

[Nagorak]

I agree with the original poster, AA is more or less a gimmick. The only reason I'm warming at all to AA is with the newer hardware we're going to be able to run high resolution and AA. If there's a choice between running in higher res or running with AA, well let's just say there's not anything to decide.

 

[Tagrineth]

3dfx's J-RGSS owns, you can always tell when it's on

It's still by far the highest quality FSAA algo out there, but it drains performance like crazy...

 

[LLB]

I agree with the original poster, AA is more or less a gimmick. The only reason I'm warming at all to AA is with the newer hardware we're going to be able to run high resolution and AA. If there's a choice between running in higher res or running with AA, well let's just say there's not anything to decide.

Call it what you will, all I know is that I have not played a single game since purchasing my Ti-4600 without some level of AA enabled.
2xAA at high resolutions (at least 1280x960) looks great and performs well.

LLB

 

[Nagorak]

Call it what you will, all I know is that I have not played a single game since purchasing my Ti-4600 without some level of AA enabled.
2xAA at high resolutions (at least 1280x960) looks great and performs well.

LLB

Let me try again:

I agree with the original poster, AA is more or less a gimmick. The only reason I'm warming at all to AA is with the newer hardware we're going to be able to run high resolution and AA. If there's a choice between running in higher res or running with AA, well let's just say there's not anything to decide.

You spent $400 on that graphics card, I guess you'd better get your money's worth out of it. I notice you don't have a GF2 MX or even Radeon 8500... 1280 is a high resolution, although depending on your monitor you'd still probably be better running in 1600*1200 IMO. Anyway it's beside the point. AA is like AF, not required, thus a gimick. You don't drop down to 800*600 to run in AA, and most games on non GF4 hardware would require that.

 

[LLB]

Nagorak, my reading comprehension is fine, that was a bit unnecessary.
I was simply stating that what you call a "gimmick" is IMO an indespensible feature.

LLB

 

[Ailuros]

Nagorak,

Respecting a choice works both ways. Some like chocolate and some vanilla. I don´t need anyone to tell me what resolution and with what setting I should run my games, do you?

 

[Randell]

No and I played a fair few games at 10x7 with 2xAA on my V5 as well. What is it with some people that they beleive AA only runs fast enough at 800x600?

 

[Malo]

Whether still or in motion I blieve AA makes a difference, considerable enough for me to lower the resolution to use AA. Fair enough I can use 1600 but thats also only 72hz for me. I prefer 100hz at 1024 with some nice AA and Aniso. Gives the same effect as 1600, includes Aniso and gives me high refresh. Also some games dont have panels etc for high resolutions so I end up with tiny text boxes etc.

 

[Sharkfood]

Ante said it best. I can totally understand the viewpoint of the original poster if they are simply judging "AA" by looking at multisampling or multisampling plus cheap neighbor blur/blend tricks.

When 80%+ of your display area in textured, 3D games is left totally unaltered, obviously the impact of this so-called "AA" wont blow any skirts up. And when applying post-filter blurs or other efficient-but-ugly techniques, the end result is drab and unexhilerating.

To see true, high sample, RG/jittered supersampling- you know, as in FULL SCENE Anti-aliasing, alpha tests are smoothed, texture aliasing is reduced dramatically and full screen coverage/impact is obtained. This removes all the shimmer, moire, crawling, and other artifact errors in the rendering process.

Unfortunately, the emphasis has been placed on discovering the cheapest/fastest, most borderline stretch of the term "antialiasing" possible in order to get the tallest line on a bar graph as of late so it's easy for consumers to become less interested in these newer forms. They still offer benefit, but simply dont offer the benefit of more expensive, lesser performing super sampling.

 

[Ante P]

You don't drop down to 800*600 to run in AA, and most games on non GF4 hardware would require that.

Erhmm, most modern hardware can run with 2x FSAA at a decent framerate at 1024x768.

I run almost all my games at 1152x864 with 2x Quality Smoothvision and 16x Anisotropic Filtering, all in game options maxxed out. And my rig isn't that fast anyways. (Athlon TB 1.3 Ghz, 384 MB PC133, VIA KT133 etc.)
If that becomes too heavy I'll just drop down to 1024x768 and/or 2x Performance Smoothvision.

Sharkfood hit the nail on the head.
MSAA (according to me at least) shouldn't go by the name of FULL Scene AA. It only does edge AA in effect so why call it anything but that?

And though removing edges is the prime intention of FSAA I personally think that the difference between FSAA and MSAA is too great to go with the latter.
And a comment for Calnoth who will probably step in with his usual arguments:
SSAA removes aliasing in areas where texture filtering won't help you no matter what. (Skybox, the emmidiate area in front of you, areas WAY back in the scene, mip map boundaries etc. And it will do so no matter what angle or distance which is not the case with texture filtering.)

 

[KimB]

To see true, high sample, RG/jittered supersampling- you know, as in FULL SCENE Anti-aliasing, alpha tests are smoothed, texture aliasing is reduced dramatically and full screen coverage/impact is obtained. This removes all the shimmer, moire, crawling, and other artifact errors in the rendering process.

Let texture filtering take care of textures. Let FSAA take care of edges. Attempting to use a "one size fits all" algorithm will always result in lower performance for the resulting image quality.

By using more advanced forms of texture filtering, you can significantly improve the texture quality beyond what SSAA alone can achieve.

By using MSAA, or some form of edge AA, you can achieve far higher edge AA quality for the same performance as SSAA.

Nothing that SSAA can accomplish for textures cannot be accomplished by better texture filtering, and using better texture filtering as opposed to SSAA will always produce higher performance for the image quality (simply because all of the math can be done before a pixel is output...there is no need to take up the extra space in memory).