Native anti-alising support

[AndreaColombo]

So I was reading this interesting article on anti-alisting, and it turns out that forcing anti-aliasing from the graphics card's drivers is surprisingly unreliable.

 

From the same article, I seem to understand that modern graphics cards do not offer the option to directly set Super Sampling Anti-aliasing (SSAA, the best anti-aliasing method in terms of picture quality) from the drivers; SSAA is only an option if the game itself supports it via its options menu.

 

Which bears the question, will Pillars of Eternity natively support Super Sampling Anti-aliasing (enabling the selection of 2X or 4X SSAA in its options menu)?

 

Even though SSAA is quite exacting on system resources (and more specifically on video memory), again Pillars of Eternity won't be an extremely demanding game in and of itself—allowing for SSAA would be a nice treat for those who will play it on beefier rigs.

 

Likewise, native support for MSAA (and perhaps even for those fancy AMD/nVidia proprietary anti-aliasing methods which are really only viable if the game is specifically programmed to support them) would be a nice-to-have feature, because a) it would ensure effectiveness of the selected anti-aliasing option, as opposed to forcing it via graphics card's drivers as illustrated in the article; b) it would be a nice compromise for gamers who want AA but whose rig cannot handle the memory-hungry super sampling.

[samm]

So I was reading this interesting article on anti-alisting, and it turns out that forcing anti-aliasing from the graphics card's drivers is surprisingly unreliable.

 

From the same article, I seem to understand that modern graphics cards do not offer the option to directly set Super Sampling Anti-aliasing (SSAA, the best anti-aliasing method in terms of picture quality) from the drivers; SSAA is only an option if the game itself supports it via its options menu.

This is not quite true. While forcing AA via driver is unreliable for DX9 games, it is plain impossible for anything using something > DX9, independent of whether you use a modern graphics card or an older one. Similarly to "trick" a game using MSAA to use SSAA instead, which can still be done for some games >DX9 as far as I know - all of this is not a problem of modern graphics cards, but of modern game programming.

 

So: Yes, I do hope the devs will include some form of AA (best suited probably MSAA + some form of transparency AA, because we don't want to blur the background, but smooth the characters' polygons and leaf textures etc).

 

If by "fancy AMD/nVidia proprietary anti-aliasing" you mean their post processing excuses to blur the image while not doing anything against aliasing (FXAA and MLAA, i.e. destroying information instead of adding information to smooth jagged polygon edges), or the dirty glasses effect that is TXAA: Please dear devs don't add that^^

Edited April 8, 2014 by samm

[AndreaColombo]

This is not quite true. While forcing AA via driver is unreliable for DX9 games, it is plain impossible for anything using something > DX9, independent of whether you use a modern graphics card or an older one. Similarly to "trick" a game using MSAA to use SSAA instead, which can still be done for some games >DX9 as far as I know - all of this is not a problem of modern graphics cards, but of modern game programming.

 

 

Hi samm,

 

my purpose was not to put the blame on modern graphics cards so much as highlighting an issue: that forcing anti-aliasing from the graphics card's drivers does not appear to be a viable option because it fails more often than not—from which it ensues my request that Pillars of Eternity support anti-aliasing natively via its options menu.

 

As for SSAA, I seem to recall a time—before all the fancy transparency anti-aliasing and proprietary techniques—when it was possible to select it in the graphics card's drivers as an alternative to MSAA. This seems to be no longer the case according to what I read in this page and the following page of the article I linked. Not a big deal if, as you say, forcing AA (and especially so SSAA) on > DX9 games is impossible (I thought it was merely unlikely to be successful).

 

So: Yes, I do hope the devs will include some form of AA (best suited probably MSAA + some form of transparency AA, because we don't want to blur the background, but smooth the characters' polygons and leaf textures etc).

 

While I do agree that we want sharp graphics and smooth polygons, wouldn't AA in Pillars of Eternity only apply to character/monster models and spell effects (those with straight lines susceptible of being jagged, anyway)? For backdrops are going to be pre-rendered 2D, anti-aliasing would have already been applied in the (pre-)rendering phase.

 

I would still like the possibility to set SSAA alongside MSAA+transparency.

 

If by "fancy AMD/nVidia proprietary anti-aliasing" you mean their post processing excuses to blur the image while not doing anything against aliasing (FXAA and MLAA, i.e. destroying information instead of adding information to smooth jagged polygon edges), or the dirty glasses effect that is TXAA: Please dear devs don't add that^^

 

Yeah, I was referring to those. While I am not particularly keen on them myself, other gamers may like them and/or want to use them—if they're taking the time to implement AA, might as well throw in support for FXAA, TXAA, and MLAA (unless it was a lot of additional work; in that case, time would be better spent on other tasks. Just give us SSAA and MSAA+transparency, please ).

Edited April 9, 2014 by AndreaColombo

[samm]

As for SSAA, I seem to recall a time—before all the fancy transparency anti-aliasing and proprietary techniques—when it was possible to select it in the graphics card's drivers as an alternative to MSAA. This seems to be no longer the case according to what I read in this page and the following page of the article I linked. Not a big deal if, as you say, forcing AA (and especially so SSAA) on > DX9 games is impossible (I thought it was merely unlikely to be successful).

Regarding the driver, this is still possible like in the olden days on AMD cards at least. You can leave everything on "use application settings" but select Supersampling for AA method, and now whenever a game asks for Multisampling, what you actually get is Supersampling

Edited April 10, 2014 by samm

[AndreaColombo]

Regarding the driver, this is still possible like in the olden days on AMD cards at least. You can leave everything on "use application settings" but select Supersampling for AA method, and now whenever a game asks for Multisampling, what you actually get is Supersampling

 

Does that work on DX10+ games as well?

[samm]

Yes it does, just tested on BF 4 DX 11 @Ultra @4xMSAA, see linked screenshots (big PNGs, so mind the loading times). The scene may not be perfect here, and I stupidly left PP-AA on high, but the LOD difference is noticable on the distant palm tree leaves and the fps. A restart of the game was necessary however, Alt-tabbing to Windows and changing the setting in the driver did nothing.

 

4x MSAA

 

4x MSAA --> SSAA

Edited April 18, 2014 by samm

[AndreaColombo]

Whoa, that is great news! Guess I'll consider a Radeon card for my new rig, when the time comes

 

The difference between MSAA and SSAA is probably a lot more evident "live" than on screenshots, but I can see it especially on the grid-shaped metal ... things that hold lights LOL no idea what they are called in English XD The grass and palms on the left are also a dead giveaway. If you ran into a fence, the difference would probably be even more dramatic.

Edited April 18, 2014 by AndreaColombo

[samm]

True Now I'll have to check if this applies to Mantle as well. I doubt it, since almost all control is on the developers' side with that API, but maybe AA can still be tweaked. I'll report back

[Frenetic Pony]

Now... this is mostly useless as you'll not be looking at actual geometry for the most part. Toksvig normal map anti aliasing and correct mipmapping would really, REALLY be appreciated with the ability to zoom in and out. Or you could just play it at native res and it'd be fine.

 

As for just plain ol anti-aliasing, ensuring selective edge multisampling for dynamic entities, the only actual geometry onscreen, would be cool though. Mmm, 16msaa would help those characters fit right in with what I can only assume is a highly supersampled background.

 

Speaking of which, for the final, shipping background renders you are going to go for 64x supersampling right? Same as Hollywood? One would hope.

[AndreaColombo]

Now... this is mostly useless as you'll not be looking at actual geometry for the most part.

 

Hi Frenetic Pony,

 

I am well aware of the fact that backdrops (as well as the GUI) in Pillars of Eternity are going to be pre-rendered 2D images, from which it ensues that you could not apply any real-time anti-aliasing to them. In fact, what I would like to have anti-aliasing for is those elements that would be real-time 3D-rendered: character models, monster models, spell effects (those with straight lines that could be aliased and/or with grid-shaped patterns and transparency textures anyway, if there are going to be any) and possibly water (if it is rendered in real time, as this video would seem to suggest).

 

Because only a few elements in the game would be actual geometry rendered in real time, the game is most likely going to be "light" enough to allow the use of super-sampling anti-aliasing without worrying too much about the resulting performance hit.

 

For, as stated, it is impossible to force super-sampling anti-aliasing via the graphics card's drivers on >DX9 games, I am requesting that the devs consider adding it as an option to Pillars of Eternity. Having it as an option alongside MSAA would also be fine, but MSAA might still be forced via the drivers, whereas SSAA couldn't—and SSAA offers much, much superior picture quality.

 

Speaking of which, for the final, shipping background renders you are going to go for 64x supersampling right? Same as Hollywood? One would hope.

 

This is something I have also been wondering. Screenshots currently available—which I realize are not final—occasionally show jagged lines here and there (for example, see the pink crystals in this one). I, too, hope the final renders will go for the same anti-aliasing you are suggesting, thus achieving hollywood-grade smooth lines across all areas.

[samm]

I too hope they take the time to properly smooth the backgrounds, yes. Bad memories regarding lots of jaggies in IWD 2...

[Frenetic Pony]

Don't really need Supersample that much, though support isn't that hard.

 

Honestly now that I think about edges... I guess you'd have to store 2 samples for each edge pixel where there's super sampled depth discontinuity. One for the foreground depth and one for the background, and then you'd have to depth sort. Which will suck, but will be the only way to make it work unless you're doing a post process like SMAA. What's Unities lighting like again? I remember using it, and I know it supported light pre-pass deferred. "deferred lighting" (as opposed to deferred rendering, where the lighting is also deferred so... ugh). But I don't remember how it handled transparencies... hmmm.

[Mungri]

We might not 'need' SSAA, but then by that logic we don't 'need' video games or computers either.

 

It sucks when you buy a modern high end graphics card, or two and cant use more than MSAA in your games that are running at 120+ FPS. If players have a setup powerful enough to run SSAA, then they should be able to use it.

 

Nvidia driver over rides rarely work on anything, however forcing SSAA, or SGSSAA is possible in a lot of games using some third party program I cant remember the name of, but its very technical stuff to do.

[Frenetic Pony]

We might not 'need' SSAA, but then by that logic we don't 'need' video games or computers either.

 

It sucks when you buy a modern high end graphics card, or two and cant use more than MSAA in your games that are running at 120+ FPS. If players have a setup powerful enough to run SSAA, then they should be able to use it.

 

Nvidia driver over rides rarely work on anything, however forcing SSAA, or SGSSAA is possible in a lot of games using some third party program I cant remember the name of, but its very technical stuff to do.

 

SSAA is almost completely useless with this game... not needed.

[Azmodiuz]

Should still have some anti-aliasing. Its a must option on any game with moving things...

[sb5]

Wouldn't SSAA degrade the high res backgrounds? Some post processing AA that's applied to the character and scenery meshes like FXAA should be ideal. Shader based

[AndreaColombo]

Wouldn't SSAA degrade the high res backgrounds? Some post processing AA that's applied to the character and scenery meshes like FXAA should be ideal. Shader based

 

Why would it?

 

All kinds of anti-aliasting only apply to real-time rendered 3D objects anyway, so backdrops would be entirely unaffected.

 

I agree with Azmodius on the need of anti-aliasting for the rea-time 3D parts of the game—and SSAA would be the best-looking option. Marginally, perhaps, but still the best looking (and since zoom has been confirmed, the benefits of SSAA would probably become more apparent when zooming in).

[sb5]

The backdrop is a real-time rendered plane and would be affected. SSAA renders at x*resolution and scales down and thus might blur details

[samm]

There's some serious misunderstanding of the way AA works when recommending FXAA because it applies "to the character and scenery meshes" and then critcizing SSAA because it "might blur details".

SSAA would, if anything, add details, and true blurring would only happen in case of some Post-Processing affecting it. SSAA uses added information to smooth the image, FXAA on the other hand is nothing but a blur filter, destroying information of the image.

[sb5]

My point was if you render the backdrops which are basically sprites at a fixed resolution at X times the render target you upscale a graphic and then scale it back down

[AndreaColombo]

My point was if you render the backdrops which are basically sprites at a fixed resolution at X times the render target you upscale a graphic and then scale it back down

 

My understanding was that backdrops in Pillars of Eternity would be pre-rendered 2D images as was the case in all IE games. In the latter it is impossible to apply any antialiasing, not even in BG:EE where all graphics rely entirely on hardware-accelerated OpenGL.

 

All vectorial 3D objects in the game would benefit from SSAA in terms of edge-smoothing and texture detail. I still have doubts that backdrops would be affected, but if they were, then MSAA would be the better alternative.

[sb5]

As seen in previous footage the backdrops are essentially a textured planar quad and as such would be affected from any kind of full scene upscaling

[samm]

The backdrop is seen orthogonally, so I would believe that MSAA has no effect on it, while FXAA would still blur it and supersampling should still not make it look worse, even presenting more information in case the background texture's resolution is high enough. Nor do I quite get what you're referring to when you say upscaling. Do you mean when zooming in?

 

Btw, maybe I'm misinterpreting, or just wrong

[AndreaColombo]

samm, I believe he's referring to the inherent workings of SSAA, whereby an image is rendered at X times the target resolution and subsequently downsized, using the additional information contained in the larger/higher-resolution version to approximate texture color more accurately (it applies to whole textures and not just borders, but borders of course show the most notable improvements).

 

Because Pillars of Eternity's backdrops are rendered at a fixed resolution of 2560x1440, sb5 is implying that using SSAA to render them at a higher resolution than that would mean upscaling them first and downscaling them thereafter, thus resulting in useless video processing and potential blur.

 

Hopefully a dev will chime in and clarify whether backdrops in PoE are pre-rendered (as I seem to understand) or real-time rendered (as sb5 understands), as that would determines wether hardware-accelerated anti aliasting would affect them at all.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Backgrounds seem to be prerendered that are rendered as a large 2D object in the 3D engine. So they would be upscaled and downscaled. If it's possible to not anti-alias the background, with a custom rendering engine that renders the background separately, I don't think it's worth the effort because the prerendered background is manipulated in the 3D engine by 3D objects, they'd have to reimplement all that another way. I don't know why upscaling and downscaling would blur the background unless the scaler was broken in some way.