Downsampling with AMD: Guide and Demonstration (Antialiasing Substitute)

Omaeka · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:23

Spenty said:
This seemed to make my game look worse. If you check the GTA4 mods and tweaks thread my first screenshot of the yellow mini is on my normal 1920x1080 res and the second of the black golf gti is using 2560x1440 downsampling and there's more jaggies.

I think a black car on grey background will show more jaggies than a yellow car on grey background. :rolleyes:

Enable morphological edge detect AA, it does force AA into GTAIV, forcing MSAA doesn't. Incase you didn't know.

Martini1991 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:24

Omaeka said:
I think a black car on grey background will show more jaggies than a yellow car on grey background.

Enable morphological edge detect AA, it does force AA into GTAIV, forcing MSAA doesn't. Incase you didn't know.

And compromise textures? Urgh.

Martini1991 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:25

Omaeka said:
I've tried that before, and it gave me some crazy results in game, no textures, square tree's etc. This just flatout changes your resolution to something way higher than native. This won't mess up your games and will simply give you higher quality for the same impact on performance as actually having a larger resolution monitor. It also works outside of games.

I've never had the effect you describe,
I've dabbled with downsampling years ago on Nvidia and a little while ago on AMD.

Spenty · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:25

LOL! Jaggies aren't decided by colour. This downsampling tool creates a slight blur in my opinion, you can see it on the text and stuff in games.

Proto · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:26

Spenty said:
This seemed to make my game look worse. If you check the GTA4 mods and tweaks thread my first screenshot of the yellow mini is on my normal 1920x1080 res and the second of the black golf gti is using 2560x1440 downsampling and there's more jaggies.

Not according to this article at pcgameshardware.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,684782/GTA-4-Higher-visual-quality-with-Downsampling/News/

You probably had other issues, as it should not increase jaggies when a higher resolution is downsampled.

Omaeka said:
I've tried that before, and it gave me some crazy results in game, no textures, square tree's etc. This just flatout changes your resolution to something way higher than native. This won't mess up your games and will simply give you higher quality for the same impact on performance as actually having a larger resolution monitor. It also works outside of games.

Super sampling can create all sorts of incompatibilities as the driver is actively 'sampling' texture edges. With downsampling this is not the case and therefore there should be far less compatibility issues. I do not suggest this as complete substitute to supersampling as when SSAA works it works great, however this method does provide a useful alternative to the many AA methods as a whole.

Omaeka · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:26

Martini1991 said:
And compromise textures? Urgh.

It doesn't compromise textures, at least not on GTA IV. I've been using it for a while, the quality of AA it forces onto IV is similar to MSAA.

FrenchTart · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:27

Omaeka said:
I've tried that before, and it gave me some crazy results in game, no textures, square tree's etc. This just flatout changes your resolution to something way higher than native. This won't mess up your games and will simply give you higher quality for the same impact on performance as actually having a larger resolution monitor. It also works outside of games.

As you stated yourself, it creates blur and worsens image quality outside of games. Perhaps with your low monitor resolution the trade off is worth it but most of us are running with a higher DPI anyhow.

You are far better off using proper super sampling methods if you're interested in image quality.

The only argument in favour of this technique is that you can achieve some degree of super sampling-style antialiasing without losing quite as much performance as the standard methods (at least in theory...judging solely on the resolution increase for both methods). However, the lack of optimisation for these custom resolutions makes that a questionable conclusion.

If you're that bothered about your performance losses with AA you may as well stick to MSAA or MLAA.

Btw, you having missing textures when you attempted to use SSAA is not indicative of the feature being flawed - just of you having bad luck with drivers, hardware or the particular game you tried.

Martini1991 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:28

Omaeka said:
It doesn't compromise textures, at least not on GTA IV. I've been using it for a while, the quality of AA it forces onto IV is similar to MSAA.

It does compromise textures, do you actually know what MLAA does specifically?

FrenchTart · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:31

Proto said:
Not according to this article at pcgameshardware.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,684782/GTA-4-Higher-visual-quality-with-Downsampling/News/

You probably had other issues, as it should not increase jaggies when a higher resolution is downsampled.

Those comparison shots are really dodgy. You can clearly see some reduction in jaggies but the fact that the shots are at slightly different points in the games (and the GTA lighting difference is laughable) makes it a really unfair comparison for everything else.

FrenchTart · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:32

Martini1991 said:
It does compromise textures, do you actually know what MLAA does specifically?

I strongly doubt it.

Martini1991 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:33

FrenchTart said:
I strongly doubt it.

It doesn't massively.
But that was one of the negatives, same as FXAA.
Unless you're on about the second part?

Which was why TLAA (Or whatever it's called) was all the rage (Which has amounted to nothing as of so far)

FrenchTart · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:34

Martini1991 said:
It doesn't massively.
But that was one of the negatives, same as FXAA.

Which was why TLAA (Or whatever it's called) was all the rage (Which has amounted to nothing as of so far)

I meant that I strongly doubts that he knows what it does

Martini1991 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:35

Omaeka said:
Yes, and if your noticing any texture quality reduction, you need to spend less time with your face glued to your monitor staring at individual textures and playing your games. I use MLAA in a lot of things (Borderlands for example) with absolutely no noticeable drop in texture quality. I know specifically what GTA IV looks like vanilla, I don't notice any difference whatsoever.

Couldn't the same be said of jaggies?

Just use real AA implementations.

Go OTT like the real men, 8x MSAA at 1920x1080 just because you can.

Proto · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:35

FrenchTart said:
Those comparison shots are really dodgy. You can clearly see some reduction in jaggies but the fact that the shots are at slightly different points in the games (and the GTA lighting difference is laughable) makes it a really unfair comparison for everything else.

PCGamesHardware have no reason to post unfair comparisons. They saw a reasonable method of improving image quality and wrote an article about it. It's a well respected site and I can't see what they would gain from making it up.

Martini1991 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:35

FrenchTart said:
I meant that I strongly doubts that he knows what it does

Ah, got you

FrenchTart · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:35

Omaeka said:
Stuff

You may wish to respond to my other post rather than coming out with extremely random stuff.

twist3d0n3 · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:35

for some reason this is only allowing me to add the new res to the right monitor, not my middle (primary) one... any ideas?

Omaeka · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:36

Martini1991 said:
Couldn't the same be said of jaggies?

I've played a few games with AA off, and its a really big problem for me, I never stare at any particular thing when playing, and the jaggies seriously effect the overall quality of the visuals. Just look at games like Skyrim and Prototype 2, they have low res, low quality textures yet still look great in the grand scheme of things.

FrenchTart · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:36

Proto said:
PCGamesHardware have no reason to post unfair comparisons. They saw a reasonable method of improving image quality and wrote an article about it. It's a well respected site and I can't see what they would gain from making it up.

I'm not suggesting that they're making things up - just that the shots in the article don't do a great job of a fair comparison. I can imagine this technique does reduce jaggies and that's great...I'm just not sold on it's advantages over using SSAA if you've got the graphics card grunt to do so.

Proto · 26 Jul 2012 at 12:40

twist3d0n3 said:
for some reason this is only allowing me to add the new res to the right monitor, not my middle (primary) one... any ideas?

apply it for each monitor by making the one you are using the primary and disabling the second; then apply the new settings from the single primary display.

This is what I had to do to get it to wok for my HDTV while my LCD was connected. There might be another way to do this by altering the device ID number at the top of the utility, I did not however try this.

I will add this to the FAQ.