Falling out of love with Anti-Aliasing

[almoststew1990]

I used to envy AA and have it disabled by default because I never had a graphics card powerful enough for it (going back to, like, FX5200 in the family computer days). Now games seem to be based around it and jaggies seem a thing of the past and It's great I can turn up the AA in most games despite having memory muscle telling me not to do it (kind of like disabling start up programs when windows launches - not really needed but running XP on old HDDs trained me to do it!)

However, it might just be my eyes but modern games all appear to be smudged compared to no AA or old types of AA like SSAA / FSAA. (I understand that old school FSAA / Screen Space AA basically does the same thing as upscaling the internal render resolution beyond your display resolution that modern games can do)?

So anyway I did some comparisons on AA types in a couple of games to see what they all looked like because I have lost track of all the different types and whether they're a CPU based 2D post-process or a GPU based 3D rendering technique and how 'expensive' they are etc.


RDR2 has some interesting options for AA:

Spoiler: Links to 4K BMPs edit: meh they uploaded as PNGs

https://i.ibb.co/yQrtRh1/RDR2-FXAA.png
https://i.ibb.co/TMGJW87/RDR2-MSAA-2-X-FXAA.png
https://i.ibb.co/w6zXjy5/RDR2-MSAA-4-X.png
https://i.ibb.co/61bzk2h/RDR2-No-AA.png
https://i.ibb.co/khpBqL2/RDR2-SSAA-150.png
https://i.ibb.co/554rSyK/RDR2-TAA-High-Default.png
https://i.ibb.co/FwXPz2S/RDR2-TAA-High-Sharp.png

In particular zoom into the tree and slate roof on the centre right, middle distance. All 3 images are taken at 193% zoom of the 4k BMP image, even if the images cropped to slightly different sizes:

TAA High Setting (59fps)

150% resolution (34fps)

No AA at all (60fps vsync and 63% GPU usage)

Just FXAA (59fps, not sure this makes sense)

TAA almost makes it look like a watercolour painting or something! I think I prefer FXAA as it takes the edge (literally...?) off the antlers attached to the hut but without making the tree leaves one giant blob. The slates look awful in TAA High but do the best job of sorting out the antler jaggies (noting the high zoom level)

Here is another angle but a standard 100% zoom of the 4K image

TAA High (59fps)

150% Resolution (34fps)

No AA at all (60fps 63% GPU usage)

FXAA (59fps)

TAA smoothes out the angled fence but at this view isn't materially better than even FXAA, only No AA has any noticable, to me, jaggies on the fence.

The building doesn't look materially different in any of the images - even the 45% angled roof which should be a worst case for anti aliasing? edit - actually TAA easily looks best on the right hand side of the house roof line contrasting with the grass behind it.

TAA The tree line in the distance is just a blob of green whereas the other methods, even FXAA, keeps what definition the LOD allows. Grass blades in the mid ground blend together in TAA to the extent that it could be lower quality grass setting!

The nearground top-left tree is just a blob of leaves and the transparency effect on the twigs of the tree looks just as bad if not worse than jaggies.

The horses are quite jaggy without any AA presumably due the contrast between brown and green.

Assassins Creed Odyssey
High AA setting uses "TAA using the native resolution of the screen". I noticed when I ran the game without AA (for performance reasons at 4K) that I could see leaves more clearly and this made me want to do this experiment. The "SSAA" image is at 160% resolution of 4K.

Spoiler: Links to 4K BMPs

https://i.ibb.co/JtjqVP1/ACO-High-AA.png
https://i.ibb.co/yRTLvTq/ACO-Low-AA.png
https://i.ibb.co/HKQfPkF/ACO-Med-AA.png
https://i.ibb.co/xYWGg6K/ACO-No-AA.png
https://i.ibb.co/wNXB79N/ACO-SSAA.png

TAA (53fps)

No AA (55fps)

1.6x Supersampled (27fps)

Kassandra's hair looks better under TAA where it is dense. However the bronze/black 'pattern' on her armour is smudgey in comparison to noAA and the supersampled image. The round blobs on the bow have two thin lines of brown, but TAA blurs this into one. The tree leaves follow the pattern set out in RDR.

Honestly I think I prefer FXAA in these two games - I clearly can't afford supersampling at 4K with a 6800XT and I'll take the slightly worse jaggy performance over the smudged look of TAA. But when I play on my 1440p monitor maybe I'll super sample instead of running TAA.

I do have a 2070 Super so I might add DLSS into the mix for RDR if I can be bothered swapping GPUs.

Anyway having spent a cold and cloudy Sunday afternoon typing this out I think it has been useful and at least answered by question about whether my eyes are working.

 

[Darujhistan]

Forget about it and just enjoy the games.

 

[Quartz]

All antialiasing is smudging, and the FX in FXAA stands for 'Fast approXimate' so what do you expect?

 

[Nexus18]

Was going to say use dlss instead but then seen you mention you have an amd card....

Completely agree though, some people don't realise just how much TAA ruins the IQ and turning off TAA only makes the IQ even worse in games like rdr 2.

Good sub-reddit on this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckTAA/

Worse thing about most TAA implementations is the motion clarity issues:

Spoiler

DLSS VS TAA the above.

Days gone, you could just see trailing all over the place not to mention the shimmering when you slightly move the camera angle:

Spoiler

 

[almoststew1990]

Forget about it and just enjoy the games.

I can now that this minor thing thats been bugging me has been thought through!

All antialiasing is smudging, and the FX in FXAA stands for 'Fast approXimate' so what do you expect?

That's just it, the oldschool FSAA is just downscaling so it doesn't smudge. But it is expensive as I found out in the images above. And FXAA didn't smudge anywhere near as bad TAA

Completely agree though, some people don't realise just how much TAA ruins the IQ and turning off TAA only makes the IQ even worse in games like rdr 2.

Good sub-reddit on this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckTAA/

Not sure I see what you mean "TAA Ruins IQ and turning off TAA makes it worse" how do you mean?

 

[Nexus18]

I can now that this minor thing thats been bugging me has been thought through!



That's just it, the oldschool FSAA is just downscaling so it doesn't smudge. But it is expensive as I found out in the images above. And FXAA didn't smudge anywhere near as bad TAA



Not sure I see what you mean "TAA Ruins IQ and turning off TAA makes it worse" how do you mean?

As in some games are made to be used with TAA and if turned off, you will get terrible shimmering/jaggies, hair looking completely messed up such as in rdr 2, personally for me that is worse than having an overly soft image.

 

[Tired9]

I use FXAA or no AA + scaling, TAA has it's good and bad implementations.

Borderlands 3 looks sick with FXAA at 1440P.

 

[varkanoid]

Get a 4k monitor then you can worry less about AA as its not always needed at that resolution.

 

[Grim5]

Yep, TAA and FXAA are a crime against humanity . That's why DLSS is great, use DLSS where you can OP. For everything else, force MSAA in your graphics drivers or down sample from 4k/8k

 

[Mr Evil]

SSAA doesn't have any wierd artefacts like that, and is just plain better than no AA. MSAA would be the next best, with better performance than SSAA. Unfortunately those two are not a thing in most games now.

Aliasing artefacts are worse than your screenshots show though, since they include things like pixel-popping, which is really annoying and doesn't show up in static images. While AA is the first thing I turn off if I need more FPS, games still look better with it on.

Get a 4k monitor then you can worry less about AA as its not always needed at that resolution.

With high enough resolution AA is less necessary, but it still gives a noticable improvement. I particularly notice it on things like distant powerlines, where without AA they are rendered as broken lines instead of continuous.

 

[BUDFORCE]

AA is for 1080p, even 1440p you don't really need it or turn it to low or 2x or whatever.

I run 1440p and usually just put the lowest level of AA there is the option for and it looks fine, anything higher looks the same or sometimes worse and nukes your FPS for nothing.

At 4k no I wouldn't bother at all.

 

[Nexus18]

Depends largely on the game, even at 4k, such as with rdr 2, you need AA. Even 8x msaa in that game still looks like a jaggy mess on foliage.

Suppose most people prefer different end results though, some like over sharpened images with jaggies (i.e. many use amds sharpening slider at 80% even though it fundamentally harms the IQ) over a blurrier/softer image.

 

[g67575]

TAA is pretty good in most the games I've played, especially at 4K resolution. I think ideally they would allow the user to tweak the 'sharpness' and temporal part of TAA. Actually, Unreal Engine 4 (and probably 5 too) have TAA built into the engine (it can be disabled) and it looks excellent, so it really depends on the implementation.

Games without TAA like the Witcher 3 unfortunately suffer a lot from pixel shimmering when objects or the camera moves, sometimes you notice it a lot other times not much, it depends on the conditions of the scene, some will have more light pixels than others.

TAA tends to be very easy to configure, it's nice just to turn it on and forget about visual artefacts / errors.

Realistically, unless you have an 8K monitor that's < 30 inches, aliasing / pixel shimmering is going to remain a problem in games, without anti-aliasing.

 

[Nexus18]

There is also that, it's almost like TAA was made for 4k in mind as it is noticeably better/less blurry at that res as opposed to <1440, sadly all motion issues remain regardless of res. though.

 

[g67575]

Part of DLSS's success is to do with the effectiveness of temporal AA, which it incorporates.

I think in DLSS 2.3, they did manage to remove some of the ghosting seen in games like Cyberpunk 2077.

I can't say I've noticed any issues related to motion, perhaps I've become accustomed to a little bit of blurring of moving objects in games.

 

[Nexus18]

Yeah DLSS is generally superior to TAA motion clarity now, originally the ghosting issues dlss had where pretty similar to taas motion issues. Ultimately I think it just comes down to game developers implementation of TAA being poor as some games TAA implementation are better than others such as BF and SWBF

 

[g67575]

Games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance have some issues with camera movement and object blurring. I experimented with console codes and found out that disabling TAA / any type of AA completely didn't fix the problem. I noticed that in this game, the post processing is only properly applied when the player is stationary, which the game appears to cover up by deliberately blurring the camera whenever the player is in motion.

 

[g67575]

Couldn't developers implement a more advanced distance based version of TAA? So that objects close to a game's camera are more strongly effected by Temporal anti-aliasing, and objects past a certain distance (such as trees and foliage) have TAA disabled?

 

[Harlequin]

Or try and render without AA but render at 6k or even 8k then downsample and display at 4k

 

[Rroff]

I remember the days of being able to do 32x SLI-AA - that actually looked amazing - TAA doesn't even come close. Crisp clean lines without any impact on detail made the whole scene look crisp and clear.

I can put up with FXAA but there are some image stability issues still which aren't great with it and it is still smeary compared to native res with super-sampling. TAA generally I find pretty meh.