Nvidia DX11 AA-bits petition

[boxleitnerb]

The problem is that even tough a game may support real MSAA natively, the antialiasing effect may be very poor in general or on some types of objects. Max Payne 3 is a good example - it looks horrible with MSAA.

 

[Lavans]

Good and bad is a matter of perspective. If I had a choice, I'd take MSAA over any sort of post-AA, flaws included. IMO, post-AA looks terrible with the scene in motion, and more often than not, has a tendency of blurring the finer details.

 

[bystander36]

That's not exactly true. A good number of games since the start of the DX11 era does support hardware AA, although some require compatibility to be enabled for it. It's only games that utilize a certain type of deferred rendering that AA is incompatible, even with tweaked AA bits. This is an issue only with the DX9 API. DX11 natively supports hardware AA, even in games with deferred rendering. Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Metro 2033 are two great examples of early DX11 games that has MSAA support when in DX11 mode, but no hardware AA support when in DX9.



This is partly true. Games that have FXAA/MLAA coded into the engine directly are rare. I can probably count the games with in game FXAA/MLAA options with just two hands. Likelihood is that you'll end up using an injector or adjusting driver settings to enable it. However, while one part of post-AA's existence is to offer an AA "solution" to games that don't have a hardware AA support, even when setting compatibility bits, there is a much larger reason behind the innovation of post-AA. The biggest benefit to post-AA is that it's far less computationally expensive to run than hardware AA, and is generally intended for low spec systems. In fact, MLAA first made its appearance in console games before AMD ever opened it to the PC market.

I did not say no games have supported AA since DX11 came about. I said more and more games do not support it. There is a big difference. If you look outside the AAA titles, most newer games do not seem to support it natively. I'm not even say it is directly related to Dx11 either, only their time lines have matched up.

I also did not say that was the only reason for developing FXAA, MLAA, TXAA and SMAA, only that it is partly the reason.

 

[BFG10K]

Is there much that Nvidia can do about it? Do AAbits even work on post process stuff?

The driver can pretty much do anything, it's just a question of performance and per-game development effort.

As many of you know, corporations generally ignore online petitions.

Actually nVidia has a history of adding stuff back in when enough people complain. Back in 2006/2007 we got combined mode AA on the G80 series, for example. Also auto-LOD, improved AF and SGSSAA.

They even fix a lot of obscure bugs that I personally report.

 

[Rakehellion]

Is there much that Nvidia can do about it? Do AAbits even work on post process stuff?

This. You think they're screwing people over deliberately?

 

[f1sherman]

Nope sorry. I can't see this happening.
This is far from being simple or straightforward or even doable with reasonable effort.
Maybe we should keep it real. Official SGSSAA support, proper downsampling filter, FXAA sliders... doable things

But hey....

/signed

 

[Lavans]

I did not say no games have supported AA since DX11 came about. I said more and more games do not support it. There is a big difference. If you look outside the AAA titles, most newer games do not seem to support it natively. I'm not even say it is directly related to Dx11 either, only their time lines have matched up.

I never said you claimed otherwise.

Less games support hardware AA because everything is going with a deferred rendering method to render the games. Since not having native hardware AA in deferred rendering is only an issue for DX9, its not unreasonable to assume that Nvidia will introduce more DX11 AA bits when DX11 becomes mainstream.

 

[Lavans]

This. You think they're screwing people over deliberately?

Post process effects has nothing to do with a GPU's ability to render hardware AA.

 

[boxleitnerb]

I agree it's a long shot. But asking doesn't cost anything. I'd be all for custom downsampling filters, though

 

[f1sherman]

ManuelG
I filed a RFE. I'll let you all know what is decided.

Posted 1 hour ago

 

[BrightCandle]

MSAA and SSAA don't work with deferred rendering, which is why you can't force it. If post processing effects are adding or otherwise working on things requiring anti aliasing then the anti aliasing must be applied after the image is done. Which is how we got FXAA and such to begin with. But FXAA requires specific game support to be implemented.

Given that the current situation and its impact there really isn't a simple solution to the problem. SMAA is about the only thing I know that could be force into pretty much any game and that already works with injection and you can use that today. But you can't force NVidia to provide a mechanism to do SSAA or MSAA at all, its simply not possible to do it.

 

[biostud]

Seriously? Jaggies bother you that much? Kids these days. You kids haven't seen real jaggies. Let me tell you, back in my day the jaggies were so big that they were planned into the design of monsters and levels and that's how we liked it.

But we also had blurry CRT screens that had a build in AA

 

[Lavans]

MSAA and SSAA don't work with deferred rendering, which is why you can't force it. If post processing effects are adding or otherwise working on things requiring anti aliasing then the anti aliasing must be applied after the image is done. Which is how we got FXAA and such to begin with. But FXAA requires specific game support to be implemented.

Given that the current situation and its impact there really isn't a simple solution to the problem. SMAA is about the only thing I know that could be force into pretty much any game and that already works with injection and you can use that today. But you can't force NVidia to provide a mechanism to do SSAA or MSAA at all, its simply not possible to do it.

Were not asking to petition Nvidia to add AA bits to DX9, which is what has the "no MSAA" issue with deferred renders.

MSAA is fully compatible with deferred rendering in DX11, as Epic games has already demonstrated with the DX11 update to UE3.

 

[bystander36]

MSAA and SSAA don't work with deferred rendering, which is why you can't force it. If post processing effects are adding or otherwise working on things requiring anti aliasing then the anti aliasing must be applied after the image is done. Which is how we got FXAA and such to begin with. But FXAA requires specific game support to be implemented.

Given that the current situation and its impact there really isn't a simple solution to the problem. SMAA is about the only thing I know that could be force into pretty much any game and that already works with injection and you can use that today. But you can't force NVidia to provide a mechanism to do SSAA or MSAA at all, its simply not possible to do it.

Actually, FXAA and MLAA both can be forced on any game. FXAA can only be forced on with Nvidia, and MLAA is forceable on any game with AMD. Tom's Hardware even did a test on not so long ago. You may be thinking of TXAA.

The only problem is that neither are all that great looking, but hopefully they improve it.

 

[BFG10K]

MSAA and SSAA don't work with deferred rendering, which is why you can't force it.

They do work but not by default (i.e. you can't just force it externally and assume a standard rendering pipeline). Either the game developer or the IHV needs to put in extra steps, but it will work once that's done.

The petition here is for nVidia to put in the work at the driver level on a per-game basis for DX11 apps, similar to what they've done for DX9/DX10 before.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Just a heads up:

Yes. I'm working on it. If you guys can just keep on posting why this is important to you, it will help out a lot. Our preference is for in game menus to provide fully advanced AA modes but we understand that doesn't always work out.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...liasing-driver-profiles/post/3891774/#3891774

So if you haven't already, please support this petition

 

[Tempered81]

Why not just downsample? At least Nvidia makes it easy for their customers to downsample. With this AMD card, i have to roll back to 12.11 driver to add my resolutions, and then update to 13.3 to use them. Cant use any newer driver yet... kinda lame.

Nvidia is as simple as adding the resolution....

 

[boxleitnerb]

Why not just downsample? At least Nvidia makes it easy for their customers to downsample. With this AMD card, i have to roll back to 12.11 driver to add my resolutions, and then update to 13.3 to use them. Cant use any newer driver yet... kinda lame.

Nvidia is as simple as adding the resolution....

Because downsampling is extremely expensive compared to MSAA. And because it can make 2D elements like the HUD or text small if they don't scale with the resolution (in some games). Both options would be better for more flexibility.

 

[Anarchist420]

Why not just downsample?

Because it's not a rotated grid sampling pattern.

 

[imaheadcase]

I don't use any AA in any game, does not make a difference visually to me with if on or off, so just disable it.

 

[boxleitnerb]

But you see the difference, I hope. Otherwise you would be quite blind
If you don't care about it, that's another matter.