User:Blackbird/AA Test

Graphics and video

Resolutions

• Widescreen resolution
• Multi-monitor
• Ultra-widescreen
• 4K Ultra HD
• Custom resolution
• Scaling

Video settings

• Field of view (FOV)
• Windowed / borderless fullscreen
• Anisotropic filtering (AF)
• Anti-aliasing (AA)
• High-fidelity upscaling
• Vertical sync (Vsync)
• Frame rate (FPS)
• High dynamic range (HDR)
• Ray tracing (RT)
• Color blind mode

Hardware

• Graphics card
• Variable refresh rate (VRR)
• Virtual reality (VR) headset

For a list of games, see List of games that support anti-aliasing (AA).

Anti-aliasing (AA) is a computer graphics technique that attempts to minimise the unwanted 'staircase' or jagged object outlines which occur due to the limited resolution in 3D-Renderers, essentially by 'smoothing' these lines. Enabling this graphics feature will also increase the texture quality in some cases.

Example of Anti-Aliasing

No anti-aliasing	16x anti-aliasing

Impact on Graphical Quality

Anti-Aliasing improves the general graphics quality but lowers the frame rate quite significantly. Lowering or disabling the Anti-Aliasing effect is a good way to improve the overall frame-rate. An Anti-Aliasing setting is present in most PC games. If its not available in a specific title, it is usually possible to force it via the graphics card driver or a mod/hack.

For lower-end systems, prioritise post-process Anti-Aliasing types as these will result in a much lower reduction in frame rates. If your system is up to it, however, use traditional anti-aliasing methods to drastically improve overall image quality.

Types of Anti-Aliasing

There are a number of Anti-Aliasing techniques today but all of them are based on the same principle. They simply render multiple pixels per pixel of the final image.

The techniques only differ on two factors:

• How they determine which pixels are aliased.
• How they "mix" the multiple rendered pixels to get the final pixel.

Those algorithms are also variable on how many pixels they use to determine one final pixel. In video games this is represented by a simple number which is a power of 2 like 2x, 4x, 8x etc.

There are several terms associated with Anti-Aliasing, most of which are derivatives on the standard Anti-Aliasing formula.

Traditional methods

The result is much sharper and clearer than post-processing methods

Usually more taxing on resources

Some methods are mixed with post-processing ones

Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA)

Also known as FullScreen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA)

Applies the general anti-aliasing formula to fullscreen images, reducing the "staircase effect". When compared to a rendered image undergoing MSAA, a SSAA/FSAA image will appear smoother.

Has largely been replaced by MSAA due to the huge stress it puts on the GPU, but due to the better result that it provides, some games still adopt it as an option in the in-game settings.

Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA)

Essentially a "budget" version of Super-Sampling

To reduce the stress that SSAA/FSAA puts on a system, multi-sampling optimizes the process by evaluating each pixel only once, with true super-sampling only occurring at the edges of a rendered object, and to depth values. This results in a similar (but less drastic) improvement in visual quality whilst reducing the load put on the system to render and downscale such high resolutions.

Coverage Sampling Anti-Aliasing (CSAA)

QCSAA variant is supposed to increase the quality even further

Developed by Nvidia

GeForce 8000 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)

Maxwell based cards such as GTX 750 Ti and GTX 800M/900 series removed the support

Aims to further reduce the additional stress that MSAA puts on the system, with Nvidia claiming that a CSAA-rendered image will rival 8x-16x MSAA whilst only putting a load on the system comparable to 4x MSAA. It does this by reducing the number of settings each sample determines (by creating a new sample for coverage) whilst increasing the overall number of samples.

Quincunx Super Anti-Aliasing (QSAA)

Developed by Nvidia (Nvidia exclusive)

Improves on standard MSAA somewhat. For example, 2x QSAA roughly equates to 3x MSAA in terms of quality.

Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA)

Developed by AMD

HD 6900 series and higher (AMD exclusive)

AMD claims it offers enhanced AA quality over standard Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing modes by adding more coverage samples per pixel but keeping the same number of color/depth/stencil samples to achieve better AA quality than standard MSAA modes.

Hybrid Sampling Anti-Aliasing (HSAA)

Developed by Nvidia

Combination of MSAA and SGSSAA

Sparse Grid Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SGSSAA)

Developed by Nvidia

GeForce GTX 400 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)

Modern version of SSAA, possessing superior quality to other anti-aliasing methods at a steep performance cost.

Comes in two forms: FSSGSSAA (Full Scene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing) and TRSGSSAA (Transparency Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing). More information can be found here.

Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA)

Not confined to a particular manufacturer

Seeks to reduce or remove the effects of temporal aliasing

Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TXAA)

Developed by Nvidia

GeForce GTX 600 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)

Film–style technique designed specifically to reduce temporal aliasing (crawling and flickering seen in motion when playing games)

Combines the raw power of MSAA with sophisticated resolve filters similar to those employed in CG films to produce a smooth image.

Hybrid Reconstruction Anti-Aliasing (HRAA)

Hybrid solution of hardware sampling, postprocessing, temporal and analysis

Temporal Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing (TSSAA)

Also known as TMAA

Applies anti-aliasing not only to the current frame but also to some frames that were rendered before, restoring the old positions of pixels by using their velocity. This creates smoother and more cinematic images in the game, while only slightly increasing the load on your video card.

Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing (MFAA)

Developed by Nvidia

GeForce GTX 900 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)

According to Nvidia it reduces performance cost while used with high resolutions and is more flexible to needs of different game engines due to its programmability.

One note of importance is that MFAA doesn't function properly below 40FPS. Below that threshold, MFAA causes smearing and blurring in motion.

Post-processing methods

Less taxing on resources than traditional methods

Applied after the image is rendered unlike the traditional methods. This means that many titles which are DirectX 9 and later and which did not previously support anti-aliasing can be forced

In most cases the image quality can be worse/blurry

Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA)

Developed by Nvidia

Does not require large amounts of computing power. It achieves this by smoothing jagged edges ("jaggies") according to how they appear on screen as pixels, rather than analyzing the 3D models itself as in conventional anti-aliasing

However, the image quality improvement it provides is significantly less impressive than traditional AA methods such as MSAA.

Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)

Developed by Intel

AMD claims it outperforms FXAA at comparable settings. SMAA is an upgraded form of it.

Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA)

Developed by Crytek

Image quality varies from game to game due to differing implementations, but it is arguably better than FXAA or MLAA. You can find pictures, videos and a demo from the developer's site.

Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing (CMAA)

Developed by Intel

CMAA is positioned between FXAA and SMAA 1x in computation cost (1.0-1.2x the cost of default FXAA 3.8 and 0.55-0.75x the cost of SMAA 1x). Compared to FXAA 3.8, CMAA provides significantly better image quality and temporal stability as it correctly handles edge lines up to 64 pixels long and is based on an algorithm that only handles symmetrical discontinuities in order to avoid unwanted blurring (thus being more conservative

Forcing Anti-Aliasing

Anti-Aliasing	Nvidia	ATI/AMD	How to force?
SSAA			NVIDIA Control Panel/NVIDIA Inspector and AMD Catalyst Control Center
MSAA			NVIDIA Control Panel/NVIDIA Inspector
CSAA			NVIDIA Control Panel/NVIDIA Inspector
QSAA			NVIDIA Inspector
EQAA			AMD Catalyst Control Center
HSAA
SGSSAA			NVIDIA Inspector
TAA			Can't be forced. Has to be implemented in the game by developer.
TXAA			Can't be forced. Has to be implemented in the game by developer.
HRAA			Can't be forced. Has to be implemented in the game by developer.
TSSAA			Can't be forced. Has to be implemented in the game by developer.
MFAA			NVIDIA Control Panel/NVIDIA Inspector or GeForce Experience. Requires MSAA to be enabled.
FXAA			NVIDIA Control Panel/NVIDIA Inspector and FXAA injector/SweetFX 2.0
MLAA			AMD Catalyst Control Center
SMAA			injectSMAA (DX9/10/11 only)
CMAA

External links

• Anti-aliasing article on Wikipedia
• Nvidia Anti-Aliasing Compatibility Flags