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Revision as of 11:45, 9 June 2016
Graphics and video
Resolutions
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
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.[1]
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.[2]
Coverage Sampling Anti-Aliasing (CSAA)
- QCSAA variant is supposed to increase the quality even further
- GeForce 8000 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)[3]
- Maxwell based cards such as GTX 750 Ti and GTX 800M/900 series removed the support[4]
- 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)
- Nvidia exclusive
- Improves on standard MSAA somewhat. For example, 2x QSAA roughly equates to 3x MSAA in terms of quality.[5]
Enhanced Quality Anti-Aliasing (EQAA)
- HD 6900 series and higher (AMD exclusive)[6]
- 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.[6]
Hybrid Sampling Anti-Aliasing (HSAA)
- Combination of MSAA and SGSSAA
Sparse Grid Super-Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SGSSAA)
- 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[7]
Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TXAA)
- GeForce GTX 600 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)[8]
- 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.[9]
Hybrid Reconstruction Anti-Aliasing (HRAA)
- Hybrid solution of hardware sampling, postprocessing, temporal and analysis[10]
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.[11]
Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing (MFAA)
- GeForce GTX 900 series and higher (Nvidia exclusive)[12]
- 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.[13]
- One note of importance is that MFAA doesn't function properly below 40FPS. Below that threshold, MFAA causes smearing and blurring in motion.[14]
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)
- Does not require large amounts of computing power. It achieves this by smoothing jagged edges ("jaggies")[15] 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.[16]
Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA)
- AMD claims it outperforms FXAA at comparable settings. SMAA is an upgraded form of it.
Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA)
- 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)
- 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[17]
Quality comparisions
Call of Duty: Ghosts | Elite: Dangerous |
---|---|
Far Cry 4 | Shadow Warrior (2013) |
External links
References
- ↑ Supersampling
- ↑ Multisample anti-aliasing
- ↑ CSAA (Coverage Sampling Antialiasing) article - Nvidia.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ New nVidia Maxwell chips do not support fast CSAA - Real Hardware Reviews - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ MSAA and QSAA thread - Overclockers - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 EQAA Modes for AMD 6900 Series Graphics Cards (PDF document) - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ Temporal anti-aliasing
- ↑ TXAA supported GPUs on GeForce.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ TXAA Technology on GeForce.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ HRAA Siggraph 2014 (PPT document) - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ Update 9.9: Graphics Changes - World of Tanks - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ MFAA supported GPUs on GeForce.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ Technology of MFAA on GeForce.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ NVidia Anti-Aliasing Guide (updated) thread - Guru3D - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ FXAA: Anti-Aliasing at Warp Speed - GeForce.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) - Coding Horror - last accessed on 2016-4-29
- ↑ onservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing (CMAA) - Intel.com - last accessed on 2016-4-29