Anti-Aliasing in a Nutshell - Odyssey

[Frankymole]

Can you link the relevant section of this stream?

Sorry, I can't remember where it was exactly, I wasn't there for the whole stream. Probably nearer the end than the beginning!

At 3h 53m someone in the chat sidebar asks about the AA fix (or not) so it might start around there: (ETA - looks like he explains how it works from 3h 54m)

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[Imo]

When I started playing ED, my main GPU was an R9 290X. Since then my primary gaming system has progressed through an R9 Fury, R9 290X Crossfire, GTX 1080 Ti, RX 6800 XT, RTX 3080, RX 6900 XT, to an RTX 4090 today. After almost ten years, with almost ten times the GPU grunt, I'm getting about the same frame rates with more or less the same level of jaggies in worst case scenarios!

Same experience here. I started with an 6700M (2014). It could only handle smooth 60 fps in 720p. Then the R9 M295X (2015), the GTX 1070 TI (2018), RTX 2070 Super (2019) and finally an RTX 4090 (2023).

 

[Morbad]

Sorry, I can't remember where it was exactly, I wasn't there for the whole stream. Probably nearer the end than the beginning!

At 3h 53m someone in the chat sidebar asks about the AA fix (or not) so it might start around there: (ETA - looks like he explains how it works from 3h 54m)

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The statements here may be essentially correct, but they do not explain the problem.

I don't doubt that the game is applying certain rendering passes out of order and I know that the post-process AA shaders the game has work. However, even adding much stronger AA to the final image, after everything else, still does not adequately address aliasing; edges still crawl and there is still pervasive shimmer, unless the AA applied is so strong as to significantly blur the image.

I strongly suspect the assets themselves (many very high contrast edges, especially in Odyssey content) and the lack of modern (temporal) AA solutions that would be capable of handling this, are the overriding issue here, not the order the extant AA shaders are applied.

 

[morphixx]

The statements here may be essentially correct, but they do not explain the problem.

I don't doubt that the game is applying certain rendering passes out of order and I know that the post-process AA shaders the game has work. However, even adding much stronger AA to the final image, after everything else, still does not adequately address aliasing; edges still crawl and there is still pervasive shimmer, unless the AA applied is so strong as to significantly blur the image.

I strongly suspect the assets themselves (many very high contrast edges, especially in Odyssey content) and the lack of modern (temporal) AA solutions that would be capable of handling this, are the overriding issue here, not the order the extant AA shaders are applied.

Hey you seem to know a little bit about the graphical tricks in this game, sorry if this the wrong thread to ask but since we have the same gpu and I recently discovered the Ultra+ terrain setting and been reading through the graphical mods on the wiki.

Is there anyway to just force like all 24gb of the vram towards planet generation? Or whatever. Basically somehow utilize more of the vram than just the 8gb+ setting that's recommended under the Ultra+ setting?

Also since we're talking GPUs, I have the 5800x3d, if you have any of the newer am5 x3d chips, seen any real performance uplift? The 5800x3d gave me a huge 1% lows boost in settlements and in general fluidity, but wondering if theres more to claw out of this game by getting a 9800x3d.

 

[Morbad]

Is there anyway to just force like all 24gb of the vram towards planet generation? Or whatever. Basically somehow utilize more of the vram than just the 8gb+ setting that's recommended under the Ultra+ setting?

I know of no way to tell the game or driver to deliberately allocate more memory for the game, let alone for a specific subset of the game.

That said, the game seems to have no issues allocating all the VRAM it actually needs for whatever it's doing, and I have seen some areas use 18GiB+ of VRAM on my 4090 with custom settings.

Some performance improvement can be had by making sure ReBAR is enabled, but that doesn't actually change VRAM allocation, it just reduces the overhead of memory management.

Also since we're talking GPUs, I have the 5800x3d, if you have any of the newer am5 x3d chips, seen any real performance uplift? The 5800x3d gave me a huge 1% lows boost in settlements and in general fluidity, but wondering if theres more to claw out of this game by getting a 9800x3d.

I've played on the 5800X3D, 7800X3D, and 9800X3D. The 7800X3D is considerably faster than the 5800X3D (like 30%), and while I haven't played much at all on the 9800X3D (I'm still binning/building/tuning my new system), I am confident I'll see another ~10% uplift when I'm done.

So yeah, a 9800X3D is going to be a solid ~40% faster in non-GPU limited scenarios in Odyssey.

 

[morphixx]

I know of no way to tell the game or driver to deliberately allocate more memory for the game, let alone for a specific subset of the game.

That said, the game seems to have no issues allocating all the VRAM it actually needs for whatever it's doing, and I have seen some areas use 18GiB+ of VRAM on my 4090 with custom settings.

Some performance improvement can be had by making sure ReBAR is enabled, but that doesn't actually change VRAM allocation, it just reduces the overhead of memory management.



I've played on the 5800X3D, 7800X3D, and 9800X3D. The 7800X3D is considerably faster than the 5800X3D (like 30%), and while I haven't played much at all on the 9800X3D (I'm still binning/building/tuning my new system), I am confident I'll see another ~10% uplift when I'm done.

So yeah, a 9800X3D is going to be a solid ~40% faster in non-GPU limited scenarios in Odyssey.

Damn, well looks like I am upgrading my system this christmas afterall. 40% in settlements would be amazing. Have you done any of the frontier settlement combat zone stuff with the 9800 yet? That's always been the roughest spot in terms of performance for Odyssey, the 5800 gave a huge uplift there, but it still stutters during the dropship section of the loading. You said not much ,but maybe you tried one of those sections. If not, I'td be really curious to see your 1% lows and avgs fps.

 

[Morbad]

Damn, well looks like I am upgrading my system this christmas afterall. 40% in settlements would be amazing. Have you done any of the frontier settlement combat zone stuff with the 9800 yet? That's always been the roughest spot in terms of performance for Odyssey, the 5800 gave a huge uplift there, but it still stutters during the dropship section of the loading. You said not much ,but maybe you tried one of those sections. If not, I'td be really curious to see your 1% lows and avgs fps.

I've got a test from almost a year and a half-ago on the 7800X3D:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgWNOU5Kusg

From that recording segment:

The game's performance has not changed significantly since then, and the 9800X3D is only modestly faster.

 

[Lee Archer]

New content good!

 

[morphixx]

I've got a test from almost a year and a half-ago on the 7800X3D:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgWNOU5Kusg

From that recording segment:

The game's performance has not changed significantly since then, and the 9800X3D is only modestly faster.

Awesome thank you, out of curiosity did you do 1080p to better isolate the cpu or do you game at resolution? I'm guessing the former.

I went to check if rebar was enabled, it wasn't, so enabled that and ran 3dmark and got the exact same score, so jumped in a game of fortnite and my god the stuttering, it's not just unreal caching, it's like everywhere. So I vaguely remember these stutters are the reason I had left it off after some cursory research, so am I missing something? Is 32gb at 3200mhz with cl16 not fast enough to take advantage of the rebar thing? I have an x570 board so in hardware wise I feel like i should be ok? Latest version of Win11H2 Maybe it's just a fort nite thing, ill go experiment some in elite.

 

[Morbad]

Awesome thank you, out of curiosity did you do 1080p to better isolate the cpu or do you game at resolution? I'm guessing the former.

The former, though the game is so profoundly CPU/memory performance limited in large settlement CZs that I could probably have left it at 5k without changing the results.

I went to check if rebar was enabled, it wasn't, so enabled that and ran 3dmark and got the exact same score, so jumped in a game of fortnite and my god the stuttering, it's not just unreal caching, it's like everywhere. So I vaguely remember these stutters are the reason I had left it off after some cursory research, so am I missing something? Is 32gb at 3200mhz with cl16 not fast enough to take advantage of the rebar thing? I have an x570 board so in hardware wise I feel like i should be ok? Latest version of Win11H2 Maybe it's just a fort nite thing, ill go experiment some in elite.

Neither your system memory nor chipset should have anything to do with this. Also, just enabling the feature in firmware doesn't mean it's enabled in games. NVIDIA's profiles have it disabled by default, enabling it only for specific titles. To use it with Elite: Dangerous you have to manually change the Resizable BAR flags in the game (or global) profile, probably with a tool like NVIDIA Profile Inspector.

 

[Cosmo]

Tracker: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/32228

Fdev's answer: "Status Closed
Over the course of multiple Odyssey updates, the team have worked hard to address as many of the reported issues around anti aliasing and this ticket will now be closed. We are grateful for all of the feedback you provided throughout."

Why is the issue closed when it's unsolved, broken?

How is ED's branch of the Cobra engine incapable of proper anti-aliasing? This is far below contemporary game graphics standards.

ED needs a graphics upgrade since it's visually lagging behind counterparts.

 

[Rat Catcher]

ED needs a graphics upgrade since it's visually lagging behind counterparts.

Does that really matter?

If the counterparts are better, folk will play those, but, as there is nothing that actually competes with the game...

 

[Schattenmacher]

Anti-alasing broken,
the shadows broken,
lighting broken,
That bothers me.

 

[Arioch]

Anti-alasing broken,
the shadows broken,
lighting broken,
That bothers me.

I feel like we should now submit haikus to Issue Tracker

“The shimmering lines,
and the shadows that flicker.
These things bother me.”

 

[V'larr]

Fdev's answer: "Status Closed
Over the course of multiple Odyssey updates, the team have worked hard to address as many of the reported issues around anti aliasing and this ticket will now be closed. We are grateful for all of the feedback you provided throughout."

Why is the issue closed when it's unsolved, broken?

How is ED's branch of the Cobra engine incapable of proper anti-aliasing? This is far below contemporary game graphics standards.

ED needs a graphics upgrade since it's visually lagging behind counterparts.

This goes for a frustrating amount of reported issues, sadly.

It feels like the Issue Tracker came about as a means of giving someone an excuse to discard problems that don't have a quick fix, rather than being a practical way of acknowledging, recording and keeping track of existing problems that have not gone away... in spite of its name.

Something else that Fdev could stand to change in the coming year.

 

[Rhaazerus Orzhov]

The Issue Tracker is the perfect example of FDev's negligence, apathy, and/or incompetence

Anti-Aliasing "Closed" - not fixed, just given an excuse that "we can't do it"
Planetary tesselation "Closed" - never fixed
Lighting and shadow flickering "Closed" - not fixed
NPC pilot profile pictures all the same generic face "Closed" - never even attempted to fix
and the list goes on...

"But hey, here's some new ships that are just model tweaks on previous ones, and here's colonization! Look new things! Let's all just move on to new things! The current thing! The current thing!" . . .

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

Fdev's answer: "Status Closed
Over the course of multiple Odyssey updates, the team have worked hard to address as many of the reported issues around anti aliasing and this ticket will now be closed. We are grateful for all of the feedback you provided throughout."

Why is the issue closed when it's unsolved, broken?

How is ED's branch of the Cobra engine incapable of proper anti-aliasing? This is far below contemporary game graphics standards.

ED needs a graphics upgrade since it's visually lagging behind counterparts.

The sad thing is, ED 4.0 was supposed to be that upgrade. One step forward, two steps back. And that order won't change by the looks of it.

The Issue Tracker is the perfect example of FDev's negligence, apathy, and/or incompetence

Anti-Aliasing "Closed" - not fixed, just given an excuse that "we can't do it"
Planetary tesselation "Closed" - never fixed
Lighting and shadow flickering "Closed" - not fixed
NPC pilot profile pictures all the same generic face "Closed" - never even attempted to fix
and the list goes on...

"But hey, here's some new ships that are just model tweaks on previous ones, and here's colonization! Look new things! Let's all just move on to new things! The current thing! The current thing!" . . .

The Cobra 5 is actually a ship I do really like and want (even despite some bugs of its own ), but I'm reeallly struggling pulling the trigger on the Arx purchase because of how the game is handled elsewhere, as it makes me feel like I'm only further enabling and rewarding Frontier by giving them more money.

 

[Cosmo]

The sad thing is, ED 4.0 was supposed to be that upgrade. One step forward, two steps back. And that order won't change by the looks of it.

After the launch of Odyssey lots of people complained about performance. Now there's GPUs that can easily run ED in its semi-optimized state.

They should add higher optional graphics settings for players with an Nvidia RTX 40-series and the upcoming RTX 50-series.

 

[Knuttin Atoll]

After the launch of Odyssey lots of people complained about performance. Now there's GPUs that can easily run ED in its semi-optimized state.

They should add higher optional graphics settings for players with an Nvidia RTX 40-series and the upcoming RTX 50-series.

I'm on a 2060S and am not planning to upgrade that anytime soon, if ever (diminishing returns of visuals plus increasingly ludicrous hardware cost plus alienation with AAA gaming as a whole being the main reasons - it does the job though for the games I already own).

I'm actually afraid of Frontier going anywhere near 'upgrading' their engine any further (beyond bugfixing like shadows, lighting, etc.) as they don't seem to be able to optimise it the way other devs do with their games, and an increase in visuals would likely cost more performance and rule me out in the end. The minor upsides (I'll include the new planet tech even though I don't actually think it is a net positive) vs the major downsides of the 4.0 engine were not worth it imo, and I wished they had stuck with 3.8 and further refined that instead.

A from-the-ground-up new Elite on a different engine by a different developer though? A nice little daydream even if it'll never materialise.

 

[Cosmo]

I'm on a 2060S and am not planning to upgrade that anytime soon, if ever (diminishing returns of visuals plus increasingly ludicrous hardware cost plus alienation with AAA gaming as a whole being the main reasons - it does the job though for the games I already own).

I'm actually afraid of Frontier going anywhere near 'upgrading' their engine any further (beyond bugfixing like shadows, lighting, etc.) as they don't seem to be able to optimise it the way other devs do with their games, and an increase in visuals would likely cost more performance and rule me out in the end. T

ED runs smoothly on a PC with medium specs. You don't have to play at higher graphics settings so the lower settings shouldn't decrease FPS.

ED's graphics are clearly dated. It looks like a last-gen game that was released 3-4 years ago. That's generous because ED is 10 years old. I think this is primarily due to a lack of good anti-aliasing, ray / path tracing and the low polygon count of assets. The Odyssey assets are more detailed. Such as curves should be smooth, but are angular up close. The absence of path tracing makes the light, shadows, reflections and refractions unrealistic.

Meanwhile, the devs of e.g. Eve Online and No Man's Sky keep upgrading the graphics including the ship models. The 2024 ED ships look pretty good, but the older ones need an upgrade.