Anti-aliasing

[Insomnia]

Having lost the interest in Elite, I don't know if there's a better AA method supported these days, such as temporal anti-aliasing, but it's 2018 and no game or game engine should never be without a proper and sufficient AA.

Speaking of anti-aliasing, here's Digital Foundry's awesome video about this for people that are wondering what the heck it is or why it's even there.
[video=youtube_share;NbrA4Nxd8Vo]https://youtu.be/NbrA4Nxd8Vo[/video]

 

[Chris Simon]

I have to say I'm confused. The video is great but I don't understand your message. Firstly, that sentence doesn't make sense in any English dialect I know and secondly... why even post something like that. Does stating "Having lost interest in Elite" give you some sort of moral high ground from which to view the gaming industry? Or is it just some cleverly disguised trolling? Or maybe a cry for help? Something along the lines "I don't play Elite any more but you are the only people who were ever nice to me so I want to stay and desperately trying to come up with topics"? I would like to believe that.

But I also believe you could have much better conversation about this video on a tech forum, for example. Without any emotional baggage.

 

[Insomnia]

I have to say I'm confused. The video is great but I don't understand your message. Firstly, that sentence doesn't make sense in any English dialect I know and secondly... why even post something like that. Does stating "Having lost interest in Elite" give you some sort of moral high ground from which to view the gaming industry? Or is it just some cleverly disguised trolling? Or maybe a cry for help? Something along the lines "I don't play Elite any more but you are the only people who were ever nice to me so I want to stay and desperately trying to come up with topics"? I would like to believe that.

But I also believe you could have much better conversation about this video on a tech forum, for example. Without any emotional baggage.

Not the kind of reaction I was expecting. I didn't mean anything by saying I lost interest in Elite. And that's definitely not what the topic is about. The topic is about many games in 2018 still don't have sufficient AA. And I wasn't sure Elite added TAA yet...

I apologise if this came out wrong.

 

[Lasse B.]

Hey Insomnia, long time no see.

Nope, nothing changed on the AA front. SSAA helps a bit, the others anti aliasing options don't seem to have any impact on the jaggies at all.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

Hey Insomnia, long time no see.

Nope, nothing changed on the AA front. SSAA helps a bit, the others anti aliasing options don't seem to have any impact on the jaggies at all.

Indeed. For me it's SMAA or nothing. All the others just make the cockpit UI text look fuzzy.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

What do you mean: insufficient? I barely see difference in different AA options - then again I tend to press for performance rather than quality.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I have to say I'm confused. The video is great but I don't understand your message. Firstly, that sentence doesn't make sense in any English dialect I know and secondly... why even post something like that. Does stating "Having lost interest in Elite" give you some sort of moral high ground from which to view the gaming industry? Or is it just some cleverly disguised trolling? Or maybe a cry for help? Something along the lines "I don't play Elite any more but you are the only people who were ever nice to me so I want to stay and desperately trying to come up with topics"? I would like to believe that.

But I also believe you could have much better conversation about this video on a tech forum, for example. Without any emotional baggage.

Wow, the thought police graces offtopic with its humbling presence.

Hello, we are discussing AA, but I call it "Kantengättung" for I'm just an ignorant dude, but at least I stay on topic.

 

[Chris Simon]

Not the kind of reaction I was expecting. I didn't mean anything by saying I lost interest in Elite. And that's definitely not what the topic is about. The topic is about many games in 2018 still don't have sufficient AA. And I wasn't sure Elite added TAA yet...

I apologise if this came out wrong.

And I apologize for overreacting. It's just that there is a flood of people, now who stoped playing Elite but keep trolling around the forums, so I kind of jumped on your opening line which I simply found unnecessary. (and in the light of the rest of your OP - also off topic, btw. )

You know. Something like someone opening every conversation with "As a vegan..."

Anyway. On topic.
With higher resolutions the difference between different AAs is not that big but the biggest problem of most AA technologies is the flickering on moving edges.
There is a technology called V-Ray that seems to be on a way of completely smooth and flicker-free AA

[video=youtube;RAk0OGoZkgI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAk0OGoZkgI[/video]

 

[Backer42]

It's just that there is a flood of people, now who stoped playing Elite but keep trolling around the forums,

I stopped playing Elite too and still keep "trolling" around the forums, because honestly I think this forum is way more entertaining than the content grind in the long-term. Also Elite is nothing special in that regard, I stopped playing hundreds of other video games in the past and they now sit around in my mighty library.

So I apologize too, if others not playing a certain video game causes you discomfort.

Of course I have to add something to the topic too. Anti-Aliasing fell out of fashion, as resolutions increased and consoles always struggled with any kind of over-sampling in the past due to limited GPU power. As a result of that certain renderers have been developed for these platforms, which are simply incompatible with classic AA methods and lead to the development of different methods and workarounds on the PC.

However stepping up the viewport resolution to 2K/4K reduced the need for AA. In fact at some point it reduces the sharpness of the image you just gained by adding more pixels, so it isn't considered a big loss by the industry and most developers do not bother with it anymore.

 

[Insomnia]

With higher resolutions the difference between different AAs is not that big but the biggest problem of most AA technologies is the flickering on moving edges.
There is a technology called V-Ray that seems to be on a way of completely smooth and flicker-free AA

True, but AA will always be needed due to specular aliasing and texture aliasing (this was mentioned in the video).
V-ray is so cool, but I wasn't aware that it could reduce aliasing as well. I remember seeing Nvidia's Star Wars V-ray showcase from GDC 2018. It looked real! Although that demo was running like 3 Titan V GPU's.

 

[Insomnia]

Anti-Aliasing fell out of fashion, as resolutions increased and consoles always struggled with any kind of over-sampling in the past due to limited GPU power. As a result of that certain renderers have been developed for these platforms, which are simply incompatible with classic AA methods and lead to the development of different methods and workarounds on the PC.

However stepping up the viewport resolution to 2K/4K reduced the need for AA. In fact at some point it reduces the sharpness of the image you just gained by adding more pixels, so it isn't considered a big loss by the industry and most developers do not bother with it anymore.

I strongly believe you are misinformed here... AA has definitely not fell out of fashion. In fact, the developers are creating new and exciting techniques to counter aliasing. Sure, super sampling does help, but it doesn't remove aliasing. Things like specular and texture aliasing is still present at higher resolutions, and thin 1 pixel lines like Elite's orbital lines lacks pixel information in order for any AA to try to counter it. This is where Temporal anti-aliasing would help.

Also, specific platforms are not to be blamed for the evolution of renders. 10 years ago, forward render was all we had basically, but if the devs were to add, say, more lights to a scene, then that would take a huge toll on the performance.
Instead, developers separated the geometry and lighting pass making it possible to add a ton of lights without the significant performance loss (this is the so called deferred render Elite among all new engines are using). But by separating it, the most common anti-aliasing method (MSAA) lost the information needed to produce sensical results. Now, the only available methods for anti-aliasing left to use are post-process AA like SMAA or FXAA (FXAA was the most commonly used AA during last-gen consoles.
But we still have the all-mighty Temporal Anti Aliasing (TAA, not to be confused with Nvidia's TXAA). This method would actually help against almost all aliasing in the scene.
But it requires per-engine specific implementation, but it's the best we have today.

 

[Chris Simon]

True, but AA will always be needed due to specular aliasing and texture aliasing (this was mentioned in the video).
V-ray is so cool, but I wasn't aware that it could reduce aliasing as well. I remember seeing Nvidia's Star Wars V-ray showcase from GDC 2018. It looked real! Although that demo was running like 3 Titan V GPU's.

Yeah. I bet it's quite costly when comes to resources.
And you're right. AA these days does much more than just "smoothing the edges". I think it's these secondary effects that will be the main focus in the future.

 

[Backer42]

I strongly believe you are misinformed here... AA has definitely not fell out of fashion. In fact, the developers are creating new and exciting techniques to counter aliasing. Sure, super sampling does help, but it doesn't remove aliasing. Things like specular and texture aliasing is still present at higher resolutions, and thin 1 pixel lines like Elite's orbital lines lacks pixel information in order for any AA to try to counter it. This is where Temporal anti-aliasing would help.

Well, 1 pixel lines don't work anymore in a scenario where 1 pixel is too small to be visible (4K and up).

Anyway classic AA was only about smoothing geometry edges, while texture filtering is about fighting pixel aliasing in textures and I was interpreting the OP to be about the first one. I still think smoothing geometry edges is a non-issue with (U)HD viewport resolutions.

Of course, you have to apply some filter to textures to scale them to the viewport resolution without aliasing (while not losing sharpness). However I never perceived texture aliasing as an issue or texture filtering lacking in fidelity, but maybe I'm not Chris Roberts enough. That's why I didn't miss stuff like TAA and saw no reason to increase spending on PC GPUs until now.

Also somewhere beyond 2K viewport resolution becomes a non-issue for me too, because my vision doesn't get better either.

 

[Old Duck]

Having recently picked up PSVR, I can tell you that anti-aliasing makes a HUGE difference on a low-res VR headset. Unfortunately VR is where some games skip AA to preserve framerates, but man does visual quality take a hit when they do that..

 

[Backer42]

VR stuff is essentially two generations behind graphics-wise, which mean you get PS2VR. ;-)

 

[Old Duck]

VR stuff is essentially two generations behind graphics-wise, which mean you get PS2VR. ;-)

To be fair, some PSVR games are actually pretty good. Skyrim on my vanilla PS4 looks better in places than Skyrim PS3 did. I hope to upgrade to PS4 Pro during a holiday sale, which will make things better still. Heck, the Battlefront VR mission often looks better than 2D Elite Dangerous on PS4! But to your point, there are plenty of PS2-like VR games that are fun but primitive-looking (Ultrawings comes to mind).

 

[Insomnia]

Well, 1 pixel lines don't work anymore in a scenario where 1 pixel is too small to be visible (4K and up).

Anyway classic AA was only about smoothing geometry edges, while texture filtering is about fighting pixel aliasing in textures and I was interpreting the OP to be about the first one. I still think smoothing geometry edges is a non-issue with (U)HD viewport resolutions.

Of course, you have to apply some filter to textures to scale them to the viewport resolution without aliasing (while not losing sharpness). However I never perceived texture aliasing as an issue or texture filtering lacking in fidelity, but maybe I'm not Chris Roberts enough. That's why I didn't miss stuff like TAA and saw no reason to increase spending on PC GPUs until now.

Also somewhere beyond 2K viewport resolution becomes a non-issue for me too, because my vision doesn't get better either.

2k is still industry standard, even on PC. 4k is the near future but we're still not there. Most PC gamers use 1060 or 1050ti which won't cut it for 4k. And the most popular resolution is still 1080p among the PC users. This means we still need good anti-aliasing like temporal AA that produces a soft image with almost no pixel artifacts.

Like I said before, 4k in some games is far from enough to eliminate aliasing. In Elite's case I remember that even at 4k there were still aliasing. And in games with heavy use of post processing and pixel distortion effects, aliasing is even more visible despite using UHD resolutions.

I guess it all comes down to personal preferences. Personally though, I hate aliasing and it takes away a huge chunk of immersion when I see it. Like a eyelash in the eye.

 

[Old Duck]

2k is still industry standard, even on PC. 4k is the near future but we're still not there. Most PC gamers use 1060 or 1050ti which won't cut it for 4k. And the most popular resolution is still 1080p among the PC users. ....

I guess it all comes down to personal preferences....

I'd personally much rather have higher LOD, AA, and framerate on my nice 1080p display than sacrifice those for 4K. There's a whole lot more that contributes to image quality than pixel count. We still have a way to go before video games start looking like the National Geographic channel in 1080p, let alone 4K.

 

[Insomnia]

I'd personally much rather have higher LOD, AA, and framerate on my nice 1080p display than sacrifice those for 4K. There's a whole lot more that contributes to image quality than pixel count. We still have a way to go before video games start looking like the National Geographic channel in 1080p, let alone 4K.

Ikr.
It's funny when you see those "how does old games look in 4k" videos on YouTube. It's like people think they'll look awesome just because the pixel count is up. Sure, it almost completely removes the aliasing due to the low geometry complexity, but those games don't have those fancy shaders and textures that makes games look good.

 

[Backer42]

2k is still industry standard, even on PC. 4k is the near future but we're still not there.

The current console generation (which is almost two years on the market now) is rendering to 2160p (and downsampling to 1080p if needed). So 2K is last-gen in 2018 and the new industry standard is 4K.

Most PC gamers use 1060 or 1050ti which won't cut it for 4k. And the most popular resolution is still 1080p among the PC users.

And it won't move much from there, because PC GPUs are now mostly used for mining "crypto currency", so PCs are stuck with what is left.