Does Anti-Aliasing actually do anything?

And yet I've never had the same issues in other games... I messed with settings last night, including the Nvidia settings, and never could make the bar in the stations look like anything other than a jaggy mess when standing next to a table in an outpost. If I'm at a settlement, I can hardly see the NPCs half-way across the settlement for all the jaggy mess they are. I don't have an issue with other games. It's really immersion breaking and yet another reason not to play the game.
Hence OP...
 
... I messed with settings last night, including the Nvidia settings, and never could make the bar in the stations look like anything other than a jaggy mess...
The only way to make the bar stop looking jaggy is to stand perpendicular (at 90°) to it I'm afraid. There must be something very wrong with the rendering of the image if it looks jagged even on relatively high resolution screens.

And no, I can't get any of the AA options to make any meaningful difference either.
 
At 1080p on monitor, i switched between all available anti-aliasing modes and even played with the supersampling back and forth so it would re-initiate the graphics output (just in case simply changing the anti-aliasing mode wouldn't show the changes) ... and it all showed aliasing artifacts. All were so similar looking that it was hard to tell if any difference was just placebo.

the only thing that made a significant difference was supersampling ...but the games' performance tanks so hard that it's not worth it.

feels like the setting is being applied at the wrong point in the pipeline, if it's being applied at all.
 
At 1080p on monitor, i switched between all available anti-aliasing modes and even played with the supersampling back and forth so it would re-initiate the graphics output (just in case simply changing the anti-aliasing mode wouldn't show the changes) ... and it all showed aliasing artifacts. All were so similar looking that it was hard to tell if any difference was just placebo.

the only thing that made a significant difference was supersampling ...but the games' performance tanks so hard that it's not worth it.

feels like the setting is being applied at the wrong point in the pipeline, if it's being applied at all.
Yup, I see the same thing. GPU memory usage is at like 70-80% but the GPU usage is at like 10-15%. maybe 20%, whereas CPU usage is between 87% and 97% percent, even if I tab out to check INARA for stuff. Horizons is the opposite, and when tab out Horizons is at like 49% max, more like 25% to 30%.
 
There must be something very wrong with the rendering of the image if it looks jagged even on relatively high resolution screens.
Not necessarily wrong, but... complicated...

So, other than the whole no-multisampling-antialiasing-(MSAA)-with-deferred-rendering thing, which just about all modern graphics engines are subject to, I suspect much of the aliasing we see in Elite Dangerous, whose edges tend to not only come out jaggy, but jaggy and non-contiguous, is: "specular aliasing", which is something you get on fancy modern shiny and reflective materials, especially ones with a lot of fine detail, like grilles and such. Looks to me like the game has a lot of those types of materials -- it's the whole PBR (Physically Based Rendering) thing.

Say you've got a normal map that turns a single rectangle on the floor into fine latticework -- just a reflective metal wire mesh whose gaps you can see through. Here the normals do not only determine the wire shape for the shading, so that it comes out looking round, and not just a flat plane, but also for the mapping of an environment map that reflects in the shiny wire, and which will also come at some sort of limiting resolution.
You end up with aliasing compounding with aliasing, as you sample a texel from the normal map, which determines the angle you need to sample a second texel from the environment cubemap. Since it is textures interacting dynamically wiith one another, you can not simply bake the result down into a prepared static texture, and you can not afford unlimited texture filtering whilst rendering the frame in real time.

If you google around, you will find various clever solutions to the problem, but not necessarily a simple general fix, that takes care of every case in a game with a single automating press of a button.
 
Not necessarily wrong, but... complicated...

So, other than the whole no-multisampling-antialiasing-(MSAA)-with-deferred-rendering thing, which just about all modern graphics engines are subject to, I suspect much of the aliasing we see in Elite Dangerous, whose edges tend to not only come out jaggy, but jaggy and non-contiguous, is: "specular aliasing", which is something you get on fancy modern shiny and reflective materials, especially ones with a lot of fine detail, like grilles and such. Looks to me like the game has a lot of those types of materials -- it's the whole PBR (Physically Based Rendering) thing.

Say you've got a normal map that turns a single rectangle on the floor into fine latticework -- just a reflective metal wire mesh whose gaps you can see through. Here the normals do not only determine the wire shape for the shading, so that it comes out looking round, and not just a flat plane, but also for the mapping of an environment map that reflects in the shiny wire, and which will also come at some sort of limiting resolution.
You end up with aliasing compounding with aliasing, as you sample a texel from the normal map, which determines the angle you need to sample a second texel from the environment cubemap. Since it is textures interacting dynamically wiith one another, you can not simply bake the result down into a prepared static texture, and you can not afford unlimited texture filtering whilst rendering the frame in real time.

If you google around, you will find various clever solutions to the problem, but not necessarily a simple general fix, that takes care of every case in a game with a single automating press of a button.

Most of this goes over my head but I understand order of operations in engineering ;)

Just another puzzle to solve :)
 
Ok so I now went through all settings from none to SMAA and I dont see ANY difference? Is this setting just here to idk confuse people because obviously there is NO anti-aliasing implemented in this game.
Maybe your monitor resolution is not high enough to make a difference?
 
Like i said AA is working. Problem is, ED has some white lines coming from light sources reflecting on edges. Those lines have no AA possibility (it's similar to alpha textures, they always shimmering a lot even if you are using high AF clamped with + lod bias). The only thing which helps is using a higher resolution like 4k and above. I think FDEV could give those lines AA but they don't know about the issue or it's technical not possible.
 
Like i said AA is working. Problem is, ED has some white lines coming from light sources reflecting on edges. Those lines have no AA possibility (it's similar to alpha textures, they always shimmering a lot even if you are using high AF clamped with + lod bias). The only thing which helps is using a higher resolution like 4k and above. I think FDEV could give those lines AA but they don't know about the issue or it's technical not possible.
So why does it not work on solid lines then either as seen in the pictures I posted. Those aren't really reflections?
 
AA in Elite has always been very basic. Things like TAA or the latest tech never made it into their self-developed cobra engine. Frontier apparently dislikes to keep with with the latest tech. You can see this by the absence of by today's standards commonly implemented features such as crossplay, volumetric fog, TAA (as mentioned), first person VR or multiple light sources.
Truth to be said, back in 2014 when Elite was released, something like TAA was still not mature enough to be implemented into a custom engine. I get that but the tech has advanced. Elite and the cobra however, did not. These two are on the same tech level as when they have been released.
 
5700XT, besides what GPU you have has no effect on the working of FXAA or any other Post Process AA. Only effect being different performance
Why you are not using MLAA? As far as i known it´s AMD exclusive. Have you already tested or compared it?

AA off; SS 1,0x; 1080p


SMAA on; SS 1,0x; 1080p


SMAA on; SS 2,0x (=4k); 1080p


As you can see AA is definitely working! Just white lines or edges from some textures are the problem.
 
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Why you are not using MLAA? As far as i known it´s AMD exclusive. Have you already tested or compared it?

AA off; SS 1,0x; 1080p


SMAA on; SS 1,0x; 1080p


SMAA on; SS 2,0x (=4k); 1080p


As you can see AA is definitely working! Just white lines or edges from some textures are the problem.
sorry but there seems to be ONLY a difference in those pics from x2.0 SS and 1.0 SS.

Look at the rectangle on the right side floor background.

And generally when switching between pic 1 and 2 the only real difference seems to be the light from the ads on the walls. The edges seem to be virtually unchanged. Fact remains AA is NOT working.

This can generally be caused by the POST PROCESS AA being applied during the wrong steps
 
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No definitely not! The first pic with AA off has extrem jaggies! Look at the yellow handrail and klick on the pic to make it bigger.
 
No definitely not! The first pic with AA off has extrem jaggies! Look at the yellow handrail and klick on the pic to make it bigger.
Yes jaggyness was reduced by 33% at best.
While most other titles achieve the result of 2x with AA without the 2x
 
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