Does Anti-Aliasing actually do anything?

[Altarf]

Yes jaggyness was reduced by 33% at best.
While most other titles achieve the result of 2x with AA without the 2x

Don´t get me wrong i´m absolutly on your side and like i said there are some edges (like the ones that build the rectangle) all ED AA modes aren´t working. Just a higher resolution can make it better (also not perfect).

But to say there is absolulty no difference between AA off and on isn´t correct. Some edges are really good anti aliaised see the handrail.

So finally just a FDev Tec could explain why this happens and maybe solve the issue but i think they have a lot other issues at the moment...

 

[Lord Rak]

Don't worry - you're not missing anything. It doesn't work anyway:

it is working. Nvidia have this as not supported because "This feature is disabled for games that already have built-in support for FXAA." . Your welcome

 

[hunvagy]

Honest OPs screenshot looks like FSR performance or something is on, because that.. is horrible. Also in theory SMAA should be better then FXAA. Heck, everything is better then FXAA in motion.

 

[Far Beyond Driven]

Ever feel like all AA is unapplied when you enter the station concourse?

 

[Úlfhéðnar]

Honest OPs screenshot looks like FSR performance or something is on, because that.. is horrible. Also in theory SMAA should be better then FXAA. Heck, everything is better then FXAA in motion.

Actually it's ultra quality but it looks the same without FSR. And fun fact FSR looks most likely extremly horrible due to the post processing being applied before FSR and not after

 

[Sakashiro]

AA in Elite has always been very basic.

AA in Horizons wasn't that bad. Reportedly FDev implemented deferred rendering for EDO, and that's where things went downhill. This can be seen best in night vision view, e.g. in planetary rings. In Horizons it was smooth, in Odyssey it's a flickering mess of pixel stairs.

AA and frame rates are essential to rendering, and as long as FDev fails to fix these, EDO is a graphical downgrade from Horizons, regardless of how colorful they make the planets.

 

[Mersozz]

Don't worry - you're not missing anything. It doesn't work anyway:

FXAA works.

 

[Morbad]

I use EDH's AA as it makes orbital lines/etc crisper and thinner.

Orbital lines are where the difference is most obvious.

All the AA modes work...they just aren't strong enough to work well.

Why you are not using MLAA? As far as i known it´s AMD exclusive.

It's not an AMD exclusive and the in-game MLAA options are generally worse than either FXAA or SMAA.

Honest OPs screenshot looks like FSR performance or something is on, because that.. is horrible. Also in theory SMAA should be better then FXAA. Heck, everything is better then FXAA in motion.

Out of the in-game AA options, SMAA reduces aliasing more than either MLAA option and about as much as FXAA, without as much blur as FXAA. It's still quite subtle.

AA in Horizons wasn't that bad. Reportedly FDev implemented deferred rendering for EDO, and that's where things went downhill.

Elite: Dangerous has always used differed rendering and (excepting super sampling of course) only post processing AA options have ever worked.

I haven't really noticed any difference in AA between Horizons (or pre-Horizons) and EDO, except that EDO now has FSR enabled by default and FSR compounds aliasing issues.

 

[Mersozz]

Nvidia GTX 1660 Super, 1080p, High Settings except AA set to FXAA.

Clear difference between FXAA and AA off, and for my card, no dropoff in performance. Both settings max fps (60 fps/monitor cap).

For what it's worth, this video from Commander Exigeous is still very helpful.... I pretty much followed his recommendations. FF to 7:25+ of the video for his AA comments.

Source: https://youtu.be/G7efYzpquIs

 

[nanite2000]

Nvidia GTX 1660 Super, 1080p, High Settings except AA set to FXAA.

Clear difference between FXAA and AA off, and for my card, no dropoff in performance. Both settings max fps (60 fps/monitor cap).


View attachment 255551

For what it's worth, this video from Commander Exigeous is still very helpful.... I pretty much followed his recommendations. FF to 7:25+ of the video for his AA comments.

Source: https://youtu.be/G7efYzpquIs

In that case, it's highly debatable whether FDev's implementation of FXAA is any good, since it appears to be applied very inconsistently - especially on foot (as you can see in @Un1k0rn 's screenshot at https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/does-anti-aliasing-actually-do-anything.587371/post-9446045).

For whatever reason, FDev does not allow NVidia to override the game setting, so we can't compare it to NVidia's forced implementation. The best we can do is compare it to other games that implement FXAA where we see that FXAA results in much better fidelity. For example, Half Life 2 has superior FXAA than Elite Dangerous despite being 10 years older.

 

[tomimt]

ED has by far one of the worst implementations of AA. I've never managed to get satisfactory results with any of the AA modes it has.

 

[Morbad]

For whatever reason, FDev does not allow NVidia to override the game setting, so we can't compare it to NVidia's forced implementation.

You can force NVIDIA's driver FXAA through tools like NVIDIA Profile Inspector.

It's also possible to use third-party post-process AA implementations in tools like ReShade.

 

[nanite2000]

You can force NVIDIA's driver FXAA through tools like NVIDIA Profile Inspector.

It's also possible to use third-party post-process AA implementations in tools like ReShade.

Interesting - I wasn't aware it could be done with NVIDIA Profile Inspector. I'd forgotten about the ReShade option, so I just tried it again now and the results were no better than simply enabling it in game.

I'd be curious to know if NVIDIA's override in Profile Inspector implements it any better...?

Maybe the Elite Dangerous art style just highlights the limitations of FXAA...? But it is interesting that other games which implement it appear to produce far better quality results.

Perhaps a graphics expert could provide their input on this?

 

[Altarf]

You can force NVIDIA's driver FXAA through tools like NVIDIA Profile Inspector.

Doesn´t work...

 

[Mersozz]

In that case, it's highly debatable whether FDev's implementation of FXAA is any good, since it appears to be applied very inconsistently - especially on foot (as you can see in @Un1k0rn 's screenshot at https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/does-anti-aliasing-actually-do-anything.587371/post-9446045).

For whatever reason, FDev does not allow NVidia to override the game setting, so we can't compare it to NVidia's forced implementation. The best we can do is compare it to other games that implement FXAA where we see that FXAA results in much better fidelity. For example, Half Life 2 has superior FXAA than Elite Dangerous despite being 10 years older.

I’m not sure. It took me quite a bit of trial and error to find the settings that looked best on my PC. And then I also checked out some stuff on YouTube. Commander Exigeous video (noted above) was very helpful.

 

[Morbad]

Doesn´t work...

Works for me.

Turn off any in-game AA, apply settings and quit game.
Open NVIDIA Profile Inspector and navigate to the Elite Dangerous Profile.
Find "NVDIA Predefined FXAA usage". Change from "disallowed" to "allowed". Apply settings.
Open the NVIDIA CP, navigate to the game specific Elite Dangerous profile (or add it, if it's not pointing to the right executable), and you should be able to set FXAA to enabled.
Confirm FXAA is working by starting the game and looking at how it craps up all the text and barely improves aliasing elsewhere.

 

[nanite2000]

Works for me.

Turn off any in-game AA, apply settings and quit game.
Open NVIDIA Profile Inspector and navigate to the Elite Dangerous Profile.
Find "NVDIA Predefined FXAA usage". Change from "disallowed" to "allowed". Apply settings.
Open the NVIDIA CP, navigate to the game specific Elite Dangerous profile (or add it, if it's not pointing to the right executable), and you should be able to set FXAA to enabled.
Confirm FXAA is working by starting the game and looking at how it craps up all the text and barely improves aliasing elsewhere.

I'm curious - does it look any different to FDev's own FXAA implementation?

 

[Riverside]

I'm curious - does it look any different to FDev's own FXAA implementation?

Try it

 

[nanite2000]

Try it

Not going to waste my time setting up something I'm totally unfamiliar with unless it's worth it.

If someone confirms that it is better than FDev's own FXAA implementation, I'll try it.

 

[Riverside]

Not going to waste my time setting up something I'm totally unfamiliar with unless it's worth it.

If someone confirms that it is better than FDev's own FXAA implementation, I'll try it.

It's a different compromise, what one person considers better may not be 'better' in your view.

I tried them all years ago & saw essentially no improvement over the standard (SMAA) setting, but as mentioned earlier in the thread I found upscaling to work very well (playing the game at 4k downscaled to 1080p on a 1080p monitor), and downscaling (as I am doing currently) gives much needed performance in Odyssey but doesn't look better on my large 4k monitor.

Throwing money at the probem is probably your best bet if you want guaranteed results - get a monitor with physically smaller pixels than your current monitor, and enough GPU to drive that at an acceptable framerate. Anything else is a compromise really, one which only the individual can decide.