[Graphics] Can someone explain what this is?

V'larr

V'larr
Man, the advice in this thread is all over the place.

There's really nothing wrong with using native Nvidia control panel option along with Elite's settings.

I have a 550 ti graphics card, for reference (I sorely need an upgrade).

I recommend turning FXAA on in Elite, and in Nvidia's control panel, under the antialiasing settings, if you see "CSAA x16" - USE IT! I was very surprised, but the performance hit is similar to picking x4 or x8 with "normal" antialiasing options on anything I play - that is to say, mostly negligible - and it works very well. If you've got a beefier computer than I do, I say go for the 16Q or x32 options and see how it goes. Honestly, the FXAA effect can be up to personal taste - I just like how things look with the FXAA effect 'on' as opposed to 'off', even on top of Nvidia's CSAA.
 

Insomnia

Insomnia
CSAA is a sort of compressed version of MSAA. And MSAA isn't compatible with Elite Dangerous...

So far, DSR and injection of additional anti aliasing are the only things that helps. Nvidia control panel or Nvidia Inspector can't do squat about it.
 

Zambrick

Zambrick
That is Antialiasing and Antialiasing Super Sample cranked down to low or off. Change it to fxaa if your card can handle it and turn it up.
TXAA if you can

However after looking at this thing it looks more like a card issue. Are you running a dedicated GPU because it doesnt look like it. I have a 980ti and I play in Oculus CV1 and its perfectly smooth on edges. Only thing that looks bad are the thin bars at the mail slot.
 
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NW3

NW3
Zambrick said:
Are you running a dedicated GPU because it doesnt look like it. I have a 980ti and I play in Oculus CV1 and its perfectly smooth on edges. Only thing that looks bad are the thin bars at the mail slot.
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This is somewhat subjective. I also have an NVidia 980 Ti and I find the artifacts to be highly objectionable, even at 4K and even with 2x super-sampling. I occasionally run in Anaglyph 3D mode; when I do, the artifacts seem to be less pronounced, because each eye sees slightly different stairsteps. The only real solution is for ED to implement some sort of REAL anti-aliasing, probably temporal (since anything else will ruin the frame-rate).

Unfortunately, ED is practically worst case for these artifacts: The models are complex, with lots of thin features like pipes and railing and lots of grill work implemented in geometry, not textures. Thin, regularly-spaced geometry will tend to enhance Moiré patterns.

Here's more info on Moiré patterns, if you're interested (the section on "Television screens and photographs" is particularly relevant): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiré_pattern
 
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Zambrick

Zambrick
NW3 said:
This is somewhat subjective. I also have an NVidia 980 Ti and I find the artifacts to be highly objectionable, even at 4K and even with 2x super-sampling. I occasionally run in Anaglyph 3D mode; when I do, the artifacts seem to be less pronounced, because each eye sees slightly different stairsteps. The only real solution is for ED to implement some sort of REAL anti-aliasing, probably temporal (since anything else will ruin the frame-rate).

Unfortunately, ED is practically worst case for these artifacts: The models are complex, with lots of thin features like pipes and railing and lots of grill work implemented in geometry, not textures. Thin, regularly-spaced geometry will tend to enhance Moiré patterns.

Here's more info on Moiré patterns, if you're interested (the section on "Television screens and photographs" is particularly relevant): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiré_pattern
Click to expand...

Have split up some stuff in game and on the control panel. I let the in game options take care of shading, textures and physics. I turn the HMD quality to max and turn down SS in game as low as I can. Then I use the current sdk for the oculus and increase the pixel density up to 1.75. I let Nvidia take care of AA and overide the games settings. Give that a try and let me know if it looks better in the oculus for you.
 

NW3

NW3
V'larr said:
But that's why I force it on through the Nvidia control panel? I'm fairly certain I saw a visible improvement? [weird]
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The AA options vary somewhat depending on which card you have. On my 980 Ti, I have an option to force FXAA (which you can also enable within ED) and you can force 2x, 4x, and 8x AA (which is ignored, because ED uses "deferred rendering" which is incompatible with standard AA. You can force MFAA (which is a variation of standard AA and is also incompatible).

All these acronyms sound similar, but vary considerably. Only the ones available within ED itself are available (and are smoothing filters, not true AA, and don't really fix the "crawlies".

The one exception is super-sampling, which draws the graphics at a higher resolution and then shrinks it to fit the screen. The only SS option within ED that is useful (in my opinion) is 2x, which helps some, but doesn't fix the issue. NVidia control panel has some additional SS options, but their numbers are inflated 4x in the control panel is the same as 2x in ED. SS will significantly reduce your framerate.

I've run 4K at 2x/4x SS and still find the aliasing artifacts to be highly objectionable, which is why I want FD to implement temporal AA, which WILL fix the problem.
 

NW3

NW3
Zambrick said:
Have split up some stuff in game and on the control panel. I let the in game options take care of shading, textures and physics. I turn the HMD quality to max and turn down SS in game as low as I can. Then I use the current sdk for the oculus and increase the pixel density up to 1.75. I let Nvidia take care of AA and overide the games settings. Give that a try and let me know if it looks better in the oculus for you.
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Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, I don't have an oculus (or a vive). I can do anaglyph 3d (red/blue glasses). That looks surprisingly good, with high-quality glasses, although the colors are funky. Why do I do that? I find that the SRV triggers motion sickness, unless I'm in 3D.

I've spent a lot of time fiddling with the various settings. The best tradeoff for a reasonable framerate with reasonably reduced jaggies is 2x SS at a custom resolution of 2272x1278. However, that looks a bit fuzzy on my 4K display. In practice, I find myself switching between the various options, depending on what's bothering me most: Jaggies, crawlies, fuzzy image, or low framerate. If my system could handle it, I'd use 4K with 2x SS, but my framerate is unacceptably slow when near a planet, moon, or station, so I don't normally use that mode. I plan to upgrade my 980 Ti next year, so that will a reasonable option, but as I mentioned previously, the crawlies are still visible (just less obvious/annoying).
 
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V'larr

V'larr
NW3 said:
The AA options vary somewhat depending on which card you have. On my 980 Ti, I have an option to force FXAA (which you can also enable within ED) and you can force 2x, 4x, and 8x AA (which is ignored, because ED uses "deferred rendering" which is incompatible with standard AA. You can force MFAA (which is a variation of standard AA and is also incompatible).
Click to expand...

Hm, I'll add that I'm not using VR or anything (as if my 550 ti could handle that)...

I use Elite's FXAA (no up/downsampling), and in Nvidia's panel I leave FXAA "off", antialiasing mode is "Enhance Application Setting", and setting is 16x CSAA - and there's further options for 16xQ CSAA and 32x CSAA.

Are you using up-to-date Nvidia drivers...?

I mean...as far as I understand it, "enhance application setting" means Nvidia adds AA on top of whatever is being displayed, regardless of the application...? (Otherwise what exactly is the point of them even adding that option?)

Supersampling isn't exactly "anti-aliasing", in my eyes, it's pretty much just playing at a higher resolution and pretending your monitor is bigger. Like, it works, but it's not an AA filter, strictly speaking....

Obviously in my case I can't handle that kind of performance hit. :p

From what I've heard, temporal AA has a performance hit similar to supersampling....

Here's a thread where another Elite player recommends forcing 32x CSAA through the Nvidia CP: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/195627-Results-of-graphics-tweaks

So judging from his screenshots, it's not just me who could swear there's a benefit.
 
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Dbrn47

Dbrn47
Iori said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWRfLhOY2AA
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THAT seems to be what I need, when can we get THAT? :eek:

Zambrick said:
That is Antialiasing and Antialiasing Super Sample cranked down to low or off. Change it to fxaa if your card can handle it and turn it up.
TXAA if you can

However after looking at this thing it looks more like a card issue. Are you running a dedicated GPU because it doesnt look like it. I have a 980ti and I play in Oculus CV1 and its perfectly smooth on edges. Only thing that looks bad are the thin bars at the mail slot.
Click to expand...

No, read again. Everything is/was set to max, including DSR now. Seems to be what was in the video Iori posted, specular aliasing. I also have a 980Ti.

V'larr said:
But that's why I force it on through the Nvidia control panel? I'm fairly certain I saw a visible improvement? [weird]
Click to expand...

I wish I knew why it works for you and not me. Forcing anything in the control panel for Elite did nothing, it was as if the game completely ignored those settings.
 

V'larr

V'larr
Dbrn47 said:
I wish I knew why it works for you and not me. Forcing anything in the control panel for Elite did nothing, it was as if the game completely ignored those settings.
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Hm. Tossing ideas out to see what sticks:
Running in admin mode? Did you choose "enhance" or "override"? Was Elite's ingame settings left to FXAA?

Did you check out the link in my next post? Seems to have worked for that guy....

edit: I won't deny it's possible I'm experiencing a placebo effect - having spent plenty time fiddling with settings because I too hate the infamous jaggies, perhaps I *want* to believe it makes a difference.... [big grin]
 
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Dbrn47

Dbrn47
V'larr said:
Hm. Tossing ideas out to see what sticks:
Running in admin mode? Did you choose "enhance" or "override"? Was Elite's ingame settings left to FXAA?

Did you check out the link in my next post? Seems to have worked for that guy....

edit: I won't deny it's possible I'm experiencing a placebo effect - having spent plenty time fiddling with settings because I too hate the infamous jaggies, perhaps I *want* to believe it makes a difference.... [big grin]
Click to expand...

I'll revisit it after the patch, not wanting to load it up just to mess with settings some more at the moment. Will let you know. ;)
 

Insomnia

Insomnia
Dbrn47 said:
Forcing anything in the control panel for Elite did nothing, it was as if the game completely ignored those settings.
Click to expand...
That's because Elite really does ignore it.

Guys.... Forcing driver based super sampling antialiasing through Nvidia control panel won't do anything, regardless of what you might think you're experiencing. There's no magical trick to get this working. MSAA needs lighting and geometry data that are stored in buffers in deferred rendering, unlike forward rendering.

Edit:
From wiki...
One more rather important disadvantage is that, due to separating the lighting stage from the geometric stage, hardware anti-aliasing does not produce correct results anymore since interpolated subsamples would result in nonsensical position, normal, and tangent attributes.
Click to expand...


Didn't mean to sound harsch.
 
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Jukelo

Jukelo
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V'larr

V'larr
Jukelo said:
The reason you don't see much aliasing in his screenshots is that the guy is playing in 3840x2160. When you open the pictures in full size you can see there are jaggies everywhere, it's just invisible when you downside it to a forum-friendly resolution.
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Hmmm....

I had to *really look* to find any, on a second glance.

I admit, the nose of the ship? Totally jagged. But everywhere else on the screenshot looks smooth as butter to me (so to speak). Which is kinda weird.
 
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NeilF

NeilF
Dbrn47 said:
Can someone tell me what this is and how to get rid of it? I'm running at max settings already.. It looks like aliasing but anti-aliasing doesn't seem to affect it at all. It's sort of always been there, I'm just finally annoyed enough to ask about it, and movement seems to amplify it. As you can see, this is inside the hangar, so I'm not moving, yet it looks pretty bad and it's also on the ship.

https://i.gyazo.com/18fedc86ed4b86ccab228d1cddccd5a2.gif
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Yes... Perfectly normal in ED, and is very distracting IMHO.

It's why a lot of people would like temporal anti-aliasing introduced - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...like-this-would-be-awesome-in-Elite-Dangerous

I think No Mans Sky introduced it last month for example...
 

Jools

Jools
NeilF said:
...meanwhile... Coloured thrusters at least :)
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gotta have the right priorities...

but don`t worry guys... David said recently that he would like the game to be developed for 10+ years from now on (he is Very very excited, about this thing they will want to look at at some point, unless it ends up on the cutting room floor, development is hard)... one day you will get your AA (probably 3 years after everybody else moves to full ray-tracing)
 
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