Supersampling, is it worth it outside of VR?

elkar

elkar
Hello,

it's a simple question and so far I could find only VR related topics on this. And since I left VR and sold my oculus, my question is... Turning off AA and supersample... is that viable, does it add anything (considering you have enough horsepower to run it)? I can't seem to see any real difference in the game, to be honest, but it might be because I'm sitting little bit farther so I can use my hotas properly.

Please let me know what's your take on this.
 

Deleted member 140600

D
Yes it is useful with big screens or TV. I have a sort of cockpit with a 55 inches curved tv and i'm sitted at 1 meter of it. In this case only supersampling can produce a decent antialiasing.
 

GraXXoR

GraXXoR
Simply put, the lower the Resolution : Physical Size ratio, the more important it becomes.
i.e. big, low res screens need it most.

It comes down to the angle of view each pixel occupies which is a function of distance to the screen and size of each pixel. If you sit 1m from a 30"+ 1080P screen you'll easily see the pixels and "jaggies" (blocky edges of what should be smooth lines) as they're called.
You'll also see aliasing (flashing, shifting patterns in high resolution textures rendered on a low res screen) and "crawling ants" from lines too thin to occupy a full pixel.

If you swap that 30" with a 4k monitor and sit 1m away from it, you'll not see the individual pixels and most of those side-effects will all but disappear. (Apple call this Retina resolution where the pixels' angular density is higher than your eyes' retinae can discern.)

In my case, I run on 3 x 4k monitors @ 11k x 2160 resolution so I use x0.66 supersampling (actually subsampling) because the game chokes in stations and on planets if I don't. This gives a vertical resolution of about 1430 pixels which is plenty to hide most artifacts and I can barely tell the difference in picture quality. If I run at 50% (1080p) however, there is clear quality loss and all of those problems I mentioned at the top appear.
 
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elkar

elkar
Thanks guys.
I have quite normal pesky IPS 24" 1080p 60Hz monitor. So I was wondering about that.
I was considering triple monitor setup, since I have 3 very same monitors, but the side monitors distortion and the mess nVidia surroud produces is rather offputting.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Morbad said:
Supersampling is the best way to remove jaggies, if you can spare the performance for it.
Click to expand...

My dear Morbad - would you mind explaining how to go about it?

On the same 4k TV - PS4 at 1080 looks decent, PS4 Pro looks very nice, XB1 version looks absolutely terrible, and PC output looks better than them all put together.

Switching over to low-tier Acer monitor with 5ms reponse and no concept of HDR and the XB1 suddenly looks great.
 

Deleted member 140600

D
Schmack said:
Can someone tell me if this game is optimized for SLI on 1080ti pairs? I haven't seen a game yet that is.
Click to expand...

SLI is supported but not very efficient in Elite (i tryed SLI with Elite (2x 980, 2x 980 ti, 2x 1080 and 2x 1080 TI) and introduce a lot of stuttering :/

I finally run with 1x 1080 and it run well in 1080P with 2x supersampling
 
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cmdrrdmc

C
If you are gonna supersample, use it instead of AA (since supersampling is just an expensive form of anti-aliasing). There's little benefit to using both except for specific cases (e.g. shimmering in bethesda games).
 

Morbad

Morbad
Asp Explorer said:
My dear Morbad - would you mind explaining how to go about it?

On the same 4k TV - PS4 at 1080 looks decent, PS4 Pro looks very nice, XB1 version looks absolutely terrible, and PC output looks better than them all put together.

Switching over to low-tier Acer monitor with 5ms reponse and no concept of HDR and the XB1 suddenly looks great.
Click to expand...

Your issues with the TV don't seem to be related to supersampling (which in this context means rendering the game at a higher resolution than it's actually displayed at).

A bad display is a bad display, but before dismissing your TV as a bad display, I'd ask you to troubleshoot by making sure it's set to full RGB (0-255, 4:4:4) color and, playing around with the scaling options available, if any. A 4k display has 3840*2160 physical pixels and must upscale (which is the opposite of supersampling) 1080p (1920*1080) content to display it full screen. How it does this can dramatically affect the the crispness of the resulting image and may even introduce significant processing latency.

If you can't find your scaling options, google instructions on how to get to your TV's service menu. I have a 250 dollar 55" 4k TV that is as low-end as it gets for something of this size and resolution and it still has about two dozen different scaling/filtering options in the hidden service menu.

cmdrrdmc said:
If you are gonna supersample, use it instead of AA (since supersampling is just an expensive form of anti-aliasing). There's little benefit to using both except for specific cases (e.g. shimmering in bethesda games).
Click to expand...

I use 1.5x supersampling (though via NVIDIA's VSR, rather than the in-game option) and SMAA in ED because this combination makes my orbit lines look best.
 

elkar

elkar
GraXXoR said:
That's a shame. I love my triple monitor NVIDIA 1080Ti setup.
Click to expand...

So are you trying to tell me, enabling/disabling nvidia surround which messes your desktop apps window sizes and positions every time you use it, and heavy distortion on side monitors, dont bother you?
I've tried it, I have the horse power for it, but even elite isnt suited for it as you get interface only on the middle screen.
 

Faybs

Faybs
If you have an NVidia card (although ATI probably supports this too), enable temporal antialiasing for the ED executable in the nvidia control panel. It makes a very noticeable difference, and it's got no perf impact - it antialiases every other frame slightly differently, so because of human perception the perceived resolution is noticeably higher, even though the actual resolution stays the same.
 
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Valorin

Valorin
Especially on planet surfaces I notice a very distinctive difference between supersampling 1.0 and 2.0. It's much more crisp on max settings. Anti aliasing helps a lot with flickering edges in stations, though I think using it driverside might be better. I always wanted to try this but forgot about it every time when starting the game. :D
 

Jon flint

Jon flint
Short answer...yes.

If you've got the extra horsepower, supersampling is always worth it. Hell even running at native 4k, I use 1.25x supersampling just to alleviate the jagged edges on orbit lines a bit.
 
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Zelos1983

Z
Depends on your resolution.

On my 4k display, I find it utterly useless to supersample. Even AA doesn't make much of a difference.

On my smaller 2k (FHD) displays, supersampling grealy improved the image quality and some sort of AA was almost amust.

So, if you have enoug native pixels, you don't need to supersample.
 
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