Temporal vs Edge vs SMAA

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Does anyone have any screenshot comparisons of the new AA modes in ENBLOCAL compared to traditional SMAA?

 

Also, what is the best combination of AA that you have found? Should I combine Edge, Temporal, SMAA, and Sub Pixel AA?

[Aiyen]

With the amount of questions you have to wait for feedback on you are never gonna get to play the game lol :P

 

You can have all of the above mentioned active at once if you so please. The only question you need to ask yourself is if you are willing to pay the performance cost.

 

There is no "Best" combination. Some people do not like how edge AA blurs the edges, some people got issues with ghosting using temporal... it varies, you have to try it out on your own.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

With the amount of questions you have to wait for feedback on you are never gonna get to play the game lol :P

 

You can have all of the above mentioned active at once if you so please. The only question you need to ask yourself is if you are willing to pay the performance cost.

 

There is no "Best" combination. Some people do not like how edge AA blurs the edges, some people got issues with ghosting using temporal... it varies, you have to try it out on your own.

I'm at work so all I have to do all day is ask questions :-/. I can't play the game until I get home. Also I need to reinstall STEP since I recently did a PC reformat so it'll be a while. 

[johnnyboy88]

Here are some comparison shots of Crysis 3 with the different types of AA

https://www.tweakguides.com/Crysis3_6.html

 

A video showing some differences (recommend downloading as compression for online viewing makes it difficult to see)

https://www.iryoku.com/smaa/#movie

 

And here is a little discussion about it as well

https://www.tomshardware.com/forum/126371-13-crysis-beta-smaa-txaa-fxaa-msaa

 

another discussion

https://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=360758

 

TXAA info from Geforce

https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/txaa/technology

 

CSAA info available on Geforce 8 series

https://developer.nvidia.com/csaa-coverage-sampling-antialiasing

 

With the SMAA injector you can actually enable temporal supersampling through SMAA.h too and it tells you how to do it. As well as getting rid of the ghosting associated with it. Because enb's temporal aa is so new it still has ghosting.

 

I played with it a little while but I think the frame rate hit of enb temporal aa is higher than smaa. I also prefer smaa over enb edge aa, as I think enb edge aa blurs things too much.

 

With smaa there are four presets in the injector.ini:

* SMAA_PRESET_LOW (%60 of the quality)

* SMAA_PRESET_MEDIUM (%80 of the quality)

* SMAA_PRESET_HIGH (%95 of the quality)

* SMAA_PRESET_ULTRA (%99 of the quality)

 

There are also three different edge detection techniques: luma, color or depth.

* They represent different quality/performance and anti-aliasing/sharpness tradeoffs

 

You can read about how it works and customize it inside SMAA.h

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Here are some comparison shots of Crysis 3 with the different types of AA

https://www.tweakguides.com/Crysis3_6.html

 

And here is a little discusion about it as well

https://www.tomshardware.com/forum/126371-13-crysis-beta-smaa-txaa-fxaa-msaa

 

With the SMAA injector you can actually enable temporal supersampling through SMAA.h too and it tells you how to do it. As well as getting rid of the ghosting associated with it. Because enb's temporal aa is so new it still has ghosting.

 

I played with it a little while but I think the frame rate hit of enb temporal aa is higher than smaa. I also prefer smaa over enb edge aa, as I think enb edge aa blurs things too much.

 

With smaa there are four presets in the injector.ini:

* SMAA_PRESET_LOW (%60 of the quality)

* SMAA_PRESET_MEDIUM (%80 of the quality)

* SMAA_PRESET_HIGH (%95 of the quality)

* SMAA_PRESET_ULTRA (%99 of the quality)

 

There are also three different edge detection techniques: luma, color or depth.

* They represent different quality/performance and anti-aliasing/sharpness tradeoffs

 

You can read about how it works and customize it inside SMAA.h

What about Transparency AA? Boris added it in for 0.215 or 0.217. I don't remember which one.

[johnnyboy88]

I haven't tried enb transparency aa yet. But what should do is provide aa for objects with transparent textures. While it's possible that those are the only jaggies you notice it's probably not the case. Transparency aa was designed to work in tandem with other aa techniques.

 

Here's a short Nvidia video demonstrating the techinque:

https://www.nvidia.com/object/transparency_aa.html

 

Here are some screenshots demonstrating how MSAA is not performing well on objects with alpha transparency. But combine Transparency aa with it as it looks good:

https://techreport.com/review/8466/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx-graphics-processor/21

 

And some more screenshots demonstrating the technique.

https://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/g70-indepth_10.html

 

And finally the whitepaper with more information than you'd probably ever want to know

https://developer.nvidia.com/content/transparency-aa-antialiasing-whitepaper

[Aiyen]

Guess I will just link to this thread rather then explaining people what the differences are from now on! :)

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I haven't tried enb transparency aa yet. But what should do is provide aa for objects with transparent textures. While it's possible that those are the only jaggies you notice it's probably not the case. Transparency aa was designed to work in tandem with other aa techniques.

 

Here's a short Nvidia video demonstrating the techinque:

https://www.nvidia.com/object/transparency_aa.html

 

Here are some screenshots demonstrating how MSAA is not performing well on objects with alpha transparency. But combine Transparency aa with it as it looks good:

https://techreport.com/review/8466/nvidia-geforce-7800-gtx-graphics-processor/21

 

And some more screenshots demonstrating the technique.

https://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/g70-indepth_10.html

 

And finally the whitepaper with more information than you'd probably ever want to know

https://developer.nvidia.com/content/transparency-aa-antialiasing-whitepaper

I'm a little confused about the Transparency AA description from Phinix Enb

 

Here it is:

 

//Set true to use TransparencyAA, for probably the best quality

//reduction of jagged edges on things like grass and hair.

//Minimal cost when forcing AA through video card/launcher which is

//NOT recommended as that method of AA requires disabling deferred

//rendering, which in turn disables several of the ENB graphical

//enhancements like SSAO, which require deferred rendering to be on.

//CAN be used without disabling deferred rendering so it IS

//compatible with these features, however it may result in

//significant frame loss. Definitely worth testing.

 

 

This makes it sound like you need to force AA through your drivers/launcher which isn't allowed with ENB, right? Is he saying that if you want to use this feature with hardware AA and disabling enb effects, it won't cost much performance BUT if you want to use it without hardware aa with enb effects then it will be demanding?

 

 

 

Also, where do I change the SMAA techniques (luma, color, depth, etc.) What is it set to by default?

[johnnyboy88]

Basically that's what it sounds like. I'm not sure how enb is implementing it. But it sounds like you'd get the best performance if you enable it via your drivers. However, if you do that it is considered hardware aa. And if you have hardware aa enabled it disables a lot of enb effects.

 

If you use the transparency aa via enb settings though it's software transparency aa and will take more of a performance hit. Will it be enough for you to notice? It depends entirely on your system.

[Aiyen]

Transparency AA hits like a truck in heavy foliage areas, or other areas with lots of transparent textures!

I tried it in riften for fun... difference is over 10 FPS on average using my system and setting bla bla. :)

 

Ofc. if you have a titan or similar it might just eat said truck and spit out the pieces like nothing happened.

[Garfink]

Nope, I have a Titan & a 5Ghz CPU and the transparency AA still takes a toll, but the game still remains at playable speeds with it on... but with everything else turned up... it still hurts, with everything ON with Somber ENB (high settings), grass dense, temporal & subpixel & transparency AA, 2950x1440 res, FOV 85, I get 37 fps outdoors and 39 in whiterun.

 

I get like 160+fps vanilla without ENB... talk about performance killing!

[Aiyen]

Technically you do not.. the game is capped at 30 FPS :P Anything above that is pointless. This is part reason why if you disable the ingame Vsync or all the other limiters etc. the physics engine will go nuts and/or fail.

 

37 FPS is still more then the 30 the game is designed around so... you are still golden.

If you have sluggish movements etc. then its not because of a difference between 30 and higher FPS, but rather that some techniques and mods. add input lag to the game which would happen regardless.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Technically you do not.. the game is capped at 30 FPS :P Anything above that is pointless. This is part reason why if you disable the ingame Vsync or all the other limiters etc. the physics engine will go nuts and/or fail.

 

37 FPS is still more then the 30 the game is designed around so... you are still golden.

If you have sluggish movements etc. then its not because of a difference between 30 and higher FPS, but rather that some techniques and mods. add input lag to the game which would happen regardless.

What do you mean the game is capped at 30 fps? I know it's capped at 30 fps on consoles. I usually get 60 fps in Skyrim. 

[Aiyen]

The game has built in "vsync" that should limit the game to this value (afaik). Mainly to prevent the physics engine to go nuts. ENB has an override vsync function that will override this. The reason why boris had to make the "fixphysicsbugs" was because of issues with the physics engine due to higher FPS.

 

To see it in action you can just search youtube.. there are funny videos of the carts in the helgen intro going nuts and flying around because the ingame timings get totally messed up.

 

And again... anything above 30 for a game like skyrim makes no sense. There is no requirement for pinpoint accuracy on a pixel basis like FPS shooters where higher FPS does make a difference. What some people feel is higher input lag, hence the game feels more sluggish and unresponsive.. but this is to be expected when using injection methods like ENB since what it does technically happen after the game has already performed its actions.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

The game has built in "vsync" that should limit the game to this value (afaik). Mainly to prevent the physics engine to go nuts. ENB has an override vsync function that will override this. The reason why boris had to make the "fixphysicsbugs" was because of issues with the physics engine due to higher FPS.

 

To see it in action you can just search youtube.. there are funny videos of the carts in the helgen intro going nuts and flying around because the ingame timings get totally messed up.

 

And again... anything above 30 for a game like skyrim makes no sense. There is no requirement for pinpoint accuracy on a pixel basis like FPS shooters where higher FPS does make a difference. What some people feel is higher input lag, hence the game feels more sluggish and unresponsive.. but this is to be expected when using injection methods like ENB since what it does technically happen after the game has already performed its actions.

But even before all this ENB Boost hack stuff, I remember testing my FPS in Skyrim and getting above 30. 

[Aiyen]

As I have understood it then it has more to do with how those programs measure the FPS. You can still get the card to render more frames, but anything above 30 is just not used and make no difference for the game, since its limited in a way that makes the physics engine behave.

I know that for certain other titles, then if you have a monitor with a high enough refresh rate, and low latency then you would be able to see a difference when having fast moving scenes between 60FPS and 120. However I have not found anything that states that this is the case in skyrim.

 

If someone has a better technical description then I am all ears... since I have never really been satisfied with what I could dig up myself.

 

Also in my own tests... I really cannot feel any difference between 30 and 50 FPS in terms of playing the game. Only difference I ever noticed was input lag issues, which where always traceable to either an ini change, or some mod or ENB feature.

 

However most of this have nothing to do with AA techniques per se, other then the fact that AA can add substantial input lag as well as FPS drop, hence you can still have higher FPS but there will be input lag because of the techniques used. However its not because of a low FPS...

You can have 37 FPS with no input lag with some settings, but input lag with others.