Issue with software anti aliasing

[TirigonX]

Ever since using ENB I wasn't really happy with the anti aliasing. It does work, but it causes an annoying flickering in mid to far distance on certain objects. Check this short video to see what I mean. You may have to watch in HD and fullscreen to see it properly. Watch the planks, barrels and crates. It's actually even worse in game but youtube's compression seems to filter some of it.

It's most noticeable on wooden objects. But also thin objects like ropes or metal bars are affected. I had another video for that but youtube made it look like everything was ok lol.

 

It doesn't matter whether I use ENB's Edge and/or Subpixel AA or SMAA with highest preset. Or even all of them together. For this video I enabled Edge and Subpixel AA in enblocal.ini

I don't see this flickering with hardware AA, but of course that's not an option with ENB.

 

Does anyone else have this problem too? Or am I expecting too much and this is just how software AA looks?

 

 

System specs:
i5 3570K, 8 GB RAM, Radeon 270X, Win 7 64bit

[TirigonX]

@TechAngel: Thanks, but the flickering is only visible when walking around or just moving the mouse a bit. It's probably not noticeable on a screenshot at all.

 

@Spock: yes I also spent some time with the CCC, forgot to mention that earlier. It's not an AF issue as far as I can tell. I tried all 3 methods (skyrimprefs.ini, enb, ccc). And I tried different enb presets, but it's actually not an issue with enb itself. It's just the fact that a full enb forces one to use software based AA. And this causes the flickering on a lot of objects. (I'm playing in 1080p on a 24'' monitor btw and I also checked the monitor settings to be sure^^)

 

@Audley: yeah that pretty much matches my experiences (with Skyrim though). It may also be an issue that I'm oversensitive in this regard. But with an full ENB which makes Skyrim look really magnificent, these flickering textures just ruin it for me and it's really hard getting used to imho. It's not like MSAA is absolutely perfect. But it's definitely an huge improvement.

Edited July 14, 2015 by TirigonX

[Aiyen]

I would imagine that if you can run 4x MSAA you should be able to scale down other effects, and then downsample instead and have a decent SMAA... MSAA´s only problem is that the cost is so prohibitive and even modest resolutions these days. 

Temporal is entirely dependent upon your FPS.. if you can sustain high FPS it is by far the best technique around since ghosting will be minimal to non existent. 

 

Also it is not really the textures that flicker.. it is the models. If you actually remove stuff like ropes and fences and replace them with the original 2d planes you wont have any flickering. It is entirely an issue with the meshes being just detailed enough that they cause flickering at 1080p. 

 

Solutions are either remove the meshes, or increase resolution... or get a detailed DoF which will blur out most of the flickering. 

[TechAngel85]

This sounds more like z-fighting. Do you have a high FOV? Higher FOV is one cause. After that, I'd be checking into the LODbias in both ENB and drivers.

[Greg]

Have you tried the solution outlined in Guide:Z-Fighting? The reason I ask is because I was noticing quite a bit of flicker (notably on the distant mountains walking into Whiterun from Riverwood) using SMAA and this knocked out quite a bit of it.

[TirigonX]

No it's an aliasing issue. As I mentioned using hardware AA ist a vast improvement.

I'm aware of z-fighting, but this is mostly an issue with distant objects. These are not the problem here. (well they are of course. I'm also getting flickering mountain tops, but that's an entire different problem)

The models that are causing trouble are the ones that are fully loaded but not close to the camera. Ironically increasing uGridsToLoad makes it even worse, as it means that more objects are displayed with their full detail model at a far distance.

I also played around with LODBias settings, but even extreme values which make the game look very ugly, don't fix it.

Edited July 15, 2015 by TirigonX

[Aiyen]

To me it seems fairly consistent. You got a somewhat detailed roundish object, you place it at a distance ingame where the total amount of pixels it has to work with is not great considering the geometry. 

 

It is something I also notice in modeling software that does not have AA on... if you zoom to certain view distances you get more and more noticeable flickering etc. You can increase the poly count of the model which will reduce it, or increase the resolution of the view window. Both have the same effect, but both cost more performance. 

 

You will most likely also have the same issue with certain actors and armors, in general any somewhat detailed model with circular slopes etc. 

 

Software AA cannot solve this since it only works on the final render and interpolates based on edge detection. A small way you can get a bit better results from SMAA etc. is to have increased contrasts which will make edges more defined and as a result improve the overall AA. Alternatively you can also increase bloom amounts which will help smooth out transitions which will have the same effect.. however both will radically change the overall image. 

 

As a final suggestion you can also try to find brighter textures... this will again help smooth out transitions and make them less noticeable at a distance. 

[juiceejay]

Hey I'm having the same exact problem with those board walk and mostly wooden items like lanterns and crates.. did u manage to fix it?

[D1Z4STR]

Not really a issue with software AA (probably posted this on the wrong thread)

 

I am going to try SMAA out in my SRLE LOTD play through. I am using the files from Vividian ENB in the SMAA folder from its archive. I think the enblocal.ini is slightly outdated so I have copied alot of my settings over to it. I would like to ask if someone could once over it below and let me know if it looks good. My only question is [FIX] FixSsaoWaterTransparency (I dont know if the setting is from a older enbdev version or not (enblocal.ini does not have this setting from the newest skyrim enbdev download)

 

FixSsaoWaterTransparency=true (should i remove this whole line or leave it a true or even set to false?)

 

 

 

[PROXY]
EnableProxyLibrary=true
InitProxyFunctions=true
ProxyLibrary=d3d9_smaa.dll

[GLOBAL]
UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false
UseDefferedRendering=true
IgnoreCreationKit=true

[PERFORMANCE]
SpeedHack=true
EnableOcclusionCulling=true
EnableZPrepass=false

[MEMORY]
ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=false    // Set to true for AMD Videocards
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=128
VideoMemorySizeMb=3750
EnableCompression=false
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

[THREADS]
DataSyncMode=0
PriorityMode=0
EnableUnsafeFixes=false

[MULTIHEAD]
ForceVideoAdapterIndex=false
VideoAdapterIndex=0

[WINDOW]
ForceBorderless=false
ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false

[ENGINE]
ForceAnisotropicFiltering=true
MaxAnisotropy=16
ForceLodBias=false
LodBias=0.0
EnableVSync=false
AddDisplaySuperSamplingResolutions=false
VSyncSkipNumFrames=0

[LIMITER]
WaitBusyRenderer=false
EnableFPSLimit=false
FPSLimit=60.0

[iNPUT]
//shift
KeyCombination=16
//f12
KeyUseEffect=123
//home
KeyFPSLimit=36
//num /       106
KeyShowFPS=106
//print screen
KeyScreenshot=44
//enter
KeyEditor=13
//f4
KeyFreeVRAM=115
//B
KeyBruteForce=66
KeyDepthOfField=118

[ADAPTIVEQUALITY]
Enable=false
Quality=1
DesiredFPS=20.0

[ANTIALIASING]
EnableEdgeAA=false
EnableTemporalAA=false
EnableSubPixelAA=false
EnableTransparencyAA=false

[FIX]
FixGameBugs=true
FixParallaxBugs=true
FixParallaxTerrain=false    //enable for parallax effects on ground textures, makes only sense with texturepacks
FixAliasedTextures=false    //helps reduce aliasing of snow on mountains and other similar objects. recommended enable, unless SMAA is being used.

IgnoreInventory=true
FixSsaoWaterTransparency=true
FixTintGamma=true
RemoveBlur=false
FixSubSurfaceScattering=true
FixSkyReflection=true
FixCursorVisibility=true
FixLag=false //enable if you experience mouselag

[LONGEXPOSURE]
EnableLongExposureMode=false
Time=1.0
BlendMax=0.0

 

 

Edited March 5, 2017 by D1Z4STR

[TechAngel85]

You can remove that and "EnableZPrepass=false". ENBSeries will populate the file with any missing settings when the game is ran so you need not worry if anything is missing. Extra parameters will not hurt anything either. They simply will not do anything. The file looks good.

[D1Z4STR]

Thanks Tech