Enhanced AA Settings?

[Kayak83]

What's the word on enhancing anti-aliasing? I've already added 8x sparse grid supersampling in Nvidia Inspector along with the in game 4x AA setting. Seems like it's not doing a ton of jaggie removal, though. Maybe I'm expecting too much. I've tried a bunch of other additional nvidia inspector settings with no improvement and I give up. I've also tried 4x DSR and honestly, I don't see what the fuss is about with DSR. I didn't see much improvement, and certainly not worth the GPU load it causes. Anybody have any recommendations?

Also, should nvidia inspector AA mode be enhance? I assumed yes.

Screenshot attached of my nvidia inspector profile. Currently getting 100 fps pretty easily on my GTX980.

 

[Authense]

This suggestion was made because Sparse grid SS is not a feature in that original AA behavior profile I guess. If true this would explain the mystery you mentioned.

 

[RasmusP]

The nvidia profiles and SGSSAA settings are completely unrelated. It's not really an official setting but from what I read it was a bug at some point but people loved it so nvidia left the door open and you can sneak your way in via the inspector.

That also explains why it's pure lottery when SGSSAA will work or not. Sometimes using a bit that works in a comparable game engine (or the same) gets it activated, sometimes not using anything at all... The behavior flag is a weird thing. It's needed for some games when running ingame options only but once you fiddle with the inspector it can make things work or break.

Most dx9 titles work with a custom bit someone found out, no behavior flag and then forcing (or enhancing if the game got inbuilt MSAA) SGSSAA on top.
Sometimes only normal supersampling works, sometimes one of the combined, weird ones work.

They also all do something differently! Some are sharp, some are blurry, some are better for "real objects" similar to MSAA, some are really good on transparent things.

Assetto Corsa is an easy game. Behavior Flag at default or off both work. Also it works without a custom bit but it might look a bit differently with some bits.

In the end I went back to 8x MSAA with MFAA enabled.

Why? Because SGSSAA triggers on SMOKE and DIRT (or explosions/magic/whatever for other games). So everything is beautifully running at 40% GPU load on my 1070 @1080p single screen until someone directly in front of you goes on the grass and the load goes up to 100% and your fps down to 20!

So it was SGSSAA or Smoke+Dirt. Since Smoke+Dirt are nice feedback for locking tyres, going too wide or seeing if someone does one of that, I decided for race pace against SGSSAA.


LOD BIAS:
NEVER use this for sharpening when using SGSSAA. It's an ancient solution that brings a lot of problems!
In Counter Strike you got banned for it until an auto-reset was implemented because you could see enemies better at positive LOD settings.
In some games a negative LOD bias increases GPU load massively because Object LODs are increased by way too much etc etc.

What was a nice settings but is broken since the GTX 7xx series was CLAMP for the LOD settings. This allowed for normal LODing but blocked negative settings so fine lines weren't overly sharp and didn't start to flicker.
Sadly the setting is broken - otherwise you probably wouldn't need such high amounts of AA in games like Assetto Corsa...

How to fight blurriness:
Use reshade/sweetFX/whatever works for your game! From my tests Lumasharpen induces the least flickering while sharpening really well.


Conclusion:
Buy a 1440p or 4k screen, lower graphic settings until your GPU can handle it and get used to flickering/shimmering/pixel crawling. You will save lots and lots of time and frustration and just be able to enjoy every game without much fiddling.
I tried Witcher 3 and pcars1 for example with all bits I could find, trying to force everything that's possible, wasted DAYS!
Then played for some time with forced nvidia FXAA on top and Reshades SMAA on top and then sharpening it up again... It was okay but texts were difficult to read since they were affected too.

Then I slowly became less bothered by that all and stopped fiddling around. Once you get used to it you stop seeing it and nowadays I just enjoy games as they are.

Also the newest games have TAA, which does a great job in ACC, Assassin's Creed origins, Battlefield 1, For Honor and F1 2018 (2017 was really blurry and bad when standing still!!).
Throw some Lumasharpen at them and get happy

 

[Richard8746]

The nvidia profiles and SGSSAA settings are completely unrelated. It's not really an official setting but from what I read it was a bug at some point but people loved it so nvidia left the door open and you can sneak your way in via the inspector.

That also explains why it's pure lottery when SGSSAA will work or not. Sometimes using a bit that works in a comparable game engine (or the same) gets it activated, sometimes not using anything at all... The behavior flag is a weird thing. It's needed for some games when running ingame options only but once you fiddle with the inspector it can make things work or break.

Most dx9 titles work with a custom bit someone found out, no behavior flag and then forcing (or enhancing if the game got inbuilt MSAA) SGSSAA on top.
Sometimes only normal supersampling works, sometimes one of the combined, weird ones work.

They also all do something differently! Some are sharp, some are blurry, some are better for "real objects" similar to MSAA, some are really good on transparent things.

Assetto Corsa is an easy game. Behavior Flag at default or off both work. Also it works without a custom bit but it might look a bit differently with some bits.

In the end I went back to 8x MSAA with MFAA enabled.

Why? Because SGSSAA triggers on SMOKE and DIRT (or explosions/magic/whatever for other games). So everything is beautifully running at 40% GPU load on my 1070 @1080p single screen until someone directly in front of you goes on the grass and the load goes up to 100% and your fps down to 20!

So it was SGSSAA or Smoke+Dirt. Since Smoke+Dirt are nice feedback for locking tyres, going too wide or seeing if someone does one of that, I decided for race pace against SGSSAA.


LOD BIAS:
NEVER use this for sharpening when using SGSSAA. It's an ancient solution that brings a lot of problems!
In Counter Strike you got banned for it until an auto-reset was implemented because you could see enemies better at positive LOD settings.
In some games a negative LOD bias increases GPU load massively because Object LODs are increased by way too much etc etc.

What was a nice settings but is broken since the GTX 7xx series was CLAMP for the LOD settings. This allowed for normal LODing but blocked negative settings so fine lines weren't overly sharp and didn't start to flicker.
Sadly the setting is broken - otherwise you probably wouldn't need such high amounts of AA in games like Assetto Corsa...

How to fight blurriness:
Use reshade/sweetFX/whatever works for your game! From my tests Lumasharpen induces the least flickering while sharpening really well.


Conclusion:
Buy a 1440p or 4k screen, lower graphic settings until your GPU can handle it and get used to flickering/shimmering/pixel crawling. You will save lots and lots of time and frustration and just be able to enjoy every game without much fiddling.
I tried Witcher 3 and pcars1 for example with all bits I could find, trying to force everything that's possible, wasted DAYS!
Then played for some time with forced nvidia FXAA on top and Reshades SMAA on top and then sharpening it up again... It was okay but texts were difficult to read since they were affected too.

Then I slowly became less bothered by that all and stopped fiddling around. Once you get used to it you stop seeing it and nowadays I just enjoy games as they are.

Also the newest games have TAA, which does a great job in ACC, Assassin's Creed origins, Battlefield 1, For Honor and F1 2018 (2017 was really blurry and bad when standing still!!).
Throw some Lumasharpen at them and get happy

Thanks very much for the detailed information.

 

[Davide Nativo]

@RasmusP MFAA does not work with MSAA settings higher than 4x

I would be interested in reading your source about negative bias, I always read that it is a must for SGSSAA to properly work :s

 

[RasmusP]

@RasmusP MFAA does not work with MSAA settings higher than 4x

I would be interested in reading your source about negative bias, I always read that it is a must for SGSSAA to properly work :s

Ah, good to know I didn't see a real difference (probably placebo) but also no performance difference.

There's no source I could throw in but I can explain why it's not a good solution if you can get reshade etc to work:
Negative LOD Bias will result in more fine details. Therefore everything will look sharper too but it's not because it's sharper, it's because finer details are just sharper by nature. If you set the LOD Bias to huge POSITIVE numbers, there won't be any textures anymore. Everything will be just a blurred, single colour surface (which is why you see enemies better for example).

SGSSAA blurrs the image to some amount and back then there was no DirectX-Injection like Reshade so Negative LOD Bias was the only possible thing.

But you change the graphics load, add artificial details etc. If you want that too, then you can do it. But if you just want to fight the blurriness, I won't recommend it.

I will provide some Screenshots until tomorrow and tag you then!

 

[manu68]

Thanks rasmus. Great explanations !

 

[RasmusP]

@leon_90 and @manu68 here are the Screenshots.
LODs are 0, +3, -3. I activated 2x SGSSAA since the LOD Bias setting only works with SGSSAA or instead "AA replay mode all" or something like this selected for transparency AA!

What I would like to comment on this: I really miss the "clamp" option that allowed positive LODs but locked all negative LODs.
As you can see the image with +3.0 LOD Bias is really soft and smooth! I'd like to have this softness for the "0.0" picture at the horizon or far away lines!
Not a great example here but look at the red/white tyre-wall at the left on "+3.0 lod"

There was a hacktool available on the internet that modified the nvidia driver DLLs and locked all dx9 or below games to "clamp". Tried with Rocket League and rf2 before the dx11 transformation and it worked like a charm!
Sadly it doesn't work with current GPU drivers and of course I wouldn't link it here in public. It's coded by a frustrated rF2 guy afaik but still a DLL modifying tool.

There's a petition for bringing back the "clamp setting" in the geforce forums. Google for it and you'll find it

Anyway, here are the shots:
LOD 0.0 (standard):

LOD -3.0 (look how overly crisp everything is!)

LOD +3.0 (well... blurr blurr):

And since it's so much fun:
LOD 0.0, 2x SGSSAA but Reshade's Lumasharpen to a crazy high value!!:

 

[Kek700]

I use clamp, but it appears that I may be fooling myself into thinking it’s working.
I like your demonstration above, shows the difference really well. Forgive my ignorance
but does this apply when using the AC graphics settings only.
I have lost my enthusiasm for using the multiple settings of Nvidia inspector.

 

[RasmusP]

I use clamp, but it appears that I may be fooling myself into thinking it’s working.
I like your demonstration above, shows the difference really well. Forgive my ignorance
but does this apply when using the AC graphics settings only.
I have lost my enthusiasm for using the multiple settings of Nvidia inspector.

The last screenshot with lumasharpen from Reshade works, yes.
The LOD Bias value does not.

To make the LOD Bias Value to kick in you 100% need the nvidia inspector. You can either use SGSSAA (not sure if it works with just supersampling too) or you need to set the "Transparency Supersampling" to "0x00000008 AA_MODE_REPLAY_MODE_ALL".

Then on the other hand why would you? Clamp doesn't work and I really don't recommend setting LOD Bias to anything other than 0.000! It screws with the game graphics in a way the developers clearly didn't intend!

To "clamp" again: if you have an older GPU (before maxwell iirc so before the 9xx cards) it might still work. It's one of the reasons people cried for worse quality on new GPUs.

It wouldn't be such a problem if the mainstream wouldn't cry for more details and eye candy while sacrificing smoothness. The Witcher 3 for example has an inbuilt LOD setting (similar to content manager slider). It goes from 0.0, which is a bit blurry and lacks some fine details up to -1.0, which means flickering and shimmering everywhere.
Fun thing is that the higher you set the graphic settings, the more negative that slider goes.
#DetailsAreAwesome #I'mDyingFromFlickeringButNeedMoreEyeCandy.

With a mod or ini-editing I set it to -0.4. Which is a good compromise.

 

[Unionjackstar]

Hello guys,

this evening i was playing around with some settings get a better image in my oculus rift. I stumbled over a graphics.ini in the assettocorsa/system/cfg folder. There is written following:

MIP_LOD_BIAS=0 ; GO NEGATIVE (ie. -1) TO SHARP THE IMAGE

So i went negative by -1, to sharpen the image. And voila: My image was more sharpen, but even very shimmering. So set it to -0.5 and Pixel_per_Display in the oculus.ini to standard 1.0.

The result is a sharp image and framerate above 90fps with a Ryzen 5 2600 and a GTX 1060 6GB. I have shadows disabled with the shadow patch. You can raise the Pixel_per_Display, but i do not think that it is necessary.

Would like to know, if you can share my opinion.
And sorry for my bad english. I´m from germany...

 

[Cote Dazur]

Hello guys,

this evening i was playing around with some settings get a better image in my oculus rift. I stumbled over a graphics.ini in the assettocorsa/system/cfg folder. There is written following:

MIP_LOD_BIAS=0 ; GO NEGATIVE (ie. -1) TO SHARP THE IMAGE

So i went negative by -1, to sharpen the image. And voila: My image was more sharpen, but even very shimmering. So set it to -0.5 and Pixel_per_Display in the oculus.ini to standard 1.0.

The result is a sharp image and framerate above 90fps with a Ryzen 5 2600 and a GTX 1060 6GB. I have shadows disabled with the shadow patch. You can raise the Pixel_per_Display, but i do not think that it is necessary.

Would like to know, if you can share my opinion.
And sorry for my bad english. I´m from germany...

I have been using -1 lod map bias for while, using the cursor in CM setting, I like the sharpness it produce at very, if any as I did not noticed any, low fps cost. I am also using 1.5 SS.
I did not know I could adjust it for less than -1 in assettocorsa/system/cfg/graphic.ini, thank you, I will try and report, as I agree, -1 is great but introduce some "shimmering" for lack of better term.

 

[Cote Dazur]

One with shadows and Supersampling

I would like to try that setting, as I also find PCars2 to be very good in VR, as long as I don't have to drive it.
I would be delighted to have AC even better than PCars2 in VR.

 

[Authense]

AC is way way better in VR - I have both - no comparison with my setup.