SGSSAA = the highest quality AA ?

E

EC51

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Is SGSSAA (Sparse Grid Super Sampling Anti Aliasing) the highest quality (read the most hardware/performance taxing) form of anti-aliasing ?
 
They're putting too many random letters into antialiasing terms these days. By 2020, we'll have SGXS512AADBLUZ
 
Supposedly it's a higher quality version of SSAA. I found it blurry in some titles though.
 
My thing is...how much AA does one need?

I play on a 40 inch 1080p TV that's about 4 feet from my face and anything over say 4xAA Quality or 8x AA I don't even notice a difference.

I look at some games that have 32xSQADAA (or some non-sense) and it just makes me go "Why?"...like whats the point? Especially for people that use high-res screens or smaller screens...just makes no sense.
 
JoeUser said:
My thing is...how much AA does one need?

I play on a 40 inch 1080p TV that's about 4 feet from my face and anything over say 4xAA Quality or 8x AA I don't even notice a difference.

I look at some games that have 32xSQADAA (or some non-sense) and it just makes me go "Why?"...like whats the point? Especially for people that use high-res screens or smaller screens...just makes no sense.
Click to expand...

Because we uhh..you know..notice the aliasing? Just because you don't notice it, doesn't mean we don't. And 4 feet is probably 4 times the amount most people sit from their screen.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Because we uhh..you know..notice the aliasing? Just because you don't notice it, doesn't mean we don't. And 4 feet is probably 4 times the amount most people sit from their screen.
Click to expand...

Oh so you notice it because of your super human high resolution vision? PLEASE! There's no noticeable difference between 8xAA and 32xAA unless you look at your screen through a microscope...DO you use a microscope when gaming? No. Didn't think so. You don't have super 1337 gamer vision, so unless you're playing on a 30 inch monitor at 800x600 from a foot away I don't believe for a second that you could tell the difference from 8xAA to 32xAA on your current 23' monitor at any realistic distance from the screen. I'm guessing you can noticeably tell the difference between 8xAF and 16xAF too right? PC gamer elitist attitude at its finest! :p

Not only that but you sit a foot from your screen? That's not good...and you have to keep in mind that my monitor is FORTY INCHES...so even at 4 feet away its still visually larger than your 23" monitor. Actually just measured 3ft 8in. from my eye balls to the center of my screen.
 
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The lower your native resolution is, the more difference high levels of AA make. An assumption that nobody can see the difference between 32xAA and 8xAA because you can't is a very bad assumption. The choice of the game being played can also make a huge difference; for example, Mass Effect 2 has the worst case of the jaggies I've ever seen on my 1680x1050 display, and I need to use 16x CSAA + 4x SGSSAA to get rid of them entirely.

Here's a writeup about SGSSAA that explains it much better than I can:

http://naturalviolence.webs.com/sgssaa.htm

The short answer: the best AA is a higher resolution. All other forms of AA are imperfect, just in different ways, some of which are more appealing to the eye than others. SGSSAA may sometimes be one of the best, but sometimes it is not, depending on the game, the display, and the user's tastes. Finding the best possible AA for any given game is a matter of lots of experimentation. AA settings that make one game look great can make another game look awful.
 
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Yes I can, its not a huge difference but it is there. From 4x to 16x was the biggest difference for me in BFBC2.

Btw, I can't see tearing while my brother sees it clearly on my screen, does that mean he has supervision and mine is shit? Not it means I don't notice it and he does.

We are all different, but I guess because you don't notice a difference neither does anyone else.
Also, just because your a casual gamer means I am a PC elitist? I enjoy my xbox 360 on my TV as well, but when I play on my PC I want to be able to be close to the monitor so I can see everything and still be able to read ingame chat. Plus, wearing glasses sucks with a headset, so I have to sit closer.
 
Higher resolutions cannot help with all aliasing artefacts. Also, given the image quality, they are very inefficient.

SGSSAA is the best method there currently is. It's not about the number of samples (like 8x vs 32x) but about where the samples are applied to. MSAA only applies to polygon edges while SGSSAA applies to textures as well, reducing if not eliminating specular aliasing.
 
JoeUser said:
you sit a foot from your screen? That's not good...and you have to keep in mind that my monitor is FORTY INCHES...so even at 4 feet away its still visually larger than your 23" monitor. Actually just measured 3ft 8in. from my eye balls to the center of my screen.
Click to expand...

By my admittedly rusty calculations:

23" @ 1' = 51.2deg
40" @ 3'8 = 48.9deg

Just sayin'
 
Dumb question, but can you apply SGSSAA full-scene? The only game I've tried it in so far is Mass Effect 3, by way of running 4X MSAA + 4X Transparency SGSSAA. Is it possible to set SGSSAA as the "main" type of AA in the control panel or NV Inspector?

For what it's worth ME3 with 4X MSAA + 4X SGSSAA + 16X AF looks AMAZING. It is a huge improvement in visual quality from just 4X MSAA.
 
Yes, SGSSAA is full-scene:


But working MSAA is always the prerequisite, no matter if you use Nvidia or AMD. When SGSSAA is selected, it "overwrites" the MSAA but uses the same sample positions. Best use matching sample numbers, so 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA = 4xSGSSAA
 
Just askin' : but while you are applying all this super-de-dooper AA are you just looking at the pictures or are you playing the game? j/k:D
 
Is there a chart or something that keeps track of what the alphabet soup of AA's mean, what they do, etc.? It's getting a little ridiculous/out of hand
 
I agree with what I think is the crux of JoeUser's argument, that if you are actually PLAYING the game these extreme levels of AA seem a little ridiculous. I haven't seen "crawling jaggies" in a game in ages. Yes, if you stop, stare and take a screenshot, they may be there... But once in motion it becomes secondary. Sure the type of game can change how aliasing is perceived. Maybe there aren't enough people here that have played games at 320x240 on a 13-15" monitor :-P

That being said. I also agree that people all perceive the world differently and some would be more sensitive to these things.

...as for me, I've seen enough of those gifs that swap between two shots with one at 8xAA and one at 16xAA....and I always seem to think.....it that difference REALLY going to ruin my gaming experience?
 
Kranium said:
I agree with what I think is the crux of JoeUser's argument, that if you are actually PLAYING the game these extreme levels of AA seem a little ridiculous. I haven't seen "crawling jaggies" in a game in ages. Yes, if you stop, stare and take a screenshot, they may be there... But once in motion it becomes secondary. Sure the type of game can change how aliasing is perceived. Maybe there aren't enough people here that have played games at 320x240 on a 13-15" monitor :-P

That being said. I also agree that people all perceive the world differently and some would be more sensitive to these things.

...as for me, I've seen enough of those gifs that swap between two shots with one at 8xAA and one at 16xAA....and I always seem to think.....it that difference REALLY going to ruin my gaming experience?
Click to expand...

I agree that the differences are not world changing, but if you have the horsepower to run high modes of AA (like SGSSAA) why not do it? I find in single player games with good art direction (Mass Effect series for example), it adds to the immersion of the game when all surfaces are extra smooth, zero jaggies/crawling etc.

In MP games it's not worth the performance penalty, except on old stuff like TF2.

Also thanks boxleit for the explanation, agrees with what natural violence says.
 
........aaaaaand I'm back.

Temporarily anyways. It's time for one of my trademark wall-of-text posts.

My thing is...how much AA does one need?
Click to expand...

That's a subjective topic.

I play on a 40 inch 1080p TV that's about 4 feet from my face and anything over say 4xAA Quality or 8x AA I don't even notice a difference.

I look at some games that have 32xSQADAA (or some non-sense) and it just makes me go "Why?"...like whats the point? Especially for people that use high-res screens or smaller screens...just makes no sense.
Click to expand...

For MSAA/CSAA samples I agree with you. If your resolution is over 1MP nearly all geometry aliasing is gone by the time you hit 8 samples on a sparse or jitter grid.

Adding SSAA does offer a very noticeable benefit over MSAA/CSAA though. Especially in modern titles which are filled with shader aliasing, which MSAA/CSAA won't alleviate.

But working MSAA is always the prerequisite, no matter if you use Nvidia or AMD. When SGSSAA is selected, it "overwrites" the MSAA but uses the same sample positions. Best use matching sample numbers, so 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA = 4xSGSSAA
Click to expand...

AMD cards use rotated/jittered grids for their SSAA.

Is there a chart or something that keeps track of what the alphabet soup of AA's mean, what they do, etc.? It's getting a little ridiculous/out of hand
Click to expand...

It's a bit out of date since I haven't worked on it in almost two years but here you go:
http://naturalviolence.webs.com/ati.htm
http://naturalviolence.webs.com/nvidia.htm
http://naturalviolence.webs.com/generalaa.htm

That being said. I also agree that people all perceive the world differently and some would be more sensitive to these things.

...as for me, I've seen enough of those gifs that swap between two shots with one at 8xAA and one at 16xAA....and I always seem to think.....it that difference REALLY going to ruin my gaming experience?
Click to expand...

There are two things to consider here as far as I'm concerned:
1. Most aliasing is temporal and cannot be seen in screenshots.
2. Your brain filters out aliasing fairly well after you've been exposed to it for awhile. Playing with high levels of AA on a regular basis for awhile will adjust your brain so that it becomes highly sensitive to it. Just as playing with no AA on a regular basis for awhile will adjust your brain to not notice it.

I also disagree with the common assertion in this thread that SGSSAA is the best form of AA currently available on nvidia cards. HSAA (the xS modes) are clearly better.

If you have an nvidia card there are three forms of SSAA that you can use. OGSSAA, HSAA, and SGSSAA. You will rarely ever encounter a game that works well with all three so just use whichever one works and doesn't cause blurring due to conflicts with post-processing shaders (if that's even possible). If you happen to find a game engine (mostly older game engine) that works well with all of them I would strongly suggest HSAA.

Of course TXAA is going to blow HSAA out of the water. Too bad I don't have a 600 series card.....
 
Are you sure about that? I don't have an AMD/ATI card right now but for the last one I had that was not the case, you would set the AA mode to supersampling then set the number of samples. And it worked on eve online which didn't support MSAA at the time. All the screenshots I can find of the current version of CCC seem to confirm that this is still the case.
 
99% sure. Try it in GTA 4, won't work ;)
You can of course try to force MSAA, that works occasionally. But not in every game and often performance is bad and/or you get graphics glitches like black thin lines in Dead Island for example.
 
Yeah you can't set MSAA and SSAA at the same time in CCC:
ccc2j.jpg


So you're saying that you have to set MSAA in game in order for driver level SSAA to work? If you look around the web you'll find that a lot of people are using AMDs SSAA without setting MSAA in game and even using it in games which don't even support MSAA, and it clearly works. Maybe it doesn't work with some game engines but certainly not all of them.
 
NaturalViolence said:
........aaaaaand I'm back.

Temporarily anyways. It's time for one of my trademark wall-of-text posts.



That's a subjective topic.



For MSAA/CSAA samples I agree with you. If your resolution is over 1MP nearly all geometry aliasing is gone by the time you hit 8 samples on a sparse or jitter grid.

Adding SSAA does offer a very noticeable benefit over MSAA/CSAA though. Especially in modern titles which are filled with shader aliasing, which MSAA/CSAA won't alleviate.



AMD cards use rotated/jittered grids for their SSAA.



It's a bit out of date since I haven't worked on it in almost two years but here you go:
http://naturalviolence.webs.com/ati.htm
http://naturalviolence.webs.com/nvidia.htm
http://naturalviolence.webs.com/generalaa.htm



There are two things to consider here as far as I'm concerned:
1. Most aliasing is temporal and cannot be seen in screenshots.
2. Your brain filters out aliasing fairly well after you've been exposed to it for awhile. Playing with high levels of AA on a regular basis for awhile will adjust your brain so that it becomes highly sensitive to it. Just as playing with no AA on a regular basis for awhile will adjust your brain to not notice it.

I also disagree with the common assertion in this thread that SGSSAA is the best form of AA currently available on nvidia cards. HSAA (the xS modes) are clearly better.

If you have an nvidia card there are three forms of SSAA that you can use. OGSSAA, HSAA, and SGSSAA. You will rarely ever encounter a game that works well with all three so just use whichever one works and doesn't cause blurring due to conflicts with post-processing shaders (if that's even possible). If you happen to find a game engine (mostly older game engine) that works well with all of them I would strongly suggest HSAA.

Of course TXAA is going to blow HSAA out of the water. Too bad I don't have a 600 series card.....
Click to expand...

Sorry for the necro, but this is a top thread on the subject of SGSSAA which I've never seen an option for or heard of. Your post reeeeally makes me want to try HSAA, since I have never tried it and you are lauded as an AA expert and recommend it so highly. Unfortunately it seems like they still haven't added support for this to DX11+. I also don't see any options about it in the nvidia cpanel, not even for older games. One of the games I play can be run in both DX11 and older modes (WoW). I don't suppose there would be any benefit to running an older version just to try HSAA in that?
 
If you want SSAA today use DSR and simulate 3840x2160 on 1920x1080 screen. It have many advantages over all these *SSAA methods and unlike those: it just works.
For even better results you can combine FXAA with DSR.
DSR + FXAA does not blur image like FXAA normally does because FXAA is applied before down-sampling.
 
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