AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing

samurai1999 said:
Hey, man, calm down!
- don't get too hung up on the name

Where's the Tamlin we all know & love telling us that the GF110 is really 2 x GF104?
:D

(sorry,, wrong thread too!)
Click to expand...

This is not a rumor thread, like the one discussing the different GF110 rumors that are on the internet... :rolleyes:

Please read the thread title next time you post somewhere. Might avoid the confusion you express in your posts aftewards.
 
Stone Cold said:
Jaggies are annoying, so maybe some blurring is worth it to get rid of them. But, morphological AA is nothing like 4xAA, if you can spare the frame-rate.
Click to expand...

From what I have seen from actual usage of this ingame, I'd say that in some games, it looks better with MSAA, while in others with MLAA. MLAA can look very good or look like crap. ITs very game dependend IMO. That it applies AA to the whole scene is both its advantage and disadvantage.

Here's an (not game) example with Heaven Benchmark, where 8X AA is used vs. MLAA. Notice fence on top right:
1X MSAA
1xmsaau5qm.png

8X MSAA
8xmsaaeusl.png

MLAA
results.jpg

source
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
This is not a rumor thread, like the one discussing the different GF110 rumors that are on the internet... :rolleyes:

Please read the thread title next time you post somewhere. Might avoid the confusion you express in your posts aftewards.
Click to expand...

Go on then, I'll bite ...

- which part of "AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing" do you think I didn't understand?

- what confusion are you talking about?

:rolleyes:
 
samurai1999 said:
Go on then, I'll bite ...

- which part of "AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing" do you think I didn't understand?

- what confusion are you talking about?

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

That this thread is about AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing and not about what you wish to name it.
Your confusion is that this thread is not about discussing semantics of MLAA, but the effect of AMD's MLAA in games. I've pointed this out to you in a couple of posts now. Let it sink in... :rolleyes:
Create your own thread if you wish to discuss MLAA vs. AMD's MLAA vs. anything. If you want to discuss this further, PM me instead of derailing this thread.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
That this thread is about AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing and not about what you wish to name it.
Your confusion is that this thread is not about discussing semantics of MLAA, but the effect of AMD's MLAA in games. I've pointed this out to you in a couple of posts now. Let it sink in... :rolleyes:
Create your own thread if you wish to discuss MLAA vs. AMD's MLAA vs. anything. If you want to discuss this further, PM me instead of derailing this thread.
Click to expand...

Actually, I think you've misunderstood my point about it being mis-named....
- my point was that MLAA, being a 2D post-process, attempting to AA after the image has been Aliased, will, likely have negative effects as well as positive effects
- the Tom's Hardware example shows this
- the MLAA technique does a good job of removing the jaggies on certain parts of the image, but also has the unwanted effect of removing some (wanted) detail in the HUD.

The naming thing was a 'rhetorical device' that I used to emphasise the point.

But, having looked at more examples, I do think that MLAA is doing a better job than a pure Adaptive Low-Pass filter would do, so perhaps that was unfair to AMD's MLAA....
;)

Really, it's a question of 'do the positive effects of when it works, outway any negative effects'.
- but perhaps this isn't the thread to discuss this in...
:(
 
samurai1999 said:
Really, it's a question of 'do the positive effects of when it works, outway any negative effects'.
- but perhaps this isn't the thread to discuss this in...
:(
Click to expand...

Actually, if you wish to discuss what negative effects it has vs. the positive effects in a game, please do it here. If you can bring actual examples (like I do), even better. I don't expect everyone to like it in any game (heck, I love it in some games, but I don't like it in all games). This is not a theoretical thread, but a practical application thread. Kinda like [H]'s philosophy of benchmarks vs. real gaming. "What do I get when I use MLAA and what do I loose". All AA filtering techs have their strenghts and weaknesses. Sometimes SSAA looks much better then MSAA and sometimes SSAA looks like crap. MLAA is no different.

But, whether or not AMD is correct to call is this or that is way OT and that belong more in the thread on B3D I linked to. :)

And, the way you did it, reminded me of an English expression called "Taking the piss" typically used by shills when doing damage control.

Anyway, lets be done with that part of this thread and move on. :)
 
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Tamlin_WSGF said:
From what I have seen from actual usage of this ingame, I'd say that in some games, it looks better with MSAA, while in others with MLAA. MLAA can look very good or look like crap. ITs very game dependend IMO. That it applies AA to the whole scene is both its advantage and disadvantage.

Here's an (not game) example with Heaven Benchmark, where 8X AA is used vs. MLAA. Notice fence on top right:

source
Click to expand...

Very nice. Other than HUD/2D overlays, I don't see an issue. It seems to do a great job.

I understand this is a post process, output buffer type effect, but it seems like between AMD and developers they could agree on an interface for supporting games where you could also define a simple 2D mask where you don't want the effect to take place, then you could have a VERY fast and decent AA method that didn't clobber the HUDs.
 
You guys need to remember that this shit has already been implemented on the PS3 in the form of God of War III, which is anything but blurry, at all, anywhere, in menus or in game. So clearly there is some mechanism by which devs can selectively apply it and tweak it as needed. Killzone 3 is also using this tech as will a number of other upcoming first party PS3 titles in all likelihood.
 
Matrices said:
You guys need to remember that this shit has already been implemented on the PS3 in the form of God of War III, which is anything but blurry, at all, anywhere, in menus or in game. So clearly there is some mechanism by which devs can selectively apply it and tweak it as needed. Killzone 3 is also using this tech as will a number of other upcoming first party PS3 titles in all likelihood.
Click to expand...

PS3 uses different methods. You can read about them in this article. The MLAA method, where the Cell processor applies MLAA in the frame buffer, also gives blur on hud and other 2d elements:

Being experimental, it does have its drawbacks. When edges in-game are one pixel or less than one pixel in thickness, the edge-detection technique doesn't really work. Pandemic also subjects the entire, completed framebuffer to analysis - including the HUD elements - so there is often artefacting on the text overlays. This is probably unavoidable in this game: while the GPU starts to draw the next frame, the SPUs are busy with the AA and for that situation to take place the completed frame will need to be analysed.
Click to expand...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-saboteur-aa-blog-entry

This is a tradeoff for:

The PS3 rendition of Pandemic's The Saboteur is different though. It's special. It's trying something new that's never been seen before on console, or indeed PC, and its results are terrific. In a best-case scenario you get edge-smoothing that is beyond the effect of 16x multi-sampling anti-aliasing, effectively delivering an effect better than the capabilities of high-end GPUs without crippling performance. Compare and contrast with Xbox 360 hardware, which tops out at 4x MSAA.
Click to expand...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-saboteur-aa-blog-entry

Its the same as you can see with AMD's MLAA. :)

digitalfoundry_gallerySaboteur_Aliasing_000.jpg.jpg

digitalfoundry_gallerySaboteur_Aliasing_001.jpg.jpg


Snowdog said:
Very nice. Other than HUD/2D overlays, I don't see an issue. It seems to do a great job.

I understand this is a post process, output buffer type effect, but it seems like between AMD and developers they could agree on an interface for supporting games where you could also define a simple 2D mask where you don't want the effect to take place, then you could have a VERY fast and decent AA method that didn't clobber the HUDs.
Click to expand...

That would have been sweet. :) Drivers applying 2D after MLAA has been applied.
 
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samurai1999 said:
So, you've called me a Shill twice
- are personal insults allowed in this forum? How nice.
:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Second time was an explaination of first time as response to the post I quoted.

Now, can you stop derailing/thread crapping my thread and take whatever argument you have thats OT on PM?

Edit: We've taken it to PM. Thanks samurai1999. :)
 
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Snowdog said:
I understand this is a post process, output buffer type effect, but it seems like between AMD and developers they could agree on an interface for supporting games where you could also define a simple 2D mask where you don't want the effect to take place, then you could have a VERY fast and decent AA method that didn't clobber the HUDs.
Click to expand...

Or just make it a call that the Game can all before it adds the HUD
- so that the image under the HUD gets MLAA, but the HUD does not....

Or make the code available to Devs, so that they can control it themselves...
 
Forceman said:
I don't think that'll work, since MLAA is a post-processing effect.
Click to expand...

Well, I think you could organise things so that you draw everything except the HUD, then post-process that using MLAA, then add the HUD.

It's just a question of where the process is done, and ideally it should be done before the HUD
- but that needs some interaction between the game & the driver (if it's done in the driver)

As I understand it, it's just DirectCompute Code, so it needn't necessarily be done in the driver.

The current driver implementation doesn't need the game to be aware of it, which is good, but means that it happens over everything...
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
That this thread is about AMD's Morphological Anti-Aliasing and not about what you wish to name it.
Your confusion is that this thread is not about discussing semantics of MLAA, but the effect of AMD's MLAA in games. I've pointed this out to you in a couple of posts now. Let it sink in... :rolleyes:
Create your own thread if you wish to discuss MLAA vs. AMD's MLAA vs. anything. If you want to discuss this further, PM me instead of derailing this thread.
Click to expand...

samurai1999 said:
Actually, I think you've misunderstood my point about it being mis-named....
- my point was that MLAA, being a 2D post-process, attempting to AA after the image has been Aliased, will, likely have negative effects as well as positive effects
- the Tom's Hardware example shows this
- the MLAA technique does a good job of removing the jaggies on certain parts of the image, but also has the unwanted effect of removing some (wanted) detail in the HUD.

The naming thing was a 'rhetorical device' that I used to emphasise the point.

But, having looked at more examples, I do think that MLAA is doing a better job than a pure Adaptive Low-Pass filter would do, so perhaps that was unfair to AMD's MLAA....
;)

Really, it's a question of 'do the positive effects of when it works, outway any negative effects'.
- but perhaps this isn't the thread to discuss this in...
:(
Click to expand...

Tamlin_WSGF said:
Actually, if you wish to discuss what negative effects it has vs. the positive effects in a game, please do it here. If you can bring actual examples (like I do), even better. I don't expect everyone to like it in any game (heck, I love it in some games, but I don't like it in all games). This is not a theoretical thread, but a practical application thread. Kinda like [H]'s philosophy of benchmarks vs. real gaming. "What do I get when I use MLAA and what do I loose". All AA filtering techs have their strenghts and weaknesses. Sometimes SSAA looks much better then MSAA and sometimes SSAA looks like crap. MLAA is no different.

But, whether or not AMD is correct to call is this or that is way OT and that belong more in the thread on B3D I linked to. :)

And, the way you did it, reminded me of an English expression called "Taking the piss" typically used by shills when doing damage control.

Anyway, lets be done with that part of this thread and move on. :)
Click to expand...

^^

I love you guys, two quite eloquent and knowledgeable uber geeks battling it out over semantics and definitions. This is heavy entertainment :D
Plus its a great thread and I want to see Metro 2033 shots MLAA.


Snowdog said:
Very nice. Other than HUD/2D overlays, I don't see an issue. It seems to do a great job.

I understand this is a post process, output buffer type effect, but it seems like between AMD and developers they could agree on an interface for supporting games where you could also define a simple 2D mask where you don't want the effect to take place, then you could have a VERY fast and decent AA method that didn't clobber the HUDs.
Click to expand...

Like I suggested earlier in this thread.
 
Maybe I just glanced over it too quickly, but was Input lag ever talked about in the review?

Because on the 5XXX series there is definitely input lag with MLAA enabled.
 
nakedhand said:
^^

I love you guys, two quite eloquent and knowledgeable uber geeks battling it out over semantics and definitions. This is heavy entertainment :D
Plus its a great thread and I want to see Metro 2033 shots MLAA.
Click to expand...

Lol! No more entertainment for you. We've taken it on PM. :p

refraxion said:
Maybe I just glanced over it too quickly, but was Input lag ever talked about in the review?

Because on the 5XXX series there is definitely input lag with MLAA enabled.
Click to expand...

Haven't seen any mention of input lag and MLAA in any review, and this is important for many. I'll run some tests myself too. :)
 
Even if you can't do the MLAA before the HUD.

A 2D mask you build while drawing your HUD, will produce exactly the same visual result. Since the mask only need to be a simply do/don't process map, it is only 1 bit/pixel so you only need ~2MB for a frame.

Obviously this will be different than using any other AA method and game programmers will have maintain the mask and pass its location in with buffer completion call.

But I see nothing preventing this at least in some future release and it will not really affect the image chain or processing speed.
 
Honestly I can't wait to see this on eyefinity. In the games I play, I take some huge hits with AA at 5760x1200. Just imagine 5760x1200 with mlaa running dirt2 at 60fps constant instead of 5760x1200 with 2xAA at 38fps.
 
refraxion said:
Maybe I just glanced over it too quickly, but was Input lag ever talked about in the review?

Because on the 5XXX series there is definitely input lag with MLAA enabled.
Click to expand...

Got MLAA working with 5750. Noticed input lag in VTMB, but none at all in ME2 or in CoJ:Bound in Blood. So depends on the game i suppose.

Other than that i like what MLAA does, especially with games that have only partial AA or none at all. In CoJ, i could never get AA to work, so this is a godsend. Makes it much easier to spot enemies in the distance without all those jaggies. I can live with blurry text.
 
I will attest that there is indeed noticeable input lag with MLAA on my 5870. It cripples certain games responsiveness.
 
I'm way over my head here with the different kinds of AA. I just installed my new 6870 and noticed that MLAA is unchecked by default in the 3D section of Cataclyst with the 10.10a drivers. If I enable this with application control enabled, will it take effect before the AA settings in a game? What if the game doesn't support it? Also, what if I turn up the AA in a game, will the MLAA take precedence? Sorry for the noob questions, I'm just completely lost in the hierarchy of what controls what.
 
Snowdog said:
Even if you can't do the MLAA before the HUD.

A 2D mask you build while drawing your HUD, will produce exactly the same visual result. Since the mask only need to be a simply do/don't process map, it is only 1 bit/pixel so you only need ~2MB for a frame.

Obviously this will be different than using any other AA method and game programmers will have maintain the mask and pass its location in with buffer completion call.

But I see nothing preventing this at least in some future release and it will not really affect the image chain or processing speed.
Click to expand...

Yes, should work fine
- but if the game can control when the MLAA happens, it might make it easier to deal with transparent HUDs, score-tables etc, that have mixture of transparent areas & opaque areas...
 
So, I've been testing MLAA in a number of titles. I can only think of two words to describe it...

Input lag

The post-processing filter adds massive amounts of input lag to any game it's used on. The screen is so far behind the mouse, aiming/driving accurately was made pretty much impossible. It even made RTS titles hard to play, because cursor movement is delayed.

Nice idea, but I can't even begin to comment on the visual quality or performance until the input lag problems are solved. Way too much delay to be playable (almost as bad as OnLive).
 
Is the "input lag" due to 8x AA being chosen? Drop down to 4x in CCC and see if it goes away.
 
jimbo75 said:
Is the "input lag" due to 8x AA being chosen? Drop down to 4x in CCC and see if it goes away.
Click to expand...

...I just said I was using MLAA, not MSAA.

Since MLAA is applied as a post-processing effect, it adds additional input lag. Hopefully AMD has some way to minimize this problem.
 
I tried this last night on my crossfired 5870s in 24" eyefinity. I got the option, it seems to be working but my fps in even older games is about 5. So something is screwed. I got the slipstreamed drivers, the latest application profiles from AMD's site.

Anyone else have unbelievable terrible performance? I tried various settings (set to Application under AA and AF options).
 
Unknown-One said:
So, I've been testing MLAA in a number of titles. I can only think of two words to describe it...

Input lag

The post-processing filter adds massive amounts of input lag to any game it's used on. The screen is so far behind the mouse, aiming/driving accurately was made pretty much impossible. It even made RTS titles hard to play, because cursor movement is delayed.

Nice idea, but I can't even begin to comment on the visual quality or performance until the input lag problems are solved. Way too much delay to be playable (almost as bad as OnLive).
Click to expand...

I wonder if that is because you are using it on a 5xxx series card, and if the 6xxx cards are better optimized for it in some way.
 
Didn't seem to work on my 4850 even though its checked in CCC. Massive artifact-inducing screen tearing in CSS, white screen in TMNF, no video output in MPC-HC, etc.
 
This post may be of interest:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1487222&postcount=4223
MLAA applied in the driver is a post process filter, but there is no reason why a dev cannot include it as part of their rendering. All we are doing is taking the final frame buffer data and intercepting it before it goes to the display. A dev can do all their rendering, have an MLAA pass, copy that into the frame buffer than them put the HUD/overlays on top of that.
Click to expand...
 
mgulbran said:
Does that check box simply override the other choices? I guess I should wait till the [H] review because most of this is usually explained.
Click to expand...

Since it's a post-process effect, it's the very last thing that gets done. The effect is applied after your video card has processed whatever choice you made for AA. It's sort of like the game draws a picture, but your video card is photoshipping an edge-smoothing filter afterward.
 
mgulbran said:
I suppose I'm just curious about all the choices and MLAA. Does that check box simply override the other choices? I guess I should wait till the [H] review because most of this is usually explained.
Click to expand...

MLAA works in tandem to whatever other forms of AA, if any, you have selected. MSAA(and all the filters) and Adaptive AA work while the game is being rendered. MLAA, as has been stated numerous times, is only a post-processing process. Once the image has been rendered, but before it's been sent to the display, it is applied. That means you could combine it with any of the other options, but it would be a bit redundant since it would really only serve to blur the image. MLAA is best thought of as a last ditch option, mainly to be used on games that don't allow you to apply any kind of other AA, or games that take an overly large performance penalty for doing so.
 
No, just ticking the box is enough, tbh IF MLAA works in a game, you do not need the other types of AA.

And that is also the reason why we need profiles for each game, to choose which ones require MLAA and which ones use the standard AA methods.
 
mgulbran said:
Thing is I don't have a choice. I HAVE to choose an AA and filter there is no choose only MLAA option. I'm well aware it is a post-processing process. According to my control panel I have to combine it.
Click to expand...

Once you check the MLAA box, it will be applied to any game that it's compatible with. There is nothing else to do. If you just want to use MLAA, set AA to "Use Application Settings". If the game supports native AA, then disable it in the game. Games that don't allow you any in-game AA option will have just MLAA adn there will be no other settings to mess with.
 
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