SGSSAA - matching # of MSAA samples to TR samples?

grambo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
1,231
I used to only use in-game AA options and didn't pay much attention to transparency AA or other override/enhanced styles of AA. With the purchase of a more powerful system, and a lack of demanding games, I've been getting into forcing higher levels of AA and have been very impressed with the results. Mass Effect 3 with 8X MSAA + 4X SGSSAA looks ridiculously amazing, every surface is smooth with no jaggies, amazing! Diablo 3 is similar but the effect is not as apparent.

Anyway, I was doing some reading online and came across the site below, which says you should always match the coverage sample # from the full scene MSAA to the # of samples used in the transparency AA. Is that true?

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

From that, 4X MSAA + 4X SGSSAA transparency + LOD bias adjustment = ultimate image quality?
 
The SGSSAA option in nVidia Inspector applies the process to the entire screen including non-transparent areas. i.e. It reworks models that have already been MSAAed. It may blur the image.

Objectively speaking the highest quality should be from Antialiasing = 8xQ MSAA and Transparency Antialiasing = 8x Supersampling. This only applies SSAA to transparent textures that can't be MSAAed.
 
Back
Top