I'm now noticing awful, truly awful Anti-Aliasing

Stacey · Jan 11, 2021

The shit that smears your beautiful screen with what can only be called cataract.

I upgraded my monitor recently to a 34 inch 3440x1440 ultrawide, coming from a 24 inch. The detail in a lot of games is astounding but good God TAA and CryEngines implementation makes me nauseous. It wasn't visible enough to bother me initially but increasing my monitor size magnifies it exponentially.

I've tried Nvidia sharpening but it just ain't enough :(

So it's decided, AA - Off forever.

Zoidn · Jan 11, 2021

Modern AA solutions making games super blurry is a real bummer. MSAA just costs too much performance in most cases, but I find it odd that you often don't even get the option to activate it, only FXAA, TAA and stuff like that. I guess forcing it through the GPU drivers is still an option but it seems to be random if it actually works or not.

Cross-Section · Jan 11, 2021

I recently upgraded to a similar ultrawide and I will say that it does help that aliasing is way less evident (and less bothersome) at the higher resolution.

Stuff like TAA doesn't bother me, at least not yet, but I guess it all depends on implementation.

nuoh_my_god · Jan 11, 2021

Zoidn said:
Modern AA solutions making games super blurry is a real bummer. MSAA just costs too much performance in most cases, but I find it odd that you often don't even get the option to activate it, only FXAA, TAA and stuff like that. I guess forcing it through the GPU drivers is still an option but it seems to be random if it actually works or not.

Afaik MSAA has issues with deffered renderers unlike forward renderers, and the former became the defacto standard since the PS3/360 era.

Ada · Jan 11, 2021

TAA is awful. I can't stand the vaseline effect when in motion then the switch to clear image when you keep the camera still.

exodus · Jan 11, 2021

Zoidn said:
Modern AA solutions making games super blurry is a real bummer. MSAA just costs too much performance in most cases, but I find it odd that you often don't even get the option to activate it, only FXAA, TAA and stuff like that. I guess forcing it through the GPU drivers is still an option but it seems to be random if it actually works or not.

Supersampling and TAA is worlds better than MSAA. A lot of TAA games will let you run at arbitrary resolutions now. Combine that with decent sharpening, and you can get really good IQ. At base 1080p with TAA, RDR2 is a blurry mess. But I can run the game at 1600p and give it a slight 10% sharpen with NVidia filters and it looks pristine.

Not all TAA is created equal though. Just take a look at God of War 2018 for an example of stellar TAA. Even at 1080p, the image is very clean and sharp...moreso than many games I've seen at 1440p.

Sanctuary · Jan 11, 2021

I almost never even bother with AA, unless it's a game that isn't super taxing. Rather just use resolution and deal with the random aliasing that is infrequently noticeable in the first place at 1440p with my desktop, or 4K on my TV.

1-D_FE · Jan 11, 2021

Stacey said:
The shit that smears your beautiful screen with what can only be called cataract.

I upgraded my monitor recently to a 34 inch 3440x1440 ultrawide, coming from a 24 inch. The detail in a lot of games is astounding but good God TAA and CryEngines implementation makes me nauseous. It wasn't visible enough to bother me initially but increasing my monitor size magnifies it exponentially.

I've tried Nvidia sharpening but it just ain't enough :(

So it's decided, AA - Off forever.

You think that shit's bad on a monitor, you should see it in VR. Anything that isn't foward rendering gets an instant groan from me. Not only is it smeared vasoline on your screens, but since your head is never totally still, that aliasing literally "crawls" all over the place. Deferred rendering AA is just the worst.

exodus · Jan 11, 2021

nuoh_my_god said:
Afaik MSAA has issues with deffered renderers unlike forward renderers, and the former became the defacto standard since the PS3/360 era.

Not to mention MSAA doesn't work on textures, transparencies, and sub-pixel detail in general. MSAA is just not adequate for today's games. It does very little to clean up the type of aliasing we see in modern games, and it costs a lot.

Atolm · Jan 11, 2021

MSAA is too old for today's graphics. It doesn't work for most stuff.

lunanto · Jan 11, 2021

I have always been highly jaggies tolerant. I guess I am a gamer old enough for that.

When I have to set low resolutions on my Steam games I directly disable these techniques.

Some games on the Switch look like absolute crap bc of this.

Cyanity · Jan 11, 2021

Sounds like a problem waiting for a smart tech solution. Probably AI based

Astronut325 · Jan 11, 2021

Isn't this what DLSS is meant to solve? Especially with RT?

Deleted member 86891 · Jan 11, 2021

I can't stand most 3D games without anti aliasing, and as far as I can tell it doesn't hurt how well I can see?

Dylan · Jan 11, 2021

I'm having this issue with FFXIV at 1080p. I have all the settings maxed but I can't decide if I want anti-aliasing applied or not. I feel like things look worse up-close with it on but they look worse in the distance with it off.

Koklusz · Jan 11, 2021

Stacey said:
So it's decided, AA - Off forever.

Good luck with that, when almost all modern engines uses temporal accumulation for rendering the effects in one way or the other. Unless you like your games looking like jaggy, dithered mess.

ApeEscaper · Jan 11, 2021

SFV has terrible AA, disabled that and turned on SMAA through Reshade looks much better now especially in motion not a blurry mess anymore

Miker · Jan 11, 2021

Play an old game (DX9) with SGSSAA and know the true meaning of image quality. RTS games which are notoriously shimmery arguably benefit more than any other genre.

behOemoth · Jan 11, 2021

TAA is in most cases pretty good for 3d rendered images as long as the HUD stays in the respective resolution of the panel you use.

daninthemix · Jan 11, 2021

Shader aliasing gets really bad on some titles if you disable AA. I'd rather have slightly blurry TAA than that.

Back when the only option was FXAA or SMAA I did turn them both off as they don't actually help.

taahahmed · Jan 11, 2021

I get the sense that TAA seems to work better on TVs than monitors since you're a bit farther from the screen but even then, it can still be pretty nasty (thinking of Uncharted 4).

supernormal · Jan 11, 2021

I prefer it in every way when compared to jaggies. Plus I feel a little bit of blur makes it seems a bit more like its filmed on a camera instead of drawn. It definitely takes the edge off. I love the image quality in games like The Order for example.

Jaded Alyx · Jan 11, 2021

Samusaran said:
SFV has terrible AA, disabled that and turned on SMAA through Reshade looks much better now especially in motion not a blurry mess anymore

Can't say I've noticed this at all. The only blur I see is the motion blur which you can disable in settings.

Dinjoralo · Jan 11, 2021

Unreal Engine 4 is the peak of this. All the built-in AA solutions have been awful for the longest time. It's gotten better kinda recently, like in Tetris Effect, but you still need to downsample from a higher resolution for any kind of decent image quality.
It's a shame good, cheaper MSAA had to be lost for deferred rendering.

Ra · Jan 11, 2021

Miker said:
Play an old game (DX9) with SGSSAA and know the true meaning of image quality. RTS games which are notoriously shimmery arguably benefit more than any other genre.

I miss the old SGSSAA days. made the Mass Effect games look incredible.

ApeEscaper · Jan 11, 2021

Jaded Alyx said:
Can't say I've noticed this at all. The only blur I see is the motion blur which you can disable in settings.

It's better shown here it's the AA not the motion blur

s y · Jan 11, 2021

It's why I've come to value native 4k

Doskoi Panda · Jan 11, 2021

TAA is wonderful but IMO supersampling from a higher resolution is practically a requirement for most TAA solutions to look good in motion.

Usually not a problem today on consoles since those games typically target 1440p+.

On PC however... I play on a 1080p monitor, and I can't stand the way TAA looks at 1080p on it in general. 1680p is the sweet spot for me - downsampled to 1080p, TAA looks crisp and clean, though I'll usually still apply a slight layer of sharpening to mitigate the slight drop in crispness that occurs during motion.

Of course downsampling from that resolution incurs performance penalties on my 2070S and not all GPUs are going to be able to render a given game at that kind of resolution. You're rocking a monitor with a big boy resolution... Not sure what the solution for you would be, aside from, like, getting yourself a 3080+ and going ham on your res.

Doskoi Panda · Jan 11, 2021

s y said:
It's why I've come to value native 4k

There's no better AA solution than supersampling from a clean multiple of your monitor's native resolution (like 4k - 1080p), and 4K is usually dense enough PPI-wise at monitor size that a little bit of SMAA is enough to clean up any errant jaggies on its own if you've got a 4K monitor

Slick Butter · Jan 11, 2021

CryEngine's TAA is particularly bad, but it can be fine in many other games from different devs. I dunno why Crytek's implementation causes such heavy terrible ghosting.

ThereAreFourNaan · Jan 11, 2021

MSAA flat out won't cover the whole scene in deferred or hybrid deferred renderers, nor does it deal with in surface aliasing. Taa is a bit destructive but it is otherwise effective. Games like Doom Eternal won't run properly without the temporal accumulation because it's built around ammortizing aspects of the rendering across multiple frames. They don't even let you disable it. But at least it looks damn good! Even at 1440p.

leng jai · Jan 11, 2021

I hope the OP never plays RDR 2 then.

DaciaJC · Jan 11, 2021

Ada said:
TAA is awful. I can't stand the vaseline effect when in motion then the switch to clear image when you keep the camera still.

Same. In some games it would be so bad that I just switched to FXAA, as bad as it is.

Stacey · Jan 11, 2021

leng jai said:
I hope the OP never plays RDR 2 then.

Been there, done that.

Ranking the most recent efforts from good to bad
The Good:
Immortals Fenyx Rising
Dirt 5
Horizon Zero Dawn
Master Chief Collection

The bad:
Hunt: Showdown
Mortal Shell
Cyberpunk 2077

The truly awful:
Bioshock Remastered
RDR2

NeoChaos · Jan 11, 2021

Stacey said:
The Good:
Master Chief Collection

Really? With all the annoying aliasing on foliage in those games? I love the work 343's put into improving MCC, but the obnoxious shimmering I see from plants and other transparencies is a huge glaring miss in an otherwise fantastic package.

leng jai · Jan 11, 2021

MCC's aliasing coverage is bad whatever it is. You can still clearly see jaggies when downsampling from 4k back to 1080p.

The best TAA I've seen is the one used in Gears 5.

FaffEra · Jan 11, 2021

AI assisted super sampling is the only good all round modern solution.

Plywood · Jan 11, 2021

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the worst with this.

Kabukimurder · Jan 11, 2021

I think that the AA-implementation in Doom Eternal is horrible and i honestly can't believe that it doesn't get more shit for it. With film grain off and sharpening turned up it's still a blurry mess that makes you think it's actually rendered at a far lower resolution than it is.

Doskoi Panda · Jan 11, 2021

Kabukimurder said:
I think that the AA-implementation in Doom Eternal is horrible and i honestly can't believe that it doesn't get more shit for it. With film grain off and sharpening turned up it's still a blurry mess that makes you think it's actually rendered at a far lower resolution than it is.

PC or console? 8xTAA on PC is the best, sharpest looking TAA I've ever used, it's so good I can run the game at 1080p without any supersampling and it looks just fine, which isn't something I can say for basically any other game I've played with TAA

jediyoshi · Jan 11, 2021

I've literally never looked at FXAA enabled and thought 'yeah this is an improvement'.

Ganado · Jan 11, 2021

Stacey said:
The shit that smears your beautiful screen with what can only be called cataract.

I upgraded my monitor recently to a 34 inch 3440x1440 ultrawide, coming from a 24 inch. The detail in a lot of games is astounding but good God TAA and CryEngines implementation makes me nauseous. It wasn't visible enough to bother me initially but increasing my monitor size magnifies it exponentially.

I've tried Nvidia sharpening but it just ain't enough :(

So it's decided, AA - Off forever.

Thats what I've been saying for years and I'm playing in 1080p!

Herman The Tosser · Jan 11, 2021

I'll take some minor ghosting and image blurring over a completely aliased image any day, jesus.

Steel · Jan 11, 2021

I just turn off AA in general if I get a game at 4k. I'm more fine with jaggies than blur.

leng jai · Jan 11, 2021

DLSS would fix this problem for a lot of games, RDR 2 in particular. TW3 has basically useless AA so downsampling is the only option so the upcoming RT/DLSS update should be a huge improvement. Death Stranding's TAA on PC looks horrific in motion which is why DLSS actually looks better to me than native.

Steel said:
I just turn off AA in general if I get a game at 4k. I'm more fine with jaggies than blur.

You can't even turn off TAA in a lot of games these days and if you do it looks absolutely awful. RDR 2 for example looks borderline busted if you don't use it.

rashbeep · Jan 11, 2021

it's why i try to brute force 4k when i can

TAA is so bad it hurts my eyes

Jedi2016 · Jan 11, 2021

Depends on the implementation. Some devs seem better at getting a good image with solid AA and others just slap a generic post-process on their game and call it a day.

Ironically, I think consoles actually have the edge on this, since the devs know exactly what they can get away with and exactly how it will work across the board. Insomniac, Santa Monica, Bluepoint, all fantastic.

Grimminski · Jan 11, 2021

Plywood said:
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the worst with this.

Compared to Rise, it's significantly better

Just look at this:

Then you move and the whole image starts shimmering.

A soft, stable, image is better than one so jagged you could shave with it.

leng jai · Jan 11, 2021

Grimminski said:
Compared to Rise, it's significantly better

Just look at this:

Then you move and the whole image starts shimmering.

A soft, stable, image is better than one so jagged you could shave with it.

Soft isn't the biggest problem, it's the ghosting and blur smearing that typically happens with TAA that is really bad.

Anomander · Jan 11, 2021

The TAA in RDR 2 is the worst offender I've seen.

I'm now noticing awful, truly awful Anti-Aliasing

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