More Anti Aliasing Options?

[SUB-ZER0GAMER]

I would like to see more anti aliasing options available on Warframe. Specifically MSAA (2x, 4x and 8x - Also having the ability to enable MFAA from the Nvidia Control Panel).

Maybe also split Anti Aliasing options into two separate options.

Multisample Anti Aliasing:

MSAA (2x, 4x and 8x)

Post-Process Anti Aliasing:

FXAA

SMAA

TAA x8

[NightmareT12]

I tweeted on Steve some time after the Glast Gambit released and he answered back saying he was hoping to add more options for Warframe as this year progressed, with hopefully high end supersampling being one of those.

[Brynslustafir]

Is it just me or does the newest AA option look worse than the old ones? It kinda just makes everything look blurry to me. 

[Shifted]

TAA is honestly bad.
It makes the screen blurry and creates weird, low-res shimmering whenever an object or the camera is moving.
SMAA is the best so far, unless you force something via your GPU control panel

I wish warframe had in-game support for MSAA and/or supersampling (frame scaling, downsampling, resolution scaling or however else you call it, basically running the 3D part of the game at higher res than your display, without destroying the UI)

[Brynslustafir]

3 minutes ago, Shifted said:

TAA is honestly bad.
It makes the screen blurry and creates weird, low-res shimmering whenever an object or the camera is moving.
SMAA is the best so far, unless you force something via your GPU control panel

I wish warframe had in-game support for MSAA and/or supersampling (frame scaling, downsampling, resolution scaling or however else you call it, basically running the 3D part of the game at higher res than your display, without destroying the UI)

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. TAA makes the game look like it's running at a lower resolution. 

[Shifted]

On 19.01.2017 at 0:46 AM, Plasmaface said:

TAA makes the game look like it's running at a lower resolution. 

Because that's exactly what it does.
Renders stuff multiple times at lower res and glues it together, but when things start moving it can't catch up so you see pixelization.
Some people treat it like it's the best thing ever but honestly I'd rather deal with some aliasing I notice in SMAA when standing still rather than constant shimmering when I move around.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Shifted

[MillbrookWest]

On 1/19/2017 at 0:26 PM, SUB-ZER0GAMER said:

I would like to see more anti aliasing options available on Warframe. Specifically MSAA (2x, 4x and 8x - Also having the ability to enable MFAA from the Nvidia Control Panel).

MFAA is Nvidia tech, unless Nvidia open it up to AMD, consider it a no-show. Steve had stated in his last stream that while their[Nvidia's] tech is nice, it is preferable to do it yourself and have control over how (and where) it runs. This is important since Warframe runs on Consoles too.

On MSAA however; 

MSAA doesn't work with Deferred Rendering. It technically works, but it is a wasted render pass since lighting passes happen last in the render pipeline which itself creates an aliased image. MSAA is very computationally, and memory, intensive so wasting that time for no gain is not worth it.

You can work around it, as some devs have done. But it is a long process that involves switching your renderer around for 'select' circumstances. But it comes down to dev time used implementing that change. Something to note however, if you implement it wrong, you get horrid performance and even GTX 1080's will have issues with rendering.

They could do it, obviously (DE aren't inept), but they'd need to weigh the dev time required for the actual image gain people will get.

On 1/19/2017 at 0:49 PM, Shifted said:

Because that's exactly what it does.
Renders stuff multiple times at lower res and glues it together, but when things start moving it can't catch up so you see pixelization.
Some people treat it like it's the best thing ever but honestly I'd rather deal with some aliasing I notice in SMAA when standing still rather than constant shimmering when I move around.

I think you are confusing TAA with something that Rare incorporated with Quantum Break? That was predominantly an MSAA issue rendering at 720p then reconstructing a 1080p image with that data. 

TAA works by using already rendered frames, and 'projecting' (if you will) that data forwards into the new frames. The samples (presumably 8x in Warframes case) are derived from what you use to calculate the velocity between frames.

As a rough example: If you have an object[Pixel] at point 'A' in frame 1, and at point 'C' in frame 2, Temporal AA calculates point 'B' in between those frames, which frame 2 interpolates into the frame to smooth the motion of the pixel. If the recent bug is anything to go by, DE use 'Motion Blur' as a means to help calculate this motion.

People(including Devs) like TAA for a raft of reasons, first an foremost, as a post-fx AA, it just works. It works best if you design from the ground up with it in mind, but it still works if implemented after the fact.
Secondly, it's coverage is not picky, it samples what is needed in the image and works on Alpha effects just as well as it does on polygonal edges. MSAA only works on polygonal images, and does not do any work for alpha effects.
Thirdly, it is cheaper (all round) than MSAA, and can be run on any hardware config since its memory footprint is comparatively negligible.
Fourth, and by no means last, It works well with Shader effects. You can get coverage on your various shader effects, and have it not cost a fortune in render time.

Obviously however, it is a Post-FX technique. It's not perfect which is where the Blurring comes from. But it's better then SMAA (unequivocally so in motion), and FXAA which is likely to be faded out completely at this point because it blurs the image, but makes no attempt to preserve any detail.

Realistically, DE should work on tech for adjustable internal resolutions. This works for everyone, and comes with the obvious caveat that you are responsible for the performance you get from this, which is nice for people who don't have powerful systems. You can set the HUD to your native resolution so text is clear, but change the internal resolution to something lower so you can actually play the game. This seems more feasible than trying to shoehorn an MSAA implementation that may, or may not, work.

This approach also leads them into the possibility of implementing an 'adaptive resolution' that changes your resolution on the fly to remain close to a target framerate, and beyond that, there is work being done (from other studio's, i think Sony IIRC) on breaking up the frame, and rendering different section entirely at different resolutions, where the centre remains 'native', but the screen edges are rendered at half resolution.

Edited January 22, 2017 by MillbrookWest

[Shifted]

1 hour ago, MillbrookWest said:

I think you are confusing TAA with something that Rare incorporated with Quantum Break? That was predominantly an MSAA issue rendering at 720p then reconstructing a 1080p image with that data. 

[...]

It's obvious you know more about it than I do, so alright, I was wrong.
Still, TAA looks like poop.
That pixelized shimmer while moving is absolutely disgusting and until that's fixed I will prefer SMAA over TAA.

I agree about the adjustable/adaptive resolution thing though.
Warframe barely uses my GPU and I'd love to be able to crank all this stuff even more (although with adjustable limits - don't wanna push the gpu to 100% 24/7 either.)

Edited January 22, 2017 by Shifted