***** Many reasons make his videos look good. The fact that he uploads in 4K makes Google ease up on the supercompression that normally occurs in lower res vids, and he actually produces his videos well on his end, which is the biggest contributor.
True SMAA is by far, lightyears better than any other AA. Looks better than msaa 8X but has a performance hit closer to 5% vs 85% like msaa 8x And images stay completely sharp unlike other post AA solutions. However it's implementation in watch dogs is poor to say the least. I am not sure what happened there.
Agreed, SMAA is my personal favorite too, best visual quality / performance cost ratio imo. Not as blurry / weird looking as FXAA and very efficient. High resolution (2560x1440) + SMAA 1x is good enough for me.
The new DSR software from Nvidia that can downsample higher resolutions, works like a charm for me. Been using it a lot since it came to gtx 700 series
Today, since there are lot of games that have a Temporal Anti Aliasing option like TSMAA or TXAA that is NOT from Nvidia, I cannot live without it. The smoothness of the frames while in motion is just a blessing!
I think there is some information missing in this video. AA is something that is completely personal. It all depend of you eye sight and the distance you are from your monitor. You can test this out by opening a game with all AA filters off and find some corner where you can see the "stairway effect". Now all you need is to get close to the monitor, fix that point and slowly move back. At some distance, you will not be able to see the stairway. If you play from that point, AA is completely useless. This is why we all should be excited with 4k.
Two videos... that is all it took for me to subscribe. I know I have a TON that I still need to learn, and I'm willing to bet that this channel will help me learn all of it.
Within the settings (gear shape) there is an option labeled "Speed", this option allows both the "slow" and the "too fast" to comfortably view videos at a speed suited to their pace. Though I would typically recommend the setting of "Normal", there are exceptions. That said, adjust to preference. Hope this helps!
@@realMrVent he isn't this linus dude is fast as balls. You might be like him that's why it seems normal to you, take a chillpill maditate, relax in a while
FXAA drops your framerate the least, but lot of people think it looks like crap. SMAA is probably the best compromise, it looks almost as good as SSAA but only slightly more demanding than FXAA.
Good video but you should have put a short text panel at the end of the video, naming all the AA types again and simply telling what is each unique for in a few words.
FXAA is ughh... Just get ReShade/SweetFX and enable the SMAA option, it does the same thing without blurring the screen, strictly smoothing just the edges. And SweetFX has a lot of cool options to enhance the feel of the game. I like DPX with a light Vignette on. Vignette when tuned correctly makes you feel more immersed in the game, like you're looking into the game out of your own eyes. It feels much more natural than looking at a rectangluar screen.
+Mike M Yes FXAA uses a blurring effect, but some games do it better than others. It's also nice to have AA options like FXAA or SMAA for those just barely maintaining their desired FPS, considering other forms of AA can have a massive effect on performance.
Mike M I'm saying it's nice to have an option for those with low end PC's that want SOME form of AA they can run. FXAA will vary from game to game and sometimes it's literally the only option it gives you, with a "Anti-Aliasing off/on" option which usually means it's using FXAA or SMAA. But i agree, sometimes it's just better to have it off completely than to use FXAA.
Your internet doesn't operate at the speed of light. You do realize that 4K is four times as many pixels (meaning four times as much data to download in the same time frame) as 1080p, right?
Those don't really matter, your internet speed how ever does, so maybe check you internet speed on a site like speedtest.net and start complaining about that and not your hardware.
DiscGolfer947 you do realise that if connection was an issue he would be buffering- It loads several seconds ahead but still has really choppy feel to the video.
Same and my internet isn't the issue :P. When the video switches to 4K the screen goes black and the video reverts back to 1080p. When I switch it to 4k again, the video is higher bitrate but it looks like the framerate drops to 10 fps (it's not the video buffering; the playback speed is the same). It's not my hardware either. I have xfire 7950's and an i7 3770k.
wattledgold 4K having a choppiness on youtube is not new and I have it too. Choppiness is usually caused by a lack of power in you syste- however mega and i don't lack that.
I'm just glad AA is on the way out. I've never particularly liked AA so didn't use it much, and once I moved up to 1080p I just forgot it existed. Maybe if SMAA had appeared much sooner I'd be singing a different tune, but with 4K and up already here AA makes even less sense for my use.
Well at res' like 1080p AA is still heavily needed to get a decent looking picture, but yea when everyone has 4k screens it won't be needed as much and only really by consoles which'll probably still be trying to hit 1080p native.
KRY i sometimes prefer no AA than FXAA, it makes everything blurry, i can use MSAA x2 or x4 with my 780, but still i prefer smooth framerates, at the end is no AA or MSAA x2 for me.
Low levels of AA are still necessary for a smooth image in 4k. It will no longer be necessary in 8k, which is what the next push will be for. I have a 4k monitor and fxaa generally does the trick with little noticable performance hit.
My prayers to GabeN have been answered. First the video output TechQuckie and now this one. Thank you guys for the help in understanding some of this overly complicated stuff.
If you are starved for performance, FXAA (if you can deal with the blurring over the jaggies), if you have a tiny bit of performance to spare, SMAA. If you have a lot of performance to spare and the game supports it, MSAA/TXAA. If you have a godly rig and you laugh at the performance issues others have (and also have an Nvidia card), force SGSSAA. For SGSSAA, you will need Nvidia Inspector and you will have to develop a bit of know-how to get it working. The easy way is to check the list in this forum thread. forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=357956
Linus did an episode on playing games in higher resolution than your monitor supports. So I render some of my games in 1440p and they are displayed in 1080p, which has half the pixels of 1440. So it's like msaa.
It was discussed a bit at the end, morphological. On AMD cards you can force it on nearly any game with the default driver. However, be careful because if the game uses actual text fonts the AA will be applied to the text and it will be hard to read. Some games support it natively and if it is, the quality will be much better than FXAA with the same or better performance.
How does downsampling work? I understand how upsampling is possible, but there are only a certain amount of pixels on a monitor. So how do you get higher resolutions than your native resolution?
+Teh Black Ninja Productions Basically it renders the 3d scene at a higher resolution internally, then it scales it down to scale frame by frame to be displayed on your monitor.
Another example: Think of a black diagonal line on your screen. It would be a bunch of squares connected at the corners, not very smooth. Upscaling it would give you 4 squares where before there was only 1, and it can now add/remove some more black pixels to smooth the line. Now when it gets downsampled, there might be 2 pixels from the upscale now residing in what was a blank/white pixel at normal scale, but it can't fit those 2 mini-pixels into your monitors 1 normal pixel (which can _only_ fit 4 upscaled mini-pixels). So instead it would add a _gray_ pixel, since 2/4= 50% black. That's the jist as I understand it.
+Hi yes. I think that with anti aliasing it does that only with certain shapes that require the most, whereas superresolution does it with the whole image.
I'm not a fan of AA and I always turn it off I don't care if there are some rough edges here and then. Sure it looks ugly, but at least it doesn't look like your vision is blurred by post AA. The other form of AA is so intensive that I rather prefer turning it fully off getting a locked 60fps and if I still have headroom crank up my settings till ultra. If aliasing is such a big deal to you then you can always opt for a higher resolution such as 1080p, 1440p and 4k. (yeah I do believe a 1080p videogame is fine without AA, not perfect but fine)
I tend to leave AA off or set almost nothing if it's a demanding game on my hardware because I'll take slight jagged edges over lag or, God forbid, having to turn other graphical options down which produces far more of a noticeable difference.
SMAA is FXAA without the blur. They both go to shit as soon as you move though, crawly lines all over the place. I'm enjoying my first experience with TAA in Fallout. There's no crawlies when moving and feels like good old 4x MSAA, the only downside is a bit of motion blur when moving.
Hi bear in mind, that SMAA is MSAA and MLAA combines (in essence), so it depends on the compatibility, if it really blurs out the inage that much. TAA sure does better job, but not everyone can afford it, when it comes to horsepower ;)
Tommy59375 me two sir. But when this frame is the difference between a 30 solid FPS and a 28 FPS choopy as fuck. The clarity of the image is irrelevant for me.... only in that case
I've also got a problem with playing 4K videos on my PC, its got quite a bit of power, and my internet doesn't seem to be the problem because my whimpy Macbook Pro i5 runs 4k very well. My problem is that when I play 4K on my windows 7 (i7 quad core 3.4 Ghz, 16 GB ram, 660 TI FTW Sig 2, blah blah) the videos just freezes, and only audio will play while it says 4K is still playing. Any help?
and enjoy the high performance hit. i mostly use FXAA, MSAA or SMAA and when i get a better computer i'll switch over to using SSAA and EQAA for some games
About AA: CSAA (NVidia) and EQAA (AMD) actually take additional color samples. Doing that is very cheap while it can increase the AA quality up to the number of color samples taken. This depends on the scene though (it is usually a very good performance/quality deal). Both AMD and NVidia have a hybrid MSAA/SSAA method that supersamples only transparent textures while multisampling otherwise to save performance. This doesn't work for every game though but is desirable if it does. FXAA is generally very cheap, but it blurs textures and has problems with long lines. Team red has MLAA which is better then FXAA quality wise but also more costly. Both are trumped by SMAA though. SMAA costs a little more then FXAA or MLAA but has the best performance to visual ratio of any generic post processing AA out there. If you need post processing AA, either because you need better performance or the game doesn't support driver AA options, I'd stick to SMAA and set the quality via the profile. These methods of post processing AA usually are not particulary good at eliminating "shimmering" when moving, the dreaded aliasing of fences in Skyrim are a good example. Note that all these methods apply a little bid of "smudging" to the image, FXAA being a really bad offender though while you may not notice the others. The cost of post processing AA depends on the shader power of your card. While NVidia closed the gap a little with the 900 series, AMD is faster in this regard. Additionally there are temporal anti aliasing and CMAA. Both require access to the z-buffer of the game and thus have a game specific implemenation. All temporal AA methods produce ghosting to some extend (some shadow and smudging of moved objects), this is inherent to the method. If implemented well you might not notice the difference though, especially if adding other shaders like motion blur (TXAA is on the don't make my eyes bleed side of things though). How noticeable the effect is also depends on your monitor's persistence and your FPS. CMAA is one of the newest post processing AA methods, it generally costs less then SMAA but also has less AA effect, especially on 45° angles. It has next to no "smudging" and works best with sensitive things like text. SMAA supposedly has some quality z-buffer method too, but that surpasses my knowledge. Hope this helps!
Horst Meier CSAA and EQAA use coverage samples and add blending weight for each sample of MSAA. (Basically test if coverage sample is within or outside the rendered polygon) They do not sample or store additional Z/color samples.
OMG.. had to pause the video half way before my brain exploded. but.... great job on explaining this just had to watch this a few times to comprehend everything lol.. Linus is the best
joe m Sure! If you are near-sighted, just remove your glasses. If you have an old television, you can turn down the focus, but that might require a tuner screwdriver. I love my Atari flashback.
I hate FXAA... every game I've tried it in makes the screen look like its been coated with vaseline. I would rather have jaggies than feel like my character seriously needs his glasses prescription updated.
TAAA is clearly the best kind of anti-aliasing, it's an evolution of MSAA and basically fixed it so that transparent textures are supported. I really dislike FXAA and other post processing variants because all they're doing is blurring, and while that masks jaggies is has the drawback of blurring texture detail which makes the scene look awful. Where as MSAA or TAAA maintains texture detail while dealing with jaggies. The only remaining "problem" is that MSAA or TAAA is computationally still quite expensive, it's way less expensive than SSAA, but the thing is back in the day it was just accepted that if you want to run a feature to clean up image quality then it would have some performance impact and either you could lower other settings to compensate or buy a faster video card. I think the main irritation I have with FXAA and other post processing AA is that they just work off the final rendered image and blur that, and as such no new information is being added so you're not increasing the fidelity of the image. From a pure information standpoint you have a fixed output image of say 1080p and that is run through the FXAA algorithm and you get a 1080p image out, and that image isn't increasing in fidelity in fact is can only decease in fidelity. With MSAA actual sub samples of pixels are taken which means your starting image is way higher quality and this can be averaged to spit out the final image, it's inherently better because it seeks to build the final image out of a higher quality sample of the game space. Or put another way, if you're going to blend or average pixel data then you better be averaging more samples than you have pixels. You don't want to take a 4M pixels and average/blur them and spit out 4M different pixels, you want to be averaging 12M pixels and spitting out 4M
FXAA is just freaking horrible. Just watch Fallout 4 and their anti-aliasing (both of the options). Only way I can even look the screen was to add sharpening filter through ReShade because they blur like hell. FXAA can be nice if combied with some good AA and sharpening but still there are better options like SMAA or CMAA. The game needs to have MSAA or other similar good AA and then you could add FXAA or some other on top of it. Bad AA like FXAA as the base AA in the game and you can't make the game look good with external programs because FXAA doesn't do much to jaggies alone. Adding sharpening filter can help some.
because the image is rendered at a higher resolution first and is then squeezed down to fit into a smaller resolution thus removing jagged lines. another way to look at it is. watch a 1080p video on youtube in full screen then exit full screen. its still the same 1080p image but its been forced into a smaller box. sometimes its better to run a resolution scale rather than AA
You should see MLAA (or Morphological Filtering), it must have been dreamed up by an intern at AMD. It blends everything on your screen as if you have cataracts so even your HUD becomes blurry and indecipherable. I've seen better algorithms created for DOS games like HQ2X and 2xSAL
wasn't MLAA first used on PS3 titles like GOW3, where it actually produced very good results? I did try the PC implementation once though, and yeah it was absolutely horrendous lol
***** the issue is is that too much does degrade visuals but if there is not alternative some very small ammounts (like i said 2-4X) would alleviate jaggies
Fxaa is always the best choice performance wise for me in 1080, 1440, or 4k. It has similar quality to msaa 4x and half the fps hit. The only realistic difference I notice is that msaa has bett aliasing on distant objects.
***** Maybe not, native FXAA support in games like those in Borderlands 2 or Bioshock maybe obsolete, but not for Nvidia driver native FXAA support though, it eliminate 90% of jagged line up close in all of my games, if the game support it off-course.
Linus didnt speak of the performace enough. 2xMSAA in battlefield can take away 15fps and leave a ton of jaggies when FXAA requires only 1-2fps and gets the job done but blurs things a little bit.
He said at the end it all depends on your hardware, the game you're playing, and what you're happy with. Someone with dual 780 Ti's won't notice a difference, someone with worse hardware might have an even worse FPS hit. You can't have a blanket statement for that.
MarioDragon Well yes and no, ofc it depends on your hardware but in actual gaming it's about the fps you get. If you have an 60Hz monitor and the game runs at 90fps then you got something to spare for better AA. If you barely get 60 or below then FXAA is a good choice. Usually I prefer FXAA because it's so good in recent games and I need to put at least 4xMSAA to see similar result and that requires power and VRAM.
in order to close the matter of the variety of gaming options..explain the different kinds of ambient occlusion..you started that in a previous video but you never got too far with it
These people saying FXAA is bad and crappy, it’s actually one of the best. I’ve played around with different types of AA but FXAA is probably the best when it comes down to efficiency and looks. You may be hardcore gamers but hey, until you are the one building up a game and experimenting between AA’s and their values like radius and iterations. You’ll then be granted a proper opinion to what is better. (I’ve jumped between only 3 AA’s really, DLAA, SSAA, and the FXAA’s (FXAA, FXAA II, FXAA III))
My main issue with purely analytical anti-aliasing techniques (FXAA, MLAA, basic SMAA) aside from the blur that they can sometimes induce: They do NOTHING to handle aliasing that breaks up lines in the distance. Now mix a post process AA solution with a bit of MSAA (or SSAA if you can afford it) however and/or upgrade SMAA to SMAA T2X and things'll look a fair bit better all-around.
What's the AA that Nvidia developed recently? I think I remember them releasing it last year and it prevented aliasing by using different samples between frames
Holy shit, that's a lot of acronyms.
I haven't seen this many acronyms since the KKK had to call AAA on their way to AA.
after protesting the NAACP
Your sectoid brain should have no trouble decoding it.
Welcome to the tech world!
3:50 Holy Shit I'm color blind
*keeps reading*
oh ok.
This explains why I always used to open Vines when I actually wanted to open TH-cam
Yes
3 O' clock in holland. But a techquickie never hurts :D
Ditto, my neighbour to the west.
Germany?
Tom Arkes
Yep.
I live about 10km from germany :D well it was a usefull video. But now lets sleep xD
4 here
FXAA is too much blur. The whole picture loses the sharpness.
TXAA is much more blur! I checked! It also makes textures blurry!
SmoothLord TXAA is shit. MSAA, SSAA or DSR are the true and only ones, to avoid jaggy edges,
Pas cal true
FXAA WAS INVENTED BY NVIDIA IT ALL MAKES SENSEEEEEE DAMN YOU TIMOTHY
as TAA is..
Great quickie :D
Hi
SUS
...
That's what she said.
Uncharted 4 custom AA is some of the best anti aliasing I ever seen. Tekken 7 looks good too, but we'll have to wait and see for that.
why is the video quality of your videos so much better than everyone else's?
i thought youtube started compressing everything a couple years back, making everything look like crap.
isn't bitrate another thing youtube compresses?
***** Many reasons make his videos look good. The fact that he uploads in 4K makes Google ease up on the supercompression that normally occurs in lower res vids, and he actually produces his videos well on his end, which is the biggest contributor.
ohh that explains a lot actually
now i wonder how many hard drives he has...4K sounds like very space consuming
True SMAA is by far, lightyears better than any other AA. Looks better than msaa 8X but has a performance hit closer to 5% vs 85% like msaa 8x And images stay completely sharp unlike other post AA solutions. However it's implementation in watch dogs is poor to say the least. I am not sure what happened there.
Agreed, SMAA is my personal favorite too, best visual quality / performance cost ratio imo. Not as blurry / weird looking as FXAA and very efficient. High resolution (2560x1440) + SMAA 1x is good enough for me.
Ti133700N 2x is a lot better, still not really any performance hit.
Sean Wilson Yea 2TX is pretty cool too and very close in term of performance.
SMAA is fuckin' great.
SMAA is great, but I prefer TXAA.
Thanks Linus, this was a great explanation on these different settings.
this video is proof that Linus has indeed gone through puberty.
The new DSR software from Nvidia that can downsample higher resolutions, works like a charm for me. Been using it a lot since it came to gtx 700 series
How about TSSAA? Doom uses it and it's considered one of the best anti-aliasing methods used.
can you say what these letters mean like T.... S..... S.... Anti Aliasing?
Ropkazip123 Temporal Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing.
ok ty don't know anything about it. Justwanted to know what these letters mean.
MetroidJunkie and cmaa?
Josh de Villiers Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing
Today, since there are lot of games that have a Temporal Anti Aliasing option like TSMAA or TXAA that is NOT from Nvidia, I cannot live without it. The smoothness of the frames while in motion is just a blessing!
I think there is some information missing in this video.
AA is something that is completely personal. It all depend of you eye sight and the distance you are from your monitor.
You can test this out by opening a game with all AA filters off and find some corner where you can see the "stairway effect". Now all you need is to get close to the monitor, fix that point and slowly move back.
At some distance, you will not be able to see the stairway. If you play from that point, AA is completely useless.
This is why we all should be excited with 4k.
Different types of Ambient Occlusion up next would be great !!! :)
Two videos... that is all it took for me to subscribe. I know I have a TON that I still need to learn, and I'm willing to bet that this channel will help me learn all of it.
Am I slow...or are you too fast? 😐😩😒😶
You are slow.
the name if this channel is "tech quicky"
Within the settings (gear shape) there is an option labeled "Speed", this option allows both the "slow" and the "too fast" to comfortably view videos at a speed suited to their pace. Though I would typically recommend the setting of "Normal", there are exceptions. That said, adjust to preference.
Hope this helps!
Watch at 2x speed.
@@realMrVent he isn't this linus dude is fast as balls. You might be like him that's why it seems normal to you, take a chillpill maditate, relax in a while
which is the lagless anti aliasing?
Aa is the thing that really eats your fps (depending on your system of course) but I find that any post process aa (fxaa txaa) cause less fps
k thanks man ;)
+Jacky Bro np :)
FXAA drops your framerate the least, but lot of people think it looks like crap. SMAA is probably the best compromise, it looks almost as good as SSAA but only slightly more demanding than FXAA.
FXAA or Temporal, temporal will lag if the gpu is some years old
Good video but you should have put a short text panel at the end of the video, naming all the AA types again and simply telling what is each unique for in a few words.
3:50 yay even Linus is teasing me about my red/green colourblindness
Linus could you possibly do a quickie on cuda cores and stream processors?
FXAA is a waste of 2 fps. It's light, yes, but it just blurs everything.
+Mike M Not as much as TXAA, i can barely see any blur when comparing side by side
FXAA is ughh... Just get ReShade/SweetFX and enable the SMAA option, it does the same thing without blurring the screen, strictly smoothing just the edges. And SweetFX has a lot of cool options to enhance the feel of the game. I like DPX with a light Vignette on. Vignette when tuned correctly makes you feel more immersed in the game, like you're looking into the game out of your own eyes. It feels much more natural than looking at a rectangluar screen.
+Mike M Yes FXAA uses a blurring effect, but some games do it better than others. It's also nice to have AA options like FXAA or SMAA for those just barely maintaining their desired FPS, considering other forms of AA can have a massive effect on performance.
Rukeith But why waste 2 fps for such a shitty job? It really sucks in BF4.
Mike M I'm saying it's nice to have an option for those with low end PC's that want SOME form of AA they can run. FXAA will vary from game to game and sometimes it's literally the only option it gives you, with a "Anti-Aliasing off/on" option which usually means it's using FXAA or SMAA.
But i agree, sometimes it's just better to have it off completely than to use FXAA.
0:13 Annotations are kil
2:58 FXAA doesn't use depth at all. It only looks at the brightness of neighbouring pixels.
Hm.. these 4K videos never play right for me, and i have an i7 4790k with an R9 290, im not exactly watching this on a tablet, what gives? xD
Your internet doesn't operate at the speed of light. You do realize that 4K is four times as many pixels (meaning four times as much data to download in the same time frame) as 1080p, right?
Those don't really matter, your internet speed how ever does, so maybe check you internet speed on a site like speedtest.net and start complaining about that and not your hardware.
DiscGolfer947 you do realise that if connection was an issue he would be buffering- It loads several seconds ahead but still has really choppy feel to the video.
Same and my internet isn't the issue :P. When the video switches to 4K the screen goes black and the video reverts back to 1080p. When I switch it to 4k again, the video is higher bitrate but it looks like the framerate drops to 10 fps (it's not the video buffering; the playback speed is the same).
It's not my hardware either. I have xfire 7950's and an i7 3770k.
wattledgold 4K having a choppiness on youtube is not new and I have it too. Choppiness is usually caused by a lack of power in you syste- however mega and i don't lack that.
you just had to go and point out that I'm colorblind
the logo is green in color. That was a joke.
I'm just glad AA is on the way out.
I've never particularly liked AA so didn't use it much, and once I moved up to 1080p I just forgot it existed.
Maybe if SMAA had appeared much sooner I'd be singing a different tune, but with 4K and up already here AA makes even less sense for my use.
Well at res' like 1080p AA is still heavily needed to get a decent looking picture, but yea when everyone has 4k screens it won't be needed as much and only really by consoles which'll probably still be trying to hit 1080p native.
What?! AA is definitely needed for 1080p. I hate playing with loads of jagged edges.
KRY
i sometimes prefer no AA than FXAA, it makes everything blurry, i can use MSAA x2 or x4 with my 780, but still i prefer smooth framerates, at the end is no AA or MSAA x2 for me.
Andres Gallego But at 1080p what games can't you run with only 2x msaa at 1080? I can run every game I own with 2x msaa on a 770.
Low levels of AA are still necessary for a smooth image in 4k. It will no longer be necessary in 8k, which is what the next push will be for. I have a 4k monitor and fxaa generally does the trick with little noticable performance hit.
My prayers to GabeN have been answered. First the video output TechQuckie and now this one. Thank you guys for the help in understanding some of this overly complicated stuff.
Sooooooooo which is the best?
SMAA is really good. You can use SweetFX to inject SMAA in some games and see the difference yourself.
If you are starved for performance, FXAA (if you can deal with the blurring over the jaggies), if you have a tiny bit of performance to spare, SMAA. If you have a lot of performance to spare and the game supports it, MSAA/TXAA. If you have a godly rig and you laugh at the performance issues others have (and also have an Nvidia card), force SGSSAA. For SGSSAA, you will need Nvidia Inspector and you will have to develop a bit of know-how to get it working. The easy way is to check the list in this forum thread. forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=357956
Thanks guys that's really useful!
honestly i think it depends on the graphics style and game itself. I've played a number of games that look better on FXAA than SMAA
Linus did an episode on playing games in higher resolution than your monitor supports. So I render some of my games in 1440p and they are displayed in 1080p, which has half the pixels of 1440. So it's like msaa.
All theses fast-as-possible videos all feel the same from 2014+. Loving how old vids are still great!
What about MLAA?
It was discussed a bit at the end, morphological. On AMD cards you can force it on nearly any game with the default driver. However, be careful because if the game uses actual text fonts the AA will be applied to the text and it will be hard to read. Some games support it natively and if it is, the quality will be much better than FXAA with the same or better performance.
FXAA is a more advanced form of MLAA with support for sub pixel antialiasing (albeit limited). Same with SMAA.
Okay... This time Techquickie is not *DRUNK*
How does downsampling work? I understand how upsampling is possible, but there are only a certain amount of pixels on a monitor. So how do you get higher resolutions than your native resolution?
+Teh Black Ninja Productions Basically it renders the 3d scene at a higher resolution internally, then it scales it down to scale frame by frame to be displayed on your monitor.
Carlos Reyes Ah that makes sense. Thanks.
Another example: Think of a black diagonal line on your screen. It would be a bunch of squares connected at the corners, not very smooth. Upscaling it would give you 4 squares where before there was only 1, and it can now add/remove some more black pixels to smooth the line. Now when it gets downsampled, there might be 2 pixels from the upscale now residing in what was a blank/white pixel at normal scale, but it can't fit those 2 mini-pixels into your monitors 1 normal pixel (which can _only_ fit 4 upscaled mini-pixels). So instead it would add a _gray_ pixel, since 2/4= 50% black. That's the jist as I understand it.
+Hi yes. I think that with anti aliasing it does that only with certain shapes that require the most, whereas superresolution does it with the whole image.
Hi Wow, great explanation. Thank You :)
I'm happy with anything that isn't TAA
I'm not a fan of AA and I always turn it off I don't care if there are some rough edges here and then. Sure it looks ugly, but at least it doesn't look like your vision is blurred by post AA. The other form of AA is so intensive that I rather prefer turning it fully off getting a locked 60fps and if I still have headroom crank up my settings till ultra. If aliasing is such a big deal to you then you can always opt for a higher resolution such as 1080p, 1440p and 4k. (yeah I do believe a 1080p videogame is fine without AA, not perfect but fine)
Filthy jaggy sympathiser.
I tend to leave AA off or set almost nothing if it's a demanding game on my hardware because I'll take slight jagged edges over lag or, God forbid, having to turn other graphical options down which produces far more of a noticeable difference.
Robin Clarjis will now be known as the Jagster.
McBobtheruggaman jaggies for life :]*
Yeah I don't like AA either it looks too blurry and takes too much power to do, is interesting hearing how it's supposed to work though.
Thanks mate......... always wanted to know the differences between these huge number of different types of AA !!!!
My father was an AA
Is it possible to use MSAA and FXAA at the same time?Counter Strike:Global Offensive enables this setting,but I am not sure if it works.
There no benefit though as msaa is always better
So fxaa off. Txaa off. Msaa x4.
+ThisLadWayne Fxaa is actually very good. Kinda blury but almost no perfomance lost :)
+Patrick Hache MLAA guys, go check it out
+ThisLadWayne
MSAAX2 + TXAA winner
SMAA is FXAA without the blur. They both go to shit as soon as you move though, crawly lines all over the place. I'm enjoying my first experience with TAA in Fallout. There's no crawlies when moving and feels like good old 4x MSAA, the only downside is a bit of motion blur when moving.
Hi bear in mind, that SMAA is MSAA and MLAA combines (in essence), so it depends on the compatibility, if it really blurs out the inage that much. TAA sure does better job, but not everyone can afford it, when it comes to horsepower ;)
We wouldn't be having this problem if pixels were shaped like do-decagons instead of square pixels.
thats an interesting thought
the QR code is at 5:52
Son of a Zombie i dont get it
Ive been waiting for this since first tech quickie!
Now thats what i call an AA meeting
Holy crap Linus, don't ever do cocaine.
I would always take low MSAA over high FXAA any day..
I would much rather lose a few frames in order to have a nicer image.
+Tommy59375 Its blury but you loose almost no perfomance and you have to agree. still looks better then stock.
Patrick Hache
I would rather lose a few frames in exchange for a far nicer image.
Tommy59375 me two sir. But when this frame is the difference between a 30 solid FPS and a 28 FPS choopy as fuck. The clarity of the image is irrelevant for me.... only in that case
Patrick Hache
"30 solid FPS"??
Well, at least it's cinematic, I suppose...
in my book a solid 30 means .. a stable 30
will it blend?
"Kotaku said FXAA made all other AAs obsolete"
FXAA literally looks like you smeared vaseline on your screen. It's AWFUL. Rather have no AA at all.
Why don't you talk with the new kid?
The new kid:
I've also got a problem with playing 4K videos on my PC, its got quite a bit of power, and my internet doesn't seem to be the problem because my whimpy Macbook Pro i5 runs 4k very well. My problem is that when I play 4K on my windows 7 (i7 quad core 3.4 Ghz, 16 GB ram, 660 TI FTW Sig 2, blah blah) the videos just freezes, and only audio will play while it says 4K is still playing. Any help?
An TH-cam issue, happens to me sometimes aswell
I know this is going to sound crazy but did you try the internet explorer? Chrome is bad at some things :)
***** how is that spelled wrong? I meant that it's a TH-cam issue. I'm not a native speaker, for fuck sake.
Your internet?
Gnana Prakash what did you say
How long does it take to upload one of these videos? Cause that's some damn high quality!
+Tom Can't be longer than 15 minutes.
Depends on your upload bandwidth.
Rob Fraser There running 10 Gigabit Ethernet around there place. I'd say the internet is around 500mbps to 1 gbps.
SGSSAA FTW!
what is it?
thanks i'll look at it
and enjoy the high performance hit. i mostly use FXAA, MSAA or SMAA and when i get a better computer i'll switch over to using SSAA and EQAA for some games
TXAA FTW!
odobenus159 TXAA with SGSSAA FTW! ;)
man... every question i had about pc in general, this dude solves it
Linux 8 years ago💀
That is when I started watching him. Love it!
9
10
Linux 10 years ago💀
12years
Really Linus? In the age of school shootings you pretty much say "speaking of fragging, here's a learning place for you".
so if I buy a 4K monitor I can turn down my AA and it will still look better than using a 1440P....I hate the jaggies!
Yup
About AA:
CSAA (NVidia) and EQAA (AMD) actually take additional color samples. Doing that is very cheap while it can increase the AA quality up to the number of color samples taken. This depends on the scene though (it is usually a very good performance/quality deal).
Both AMD and NVidia have a hybrid MSAA/SSAA method that supersamples only transparent textures while multisampling otherwise to save performance. This doesn't work for every game though but is desirable if it does.
FXAA is generally very cheap, but it blurs textures and has problems with long lines. Team red has MLAA which is better then FXAA quality wise but also more costly. Both are trumped by SMAA though. SMAA costs a little more then FXAA or MLAA but has the best performance to visual ratio of any generic post processing AA out there. If you need post processing AA, either because you need better performance or the game doesn't support driver AA options, I'd stick to SMAA and set the quality via the profile. These methods of post processing AA usually are not particulary good at eliminating "shimmering" when moving, the dreaded aliasing of fences in Skyrim are a good example. Note that all these methods apply a little bid of "smudging" to the image, FXAA being a really bad offender though while you may not notice the others. The cost of post processing AA depends on the shader power of your card. While NVidia closed the gap a little with the 900 series, AMD is faster in this regard.
Additionally there are temporal anti aliasing and CMAA. Both require access to the z-buffer of the game and thus have a game specific implemenation. All temporal AA methods produce ghosting to some extend (some shadow and smudging of moved objects), this is inherent to the method. If implemented well you might not notice the difference though, especially if adding other shaders like motion blur (TXAA is on the don't make my eyes bleed side of things though). How noticeable the effect is also depends on your monitor's persistence and your FPS. CMAA is one of the newest post processing AA methods, it generally costs less then SMAA but also has less AA effect, especially on 45° angles. It has next to no "smudging" and works best with sensitive things like text. SMAA supposedly has some quality z-buffer method too, but that surpasses my knowledge.
Hope this helps!
Horst Meier CSAA and EQAA use coverage samples and add blending weight for each sample of MSAA. (Basically test if coverage sample is within or outside the rendered polygon)
They do not sample or store additional Z/color samples.
What about Multi F*cking Anti-Aliasing ?
+Paul SZ (PC Gam3r) super sampling?? very demanding but improve the image by alot :)
should i have both csaa and fxaa on
Do an episode about dithering
OMG.. had to pause the video half way before my brain exploded. but.... great job on explaining this just had to watch this a few times to comprehend everything lol.. Linus is the best
can I get anti aliasing on my Atari 2600
yes you can if you close your both eyes and believe that AA is turned on.
joe m Sure! If you are near-sighted, just remove your glasses. If you have an old television, you can turn down the focus, but that might require a tuner screwdriver. I love my Atari flashback.
When he showed the AMD logo with the green symbol and advised "I" was colourblind, I was like "Bruh, I'm literally wearing a red t-shirt right now."
I hate FXAA... every game I've tried it in makes the screen look like its been coated with vaseline. I would rather have jaggies than feel like my character seriously needs his glasses prescription updated.
That was alot of info to process in such a short space of time at this hour (2:42 am) in the morning...
FXAA looks god awful, period. I'd rather have jaggies than that. No idea why people love it so much...
Cause it has no impact on the system, it better than pixels and don't ruin the game like aa
TheDarkserpent FXAA ruins games, makes everything blurry as fuck.
It doesn't. It works beautifully in Batman AO for example and makes the game look so much better without ANY performance hit.
What I really dislike is that some games only have support for FXAA and no MSAA or any other type... Guild Wars 2 anyone?
Mr. Fuzzums No AA looks sharper and more real than FXAA
This is a great guide! Well done
Dislike if you dislike (5:45)...
TAAA is clearly the best kind of anti-aliasing, it's an evolution of MSAA and basically fixed it so that transparent textures are supported. I really dislike FXAA and other post processing variants because all they're doing is blurring, and while that masks jaggies is has the drawback of blurring texture detail which makes the scene look awful. Where as MSAA or TAAA maintains texture detail while dealing with jaggies. The only remaining "problem" is that MSAA or TAAA is computationally still quite expensive, it's way less expensive than SSAA, but the thing is back in the day it was just accepted that if you want to run a feature to clean up image quality then it would have some performance impact and either you could lower other settings to compensate or buy a faster video card.
I think the main irritation I have with FXAA and other post processing AA is that they just work off the final rendered image and blur that, and as such no new information is being added so you're not increasing the fidelity of the image. From a pure information standpoint you have a fixed output image of say 1080p and that is run through the FXAA algorithm and you get a 1080p image out, and that image isn't increasing in fidelity in fact is can only decease in fidelity. With MSAA actual sub samples of pixels are taken which means your starting image is way higher quality and this can be averaged to spit out the final image, it's inherently better because it seeks to build the final image out of a higher quality sample of the game space. Or put another way, if you're going to blend or average pixel data then you better be averaging more samples than you have pixels. You don't want to take a 4M pixels and average/blur them and spit out 4M different pixels, you want to be averaging 12M pixels and spitting out 4M
I still don't fucking get it....
Only need SMAA or if your gfx card is too slow then FXAA
FXAA is just freaking horrible. Just watch Fallout 4 and their anti-aliasing (both of the options). Only way I can even look the screen was to add sharpening filter through ReShade because they blur like hell. FXAA can be nice if combied with some good AA and sharpening but still there are better options like SMAA or CMAA.
The game needs to have MSAA or other similar good AA and then you could add FXAA or some other on top of it. Bad AA like FXAA as the base AA in the game and you can't make the game look good with external programs because FXAA doesn't do much to jaggies alone. Adding sharpening filter can help some.
How does Oversampling and then downsampling can make something looks smoother than without it. I don't get it.
because the image is rendered at a higher resolution first and is then squeezed down to fit into a smaller resolution thus removing jagged lines. another way to look at it is. watch a 1080p video on youtube in full screen then exit full screen. its still the same 1080p image but its been forced into a smaller box. sometimes its better to run a resolution scale rather than AA
MSAA or SSAA for me. None of that FXAA shit, it's vaseline mode.
You should see MLAA (or Morphological Filtering), it must have been dreamed up by an intern at AMD. It blends everything on your screen as if you have cataracts so even your HUD becomes blurry and indecipherable. I've seen better algorithms created for DOS games like HQ2X and 2xSAL
wasn't MLAA first used on PS3 titles like GOW3, where it actually produced very good results? I did try the PC implementation once though, and yeah it was absolutely horrendous lol
(Reply to Rob) Liked and subscribed. I laughed so fucking hard at how accurate this is & how it was phrased.
Finally you've moved to 4k video. I'm enjoying my new monitor now you and techoftomorrow are making use of the new resolutions.
fxaa sucks DO NOT USE IT
but what if there is no AA injecting some slight FXAA (4X or even 2X) will lessen jaggies without completely fucking with everything else
***** the issue is is that too much does degrade visuals but if there is not alternative some very small ammounts (like i said 2-4X) would alleviate jaggies
***** It suppresses detail and view range with a depth of field like effect
Fxaa is always the best choice performance wise for me in 1080, 1440, or 4k. It has similar quality to msaa 4x and half the fps hit. The only realistic difference I notice is that msaa has bett aliasing on distant objects.
***** Maybe not, native FXAA support in games like those in Borderlands 2 or Bioshock maybe obsolete, but not for Nvidia driver native FXAA support though, it eliminate 90% of jagged line up close in all of my games, if the game support it off-course.
Dear Linus and everyone else that makes up Techquickie:
I love you.
Fast as Possible NVidia PhysX
Hey Linus can you give me the link to the smaa post that you showed near the end Thx
My head hurts ! :D
Not first!
yes
Damn, I was about to comment the same thing...But you were faster then me by 6 minutes! :(
So what should you use for gaming? MLAA, SMAA or FXAA?
I'am the only one who plays at HD resolution and does not miss anti aliasing ?
Can AA destroy your display screen function - something prob in circuits I dunno what they called it
No, AA processing is done by the gpu, your display just shows the final result.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA IM CONFUSED!!!!!!
Ok, mind just got blown. Need a soda to return to normal!
Thx Linus.
Linus didnt speak of the performace enough. 2xMSAA in battlefield can take away 15fps and leave a ton of jaggies when FXAA requires only 1-2fps and gets the job done but blurs things a little bit.
He said at the end it all depends on your hardware, the game you're playing, and what you're happy with. Someone with dual 780 Ti's won't notice a difference, someone with worse hardware might have an even worse FPS hit. You can't have a blanket statement for that.
MarioDragon Well yes and no, ofc it depends on your hardware but in actual gaming it's about the fps you get. If you have an 60Hz monitor and the game runs at 90fps then you got something to spare for better AA. If you barely get 60 or below then FXAA is a good choice. Usually I prefer FXAA because it's so good in recent games and I need to put at least 4xMSAA to see similar result and that requires power and VRAM.
Could you possibly do one on buffering and caching and how that all works please?
Techquickie Once again Linus and team, great job. Delivered very accurate information. :D
fxaa/txaa is my favourite on most games, specially sinematic types (max payne and such)
1:20 did I just hear "128x FSAA and SLI Quadros in one sentance?" thats fucking ludicrous speed!
in order to close the matter of the variety of gaming options..explain the different kinds of ambient occlusion..you started that in a previous video but you never got too far with it
4:40 Did you mean the smoothness of MSAA?
This information helps me on my 3D animations, thank you.
Techquickie please can you make a video about driver updates and what is the benefits or bad bits about it and please do it asap
Got to say tried txaa and I really like it, tend to use that or ogssaa to get rid of jaggies.
These people saying FXAA is bad and crappy, it’s actually one of the best.
I’ve played around with different types of AA but FXAA is probably the best when it comes down to efficiency and looks. You may be hardcore gamers but hey, until you are the one building up a game and experimenting between AA’s and their values like radius and iterations. You’ll then be granted a proper opinion to what is better. (I’ve jumped between only 3 AA’s really, DLAA, SSAA, and the FXAA’s (FXAA, FXAA II, FXAA III))
My main issue with purely analytical anti-aliasing techniques (FXAA, MLAA, basic SMAA) aside from the blur that they can sometimes induce: They do NOTHING to handle aliasing that breaks up lines in the distance. Now mix a post process AA solution with a bit of MSAA (or SSAA if you can afford it) however and/or upgrade SMAA to SMAA T2X and things'll look a fair bit better all-around.
Use fxaa with ssaa x8 best of both
I can vouch for lynda.com used their tutorials before, their really good
Do a Tech Quickie on the different types of Monitor Panels and how they're different!
What's the AA that Nvidia developed recently? I think I remember them releasing it last year and it prevented aliasing by using different samples between frames
I never knew Paul Gilbert's bass player was so tech savvy!