Nvidia and AMD Anti-Aliasing and SweetFX Guide

[Pyrii]

Interesting, I've been looking up why without these bits, forcing AA for PSO2 has no effect. I notice the in-game AA still has horrible shimmering in textures (Anisotrophy having no effect?)

Also, what do the changes to the AA Compat value from base actually do? And what is the base Compat value by the way?

EDIT: Also, how do Symbol Arts look with and without your AA? I noticed 4x SGSS oversharpens textures and messes up Symbol Arts.

[Preposterous Rhino]

Interesting, I've been looking up why without these bits, forcing AA for PSO2 has no effect. I notice the in-game AA still has horrible shimmering in textures (Anisotrophy having no effect?)

Also, what do the changes to the AA Compat value from base actually do? And what is the base Compat value by the way?

EDIT: Also, how do Symbol Arts look with and without your AA? I noticed 4x SGSS oversharpens textures and messes up Symbol Arts.

The default for this game is 0x00000000. Nvidia never made any for this game, which is why forcing AA doesn't work. Also, regular AA doesn't work well with this game, because it has A LOT of texture aliasing that regular MSAA/CSAA can't touch. This game requires SSAA, HSAA, or SGSSAA. The problem with SSAA and HSAA is that it messes up shadows to the point where there aren't any, except for a box of light that moves with your camera, which is very awkward looking.

Since gameguard sucks, you can't use any kind of injectors, so no SweetFX or SMAA. I find that SGSSAA is the only acceptable form to use.

EDIT: I haven't used and symbol chat so I don't know how it effects it. It sounds like you are describing SSAA though. SGSSAA is different from SSAA and shouldn't have the same effect on symbol chat, in theory.

[Pyrii]

The default for this game is 0x00000000. Nvidia never made any for this game, which is why forcing AA doesn't work. Also, regular AA doesn't work well with this game, because it has A LOT of texture aliasing that regular MSAA/CSAA can't touch. This game requires SSAA, HSAA, or SGSSAA. The problem with SSAA and HSAA is that it messes up shadows to the point where there aren't any, except for a box of light that moves with your camera, which is very awkward looking.

Since gameguard sucks, you can't use any kind of injectors, so no SweetFX or SMAA. I find that SGSSAA is the only acceptable form to use.

Yeah I gave SweetFX a shot and found it worked, but gameguard quickly spoilt it. Although not by much because the result wasn't good to begin with.

If only we could fix the horrible clothing textures, especially on emissive textures and some minimaps.

EDIT: Does gamma correction actually DO anything for AA or is it just another colour filter for the whole image?

[Preposterous Rhino]

Yeah I gave SweetFX a shot and found it worked, but gameguard quickly spoilt it. Although not by much because the result wasn't good to begin with.

If only we could fix the horrible clothing textures, especially on emissive textures and some minimaps.

EDIT: Does gamma correction actually DO anything for AA or is it just another colour filter for the whole image?

I made a sweetfx for this game too (based it off of what I think needed to be done) then fired it up, it looked absolutely FANTASTIC, then gameguard closed the game and I wanted to curl up in a corner lol.

I believe the gamma correction is OpenGL only, so it shouldn't effect this game at all.

Edit: Would also like to add that I editing the original post to have a comparison shot between my values and the popular values on that japanese blog.

[Zyrusticae]

I made a sweetfx for this game too (based it off of what I think needed to be done) then fired it up, it looked absolutely FANTASTIC, then gameguard closed the game and I wanted to curl up in a corner lol.

Yep, my experience as well.

Fuck Gameguard. It ruins everything.

I should note that downsampling works fine in this game as an alternative to straight SSAA (there's a guide for it here). It'll scale the HUD, of course, but it does reduce aliasing while dramatically improving clarity, and it has no side-effects with regards to in-game effects (even motion blur works correctly, which I can't say for SGSSAA where it tends to break the interpolation effects).

I still use SGSSAA, though, since downsampling causes a massive performance hit with ambient occlusion (it works on a per-pixel basis, hence, since downsampling dramatically increases the number of pixels on-screen, it also dramatically increases the number of samples taken by the ambient occlusion shader. SGSSAA does not have this problem since it runs at the native resolution and simply runs more samples per pixel), but if you're not using AO there's no reason to not downsample.

[Pyrii]

I've been playing with your settings with the Character Creator (Stuck patching PSO2 atm) and wow, it's a bit blurry, I'm having trouble focusing on the characters on the screen etc.

I am noticing though that LOD Bias is having no real effect imo. Turning off transparency SGSS makes text clearer. And I have checked, AA isn't on in the game.

There-in lies the problem, this is a hack unfortunately. If only Sonic Team could code better native AA...

[Preposterous Rhino]

Yep, my experience as well.

Fuck Gameguard. It ruins everything.

I should note that downsampling works fine in this game as an alternative to straight SSAA (there's a guide for it here). It'll scale the HUD, of course, but it does reduce aliasing while dramatically improving clarity, and it has no side-effects with regards to in-game effects (even motion blur works correctly, which I can't say for SGSSAA where it tends to break the interpolation effects).

I still use SGSSAA, though, since downsampling causes a massive performance hit with ambient occlusion (it works on a per-pixel basis, hence, since downsampling dramatically increases the number of pixels on-screen, it also dramatically increases the number of samples taken by the ambient occlusion shader. SGSSAA does not have this problem since it runs at the native resolution and simply runs more samples per pixel), but if you're not using AO there's no reason to not downsample.

Downsampling doesn't play with my monitor well (it ALWAYS has noticeable blur for me). The motion blur works great with SGSSAA for me. If it didn't work, I probably wouldn't use it, since I LOVE this games use of motion blur. It is subtle where it should be, and noticeable where it is effective. All games using motion blur should implement it like this game.

[Preposterous Rhino]

I've been playing with your settings with the Character Creator (Stuck patching PSO2 atm) and wow, it's a bit blurry, I'm having trouble focusing on the characters on the screen etc.

I am noticing though that LOD Bias is having no real effect imo. Turning off transparency SGSS makes text clearer. And I have checked, AA isn't on in the game.

There-in lies the problem, this is a hack unfortunately. If only Sonic Team could code better native AA...

Did you set it up properly? I have a keen eye for this kind of thing, and the image isn't blurry, it is softened a bit though. SGSSAA works in a way that it will soften the image a bit. Did you set the same number of multisamples as SGSSAA? The SGSSAA works off of the sample count of the MSAA, so it is very important to use the same values.

The LOD bias isn't going to help with the blur, it is just an added bonus of using SGSSAA or SSAA. I believe the LOD bias helps a lot with shadows in this game (adjusts when the LOD textures will change, making the higher resolution shadows render a bit farther back).

[Preposterous Rhino]

Just added a native screenshot to the OP. The IQ difference is quite high IMO.

[Zyrusticae]

How interesting. I haven't heard of downsampling introducing blur before. What a shame, it works great on mine and I use it on many games (basically anything that doesn't have good SGSSAA bits).

At any rate, both downsampling and SGSSAA look great on my machine. It really is amazing how much of a difference it makes in the IQ. I've always felt that a properly anti-aliased image should resemble pre-rendered CG in its cleanliness. It's a shame I won't be able to maintain this kind of IQ in next-gen games (though hopefully they will compensate with improved AA solutions, like SMAA T2x and TXAA).