GSdx

[lightchris]

Oh well,I got excited for no reason it seems I had to switch quickly between the 2 pics while zoomed to even NOTICE a difference I guess this is for the image quality junkies, and I'm not one of them I'd never even notice this small of an improvement lol
In any case,nice job Gabest

If or how strong one will notice the benefits of MSAA depends on several factors:

- which internal resolution you are using (note that a raised internal resolution is just another form of AA)
- the game and the specific scene ingame
- how big your monitor is, your viewing distance and if you run pcsx2 in fullscreen
- and of course your personal sensitivity for aliasing

Also, most find aliasing more disturbing when seen in motion and not in a screenshot.

Just one example in which pretty much everyone should notice the difference. FFX, native internal resolution. First pic is without MSAA, second with 8x MSAA:

       

I'm wondering if you can use nvidia's "Enhance the Application" AA setting, and set msaa=2 in the ini, and something like 8xQ in the control panel ?
I would test this myself, but I'm in the middle of doing some video work and need all the CPU I can get.

Tested it and it works.
However, be careful with trying to set one of the supersampling modes in nHancer. Got a nice bluescreen with that. (8800GTS, FW 186.08)

BTW, speaking of AF, I can't really see much of a difference between 16xAF and off. I tested this on GT4, and really didn't see that much of a difference.
Unless AF is somewhat broken in the drivers I'm using, which are the 190.38's, in Vista64 using a 9800GT.

This also depends on the game and the internal resolution of course. I posted a comparison of SotC some time ago (look at the noise on the ground): http://forums.pcsx2.net/thread-3816-post...l#pid22769

[DKTronics]

Tested it and it works.
However, be careful with trying to set one of the supersampling modes in nHancer. Got a nice bluescreen with that. (8800GTS, FW 186.08)

BTW, speaking of AF, I can't really see much of a difference between 16xAF and off. I tested this on GT4, and really didn't see that much of a difference.
Unless AF is somewhat broken in the drivers I'm using, which are the 190.38's, in Vista64 using a 9800GT.

This also depends on the game and the internal resolution of course. I posted a comparison of SotC some time ago (look at the noise on the ground): http://forums.pcsx2.net/thread-3816-post...l#pid22769

Yeah, I thought it might work, cheers. Although, I don't think I have to really worry about SSAA on a 9800GT Perhaps when I eventually upgrade to something like a 260, as they seem to be more than affordable now.

What kind of a hit did you take on your 8800GTS when trying out AA ?

[zero29]

Oh well,I got excited for no reason it seems I had to switch quickly between the 2 pics while zoomed to even NOTICE a difference I guess this is for the image quality junkies, and I'm not one of them I'd never even notice this small of an improvement lol
In any case,nice job Gabest

of course, aa at 1600x1200 is a toy for enthusiasts. but if you look at e.g. the sword of tidus, then you'll clearly see the difference. and it doesn't seem to lower my fps with ffx, so who cares

[dralor]

Yeah I knew about forcing AA it only worked in DX9 fullscreen mode before with nhancer.

[Koji]

If you're using the plugin with a high internal res (higher than display resolution) you basically get the exact same result.

Antialaising (on the most basic level) is pretty much just rendering an image as a higher resolution than displayed. When the image is downsized to fit your screen, it blends the pixels together removing all the jagged and obvious angles.

[Gabest]

With msaa it does not really render in higher resolution, the color of each pixel is calculated once (that is the pixel shader runs once per pixel) and then distributed to more samples, which only makes a difference at the edges. The inside of the polygons will still look the same, even if the texture has more detail there. On the other hand, vertices don't need to be modified (multipled) to get a better image in native res. I'm thinking of the shifted overlays now.

[lightchris]

What kind of a hit did you take on your 8800GTS when trying out AA ?

Really depends on the game. Generally it seems to be that way: The games which suffer performance decreases with high internal resolutions will also see decreases with MSAA.
But as I stated earlier: When raising the interal resolution works flawlessly you don't need MSAA (because the image quality with a high resolution is even better).

@Koji: (Nearly) correct. A little addition:

If you're using the plugin with a high internal res (higher than display resolution) you basically get the exact same result.

This would be correct for polygon edges. There the outcome when using MSAA (="Multi Sampling Anti Aliasing", the thing gabest now implemented) or SSAA (="Super Sampling Anti Aliasing", raising the internal resolution higher than your display resolution is one form of SSAA) is basically the same. However MSAA solely touches polygon edges while SSAA enhances the whole image and automatically provides AF. In many PS2 games the difference might not be that big, but it is still noticeable and a "nice to have" if you like good image quality.

edit: I see gabest already gave a more technical explanation.

[dralor]

On a related note I notice just like anything MSAA isn't perfect and can still screw up rendering. Persona4 seems to have shadow issues with it.

Also while raising the resolution gets a sharper image then using MSAA it also doesn't get rid of polygon edges as well as MSAA. With MSAA set at 4 the difference really is noticeable with things in motion. Unfortunately most games don't work so well with my high res and MSAAA set to 4 so I have to choose general sharpness/clearness of imace or not annoying polygon crawl.

[DKTronics]

Another thing a higher internal resolution can never fix is shimmering and crawling, something MSAA not only helps here a bit, but can also eliminate entirely in PC games, provided you use a high enough setting like 8x(Q)/16x(Q).

[Koji]

Gabest and Lightchris: Ahh, I see. I misunderstood a little bit about MSAA thanks for the clarification.