Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Custom internal resolution would be preferred, as it is unlimited and more flexible.
Plus, you can still calculate and insert a resolution that is a multiple of the original resolution, to avoid graphical glitches.

@Gabbyjay

4xSSAA in dolphin already does exactly what you're trying to do. And without blurring the textures which I see in your screenshot.

4xSSAA is only available in the DX9-Plugin (which has some disadvantages over the DX11 one and seems to run out of support in the future).

Plus SSAA its not as flexible as a custom internal resolution would be (as you got only 4x or 9x to choose), both performance and quality-wise.


Downsampling makes textures sharper in the distance (as the LOD is set automatically), not more blurry.

I just tested this for confirmation, textures dont look any sharper with DX9 + SSAA (of course).

Gabbyjay Wrote:4xSSAA is only available in the DX9-Plugin

And openGL.

Gabbyjay Wrote:Plus SSAA its not as flexible as a custom internal resolution would be (as you got only 4x or 9x to choose), both performance and quality-wise.

No but it yields better IQ since the scaling filter is actually designed to reduce aliasing.

Gabbyjay Wrote:Downsampling makes textures sharper in the distance (as the LOD is set automatically), not more blurry.

Depends on how the resolve stage is handled. Depending on how its implemented it often makes textures appear blurry. As was the case in your screenshot.

Gabbyjay Wrote:I just tested this for confirmation, textures dont look any sharper with DX9 + SSAA (of course).

What IR were you using?

Quote: And openGL.

But not DX11, unfortunately.

Quote: SSAA it yields better IQ since the scaling filter is actually designed to reduce aliasing.

You are referring only to Dolphin's internal SSAA now, don't you? As driver SSAA only uses a box-filter AFAIK.
In this case: Good to know, what kinda filter is used here?

Image Quality still is worse compared to DX11, tho (as you cannot combine Dolphin's internal SSAA with SGSSAA).

I dont understand your intention here, anyway:
We are already talking about very high quality settings at very high resolutions here, yet you still mention the difference between scaling filters for optimal IQ.
At the same time, you consider custom and thus even higher internal resolutions unnecessary.
I would think someone who even considers differences between scaling filters at that high IQ level would also love to see higher internal resolutions.
I hope it will be included in dolphin.

Quote:Depends on how the resolve stage is handled. Depending on how its implemented it often makes textures appear blurry.

It does not. Why should it? The opposite is the case. The game is rendered at a higher resolution, so the texture LOD is set further into the negative. Thus you get sharper textures further into the screen space.
You select the resolution (2880x1620 or 3840x2160, for example) directly in the application. The application treats it exactly as it would treat a 4K-Display. After that, the monitor applies a box-filter to scale it down to 1920x1080. It also does not collide with any post processing-effects or rendering techniques. So why should textures get blurry?

(10-02-2013, 11:51 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]What IR were you using?

Same for both, 2560x2112 internal resolution.
I dont see ANY difference in textures at all:


4xSSAA:
http://www7.pic-upload.de/02.10.13/yde46h21mqrp.jpg

4xDownsampling:
http://www7.pic-upload.de/02.10.13/ulcaltqc4dyt.jpg



What i can confirm is that the SSAA scaling filter seems to do a slightly different job on edges. Some seem better, some seem worse, hard to tell at such high quality levels. But anyway, as you cannot apply SGSSAA in the DX9-plugin...
But if you mention this filter as an advantage, i think you should also see the advantages of even higher internal resolutions, even if they are ever so small.
Please also consider post processing effects such as FXAA, SMAA, or SweeFX.
Some of these definitely work better (or less blurry) with higher resolutions.
4K-Displays and/or multi monitor setups are also more and more common each day, so its a good thing for the future too.


Plus we got no SSAA in DX11-plugin.


A good example where immensely high internal resolutions do make a clearly visible difference is SweetFX's cartoon-shader.
It looks absolutely great when set to 10 (and looks far better than auto toon etc) in games like Mario Galaxy 1/2 and many other comic-like games.
The fine black lines are applied post-processing, and only rendering at a higher resolution internally actually anti-aliases them correctly.

I think everyone (or almost everyone) agrees that it's nice to have this option. I don't see any drawback. But apparently, nobody wants to work on it.

Yes, you got the point... i hope i did not step over the line advocating this feature.

Gabbyjay Wrote:But not DX11, unfortunately.

You still have two backends that support it. One of which will be kept up to date until the end of time. Any dev that so much as thinks of deprecating openGL will be publicly castrated.

Gabbyjay Wrote:You are referring only to Dolphin's internal SSAA now, don't you? As driver SSAA only uses a box-filter AFAIK.
In this case: Good to know, what kinda filter is used here?

Same. A box filter.

Gabbyjay Wrote:Image Quality still is worse compared to DX11, tho (as you cannot combine Dolphin's internal SSAA with SGSSAA).

Wait. Are you comparing dolphins OGSSAA in d3d9 against driver MSAA + SGSSAA in d3d11? How exactly is that fair?

Now I'm confused. What exactly do you want? Because if SGSSAA is what you want than we need an MSAA option in d3d9 (which is impossible thanks to dolphins use of offscreen render targets). If you want SGSSAA to be added internally hell will freeze over first unless you can find us someone with experience writing such shaders who would be willing to implement it. Our d3d9 OGSSAA shader can't be ported to openGL or d3d11 for whatever reason. The openGL backend actually uses the drivers to perform SSAA instead of a custom shader. As far as I know d3d11 doesn't have a SSAA function so that can't be done.

Gabbyjay Wrote:I dont understand your intention here, anyway:

Gabbyjay Wrote:We are already talking about very high quality settings at very high resolutions here, yet you still mention the difference between scaling filters for optimal IQ.
At the same time, you consider custom and thus even higher internal resolutions unnecessary.
I would think someone who even considers differences between scaling filters at that high IQ level would also love to see higher internal resolutions.
I hope it will be included in dolphin.

My point is that SSAA provides better IQ as far as aliasing is concerned vs. raising the IR. Thus it should be the primary focus of anyone trying to reduce aliasing. Custom IR is nice but after a certain point it no longer makes a difference due to the scaling filter actually creating aliasing. There is essentially a cap on how good your IQ can be with IR based on your screen resolution. And SSAA has a much higher cap. That is my point.

Gabbyjay Wrote:It does not. Why should it?

You're asking why a blur filter can create blur if it's not carefully controlled?

Do you have any idea how many times they've fixed dolphins SSAA causing blurring due to little changes like off by 1 errors? This is EXTREMELY common with SSAA. Even in the 90s driver based SSAA in particular often caused game textures to appear blurry. This is still the case today. And its even widely debated among devs as to whether this is the proper behavior since after all you are averaging color samples.

Gabbyjay Wrote:Same for both, 2560x2112 internal resolution.
I dont see ANY difference in textures at all:

Look at the terrain. Using a lower IR will produce a more pronounced difference. Dolphins OGSSAA shader only really works effectively with fractional scaling at the moment unfortunately (auto window size IR) due to a bug that is still yet to be fixed.

Gabbyjay Wrote:Please also consider post processing effects such as FXAA, SMAA, or SweeFX

SweetFX is an injector not a post processing effect. And it works with both 32 bit and 64 bit dolphin builds with all three backends. There are also driver implementations for nvidia and other injectors that work with dolphin as well to provide these forms of AA. I agree that FXAA/SMAA should be added to dolphin itself but its not a big deal since they're easy enough to use already. They're still working on rewriting the post-processing shader option for openGL as the current implementation is not advanced enough to allow such a shader to be added that way.

xemnas Wrote:I think everyone (or almost everyone) agrees that it's nice to have this option. I don't see any drawback. But apparently, nobody wants to work on it.

Yeah lots of people have been begging them to add custom IR for a long time now. They even made a at least one attempt at it but dropped it because the implementation made the GUI "unclean".

As far as SSAA in d3d11 is concerned I've been pestering neobrain (the developer of the d3d11 backend) about that literally since the moment that the d3d11 backend existed: http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=4140

(10-03-2013, 10:12 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]As far as SSAA in d3d11 is concerned I've been pestering neobrain (the developer of the d3d11 backend) about that literally since the moment that the d3d11 backend existed: http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=4140

brb staring issue

Just to clear it up:
When you say Dolphin's internal SSAA's downfilter has better image quality, what are you comparing it to?
I think you compare it to a higher internal resolution downscaled on the display's native resolution. If I'm not mistaken.
Yet, the filter is the same as in SSAA forced in the driver, no fancy extras here.
Then it should also provide the same IQ results as downsampling via custom resolution created in the driver (see below) gives at the same sample amount.

Quote:Wait. Are you comparing dolphins OGSSAA in d3d9 against driver MSAA + SGSSAA in d3d11? How exactly is that fair?

You said, Dolphin's SSAA already does what i want (raising the internal resolution).
I replied, this is not as flexible as a custom internal resolution would be (as you only can choose between 4 and 9 suppixels).

Then you said it provides better image quality then raising the internal resolution.
But then again this does not work in DX11, which has even better IQ when you consider SGSSAA (best SGSSAA alone, its better then SGSSAA + additional MSAA). That's why:

Quote:Now I'm confused. What exactly do you want?

I would love to see a custom internal resolution in all plugins. This would provide maximum flexibility and maximum IQ, in DX11 even better than 9xSSAA in DX9 now if you consider SGSSAA.

Quote:Custom IR is nice but after a certain point it no longer makes a difference due to the scaling filter actually creating aliasing.

And that point is 4xinternal resolution? So has this limit already been reached?
If not, custom internal resolutions still make sense, especially if you want to use the DX11 plugin where you cannot take advantage of SSAA's multiplication effect.

Quote:You're asking why a blur filter can create blur if it's not carefully controlled?

No! My question is far more specific here:
How should downsampling done by creating custom resolutions in the driver create blur on the textures?
Cause that was the SSAA method i used here, as i described several times now!

Downsampling via custom resolutions NEVER creates such problems, thus it always works (long as your monitor supports it), even on games where normal SSAA would create blur. Cause it happens after all this rendering stuff happens, the monitor does the downscaling.

I hope you get what i mean.
If not, look at this:

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121123145022/screenarchery/images/thumb/d/d6/3840x.png/309px-3840x.png

This is a common practice to force 2,25x or 4x OGSSAA. It wont cause blurry textures!

Quote: SweetFX is an injector not a post processing effect.

FXAA and SMAA for example injected by SweetFX are post processing effects, to be more precise, that was my point.

Quote:I agree that FXAA/SMAA should be added to dolphin itself but its not a big deal since they're easy enough to use already.

No, misunderstanding.
I dont mind having to inject FXAA/SMAA myself.
What i was trying to say is that effects like these are also affected by high internal resolutions.