Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I went ahead and tested a few combinations of Super Sampling Anti Aliasing and the new FXAA from Nvidia that came with the latest drivers. I'm using Dolphin 2.

No AA:


2.25x SSAA + FXAA:


2.25x SSAA:


FXAA:


The combination of 2.25x SSAA + FXAA is the one that gives the best improvement in quality. But note that the latest Dolphin doesn't have the option for 2.25x SSAA, it only has 4x and 9x.

As a side note, I use Dolphin 2 to play Brawl instead of the latest Dolphin because no matter what I do, I can never get the latest dolphin to run as fast as Dolphin 2 in Brawl.

I can still see liasing

(04-16-2012, 03:44 PM)Gir Wrote: [ -> ]I can still see liasing

What's liasing?

That second screenshot looks pretty radical. Does Brawl run smoother than the Zeldas when graphical settings are set that high? I can't seem to get a good framerate out of Twilight Princess or SS when I try to play around with those settings beyond the lowest ones (aside from not being on at all).

(04-17-2012, 05:35 AM)nbmatt Wrote: [ -> ]

(04-16-2012, 03:44 PM)Gir Wrote: [ -> ]I can still see liasing

What's liasing?

I think Gir meant aliasing (aka jaggies).

I agree, 2nd screenshot looks pretty sweet. Been wondering what an FXAA implementation would look like on Dolphin.

Quote:I agree, 2nd screenshot looks pretty sweet. Been wondering what an FXAA implementation would look like on Dolphin.

Then why don't you try it? You have a GTX 550 TI, that gives you like 4 different ways to use it.

And yes 4xSSAA + FXAA is needed to eliminate most aliasing, as you would expect.

I should also point out that he's using a build from back when 4xSSAA actually worked *cough* I won't forget what you did neobrain *cough*.

(04-17-2012, 06:32 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:I agree, 2nd screenshot looks pretty sweet. Been wondering what an FXAA implementation would look like on Dolphin.

Then why don't you try it? You have a GTX 550 TI, that gives you like 4 different ways to use it.

Doesn't Nvidia provide FXAA via drivers? I don't recall seeing that option in the Linux version of their driver. I'll double check later. Any other relatively easy ways to try it?

Quote:Linux

Well I guess that explains why you haven't tried out FXAA yet. It's not included in the linux drivers, there are no linux hooks available for it, etc.

(04-17-2012, 07:29 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Linux

Well I guess that explains why you haven't tried out FXAA yet. It's not included in the linux drivers, there are no linux hooks available for it, etc.

Lovely picture. At any rate, I'm just curious as to what FXAA looks like. I only found out about it last week. I'm not into PC gaming, so I haven't kept up with anything until I got this rig a few months back. Maybe Nvidia will add it later. It's not like I'm in a rush to have it though.

I need a bigger screen first of all before I go on worrying what my AA looks like though. The one I have now is only 1280x1024 (hand-me-down), so it's not enough for 1080p. For now, however, 2x IR and 4x MSAA (that's the on OpenGL uses correct?) seems alright to my eyes.

Quote:Lovely picture.

Wasn't it?

As a huge simpsons fan it's the first thing I thought of when I read your post, I immediately burst out laughing. Why did you have to remove it? It wasn't that offensive and you've denied my post to ability to brighten up the day of any reader with laughter.

Quote:I need a bigger screen first of all before I go on worrying what my AA looks like though. The one I have now is only 1280x1024 (hand-me-down), so it's not enough for 1080p.

You realize aliasing gets worse the lower your screen resolution is right? Trust me when you upgrade to a bigger higher resolution monitor aliasing will go down not up.

Quote:For now, however, 2x IR and 4x MSAA (that's the on OpenGL uses correct?) seems alright to my eyes.

The problem with MSAA is that it can only remove geometry aliasing, and even then only in certain circumstances. As such a lot of aliasing remains untouched no matter how many samples you use. It also has a surprisingly high performance hit in dolphin when combined with a high IR, although not as bad as SSAA obviously.

FXAA affects all aliasing, but does very little in the way of reducing it. However it scales with internal resolution. As IR goes up so does FXAA effectiveness.

SSAA is highly effective at removing all forms of aliasing except temporal (which is impossible to remove without temporal blur (motion blur)). However it has an insane performance hit, causing even the most primitive graphics engines to eat up absurd amounts of shader throughput, vram bandwidth, and video ram. SSAA is broken in dolphin to top this off.

(04-17-2012, 09:58 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Wasn't it?

As a huge simpsons fan it's the first thing I thought of when I read your post, I immediately burst out laughing. Why did you have to remove it? It wasn't that offensive and you've denied my post to ability to brighten up the day of any reader with laughter.

I didn't remove it. I'm only a mod for the Support forum. Probably someone else. Look at skid. Personally, I try to quote text only. I don't particularly watch the Simpsons, but I appreciate humor when I see it .

Quote:You realize aliasing gets worse the lower your screen resolution is right? Trust me when you upgrade to a bigger higher resolution monitor aliasing will go down not up.

Yes, I do realize that. It only makes sense when you have more available pixels to draw to, the sharper the rendering. I meant I don't want to worry myself about software AA before I make the move to a higher resolution monitor.

Quote:The problem with MSAA is that it can only remove geometry aliasing, and even then only in certain circumstances. As such a lot of aliasing remains untouched no matter how many samples you use. It also has a surprisingly high performance hit in dolphin when combined with a high IR, although not as bad as SSAA obviously.

FXAA affects all aliasing, but does very little in the way of reducing it. However it scales with internal resolution. As IR goes up so does FXAA effectiveness.

SSAA is highly effective at removing all forms of aliasing except temporal (which is impossible to remove without temporal blur (motion blur)). However it has an insane performance hit, causing even the most primitive graphics engines to eat up absurd amounts of shader throughput, vram bandwidth, and video ram. SSAA is broken in dolphin to top this off.

Yeah, had a look-see on wikipedia on the differences between AA methods, out of curiosity. Thanks for the run-down here as well. Sucks that MSAA leaves some aliasing around, although it seems to do a good job on my machine, at least, I can't immediately tell if there's aliasing going on unless I lean in real close to my monitor. That's good enough for me right now until I can find something better, or someone has any recommendations.