(10-04-2013, 01:45 PM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]Roughly anything Retina-level and above. I think I posted the DPI of the 13" or 15" here a bit ago. It's 227 and 220 respectively, notably higher than either 108.79 or 163.18.
It will take time till we see this on large screen devices such as TVs and even longer on projectors.
It is obvious that for the time until then, other AA forms make sense.
As for the time after that, you are only speculating:
Will 9xSSAA be enough?
I already had an example where this pattern is very ineffective: Moirees. Even on the highest resolutions, since it is a side-effect of the regular nature of the pixel grid, which is the same grid with higher resolutions.
' Wrote:I said that for some people, performance won't be part of the equation because they don't care about it, essentially stripping it from that said equation.
Today, this is not true even for the highest end systems.
I am using a Geforce Titan and cannot even get the highest possible setting (9xSSAA + auto window size on 3840x2160) to work. It will crash, which is logical. The next available setting is 9xSSAA with 2560x2112, which has unplayable frame rates. (And looks anything but perfect, btw.) And this is on a $1000 card.
It will take time till we see a graphic card of this level reach prices the average user is willing to pay. It will take even more time till we get a card in this price region that makes it possible at playable frame rates. And even more time will pass till the same is true for the much higher resolution of smartphone-like high DPIs on all screen sizes (as that resolution is also a lot more demanding).
So you're quadruple-speculating:
1) About the degree of aliasing it will remove.
Remember, aliasing does not only consist of pixelation, but also temporal effects, shimmer, moiree and the like, and it is also about precision with all it's side effects.
2) About the number of users that will make use of AA-Types other then 9xSSAA.
You don't know anything about that number, and you cannot judge about this number by looking at this forums. It is not representative.
3) About the date where "high DPI devices" are common for all screen sizes.
4) About the hardware and if it will be enough to make playable fps out of this, especially as the emu develompent progress can slow things down again.
Quote:We can't just look at RG/SGSSAA in general terms based strictly on it's overall value; we have to look at examples of how it would or wouldn't benefit others.
Why do we "have" to do this? Is there a rule that an emulator hase to be some kind of democratic model or what is this?
How many users have a 5.1 sound system on their PC? Definitely a minority, most people don't even have it in their living room.
Yet, there still is a "Use Dolby ProLogic II decoder"-option in Dolphin.
Should this option not have been included, cause only a few people use it?
Sould it get thrown out of Dolphin for this reason?
Both no! Cause it actually makes the emulator better.
What is the whole point of this majority/minority-thing anyway?
Why should percentages be more important then absolute numbers here?
If 10% out of 100.000 users make use of a feature, if is a minority.
Yet there are still more people using this than if 70% of 10.000 users would use it.
So whats the point? Should they stop to care about that feature if it's user percentage would get low, even if with time the total number is actually rising? You don't even know anything about both numbers, the percentage and the total...
Did they even have a certain number of users in mind when they created the whole Dolphin project? And if they did, for what reason? It's written for a minority of users anyway, and no money outta that...
Quote:If you point out that it provides a high IQ in comparison to other AA methods, I have to point out that conversely it won't make a difference to others.
No. You can only say they probably don't care about the difference, based on speculation about all involved factors, see above.
Funny thing is that i remember the same discussion about the 1080p-standard. Lots of people said "AA would be unnecessary since the high resolution" (compared to the former SD). We all know that this is not true, and this also shows another important thing:
The personal demands someone has on quality often rises over time.
When i was younger, i was satisfied with things which i today wonder about: How could i ever accept this?
Quote:Are you talking about already having it (RG/SGSSAA) available through drivers?
Yes.
Quote:It doesn't change the fact that people have not been asking for this to be implemented natively in Dolphin.
What was that thread here about again?
The opening posting says: "RG/SGSSAA - will it ever be an option?".
Anyhow - take me for example. You said I was some kind of "AA enthusiast" - and even as such I don't care if it's included in Dolphin, as long as i can make it work through the drivers. As long as this method works and does not have any disadvantages compared to if it would be included in the drivers, I'm quite fine with it. In fact, I like it even more this way.
So why should I ask to have it implemented directly?
Quote:They could use it, or it's equally possible that they could just outright ignore it. Consider all of the features that get implemented in Dolphin already. When was the last time you checked Enable Wireframe, saved or loaded a state from a file manually (Load State... and Save State... respectively) or dabbled with TAS input?
And yet, they are still included (for a reason). You are contradicting yourself here. As you can see it's not only about how many users will actually use it.
Quote:Simply making it available does not ensure it will be used rather than passed over. It certainly increases the likelihood of its being used, but on the flipside does not mean it will be used.
And that was my whole point, which you just confirmed:
You cannot look at number of people speaking out for it in the forums, extrapolate a certain number of users who would want such a feature out of this, and then again determine the number of people actually using it from this. Your "equation" does not work this way. This is not a basis from where a representative analysis can be made.
And then, even if you could know the numbers: An emulator is not necessarily a project whose decisions are based on the analysis of the userbase.
Quote:How can you be so certain we won't be able to sufficiently detect moirees with displays with high DPI and high resolutions, and how do you know that making the image finer by increasing the amount of pixel in a given spot and likewise shrinking said pixels won't be enough to deal with moirees without the need for RG/SGSSAA?
Imagine a 1 pixel broad line crawling across your high DPI smartphone screen. Do you think you won't notice this one just because it is thin?
That is basically what moiree effects produce, only that it is curves crawling instead of lines.
To fight this, you need irregularity: Bring some irregularity into a regular pattern, so the human brain cannot detect it as a continuing line/pattern anymore. Higher resolutions are as regular as smaller resolutions are, and so is an ordered grid.
Quote:I'm fairly confident 9xSSAA would be enough given second hand account from people who have done gaming on high DPI displays.
I can only tell from my experience at 3840x2160 @ 4x, 9x and even 16x (!) OGSSAA, admittedly. If this is not enough, I'm sorry, but please remember that the original statement was "you people won't give a shit". Which implicts: It WILL be enough. My reply to that was that [even at high DPI there are scenarios that] "still might take advantage of further refined anti aliasing methods.". You just cannot rule out the possibility.
Quote:Alright, ignore the fact that I've been involved with this community longer than you have
Can you be certain about this, just because my nickname is not registered a long time?
Well, i already waited for this to come... "I am an authority!" - as if it would be of any significance in that context.
Quote:Ignore the fact that Lock Threads to Cores was removed specifically because the devs did not see it's usefulness
Now what does that mean for this thread?
It has already been made clear that SGSSAA is not possible in the DX9-plugin, as MSAA collides with the rendering technique. In DX11, it's already possible by forcing it with the drivers. The same is true for OpenGL (which has even more options), you only need to enable Transparency Supersampling in the driver instead of Transparency Sparse Grid Supersampling. This is a driver bug, of course, but it enables SG(!)SSAA for the whole image.
So it eems like we already got everything that is possible at the moment, the only feature I am asking for to be added is a custom internal resolution (and SSAA in DX11), which has not been implemented (only started) yet cause it causes GUI probs and cause the work that needs to be done.
The rest of this thread was a discussion about the advantages/disadvantages of OG vs SGSSAA, and our little discussion here.
Quote:Again, you don't seem to have been part of this community for very long.
"I am the autority here!" - you might as well say you're right cause you're older. Statement such as this dont help anyone in a forum.
Quote:For many people, it is their only option. They are unable to upgrade hardware, and they don't want to stop playing Dolphin. The solution, though not ideal, is to use outdated, and sometimes even unsupported revisions. It's a frequent enough phenomenon here, and it has long been the source of problems, both for users, devs, and forum staff.
Ah i see, you're nitpicking about my "this is not an option" here... yeah, of course you can use older revisions, but this is not a reason to remove a feature from an emulator, since as i said you will have many disadvantages or at some point you might be even forced to upgrade.
Quote:Who knows. I'm still wanting for a display with infinite resolution 
Go play Vectrex.
Quote:My point was that GPU tech is advancing so fast that you'll probably have to wait more like 5-10 years
I think 5 to 10 years (!) is already enough time for certain AA-techniques to be worth keeping included, and even after that it still has advantages if the hardware power needed can be lowered.
Quote:A user with a GTX Titan did something similar a few months ago (not high DPI, 4x IR + 9xSSAA, which, although smaller than common 4K resolution, is as best an estimate we have atm) with SMG2 (one of the most GPU intensive games in Dolphin). It was a constant 60 FPS and the results were quite impressive.
Oh really?
I just happen to have a GTX Titan highly overclocked and at a custom watercooling using two aquariums dedicated to cooling.
Plus, i got SMG2 on my disk and yesterday, i did a vast amount of tests in 1920x1080, 2880x1620 and 3480x2160.
It runs at barely half the speed!
Higher internal resolutions are not even possible.
' Wrote:Some aspects speed up and other speed down.
So, again, lots of speculation involved in your part.
I mean look at PSX-Emulation, for example.
The system was released in 1994 (!). Lots of hardware upgrading since then, it's been 20 years!
Yet again, emu development still progresses and now that a certain russion coder found a method for more accurate internal hardware rendering and even included a Z-Buffer (!!), today's hardware barely manges 2x it's internal resolution and 3x won't even run in his plugin.
It's full of surprises!
So it's always good to have flexibility, so you can customize your IQ/performance-ratio in a way that you can have the best available quality at the optimal framerate, instead of making a compromise: Sacrificing a lot of IQ, or play at choppy FPS.
Quote:That's not very "enthusiast". Push it to the MAX! :p
In my country, there are many enthusiasts about silent computing, which is quite as challanging as high OC or the like can be.
Look at me, for example.
I got an highly overclocked i7 and a highly overclocked GTX titan in my system. Before i had two GTX 580 highly overclocked, which can consume even more power.
Yet, i still manage not only to keep GPU- and CPU-temps below the 30 degrees (celsius) mark, i'm also doing this completely passive with no active cooling.
Why do i say this here?
I'm using a storage solution as described above, so I am happy for every wattage saved while no compromises in performance/IQ should be made (so i keep overclocking). Because this lowers the amount of water i need, it keeps the water temperature low and also increases the hours it stays cool.
So I am happy if i can limit the amount of power consumption where ever possible. Frame limiters are a good example for this! You essentially are not using more hardware power than you need.
So, if there is an option where i can get the result i want with lower hardware usage, it is a good choice even from an "enthusiast" point of view.
For the average user, it also makes sense, since this one might not even want to afford high end hardware and/or wants to keep his hardware cool and quiet. Air cooling can make a lot of noise.
And what about devices like laptops or smartphones? What about older computers? It still makes sense to keep flexibility.
Quote:All of those features were added nonetheless because the devs cared about them, saw their advantages, and made the assumption that others would as well. This is not the case with RG/SGSSAA.
It seems some of em did not even really know about it, as you can see in this or in the other thread. It's a complex topic and the differences between an OG and a SG are sometimes hard to get. Even people who know a lot about this topic like naturalviolence, often have difficulties with the difference and similarities between an RG and a SG, for example. No i'm not saying I know everything or devs are not informed or anything, I just want to say there's a difference if there is no advantage - or if you just don't know about it or don't realize it. This is why a thead like this make sense, a lot of explanations have been given. I tried to contribute myself by posting an example about the moiree patterns and the differences an OG VS a SG makes in this context.
Plus, as i said, there is not much the devs can do about it now, anyway. All they could do would be to include it directly into Dolphin instead of making it available in the drivers, as i said. This works in OGL and DX11, in DX9 it is not possible due to Dolpin's rendering anyway.
' Wrote:Do you think Dolphin was created because they had a certain number of users in mind?
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Yes. It was originally made for people who wanted to run GC games on their PCs; people wanting an automated hotdog maker were certainly not the focus of the early dev team.
That was not my question and you know that.
My question was about the number of people, not the kind of people.
They could not know if 100 or 10000 people use their program, yet they still wrote it.
So it seems there is a lot more involved here than just pleasing a certain number of people.
Maybe there are some people who just LIKE what they are doing here or it is their personal hobby to just write the best emu available?
' Wrote:And i consider the flexibility to adjust your IQ/performance ratio an advantage that makes a good emulator even better.
And the devs don't.
So why did they include the flexibility to choose between 2x, 4x, 8x multisampling, each even with 16 (!) quality levels, 8 options for different internal resolutions, 4x or 9xSSAA, 4 types of CSAA and more, if it wasn't about the flexibility to adjust your IQ to your system?