10-05-2013, 07:20 AM
10-05-2013, 07:25 AM
10-05-2013, 07:38 AM
10-05-2013, 09:33 AM
Oh, a little bit about the performance of SGSSAA vs OGSSAA.
I just tested a random SMG2-Scene.
I get ~26 to ~27 fps with 9xSSAA.
With 8x SGSSAA - which overall has better image quality then 9xSSAA - i get around ~38 to ~39 fps!
You really sure you don't want it?
(Of course you could say:
It is DX9 vs DX11.
But in this scene, if i turn any AA off and use the same IR for both, DX9 actually performs better (~90 fps) than DX11 (~70 fps).
Plus, as DX9 does not support MSAA/SGSSAA and DX11/OGL does not support 9xSSAA, these are the only options there are for the user.
Better performance and (all in all) better quality- these are strong arguments for the devs to even consider including it into Dolphin directly, so more users will get aware of it and take advantage of it.
I just tested a random SMG2-Scene.
I get ~26 to ~27 fps with 9xSSAA.
With 8x SGSSAA - which overall has better image quality then 9xSSAA - i get around ~38 to ~39 fps!
You really sure you don't want it?
(Of course you could say:
It is DX9 vs DX11.
But in this scene, if i turn any AA off and use the same IR for both, DX9 actually performs better (~90 fps) than DX11 (~70 fps).
Plus, as DX9 does not support MSAA/SGSSAA and DX11/OGL does not support 9xSSAA, these are the only options there are for the user.
Better performance and (all in all) better quality- these are strong arguments for the devs to even consider including it into Dolphin directly, so more users will get aware of it and take advantage of it.
10-05-2013, 10:31 AM
10-05-2013, 12:36 PM
(10-05-2013, 10:31 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]As far as I can tell, OGSSAA is just your standard SSAA algorithm, and SGSSAA picks out 'random' points in each pixel to sample instead. (Random here means not in a square grid.) How correct is this?
There is no "standard" algorithm, both are used.
SSAA is a more general term, SGSSAA as well as OGSSAA are both a subset of this. A sparse grid is not some kind of "weird" method (as you called it) - quite the contrary: It has been the default sample pattern for both nVidia and AMD for many years now.
The SG method is newer and overall more effective (I say overall, cause every grid pattern is a compromise between optimal EER, information per pixel and concentrating on the most important angles).
Why do you think AMD and nVidia chose a sparse grid as their default? They did this for a reason.
Quote:Given that we have some reports of games running at 4xIR + 4xSSAA on non-super-priced cards, I'm sceptical about your inability to get fullspeed.
4xSSAA is another story, as 9x is 2,25 times the pixel amount of 4x.
I can prove any day what i was saying, if you really think I am making this up.
But cmon, why the heck should I do this?
I want SMG2 to run at full speed as much as you do.
Perhaps I will indeed make a video to compare the performance of the different methods next weekend.
Quote:We even have maybe one or two reports of a GTX 780 doing 4xIR + 9xSSAA at fullspeed, although I'm pretty sure this wasn't on something as demanding as SMG2.
That might be the point - other games.
In SMG2 @ 9xSSAA + 4xIR? No way, at least not with my settings + Dolphin revision.
Quote:Overall, I am against including every possible AA method in Dolphin.
There is no disadvantage in this, so why not make use of it?
Are you afraid SGSSAA will clutter up the UI with tons of options?
No!
It's just ONE (!) additional checkbox: "Apply Anti-Aliasing to the whole image instead of only edges? (Better image quality at higher performance cost)"
And that's it!
If the user selects 2xMSAA, it should be extended to 2xSGSSAA in the background, 4xMSAA to 4xSGSSAA and so on.
Easy.
It's amazing how there are some people here in this thread speaking against a feature which they obviously never even tried or never heard of before.
It is looking better, at lower performance cost compared to OGSSAA. As i showed in the last postings.
So whats the problem with this?
I don't understand you guys!
In my language, people with that kind of thinking are called a "Bremser": People stepping on the brake all the time.
"Nooo nooo, i dont want this, as it is new, i dont know it or i dont understand it!" "Do you know what you're talking about or have you even tried it?" "No, but i dont want it!"
But OK, you can activate it in the drivers, so it's not really necessary to have it directly in Dolphin, as i said before.
It would be nice for users not that technically sophisticated, tho. But personally I can live with the situation as it is now, long as it works. Some improvements would be a custom IR (see below) and, if this is even possible (which i will try to find out some time around), the ability to set the texture LOD.
Quote:In fact, if I was in charge, I'd probably just allow IR up to 50x, and employ a nice downscaling algorithm.
50x won't work, at least not on today's cards, but a custom Internal Resolution is a good thing. You just enter your value and thus have all the flexibility you want.
Having this alone is not very effective, tho, as the pattern gets more and more ineffective and also for best efficiency you're limited to multiples.
But if you combine a high internal resolution with SGSSAA, the latter will perform even better.
Quote:The only reason I've ever got for why this wouldn't be better than using SSAA was that 'SSAA uses a downsampling filter' (this is paraphrased, and it's normally NaturalViolence who says it).
The only direct comparisons you can have is (4xOGSSAA + 2x IR VS 4x IR) or (4xOGSSAA + 1xIR VS 2xIR).
(I dont know why they call it 2xIR when it's actually 4x - that's very confusing, but hey...)
In both these cases, the combination of both will perform better than higher IR alone, which i can confirm. I did several tests on this in the last days.
On the other hand, as you can see, OGSSAA is quite unflexible as you got only 1x (= No AA), 4x and 9x factors.
SGSSAA of the same (or even a lower) factor will look best (as long as you're not actually UP(!)scaling, of course).
That is the way OGSSAA works, it's a box filter. This is actually not always the best filter available for this purpose, as it only checks inside the pixel. AMD for example had some custom filters in the past, which at very high resolutions with downsampling do not have their blur-problem any more, but actually improve the filtering quality. Maybe they will reinclude them one day in their drivers for even better quality SGSSAA.
10-05-2013, 05:24 PM
Gabbyjay Wrote: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 with higher resolutions.
Again, how do you know this? I keep emphasizing that it's not just about high resolution, but also pixel density. Higher pixel densities physically give you the equivalent's of subpixels rather than using AA techniques to estimate color values. Most graphical anomalies like miores get taken care of as you increase the DPI and the resolution. What is RG/SGSSAA doing to subpixels in software that actual physical pixels in high DPI displays can't?
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
And you're talking about 4K displays while using 9xSSAA. 4K display don't always necessarily fall into the Retina-level category in terms of DPI. High DPIs were a very emphasized point by Paul and myself. The pixel density affects how many pixels can be pushed in a given area and how small/fine they'll be. You do need a sufficiently high resolution to make the most out of it (cramming more pixels into a smaller space also means being able to make smaller screens). To elaborate, consider that a theoretical 1080p display with a DPI of 250 could measure 7.68" by 4.32", too small for most desktops, decent for tablets.
Digressing, High DPIs and high resolutions (not necessarily 4K, again, look at the MBPR) would likely make anything beyond 9xSSAA moot for all but a few people in both IQ and performance (since you yourself remain unconvinced, I can't claim it would be moot for everyone, apparently). A GTX Titan should be able do 1440p at 9xSSAA in Dolphin (somewhere above 3x IR, but below 4x IR), for example, and as time goes by, mid-level GPUs will get closer to that goal, while higher end GPUs push things into 1600p and 4K territory.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
Well moires are a form of spatial aliasing, not temporal (don't know if you're listing different kinds of temporal effects, or just listing general aliasing problems). Most any form spatial aliasing should be taken care of if you add more pixels in the same amount of space. Have you observed the effects very high DPI (again, Retina-like levels of 220+) has on aliasing? Like I said, increasing the DPI along with the resolution effectively gives you a physical implementation of AA; it gives you actual, smaller pixels where before you had to guess the color value and blend it in software or through the GPU.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
It's a fact that users have not been vocal in asking for additional forms of AA in Dolphin (unless you can provide a massive backlog of discussion from somehwere). This means they do not care enough to ask about it; if they cared enough to ask, they would have asked already. You don't have to necessarily know what RG/SGSSAA is in order to want better AA either. All it takes is someone to say "the AA available to me isn't enough, I need more. I don't know what better techniques exist, but I want them in Dolphin." The fact of the matter is that people are not asking for advanced AA in Dolphin, either here, or anywhere else.
Gabbyjay Wrote:3) About the date where "high DPI devices" are common for all screen sizes.
As are you yourself. You seem to think we're about a decade away from that. I think that's grossly conservative. Neither of us are market analysts or the heads of major manufacturing companies, so anything either of us says is idle speculation.
Gabbyjay Wrote:4) About the hardware and if it will be enough to make playable fps out of this.
You can already get playable speeds with high resolutions and high DPIs. Your example used the 4K monitors which aren't always the same as high DPI displays. By their nature they have higher than average DPIs, but not all of them have Retina-like levels of 220+ DPI. On smaller (and much more affordable models) with Retina-level DPIs, it's already possible to game using 9xSSAA. The only reason 4K displays entered into this conversation to illustrate how rapid display tech is moving; we're going to higher resolutions and higher DPIs and we're getting them sooner or later.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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?
Because that's more or less one of the major ways the devs themselves judge if a feature should be implemented in Dolphin or not. They don't just consider "hey, Feature X could be useful", they consider whom it would be useful to and whom it would not, what reasons are behind Feature X's implementation, and if one side or reason matters enough to justify implementing said feature. If every feature that was supposedly useful to any one group (large or small) was added, you'd have a mess of feature creep on your hands. You have to have a way to evaluate what's of benefit to the project, and you can't do that if features are always added regardless if they won't have any utility to some or even a large portion of users.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
This option was added as a matter of making Dolphin as accurate as possible; its one of its goals. This is the second major way in which the devs decide to add a feature. The DSP could generate 5.1 surround sound for a select games that supported it. This is Dolphin being as much like a GC/Wii as possible. Accuracy has long since had a higher priority over other considerations, sometimes to the detriment of those with weaker hardware. Despite it's possible, limited use, the devs judged that accuracy trumped any such regards in favor of achieving one of the project's long-term goals (feature parity with real hardware).
Gabbyjay Wrote:What is the whole point of this majority/minority-thing anyway?
To show you that it's one of the factors devs consider when evaluating new features for Dolphin. It plays a role in their decisions, which in turn affects everyone's usage of the emulator.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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...
It very much depends on what are the reasons for implementing the feature in the first place, as I said above. A large number of users have expressed their desire to see Dolphin run on weaker hardware, but aside from the occasional optimization (like FastMem in Linux and OS X Dolphin builds) the most obvious method of achieving this is through speed-hacks, which run contrary to Dolphin's goal of accuracy (not to mention, forum-side support and code maintainence would suffer). Again, the userbase that would be affected by speedhacks is huge, but it runs counter to one of Dolphin's priorities.
But if a feature does not run counter of one of Dolphin's goals, should the devs stop caring about a feature if the amount of users affected is low? No. Should the fact play a role in their decision making? For the most part, it already does. That's how software avoids becoming bloatware. There has to be some checks on which features make the cut in order to prevent Dolphin from having too many functions, some of which are used frequently and some of which are used rarely.
Gabbyjay Wrote:No. You can only say they probably don't care about the difference, based on speculation about all involved factors, see above.
I can certainly say others won't care about the difference because I know for a fact some people (friends and co-workers) don't care about the difference. I can postulate that there are more people like them, just like you can postulate that there are more people like yourself who will care.
Gabbyjay Wrote:The personal demands someone has on quality often rises over time.
Again, I have to point out that this is not the case for everyone. Some people are still content with 1280x1024 displays. Some people are still on dial-up (MaJoR). Some people upgrade to something better only when it is time to upgrade, regardless of the quality.
Gabbyjay Wrote:What was that thread here about again?
The opening posting says: "RG/SGSSAA - will it ever be an option?".
I was referencing the past until the very recent present. You'll be hard-pressed to find any prior discussion as lengthy as this about adding RG/SGSSAA into Dolphin.
Gabbyjay Wrote:So why should I ask to have it implemented directly?
I don't know; I haven't said you wanted them implemented natively in Dolphin, and I can't guess whatever your reasons theoretically might be.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
Yet, I'm not contradicting myself, because I never said that was the sole and only reason by which a feature is considered for implementation. You seem to have gotten that impression from the lengthy discussions we've had on majority and minority opinion. Again, see above. I already mentioned that some features are implemented on the consideration that they're useful to the devs themselves which TAS input, manual save state saving+loading (potentially allows for an unlimited number of save states to easily be used, at least more than the hotkeys) and enable Wireframe fall under, in regards to debugging. They certainly do take into account how many users they feel will use a feature and the usefulness to Dolphin's userbase, but as I demonstrated again with the speedhacks example, there's also Dolphin's goal of accuracy that's taken into account. However many users will use a feature is not always the deciding factor, but it does in fact play an important role, whether you feel this is justified or not.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
Like I said, moire patterns are a form of spatial aliasing and increasing the DPI and resolution takes care of various forms of spatial aliasing. Why wouldn't this combination be effective against moire patterns? I understand the difference between OG and RG but why wouldn't making the pattern finer and vastly more detailed in the first place eliminate that issue as well?
Gabbyjay Wrote: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? You can't likewise use a limited number of people speaking out on the forums and claim that there may be more users who would want such a feature and use it if available, when if fact there is no way to determine if any more like minded people exist. Such an equation is just as faulty.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
Again, 4K displays don't necessarily reach Retina levels. In addition to a high resolution, an extremely high DPI (220+) is necessary to get the benefits of reducing aliasing in the hardware itself. You've said nothing about the DPI of your monitor so far or how it compares to Retina-like displays. If you want to make your point more forcefully, you'll have to provide that, else your personal test case isn't the imagined scenario Paul proposed.
Gabbyjay Wrote:Can you be certain about this, just because my nickname is not registered a long time?
You certainly don't sound like someone who know much about this community.
Gabbyjay Wrote:Well, i already waited for this to come... "I am an authority!" - as if it would be of any significance in that context.
So you waited all of this time until someone else asked for RG/SGSSAA in Dolphin? Quite a lurker :p
Gabbyjay Wrote:Now what does that mean for this thread?
It means exactly what I said it implies: the devs take into account the usefulness of a feature when removing it. Your statement was "If a feature is removed, there has to be a reason other than that, like bugs, compatibility, a lot of work involved in keeping it work over the revisions, and stuff." You didn't believe features could be removed based on usefulness. That's not the case and it happens more than you realize. All of this part of our discussion was brought about because you said, "If any AA other then 9xSSAA would be considered useless and MSAA support would be dropped (hypothetically), this also takes away many other options." I merely pointed out that more often than not, options aren't eliminated unless the devs feel they're useless. If MSAA or any AA besides 9xSSAA were considered useless by the devs, it would be a prime candidate for removal (in this part of the discussion we also briefly touched upon a distant future where MSAA is no longer needed iirc).
Gabbyjay Wrote:"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.
When we're talking about the community, how it operates, how its members behave, and the opinions that get posted here, it makes a lot of difference when one person has been daily involved with that community for years. It's not an argument from authority or an appeal to authority if one person genuinely has more insights into a community; they legitimately have all the more leverage to say what happens in that community because they have more experience with it. I'm telling you, you don't appear to be very experienced with this community based on your lack of knowledge about some pretty common subjects (features being removed based on uselessness for one, or the fact that people frequently stick to old Dolphin revisions). It's not that you don't have standing to make any arguments about how it operates; you don't have the experience to make thorough insights. If you were lurking all of this time, you didn't lurk well enough.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
That sentence doesn't make sense to me. The "this" in your statement refers to using older revision (it's the closest antecendent in your sentence). Using old revisions is not a reason to remove a feature from an emulator? Of course it's not. The devs don't really consider who's using old revisions and who isn't when removing features. The mentality is that users can either upgrade Dolphin (and hardware if needed) or stick with old revisions. They don't spend too much time fretting over how many people are still on R6515, 3.0, or 3.5-1067.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
That's fine; I never contended that certain AA techniques wouldn't be worthwhile to users until we get high DPIs in combination with high resolutions and the necessary hardware. Afterwards is going to be a different case in my opinion, and this is where you and I differ. It's not like I don't already rely on MSAA as it is, and I certainly see no reason to deprive myself of it simply because I don't have a Retina-like display just yet.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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.
As you pointed out (in a later post than the one I'm responding to now), RDilus indeed never posted pictures or video proof. This is your chance to prove him wrong, and actually give us some real data about the limits of modern GPUs. You would be doing this community a favor (not many can afford a GTX Titan. I could, probably, but I'm way too frugal. That's like a 1+ year's worth of gas money...) I see you've already posted some FPS speeds, but I would like to screenshots and video if possible. Please don't misinterpret this as an attempt to somehow ferret you out as somehow deceiving us; I'm genuinely interested in seeing what the best hardware can do and how far it can be pushed
If you would specifically, could you do 3X IR + 9xSSAA? I think I've heard a few people besides RDilus claim that they could do this at fullspeed. Additionally, we need more data about OpenGL's speed. If you could test it under OpenGL (can you force 9xSSAA in your drivers? If not, then I guess the following can't be tested) and enable the Vertex Streaming hack? Feel free to test other games as well. SMG2 is one of the most GPU intensive games in Dolphin. Going by SMG2 alone doesn't reflect what the average game demands from the GPU. Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a good lightweight game for both the CPU and GPU; if you have that game, I would be interested in results for that too. Again, anything else you want to test, I would appreciate seeing how it goes.
Gabbyjay Wrote:So, again, lots of speculation involved in your part.
No one can say really. Unless you're active in developer discussions and frequently test out branches before they're merged into master, most users can't guess where performance will go. Generally it goes down (especially when neobrain is involved :p sorry I have to pick on him) over time, with ocassional bumps to pick it up, but not up enough to counter the slowdowns completely.
Gabbyjay Wrote:It's full of surprises!
You don't need to tell me man
I'm not bragging or anything, but you would have thought just about everything you can think of was already done as far as Gameboy emulation is concerned, right? Well, I've pushed it further with custom sprites (think custom textures in Dolphin and other emulators, but for sprites and background elements). The technique allows people to fully colorize games that were never meant to be played as such. We've had GB emulators since the early 90s as well, and we can still break new ground (alright, that was a rather shameless plug for my blog and my emulator, I admit that :/). And just look at Dolphin itself. Who would have thought "hey, my PC can connect to other Wiis online in real-time"? Being an emu dev myself, I have to agree that yes, thing's are always changed. It actually doesn't surprise me that accurate rendering in PSX emulation can bring modern hardware down to its knees, since I've seen other examples here and there for different projects. Nothing is more graphically accurate than Dolphin's SoftRast, and that doesn't even run more than 1FPS on many rigs.
Gabbyjay Wrote:In my country, there are many enthusiasts about silent computing, which is quite as challanging as high OC or the like can be.
-snip-
Just so you know, I wasn't actually being serious about pushing things to the max. As you demonstrated the "max" could mean different things to different people (maximum silence, maximum power savings/efficiency, etc).
Gabbyjay Wrote:That was not my question and you know that.
I answered you question. The number of people in mind was the same as those potentially interested in GC emulation at the time. Everyone else was discounted. What that number was, I can't say because at that time I was more concerned with NES through GBA emulation (not the PSX though, that was around 2007~2008). At the very least, that number included all of the devs.
Gabbyjay Wrote:So it seems there is a lot more involved here than just pleasing a certain number of people.
There is: pleasing certain group(s) of users. Again, Dolphin isn't after the hearts of those that want it to be something other than a GC, Wii (and experimentally Triforce) emulator.
Gabbyjay Wrote: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?
I meant to say that the devs don't care if specifically RG/SGSSAA adds the flexibility to adjust IQ and performance. I was talking in reference to RG/SGSSAA (that's what I meant by "implementing it") but I did not make the first part of my statement as clear as I could have.
10-06-2013, 02:47 AM
Quote:I keep emphasizing that it's not just about high resolution, but also pixel density. Higher pixel densities physically give you the equivalent's of subpixels rather than using AA techniques to estimate color values.
That is exactly the point - it's the equivalent of subpixels, and I already gave an example where more subpixels (4x, 9x and 16x OGSSAA) and/or higher physical resolution (4K) do not take care of the problem. 16xOGSSAA @ 4K is a resolution of 15360x8460 (!) downsampled to 4K and you're also applying a filter on the pixels.
Try it yourself doing a lil experiment.
Do you happen to have a smartphone with a resolution such as 1280x720? That is MANY DPI.
Now do the following:
Get into an image editing app and create the following patterns:
http://imgur.com/edit
Now drag the left pattern with a transparent (!) selection horizontally over the right one.
You will notice a totally distracting effect where black bars flicker at the screen.
What do I wanna say with this?
There are several types of aliasing effects, and even if you reach a level that high where you cannot detect any edges even without any type of AA anymore, there can still be other AA-effects visible far beyond that. Other forms of AA other than OGSSAA can be more effective in fighting those, at even lower performance cost.
Don't get me wrong, OGSSAA does have it's advantages, as i pointed out earlier in this thread.
It's the flexibility to have the option giving you the ability to adjust the IQ to your needs what I am advocating here.
Quote:Most graphical anomalies like miores get taken care of as you increase the DPI and the resolution. What is RG/SGSSAA doing to subpixels in software that actual physical pixels in high DPI displays can't?
Irregularity.
Quote: 4K display don't always necessarily fall into the Retina-level category in terms of DPI. High DPIs were a very emphasized point by Paul and myself.
The term "high DPI" does not equal "Retina level category". Compared to a 1080p Screen a 2160 one gives 4 times the resolution and as such you can also call it "high dpi". 4K will be as good as it gets when they begin to get widespread in a few years from now.
This is especially true for large screens - and also image the hardware power needed for a resolution that is so gigantically high that it can fill a 150cm TV or a projector with an image of several meters broadness with ~300DPI (for example)!
I dont know what experience you have with large screens, but you cannot imagine how disturbing the aliasing effect gets as you multiply the screen size. I consider PS3 or Xbox360 games almost unplayable at this size, as the aliasing destroys the immersion for me.
Now you probably will argue that not that many people use projectors (but many use large TVs!), but then again we're talking about many years to come here, and till then more people will own a projector too.
Quote:A GTX Titan should be able do 1440p at 9xSSAA in Dolphin (somewhere above 3x IR, but below 4x IR)
No, it isnt.
Mario Galaxy 2 won't even run with 4xSSAA in full speed @ 4xIR in Dolphin 4.0. And that is 5120x4224.
9xSSAA @ 3xIR would be 5760x4608.
Believe me, i did extensive testing on this.
Quote:It's a fact that users have not been vocal in asking for additional forms of AA in Dolphin (unless you can provide a massive backlog of discussion from somehwere). This means they do not care enough to ask about it; if they cared enough to ask, they would have asked already.
Erm... no. Not true.
As you can see in this thread, if you show em the benefits (higher IQ and far lower performance hit), more and more people agree. It's only about information.
It is the same thing as everywhere in the world: People do not realize how it can be, because what they have is all that they know.
Quote:All it takes is someone to say "the AA available to me isn't enough, I need more.
First, show em a few comparison screens. In this thread, several people, some of them "firts timers", agreed with me that 8xSGSSAA looks better then 9xSSAA, for example.
Now show em the performance impact. 26 FPS vs 38 FPS!
And then ask em about their opinion again: Do you want it or not?
Quote:As are you yourself. You seem to think we're about a decade away from that. I think that's grossly conservative. Neither of us are market analysts or the heads of major manufacturing companies, so anything either of us says is idle speculation.
For all screen sizes includes devices made for home cinema invironments, such as large TVs and projectors. These are always tied to the content delivering the resolution: Movies on disks. Look at how many years we had the DVD and how many years we have the BluRay. You can imagine the successor of the BluRay won't be exchanged for even another standard for several years again, especially as film studios also need the cameras, the equipment and stuff for it. Same is true for television broadcasting, which advances even slower. In my country, you can be glad if you even receive 720p!
The situation looks even worse in Stereo 3D. For projectors, you cannot even play @ 1080p in 3D @ 60fps. 720p @ 60Hz in 3D is the max, since the HDMI standard is also advancing slowly.
Next thing are devices such as receivers and amplifiers, who also need to support it. You cannot put a signal through your home cinema receiver if it does not support the standard. All those things need to be switched over.
As you can see it's far more complicated than you seem to think when you consider all screen sizes.
Quote:You can already get playable speeds with high resolutions and high DPIs.
See my GTX Titan example.
Quote:Because that's more or less one of the major ways the devs themselves judge if a feature should be implemented in Dolphin or not. They don't just consider "hey, Feature X could be useful", they consider whom it would be useful to and whom it would not, what reasons are behind Feature X's implementation, and if one side or reason matters enough to justify implementing said feature.
And higher fps at a higher image quality can be useful for a lot of people, can't it?
Quote:If every feature that was supposedly useful to any one group (large or small) was added, you'd have a mess of feature creep on your hands.
We are talking about ONE (!) additional checkbox here, as i already explained!
"Apply SSAA to the whole screen instead of edges only? (higher quality but less performance compared to only MSAA)"
That's all it takes.
Quote:You have to have a way to evaluate what's of benefit to the project, and you can't do that if features are always added regardless if they won't have any utility to some or even a large portion of users.
See above, SGSSAA for example is a thing a lot of people can benefit from.
Quote:The 5.1 surround option was added as a matter of making Dolphin as accurate as possible; its one of its goals. This is the second major way in which the devs decide to add a feature. The DSP could generate 5.1 surround sound for a select games that supported it. This is Dolphin being as much like a GC/Wii as possible. Accuracy has long since had a higher priority over other considerations, sometimes to the detriment of those with weaker hardware. Despite it's possible, limited use, the devs judged that accuracy trumped any such regards in favor of achieving one of the project's long-term goals (feature parity with real hardware).
So accuracy in terms of surround sound is worth including, even if only a certain percentage of users uses it.
But higher Image quality is not, because only a certain percantage of users uses it?
You are claiming that emulation accuracy as close to the original system has higher priority then rendering accuracy. This is a point where opinions differ. Cause a lot of people will say "if it's exactly the same as on the original system, i can just dig out my WII and play on this."
There are many people who play only on Dolphin cause it enables higher image quality then the original system, in fact that's the only reason i personally use it.
So who are you to judge what is more important here, playing in enhanced glory or playing as true to the original as possible?
There are different opinions about this, please accept this.
And no, they DONT exclude each other, as you can easily make it optionally.
Quote:It very much depends on what are the reasons for implementing the feature in the first place, as I said above. A large number of users have expressed their desire to see Dolphin run on weaker hardware
Very interesting!
And i would think that those people would love a feature that not only works at a lower performance hit, but at even better IQ at the same time.
Quote:There has to be some checks on which features make the cut in order to prevent Dolphin from having too many functions, some of which are used frequently and some of which are used rarely.
Is that so? Why? Cause your grandma cannot use the Dolphin emulator anymore? Go and play on the original console then, if emulation is too complicated.
But I think you can deal with an additional checkbox.
Well, course you could say, many functions can cause errors. But in this case, the reason to remove it would be the error as such, not the amount of people using it (which you have absolutely no clue of).
Quote:I can certainly say others won't care about the difference because I know for a fact some people (friends and co-workers) don't care about the difference. I can postulate that there are more people like them, just like you can postulate that there are more people like yourself who will care.
Not even about the difference in FPS?
But well, again, opinions differ.
The difference between the two of us is:
Even if I enjoy emulation only for the enhancements, nevertheless I appreciate including features that make the emulation as close to the original console as possible. No matter if only 5 people use a "scanline"-filter to simulate old CRTs, i still would encourage including it.
Why?
Cause it gives you the option and makes the emulator better.
And who knows, perhaps at some time in the future i would like to compare and see what it was about back then? Perhaps i change my opionion and want the original experience again? You never know, having both available gives you the option.
You on the other hand do not think in such terms, you and your friends don't care, and if it's not a majority that wants a feature, regardless of the abolute numbers, you dont support it.
You could as well say "hey, I most probably won't use it, but there are many owners of home cinema projectors who will see a big improvement, so please include it!".
Quote:I was referencing the past until the very recent present. You'll be hard-pressed to find any prior discussion as lengthy as this about adding RG/SGSSAA into Dolphin.
It's the lack of information. As you can see even some devs have no clue about it. Hope this is about to change.
Also, consider that SGSSAA is only available for a short time now on AMD and nvidia cards. And in the first time only with heavily restrictions (only on DX9 or without LOD bias setting). It is far less known than other AA techniques, and it was never officially supported in the drivers.
In fact it was only a bug (!) that made it possible on nNvidia cards at the first time.
No user who does not install an extra Tool like nVidia inspector or the like and who knows what he is doing (you gotta enable Transparency Supersampling to get whole screen Anti Aliasing!) is going to find out about it, as he won't see it in the drivers as he does with MSAA, for example.
So naturally, there are more users asking something like "hey, i see there's an option x working on all my PC games, could you make this possible in Dolphin as well?" if they can see it in the drivers. This is not the case with SGSSAA!
Makes sense, doesnt it?
Quote:I don't know; I haven't said you wanted them implemented natively in Dolphin, and I can't guess whatever your reasons theoretically might be.
As I come to think about it: More users can take advantage of it.
Quote:However many users will use a feature is not always the deciding factor, but it does in fact play an important role, whether you feel this is justified or not.
So you admit there are features added without having a certain "majority" in mind.
Why should this not be the case with SGSSAA?
And why do you think only a few users will check the "apply Anti Aliasing to the whole screen instead of edges only" ?
So many people want the best quality available, if they got the hardware power, it's very likely that they will check that box and use it.
Remember we got only MSAA in DX11 so far.
Quote:Like I said, moire patterns are a form of spatial aliasing and increasing the DPI and resolution takes care of various forms of spatial aliasing. Why wouldn't this combination be effective against moire patterns? I understand the difference between OG and RG but why wouldn't making the pattern finer and vastly more detailed in the first place eliminate that issue as well?
I will try to explain.
Think of a curved line on a LC Display.
It's not really a continuous line, it's several individual pixels (or lines of pixels) next to each other.
It's the human brain that makes it a continuous line, even if there are some pixels missing in between. (Similar to as it makes individual frames seem like a fluid motion.)
Now if you only increase the resolution, you can perhaps make the line thinner. (This is obviously not always the case, as were also talking about texels here, not only individual pixels, so a moiree effect can always be possible, no matter the resolution. But let's keep it simple.) But the moiree pattern stays the same. You could only be sure for it to vanish, if your resolution was THAT high that you could not see a single pixel-wide black line on a white background any more. To change this, you have to interrupt the pattern, so the brain won't detect a continous pattern anymore. This is what a SG essentially does to fight moirees.
Sorry, i cannot explain it better, you gotta try it yourself perhaps.
But this is not even necessary.
It's already enough if you agree that you definitely just cannot be certain that 9xSSAA at a certain DPI level will take care of all visible aliasing.
This is already enough for the original statement "you guys gonna give a shit" to be not true.
Quote:And? You can't likewise use a limited number of people speaking out on the forums and claim that there may be more users who would want such a feature and use it if available, when if fact there is no way to determine if any more like minded people exist. Such an equation is just as faulty.
Erm - it was you claiming that it is only few people wanting it. Not me claiming more people like me exist, I'm just saying you don't know if it's only a few people just by looking at this forum.
Quote:You certainly don't sound like someone who know much about this community.
Cause i dont claim to know if certain users are a minority or majority?
Quote:So you waited all of this time until someone else asked for RG/SGSSAA in Dolphin? Quite a lurker :p
Why, I am using SGSSAA all the time...
Quote:It means exactly what I said it implies: the devs take into account the usefulness of a feature when removing it.
Again, is a feature providing better IQ at lower FPS hit useful, or not?
Quote: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:That sentence doesn't make sense to me. The "this" in your statement refers to using older revision.
My point is, it makes no sense to say "People who wanna use this feature can still use older revisions, so we can remove it". If there is no reason other than "only a minority uses it", then why remove it? That don't make sense, as their revision will be heavily outdated one day.
Quote:I never contended that certain AA techniques wouldn't be worthwhile to users until we get high DPIs in combination with high resolutions and the necessary hardware. Afterwards is going to be a different case in my opinion, and this is where you and I differ.
Even if you have an infinitely powerful system, less hardware usage still has advantages. Is a quieter system worthwile for users, or not? Is the possibility to play on a smartphone, whose hardware lack behind, worthwile or not?
Perhaps until then, there will be some new techniques other then anti aliasing which require a LOT of new hardware power, and again you will be happy if you can save it in some other region? Do you know for sure?
Quote:It's not like I don't already rely on MSAA as it is, and I certainly see no reason to deprive myself of it simply because I don't have a Retina-like display just yet.
You have not even tried SGSSAA yet! you are only talking about something you do know almost nothing about. I will make some screenshots especially for you later.
Good chance that you don't wanna get back, if your system can handle it. Why should you? It makes textures look better, it makes foilage like trees and grass a LOT better, it fights interrupted lines like that are less then 1 pixel wide like cables and fine lines, it gives more detail and it essential fights all forms of aliasing we encounter here. If you don't have the hardware power to use it, you can still uncheck it and revert back to MSAA. Isn't it nice to have the option?
Quote:As you pointed out (in a later post than the one I'm responding to now), RDilus indeed never posted pictures or video proof. This is your chance to prove him wrong, and actually give us some real data about the limits of modern GPUs. You would be doing this community a favor
Yes.
Quote:I see you've already posted some FPS speeds, but I would like to screenshots and video if possible.
Sure. What resolution? I can go up to 2160p.
Here are some @ 4xIR, 9xSSAA, and only 1080p.
Please note:
1) This is just a random scene, it is NOT the scene where FPS drop the most!
I know several scenes where minimum FPS drop even further, to 20 FPS and below.
I can take screenshots of that too, no problem. Tell me if you want that.
And i have not really played much of this game yet, in fact i have not even beaten the first castle.
There are MANY levels in this game, where FPS can drop even further.
2) That it's a continous succession of frames, as you can tell by the movement of the birds in the background!
http://i.imgur.com/XloSMnq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3yg7u0f.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DVu64l4.jpg
Sure you could say i manipulated em, but then again you could also manipulate a video...
But I will even make a video if you tell me what (free) program to record em you want.
Quote:If you would specifically, could you do 3X IR + 9xSSAA? I think I've heard a few people besides RDilus claim that they could do this at fullspeed. Additionally, we need more data about OpenGL's speed. If you could test it under OpenGL (can you force 9xSSAA in your drivers? If not, then I guess the following can't be tested) and enable the Vertex Streaming hack?
Sure i can, as soon as if you believe me I don't lie to you about the frame rates. Cause it's a lot of work to do this, take the screenies, upload em and post em, so i dont wanna do this for 10000 different settings.
For me, it is enough if you believe me: SMG2 won't run at full speed at 4xIR and 9xSSAA, not even nearly playable, fps drops to 20fps and lower (perhaps much lower in later stages as Im only at the beginning yet).
Quote:No one can say really.
Thus, the statement "you guys won't give a shit" should more sound like the following:
"I don't know for sure, but it's possible that you guys won't notice any edge aliasing with 9xSSAA once displays with retina-like quality for all sizes, even projectors, are common and affordable. I don't know about other forms of aliasing, tho, and even then, other types of AA could still make sense, as with emulation you never know how much hardware power you need and you might wanna play on an older computer or a small device such as a smartphone/tablet.
Also, for the time until then, other AA types are a great option."
Wouldn't you agree, number one?
Quote:I'm not bragging or anything, but you would have thought just about everything you can think of was already done as far as Gameboy emulation is concerned, right?
No. Cause there are a LOT things i can think of.
Quote:It actually doesn't surprise me that accurate rendering in PSX emulation can bring modern hardware down to its knees, since I've seen other examples here and there for different projects.
Yep, i see you understand. That was why i think you can never be sure that one day, performance don't matter, even for buyers of the best systems available. Since there could always be changes bringing their PC to it's knees, and then they are lucky if they can save performance somewhere.
Quote:Just so you know, I wasn't actually being serious about pushing things to the max. As you demonstrated the "max" could mean different things to different people (maximum silence, maximum power savings/efficiency, etc).
Sure, it was kinda ironically.
I just wanted to poin out what you said, being enthusiastic can mean a lot of things...
Quote:The number of people in mind was the same as those potentially interested in GC emulation at the time.
I can't think of any figures that could be more vague or inaccurate as this. I mean it's not even possible to speculate about any numbers when you start a new project, you don't even know if it will be a sucess, if it will buggy so that no one will use it. Also, there are many emulators out there written for such rare systems such as System 22, for example. How many people use this? If it were about numbers, that guy would have written a PlayStation emulator!
What i wanna say is that there are SO many people involved in the scene that do it out of interest or that love their hobby (consoles and emulation), and a really really hope some of Dolphin's developers fall into that cathegory as well and are not as majority or number-orientated as you are trying to tell.
Quote:I meant to say that the devs don't care if specifically RG/SGSSAA adds the flexibility to adjust IQ and performance. I was talking in reference to RG/SGSSAA (that's what I meant by "implementing it") but I did not make the first part of my statement as clear as I could have.
That is absolutely not logical.
Look, in the DX11-plugin, we got 2x, 4x and 8x MSAA, that's it. No fullscreen AA, only edges! That is definitely not enough.
They seem to care about fullscreen AA, as they implemented OGSSAA in the other plugins, which causes heavy problems in DX11, as was said in another thread. You can see that they already tried including SSAA in the form of OGSSAA, but it caused problems.
Now, SGSSAA easy to include (you only have to make use of the SGSSAA transparency setting in the driver), and it will use the same basics as MSAA and just does it for every element in the picture, not only the edges.
It can provide better image quality at lesser fps hit, as i have shown.
And in the UI, one additional checkbox would be enough.
Now, be honest: Do you really think they would not think about including it, if a) it was not already possible to activate it in the drivers and b) if they really knew about it and all it's differences over the other AA methods?
I merely think they are too busy with other things right now and/or there is not a dev in the team who really knows about the advantages of it.r
10-06-2013, 05:17 AM
10-06-2013, 05:41 AM