Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Oh why oh why did I read this thread.

kirbypuff Wrote:I wouldn't recommend using any kind of standard AA (MSAA/CSAA/EQAA/MFAA), It's relatively low quality and introduces all kinds of issues.

MFAA is in a totally different category than MSAA/CSAA/EQAA.  MSAA does not introduce significant issues and produces high image quality.  

kirbypuff Wrote:8xMSAA is also a worse choice than 4xMSAA (anything higher than 4x is too blurry / a waste of GPU power).

8xMSAA is superior to 4xMSAA in image quality both mathematically and in practice.  Neither have any blurring effect at all if they are implemented correctly.  If they are having a blurring effect (which as far as I can tell they do not in dolphin) then your shader is really really broken.  

The difference in performance between the two is fairly minimal and I find it strange that you don't recommend this because of performance then go on to recommend SSAA which has a MUCH higher performance hit.

kirbypuff Wrote:For best image quality without any issues, set the IR to 3x and use SSAA.

Fractional (window size) will yield better quality than 3x.

kirbypuff Wrote:SSAA is available only if you use the OpenGL backend.

Natively in dolphin yes.  But you can apply it at the driver level to the d3d backend if you know what you're doing.

kirbypuff Wrote:If you use the Direct3D backend (e.g. for better performance on AMD hardware), then the best option is to set the IR to 6x and turn off the standard AA. Direct3D doesn't have a SSAA option (yet), so 6xIR is recommended in this case.

Using a lower IR with MSAA will yield lower aliasing and better performance than a higher IR without it.  Although you make take a slight hit in texture detail.  Obviously the best option is to have high IR and AA at the same time.

As far as FXAA goes it will be less effective than MSAA/SSAA at removing geometry aliasing but more effective at removing most other forms of aliasing.  And at virtually no performance cost.  The problem is it has a slight blurring effect overall and it can have a significant IQ impact on text and UI overlays if it's applied after those are rendered, which as far as I know is the way dolphin does it.

The last time I checked MSAA had no blurring (as it should) and SSAA had some blurring (which is fairly typical for most implementations) in dolphin.  I confess that I haven't updated/used dolphin in awhile due to work but unless they radically changed and/or broke something between dolphin 4.0.2 and now it should still be that way.

I don't know what you call blurring but the whole idea of an anti-aliasing algorithm is to blend pixels. The only way it could have no blurring is if it did absolutely nothing.

If it did not take any additional samples I would agree. And this is why AA methods that don't take additional samples like FXAA/MLAA do always have some observable blurring no matter how well implemented they are. Some SSAA implementations even appear to make textures appear sharper and more detailed than without.

(06-19-2015, 11:27 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Some SSAA implementations even appear to make textures appear sharper and more detailed than without.

Increasing the IR in Dolphin / downsampling does something similar, but it doesn't remove the aliasing completely.
AMD's driver-based (RG)SSAA also improves the texture clarity by adjusting the LOD bias a bit to remove the blur.

(06-19-2015, 09:41 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]MSAA does not introduce significant issues and produces high image quality.
I find it strange that you don't recommend this because of performance then go on to recommend SSAA which has a MUCH higher performance hit.

MSAA *does* introduce all kinds of gltches (in Dolphin), also performs like crap (especially on AMD hardware) and it's not effective at removing jaggies even at the highest '8x' setting. Switching to driver-based SSAA makes a world of a difference - it removes aliasing completely: edge/geometry, texture/transparency, shader and any other kind of aliasing artifacts.

(06-19-2015, 09:41 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Fractional (window size) will yield better quality than 3x.

But causes various issues in Dolphin.

(06-19-2015, 09:41 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]The problem with FXAA is it has a slight blurring effect overall and it can have a significant IQ impact on text and UI overlays if it's applied after those are rendered, which as far as I know is the way dolphin does it.

Even SMAA 1x (much sharper, but somewhat less effective than HQ FXAA) does add a slight blur to the whole image.
4xMSAA still produces better image quality, but it works only on edges/geometry.

I knew NaturalViolence would post in this thread   .

We talked about it two years ago. Forcing SSAA in the drivers (for D3D) looks great. For the best results, the internal resolution should be equal or higher than your monitor, or you'd be downsampling to lower resolutions.

I don't do it anymore because now I play in 3D, which requires at least 2x more GPU power. I'll upgrade to the next Tesla 70 from Nvidia.

Downsampling in the monitor or using DSR also works.

Good luck to the one who wants to improve the downsampling filter!

(06-19-2015, 07:15 AM)phenomenalkai Wrote: [ -> ]So for my R9 280, should I turn off AA and run at 6x resolution (effectively 4k according to GUI) ?

You have three options:

Option #1
-------------
Select 3xIR in Dolphin, configure the GPU driver to enhance (upgrade) MSAA to SSAA and finally use the standard '4x' or '8x' setting (without a quality level).
NOTE: 8xSSAA looks great, but it's also slow as **** (!)

Option #2
--------------
Select 6xIR in Dolphin, turn off any AA and enable the downsampling filter (or use a post-processing AA shader).
The only downside is the official builds of Dolphin don't have a downsampling filter or post-processing support for the D3D backend (yet), so you'll have to use an unofficial [unsupported] build that has these features (Ishiiruka by Tino).

Option #3:
--------------
Get a UHD/4K display of the same size, set the IR to 6x, disable AA and enjoy the near-perfect image quality. You don't need any AA on a 4K display

(06-20-2015, 03:40 AM)masterotaku Wrote: [ -> ]Good luck to the one who wants to improve the downsampling filter!

It's more of implementing than improving AFAIK.

(06-17-2015, 07:42 AM)MaJoR Wrote: [ -> ]Raising the internal resolution will be a poor substitute for anti-aliasing. Dolphin doesn't have a scaling filter for it's internal resolution system, so you can raise the internal resolution as high as you want, and aliasing will still appear! It's better to set the internal resolution to something that matches your system (3x native for 1080p for example) and then turn on SSAA.

Helios is working on a PR to tip users about this in the GUI. Apparently that is really needed!

I think this is a strange issue.

Would it not be possible add a set of simple functions to use for this?

Eg: Make it a selectable option in the GUI when using IR above the detected display resolution. Or a check box with a drop down menu of filters.
Nearest
Bilinear
Bicubic
Lanczos

Heck, it'd be cool to see different sampling patterns for the SSAA. Ordered,Rotated,Jittered,Sparse

(06-18-2015, 01:46 AM)admin89 Wrote: [ -> ]For Speed : FXAA > 4x MSAA > 8x MSAA > .... > 4xSSAA
For Quality : 4x SSAA > FXAA > 8xMSAA > 4x MSAA
SSAA is just too demanding , both MSAA and MFAA are too blurry
That's why FXAA is the best of both worlds.

You must be having some strange use cases where 8xMSAA is blurry.

Unless the game in question is doing something strange with it's implementation or doing more processing than just Geometry.(IE Replaying the shading of the game like SGSSAA does) This makes no sense./

ssaa has the benefit of working on everything instead of just on edges (some gc/wii games try to use a single 2d texture to represent something with geometry in order to reduce polygon counts and msaa won't actually anti-alias those)

that's probably also why it's more expensive

it doesn't seem like the current builds have ssaa for d3d11, so i guess you can choose between your GPU's downsampling scaler and whatever dolphin uses

So... final verdict?