Hi all,

I've been experimenting with porting FXAA and SMAA anti-aliasing into the GG shader suite.

FXAA seems to be working OK, but if anyone wants to check it for themselves that would help me (it may crash on different resolution, set-ups, think it should be OK, but not sure). And there are 'tuning controls' that affect speed/quality on different set-ups.

SMAA is a different beast and uses pre-computed textures to work its magic. I've got so far with this (I can see the edge detection working OK for example), but I'm fairly sure it needs an engine change to allow the pre-computed textures to be loaded into the post-process shader pipeline, so am leaving this for now until perhaps Lee has some inclination along with the community for post processing changes (there are other changes that would be cool in this domain too - allowing pass through variables from lua to the shaders being one - to allow different effects to be triggered in post process and other areas by lua scripting (think this was possible in FPSC)).

If you're interested in seeing if FXAA improves GG rendering for you I've attached a variation of the post-sao.fx file. This version replaces SAO with FXAA. To use, back-up/rename the original file in effectbank\reloaded, then drop the attached file in its place. Start GG and 'tab tab' to make sure the bloom and SAO intensity sliders are above zero.

Here's a side by side of the difference I see:



Cheers.

Nice one. Definitely an improvement over the current stair stepping nightmare we have. Of course, I found myself instantly missing SAO.

Sophie's Choice, for sure.

I must need specsavers ..... I cant see the difference in the pic ?

@synchromesh

Well my hearing is off but I still have good eyesight, and I see a big difference with the two pictures. But did you not say some time back you are still using the old VGA connection to your monitor, you maybe need a HDMI / DVI output to see this better.

EDIT Just looked at it with VGA Monitor and I can still see the difference.

I'm using two monitors. One huge, one small. The smaller one is mostly for file browsing and has a lower, chunky resolution so I can see it with my bad eyes from more than two feet away. On that one, it's not so clear, but I do see the a difference. On the big screen, it's a big, nice difference.

I can definitely see the difference in the pics here. I have recently re installed Reshade, though, and after installing this shader, everything still looks Reshade pretty!

Great cybernescence!, thanks for sharing.

I've made some test with some asests I'm working on, with nice results.

Here clock tower corners before you notice edges antialiazing issues; now you can notice difference in pic below



The same with the chairs woods




I didn't know about that software, I was surfing a bit, and it has interisting features, I'll take a look later.

3com

Thanks cybernescence this is great for me as I use a 4:3 monitor @ 1024 x 768 display resolution a lot of the time for GameGuru and this makes the picture so much better on the eye.

No problems here. Been tweaking a level for the last 2 days and used this while doing so, no issues. I can see a difference, it improves the edges nicely. Doesn't stop the GG flash effect though with z depth issues That would improve visuals significantly. Pity we can't have both SAO and FXAA...

Hate this behaviour

3com

Thanks for the feedback all. Seems that most are getting some benefit and is stable so far.

We can definitely get SAO & FXAA working together (I have a version with this, just needs tidying up a bit) so will update this thread with that version soon for those who want both.

[ thanks for the user banner too - that's great ]

Cheers.

Attached is a version with stock SAO and FXAA added.

Hopefully it will work OK for you - let me know if it doesn't and I'll try and fix.

Same 'install' as before - back-up/rename the original post-sao.fx file in effectbank\reloaded, then drop the attached file in its place.

Cheers.

Nice one!

Thank you.

Just thought I'd let you know it works great. Just tested it on 100% and still getting a reasonable frame rate. I think I lose about 3 fps with SAO and FXAA on 100. This is on a large map which ran at about 31-80 FPS dependent on your location. All rough edges are gone and still have the SAO effect which is nice.

Thanks for the feedback DVader - appreciate it.

Cheers.