Inject SMAA - FXAA style antialiasing with very little performance hit (ATI too)

[dangel]

Spending a little time reading up on Borderlands 2 and how people are getting on at adjusting the game (FOV etc) and I came across this little gem:

http://mrhaandi.blogspot.co.uk/p/injectsmaa.html

Essentially it's 'fake' AA (like FXAA is on nvidia cards) but the results look very good and the performance hit is negligible. I'm going to give this a go with B2 when it unlocks on Friday but I thought it worth sharing as it's the first time i've come across this.

[Terbinator]

I've bee using it with BF3 for a while and its a lot better than FXAA that i've used, both in-game and injector wise.

FWIW: Try giving SweetFX a go. The injector still uses SMAA but also some colour "correction" as well - again - i've found it to really bring out the aesthetics in BF3 and will probably use it with BL2 after seeing some comparison shots.

As for BL2 itself, i don't think you actually need to use SMAA/FXAA even though there isn't a proper AA option. The aesthetics do a good job hiding jaggies, IMO.

[kalniel]

I use SMAA for some games like Skyrim as it works really nicely on top of other modes sometimes. It's much nicer than FXAA or MLAA. Shame it has to be injected though (can trigger anti-cheat mechanisms)

[Terbinator]

http://www.mediafire.com/?a11r7k2efa1eeov

The injector i've been using^

[dangel]

Interesting stuff - I came across this guide here to injection methods:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1296721/h...ection-methods (which also covers things like having afterburner overlays work - which I do use)


There's a live link for SweetFX here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9942986/SweetFX.7z


I think I just want AA rather than any other enhancement though.

[dangel]

Screenshots with SMAA off:



And now with it on:

As for BL2 itself, i don't think you actually need to use SMAA/FXAA even though there isn't a proper AA option. The aesthetics do a good job hiding jaggies, IMO.

Gotta say, given the above I'd disagree but then I hate jaggies even at 1920x1200

[Terbinator]

Should be note that BL1 can have MSAA forced on through a config file so ideally you wouldn't use SMAA as well/instead of.

Edit: I get your highlighting the effect, though

[kalniel]

No problem using SMAA as well as MSAA - it's not a dumb blur everything algorithm, it tries to work out what to blur and what to leave alone, so will concentrate on things MSAA misses. Negative LOD clamping can help keep textures sharp if that's your concern.

[dangel]

Should be note that BL1 can have MSAA forced on through a config file so ideally you wouldn't use SMAA as well/instead of.

Edit: I get your highlighting the effect, though

I nabbed the screens from the steam forums where another guy has SMAA running but, yeah, it does look much better!

Reading up on SMAA-like techniques it seems that 'fake' AA is very close to being as good as 'real' AA but without the cost (MSAA needs much more VRAM/processing) which I wasn't aware of. I'm going to love fiddling around with this stuff

[kalniel]

Reading up on SMAA-like techniques it seems that 'fake' AA is very close to being as good as 'real' AA but without the cost (MSAA needs much more VRAM/processing) which I wasn't aware of. I'm going to love fiddling around with this stuff

It's a variant of AMDs MLAA, which nVidia refined as FXAA, and has since spawned a whole batch of methods. Effectively it's a smart blur as a post-process filter on the 2d image just before it hits the screen, so it only works on a flat 1920x1080 or whatever image. It's incredibly efficient, just a bit dumb at the moment as it has to guess where object edges are rather than using geometry information as you do in a forward renderer's AA method.

[Terbinator]

No problem using SMAA as well as MSAA - it's not a dumb blur everything algorithm, it tries to work out what to blur and what to leave alone, so will concentrate on things MSAA misses. Negative LOD clamping can help keep textures sharp if that's your concern.

Oh yeah i know, as i said, i use it on BF3 as its such an improvement - but given the choice - i try to avoid blur at all costs.

@Dangel: You've got plenty of horsepower in your build, have you considered downsampling?

[dangel]

@Dangel: You've got plenty of horsepower in your build, have you considered downsampling?

Yes - I had been reading about this last week. It's a rather cunning plan and one that I hadn't got round to trying (i've been obsessively playing Crysis 2 again with MALOHD mod for the first time locked at 60fps no matter what plus black mesa [which uses only 25% of the gpus]).
I guess it come down to how much processing power I have left after maxing everything in B2 (including Physx) but not having tried it yet I can't tell if it's possible to double my res.

It's a variant of AMDs MLAA, which nVidia refined as FXAA, and has since spawned a whole batch of methods. Effectively it's a smart blur as a post-process filter on the 2d image just before it hits the screen, so it only works on a flat 1920x1080 or whatever image. It's incredibly efficient, just a bit dumb at the moment as it has to guess where object edges are rather than using geometry information as you do in a forward renderer's AA method.

Thanks - great explanation. Have to say the edge detection looks pretty darn good on the comparison shots round the web though but i'm guessing it might vary from game to game somewhat (and B2 has that fairly unique cell shaded look).

[Terbinator]

Does anybody know why i am getting a weird grey/shimmer effect when using the injector? i haven't got any ENB stuff installed so i can't think why it would be conflicting.

[kalniel]

Does anybody know why i am getting a weird grey/shimmer effect when using the injector? i haven't got any ENB stuff installed so i can't think why it would be conflicting.

Just in BL2, or in every game you try smaa with?

[Terbinator]

Just in BL2, or in every game you try smaa with?

My error - it's in Skyrim where it's messing up. The only other game i use it in is BF3 where it works fine.

[kalniel]

My error - it's in Skyrim where it's messing up. The only other game i use it in is BF3 where it works fine.

Hmm, I don't see any shimmering in Skyrim with it. Very rarely there is a little bit of dithering on a curved edge, but it doesn't shimmer as such.