No Hardware Anti-Aliasing under DirectX 11?

[Onikimaru]

Real talk, Square is sitting one one of the most impressive graphical engines shown this generation, and they don't even make PC games. I'm sure they're aware of everything brought up by you wonderful people in this thread.

Are you talking about the DX12 tech demo nvidia showcased?

[Gieff]

Real talk, Square is sitting one one of the most impressive graphical engines shown this generation, and they don't even make PC games. I'm sure they're aware of everything brought up by you wonderful people in this thread.

If that's the case, then it would be awesome if they would just tell us so, and explain the technical reasons why they have yet to implement said methods in their big money making PC game. Even when discussing and their new DX12 demos based on the Luminous engine, they don't go into AA methods nearly enough. I think it's more of an industry-wide failure to recognize the importance of proper anti-aliasing. Lack of aliasing, along with physically accurate depth of field and motion blur, are three critical differences between a "game" and a high budget CG movie. Pixar identified and successfully implemented these things at SIGGRAPH with their very first CG demo in 1984. Why are most game developers 31 years behind on "getting it"?

[Nadirah]

Hardware compatibility.

That's why.

They're not going to make a PC game aimed at a broad audience that requires hardware a fraction of them can afford.


Not everyone has a grand to drop on a GPU.

[Ashman]

Not everyone has a grand sixty dollars to drop on a GPU.

[Gilraen]

Not everyone has a grand sixty dollars to drop on a GPU.

Uh, no. I have a G53SX Asus gaming laptop and 1.0 made it cry at max settings. The Crystal Tools engine was not made for making games, it was made for making pretty cutscenes. The jokes of people 'stealing NASA servers' to play 1.0 were founded in the stark reality of it's rather high system requirements. You'd probably still need a high end machine even now if they tried using Crystal Tools again for an MMO.

[Onikimaru]

Hardware compatibility.

That's why.

They're not going to make a PC game aimed at a broad audience that requires hardware a fraction of them can afford.


Not everyone has a grand to drop on a GPU.

Are you talking about AA or the new engine?, because AA has options. It can be lowered, heightened or ignored completely. XIV won't be getting this new engine. That engine is probably going to take another 3 years to complete, then they can start developing games with it, which will take another 3-6 years to complete.

Uh, no. I have a G53SX Asus gaming laptop and 1.0 made it cry at max settings. The Crystal Tools engine was not made for making games, it was made for making pretty cutscenes. The jokes of people 'stealing NASA servers' to play 1.0 were founded in the stark reality of it's rather high system requirements. You'd probably still need a high end machine even now if they tried using Crystal Tools again for an MMO.

What is going on here? why are people talking about different engines all of a sudden?

[Gieff]

Hardware compatibility.

That's why.

They're not going to make a PC game aimed at a broad audience that requires hardware a fraction of them can afford.


Not everyone has a grand to drop on a GPU.

Again, PC users have the option to turn these effects on or off as desired and as their respective hardware allows. in DX11, properly implemented MSAA has LESS of a hardware impact than any sort of supersampling method you would otherwise need to do in DX9. Also there are other performance light alternatives to FXAA that are FAR SUPERIOR for AA and include temporal AA, such as SMAA 2Tx. Moreover, DX11 ready cards have been available on ALL price points since 2010, and the DX11 client runs BETTER/FASTER than the DX9 client when all settings are set equal. I've already addressed the "hardware compatibility" argument several times in earlier posts. If you don't like it just turn the setting off or back to the old FXAA...

[Nadirah]

Warlords of Draenor only recently got MSAA.

They changed their engine to deferred so they could take advantage of its lighting.

Considering the hype about lighting, I'm given to think that's why they switched engines for HW, and there was no hardware AA available until a recent patch.

This tells me either SE will do it later, or they just won't bother.

And no, you can't just turn it off all the time. Some stuff requires coding lower end hardware just can't do.

When they eliminate ps3 support perhaps. Then they can justify eliminating support for similar PC hardware.

As a side note, my card does not support DX11. And I don't run AA in *any* game. I cannot tell the difference anyway.

[Ashman]

I had to deal with 10 years of "ps2 limitations" and we've already been seeing "ps3 limitations" bandied about less than a year after release of ARR. Lord Yoshi save us.

[Gieff]

Warlords of Draenor only recently got MSAA.

They changed their engine to deferred so they could take advantage of its lighting.


And no, you can't just turn it off all the time. Some stuff requires coding lower end hardware just can't do.

As a side note, my card does not support DX11. And I don't run AA in *any* game. I cannot tell the difference anyway.

While MSAA requires DX11 to run with deferred lighting, SMAA 2Tx does not, so it could be a performance-cheap and superior option to the existing FXAA. It, exactly like the current FXAA option, can simply be turned off if you don't want to use it. It works the same way in every game engine that supports it. Yes, you can just turn off MSAA in plenty of deferred lighting engines also.

Including these options would not break the game for you, don't worry! If you cannot tell the difference then that's fine, leave it all off. This is more for asking SE "WTF" by those that DO care.