[Suggestion] Add a "UI scale target resolution" feature with the advent of DX11

[BONKERS]

With the advent of DX11, we FINALLY get some really HQ SSAO in the form of HBAO+ Which is VASTLY superior to the really low quality SSAO from the DX9 client in a number of ways.
_________________________________________________
---------------------------------------------------------------------
-Physically accurate occlusion taking into account light
-Far less prone to aliasing
-Far more samples per pixel
-Full resolution buffer
-Much less prone to artifacts in motion and clouding which make IMO DX9 SSAO completely unusable.
__________________________________________________
----------------------------------------------------------------

This is a HUGE plus! Making the game world feel even more alive.

The only problem now, is that we are left with only FXAA for Anti-Aliasing.

This is very bad for a number of objective reasons. And this leaves the DX9 client for Nvidia users with a major advantage.

==Higher quality Anti Aliasing.

Rather than discussing why it's vastly superior in every way. I'll just show you a video comparison of FXAA and 4xSGSSAA in motion.
https://copy.com/wYWPwuimvWI68ZRN

The video encode isn't very great, but it works well enough to showcase most of the biggest differences which should be easily visible to anyone who knows what aliasing looks like.

______________________________________________________
-------------------------------------------------------------

Now, we could get decent AA in the DX11 client via OGSSAA (downsampling) alongside using FXAA.

The only problem is that the UI doesn't scale well at very high resolutions. Even at it's largest settings it is either too small,unreadable or very ugly looking and blurry due to the scaling from rendering *Everything* at a much higher resolution.

The solution to this is to simply code in a set of options to fix this problem.

==The first being Ordered Grid Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing.==

This is a piss easy solution to implement into games these days that is seeing more and more use. It is essentially the same as downsampling with a utility like GeDoSaTo (Google it) or driver downsampling or DSR/VSR.
You simply take every buffer, and render it to a fixed scale proportional to the display/final render resolution.

Ex- 1920x1080 with 1.5x1.5 OGSSAA multiplies each axis by 1.5, resulting in a resolution of 2880x1620. Which in turn is "2.25xSSAA" Because there are 225% as many pixels as in 1920x1080.(The base value of 100%)

The reconstruction or resampling filter when you downfilter these buffers to display resolution is often a Box or Bilinear function. Nvidia's DSR uses an adjustable Gaussian function (Which is not the same as Gaussian blur. Gaussian Blur is a blurring technique using a Gaussian function).
Choosing one of these would be simple and they could even offer multiple choices for users.

The options for SSAA would fall in line to something like
==SSAA Scale==
[*]2.25xSSAA
[*]2.25xSSAA + FXAA
[*]4xSSAA
[*]4xSSAA + FXAA

==SSAA Filter==
[*]Box
[*]Bilinear
[*]Bicubic
[*]Lanczos
[*]Gaussian

==Display Resolution==
[*] List of detected resolutions - This is what the SSAA is scaled back to

==UI Display/Render Resolution==
[*] Fixed to Display Resolution
[*] Not fixed to Display Resolution



This would render the UI pass AFTER the downfiltering stage of all the other rendering buffers before final output to the Primary Flip Chain.


And thus fix the scale to your display resolution and not the rendering resolution when SSAA is used. Preventing unsightly tiny or hard to read text and UI elements.

__________________________________
_--------------------------------------------------

What do you think? Any suggestion on whom to send this to for consideration?

[Bombast]

In the future, what you can do is post a few lines, then edit and add the rest. Edited post have no text limit.

As for the issue, I find it hard to believe a simple issue like UI resolution wont be pounded out before release, or very soon after.

[BONKERS]

I doubt the option will ever be added. But I can only dream. The only reason to ever use the DX9 client now is for better AA.

The DX9 client is hardcore CPU bottlenecked too though. Even with a GTX 980 and a first gen Core i7 @4ghz. Can't maintain 60FPS at any resolution.

The DX9 HS benchmark shows the same issue too, the DX11 client. BAM no more CPU issues and it runs a heck of a lot better.

And the biggest point for my suggestion too would be that the UI pass is rendered after downfiltering the prior buffers. Otherwise the scale would be fixed, but then it has to be upscaled. Then downscaled again.

[Al_Jazeera]

I'd love to see these suggestions implemented.

Thanks for taking the time to post this, and for your past posts elsewhere on the net on AA & AO methods in FF14.

[BONKERS]

You're welcome.
All I ever really want is for the game to be the best it deserves to be. (It also adds in a bit of future proofing allowing for people to get more out of it the better their GPU and overall system gets over the years)

You have no idea how pumped I am they added HBAO+ into the DX11 client. Because with the release of the GTX 980 and some newer drivers Nvidia broke the support for HBAO+ (Which wasn't really official anyway) in the DX9 client somehow when using "Transparent Lighting Quality- High"

Leaving it so you can only use HBAO+ in DX9 with TLQ-Normal. Which makes things like water look really ugly.

[Malithorne]

You have no idea how pumped I am they added HBAO+ into the DX11 client. Because with the release of the GTX 980 and some newer drivers Nvidia broke the support for HBAO+ (Which wasn't really official anyway) in the DX9 client somehow when using "Transparent Lighting Quality- High"

Leaving it so you can only use HBAO+ in DX9 with TLQ-Normal. Which makes things like water look really ugly.

For me, Transparent Lighting Quality - High also completely kills SLI utilization near dungeon entrances . (I hope this is fixed in DX11!)
Anyway, I do hope they either fix the UI scaling or add something like MSAA eventually, because I really don't want to suffer the cpu bottleneck in DX9. (or be missing the new HBAO+!).
I can't tell from the benchmark, but does DX11 still have that negative lod bias as well..?

[Silver_bells]

Bumping. Even WoW got MSAA after switching to deferred in the DX11 Client, there's no reason for this game not to give us the option.