No Hardware Anti-Aliasing under DirectX 11?

[Hali]

I’m sure I’m not the only person who was expecting this change to come about, only to feel rather bit disappointed that the time hadn’t been taken in order to make the adjustments for this. It would require a bit of effort in order to apply, but the trade off is an extremely huge difference.

The performance difference being a concern for some, FXAA is still a viable option to have this wouldn't go away. However the option to choose between software AA and hardware AA should be added in the future, as in this day and age the performance difference isn't drastic enough to consider it a dead avenue.

Hopefully a community rep could take the time to read through this and appropriately forward this information to the development team, that there's still a want for hardware anti-aliasing, if it could be added to the schedule. (As they did say they wanted to add more DX11 features in the future).

“What is Anti-Aliasing?”

Anti-Aliasing is an industry standard for reducing the inherent ‘stair-case’ effect that all 3D based games suffer from. The larger the distance, the more ‘pixelated’ things appear.
3D objects are made up of vector based polygons, because the computer is trying to render the vectors as accurately as possible to suit a pixel-based monitor, it creates this stair-case effect as a result, leading to the requirement to smooth it out afterwards.
This problem solver comes in various forms, some require more effort to implement as well as requiring more processing power in order to function.
But the trade-off is worth it. Software AA does not hold a candle to Hardware AA.

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“I don’t understand this, summarise it for me please?”

Essentially, every frame the game renders have ‘layers’, due to the way Deferred Rendering rendered lighting, shading and geometry in the scene, the hardware antialiasing would be ‘defeated’, meaning no effect would take place, this issue under DirectX9 pretty much lead to the wide-spread use of FXAA as a replacement. DirectX 10 fixed this issue, however it requires a bit of adjustment on how the scene is rendered.

“Wait, so FXAA isn’t Hardware Anti-Aliasing?”

No. FXAA is ‘Software’ Anti-Aliasing, this is a quick ‘pass’ over the entre screen/game scene AFTER the frame has been rendered which simply blurs it in order to try and smooth the aliasing in the scene. It’s very light on performance and easily applied, so it’s a great choice.

“So, then why bother with Hardware AA?”

The major difference between software AA and hardware AA is how it handles the scene it’s applied to. There are varying types of Hardware AA but basically it’ll detect ONLY the aliasing in the scene, including transparent edges (Hair/Grass/Robes)
This is an example of Hardware AA (Bearing in mind SSAA is old and no-longer used, but it shows the difference quite strikingly);

“I’m still a little confused as to how this applied to FFXIV?”

Looking at the previous image I posted in the last section, notice the difference in the jagged vs. smooth edges? When you’re playing FFXIV you may notice even with FXAA enabled the edge of your character, your hair, the grass, certain objects nearby or in the distance suffer from this jagged edge look where this seem to flicker a bit.
Hardware Anti-Aliasing would almost completely defeat this issue. It’s extremely powerful and it drastically improves the overall appearance of the game. FFXIV 1.0 proved this, with AA turned off, the game almost looks like ARR, with Hardware AA turned on, it looks like a completely different game altogether.



As you can see, with FXAA turned on [right] and turned off [left], the difference is substantial, however there's still a lot of ailising left over. An image doesn't do it as much justice, but try it for yourself in-game, and you'll notice the aliasing is still quite aggressive even with FXAA turned on, especially with anything that moves, or appears in the distance.


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For a technical analysis on the possible process they could use, you can view it here;
http://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/con...drendering.htm

[Waliel]

Sure you didn't mix the order of the FFXIV pictures? The left one looks a lot more aliased to me. Anyways, a real AA would be nice.

[Hali]

Sure you didn't mix the order of the FFXIV pictures? The left one looks a lot more aliased to me. Anyways, a real AA would be nice.

I did mix them up! Thank you!

[Darkshade]

You're not the only one.

Kind of a let down. Well I didn't have my expectations too high, but FSAA was on the list...

[Riardon]

There is no new AA technique in the new DX11 bench. FXAA is the only option atm. Devs also mentioned somewhere (I dont have the link now) that they will bring more DX11 features in the new client in the future. So maybe we will get SSAA and TXAA in the future.

[Gilraen]

Hmm... I remember saying in past 'DX11 Coming!' thread that it wouldn't be the 'second coming' for the game. Admittedly, it was more about Square not upgrading the textures, but this is more of the same sentiment. I don't really understand why people were so convinced that the differences were going to be 'night and day'. It's just DirectX, it's not a rebuilt game engine.

[Riardon]

Hmm... I remember saying in past 'DX11 Coming!' thread that it wouldn't be the 'second coming' for the game. Admittedly, it was more about Square not upgrading the textures, but this is more of the same sentiment. I don't really understand why people were so convinced that the differences were going to be 'night and day'. It's just DirectX, it's not a rebuilt game engine.

The differences between max settings DX9 and DX11 client are quite noticeable. I would say its day - evening difference and not day and night. The textures maybe did not got a res bump but now they are uncompressed making the skin far far better looking without blocking and large squares. Also HBAO+ makes huge difference. The differences are quite big and visible. After running the bench on max and returning to the normal game I noticed the difference even more. If someone can't spot the differences he/she should make sure the bench runs on DX11 and max settings cause you have to do it manually. The bech launches as DX9 and uses the default settings we already have in game.

[Nimlothien]

Oh, yeah, the tessellation and HBAO are amazing. But the complete lack of useful AA is shameful. FXAA is like rubbing vaseline on your screen and should just be brought out back and put out of it's misery.

[Brianmj]

Oh, yeah, the tessellation and HBAO are amazing. But the complete lack of useful AA is shameful. FXAA is like rubbing vaseline on your screen and should just be brought out back and put out of it's misery.

Can't you force an AA mode with profile settings if you have an Nvidia card?

[Radacci]

The textures maybe did not got a res bump but now they are uncompressed making the skin far far better looking without blocking and large squares..

duno if it's just me, but from running around randomly, it seems like they have increases texture res, in a few places. i don't have before/after pics, but it's what it feels like.
before everything looked blurry and low res, now there's some places with fairly high res textures; mor dhona, in the tangle for example. they added more crystal around the ramp to rathefrost, and the cliffs seem more high-res. also some cliffs in coerthas. it's quite noticeable, cause some segments are low res, others high-res. so maybe they are adding new textures, over time, checking how it works out....with tesselation, i hope they add higher res anyway.
here's to hoping.