FXAA

[Moorepheus_Oneiri]

I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 running the latest 301.42 drivers. After reading up on the new FXAA feature of this driver set, I have now disabled all AA in the FFXI Config program and set all options to highest (no Ambient Occlusion of Depth of Field) and set FXAA to on in the NVIDIA Control Panel and am seeing some nice performance with a small loss in quality, really only noticable in menus to me. Any thoughts?

[ArkNova]

I haven't updated my drivers yet because some of my ls members said after updating their drivers to the current version their game has been acting up so your the first to mention not having an issue.

[Moorepheus_Oneiri]

I definitely had a huge problem with the 296.10 set and had to roll back to 295.73, but it's been stable since 301.24 release. If you're still using 200 series drivers, I'd suggest going for the 300 series.

[Eyn]

set FXAA to on in the NVIDIA Control Panel and am seeing some nice performance with a small loss in quality, really only noticable in menus to me. Any thoughts?

What do you mean?

[Moorepheus_Oneiri]

Well without getting too deep FXAA is a new anti-aliasing technology that the latest NVIDIA drivers feature (apparently there is an ATI equivalent as well). It boasts comparable quality to MSAA x4 with a 60% reduction in load and non-native support for most games. I've now been running it on StarCraft II as well which doesn't even feature native AA.

[kierie]

I installed the new driver and my fps dropped down to 9 everywhere so I had to rollback I would love to try out the FXAA too

[Laraul]

Well without getting too deep FXAA is a new anti-aliasing technology that the latest NVIDIA drivers feature (apparently there is an ATI equivalent as well). It boasts comparable quality to MSAA x4 with a 60% reduction in load and non-native support for most games. I've now been running it on StarCraft II as well which doesn't even feature native AA.

I have not tried FXAA, and yes I am being pessimistic, but it sounds like marketing more than anything. Do we need another way of performing AA? Are you sure FXAA is even working? Take screenshots of the game (both FFXIV and SCII) with FXAA on and off and do you really notice a difference? I have SCII I don't understand why would think AA is necessarily it looks fine without it. And the built-in method of AA FFXIV uses works fine. Why go to all the work and try to make these work with some foreign mode of AA that may produce unexpected behavior.

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

I tried it, and I pretty much agree with the OP. The quality is about the same as 4XMSAA and there is a noticeable performance increase in older cards. If you have a newer card, the increases will be less noticeable.

I also question the compatibility with older DX versions. It seems this technology was aimed at supporting DX11. Since installing the 300 series driver, I started getting some FFXIV crash errors that I never got before. I suspect it's because DX9 is less compatible with the newer drivers.

[tyw214]

Built-in FFXIV AA is derived from driver.

Normal MSAA uses model edge sampling and 4x MSAA means 2 horizontal, and 2 vertical samples.

FXAA is a SHADER-based AA which gives an incredible performance increase. The down side is, FXAA will looked a little "blurred" compared to normal MSAA and that "Blur" is also what gives the FXAA the "Anti-Aliasing" effect.

[Frein]

How do you correctly set it up in the Nvidia control panel? It seems to allow FXAA on simultaneously with MSAA or CSAA. I briefly tried playing with the traditional AA settings off and with FXAA on, but it looked as if I didn't have any AA on. I'm using a GTX460 with the latest drivers.