Enable FXAA in Dx9, Dx10 and Dx11 Games Now by some dude! # Version 9

[Vardant]

NV is also working on implementing this on the driver level. It's supposed to look better and work probably almost everywhere, not only in DX9 games. In the last two versions of the driver, it can be already enabled, although it only works in OGL, but that should change soon.

[Spectrobozo]

I only tested in 2 games, Mass Effect 2, no drop on performance and it clearly "smoothed" some aliasing, although it also blurred a little bit the HUD and all the rest, but it was not to bad,
also on "Richard Burns Rally" (a 2004 DX8 game), it worked nicely to, made a big difference compared to no AA and I didn't notice anything wrong,

the VGA used was a HD5750 at default clocks.

[Stukov]

Damn, lot more people in here play WoT than I would have ever guessed.

[-=DouglasteR=-]

Mass effect 1 and 2 runs flawless and the aliasing is minimal !!

No performance hit visible.

[-=DouglasteR=-]

OMG, im downloading Bioshock and Stalker now !!

Lets see if will blend with the foliage well !

[STaRGaZeR]

I wonder why all you guys are so excited about this, it looks like crap, just like that whatever is called equivalent from ATI. Blurring the whole thing will never look good.

[Hornet331]

Isn't it ironcical... ppl with ati cards use a 3rd party tool when there card already offers such a feature..

And it works in every game....

MLAA


NoAA

[JohnZS]

Does not work with GTA IV, so it is kind of pointless for me
I must admit I am impressed that someone HAS made this so more games can support it, however I am disappointed there is no love for GTA IV
John

[Spectrobozo]

Isn't it ironcical... ppl with ati cards use a 3rd party tool when there card already offers such a feature..

And it works in every game....

MLAA


NoAA

well, I tested both the ATI MLAA and "3rd party tool", and the result was similar, but not exactly the same... at least that was my impression (I only tested for a few minutes, and compared in one game, so...) the ATI MLAA seemed a little bit more blurred, I also find more interesting being able to turn it on and off just by pressing insert

[Fraggle]

Damn, I was hoping GTA4 would work too. There is that brute force downsampling hack but you`ll need quite a bit of muscle to use it.

[STaRGaZeR]

Isn't it ironcical... ppl with ati cards use a 3rd party tool when there card already offers such a feature..

And it works in every game....

What are you doing with that crap in ME2, turn on proper AA in there! In a mere screenshot I can already tell how much worse it looks compared to MSAA

[blindbox]

Isn't it ironcical... ppl with ati cards use a 3rd party tool when there card already offers such a feature..

And it works in every game....

MLAA


NoAA

My ATi card doesn't have such feature (4890) so it's perfectly okay for me to use this cool little tweak.

EDIT: Oh yea, doesn't work with Crysis Wars (as a consequence, doesn't work with MWLL)

Also, the readme says it works only on x86, but what it really means is that, it works only with 32-bit apps (I'm on Windows 7 x64).

[Hornet331]

Why should I use MLAA in a game that has build in AA?

[kl0012]

Also, the readme says it works only on x86, but what it really means is that, it works only with 32-bit apps (I'm on Windows 7 x64).

It means that this AA algorithm is pure CPU based (no GPU resources were used). FXAA is applied to a frame after it was formed by GPU (MLAA works similarly). The author provided DX9 library but basically it can work with every DX version.

[JohnZS]

Damn, I was hoping GTA4 would work too. There is that brute force downsampling hack but you`ll need quite a bit of muscle to use it.

Yep

However I looked at the 3dcentre forum link provided by kaktus1907 and it appears that Some Dude is still working on his tool, so hopefully (fingers crossed and all that) he manages to produce a fix for GTA IV
John

[Vardant]

Isn't it ironcical... ppl with ati cards use a 3rd party tool when there card already offers such a feature..

MLAA and FXAA are similar, but there are some key differences. Performance hit when enabling MLAA is much larger for example and there are circumstances, where one looks better than the other.

[kaktus1907]

Yep

However I looked at the 3dcentre forum link provided by kaktus1907 and it appears that Some Dude is still working on his tool, so hopefully (fingers crossed and all that) he manages to produce a fix for GTA IV
John

GTA 4 already has FXAA with the icenhancer 1.25 mod it only works with version 1.4 though.. it's very resource heavy too

[JohnZS]

Thanks kaktus1907
Sadly I use 1.7 however I had a look at the mod and it appears to be using Boris' ENB series to perform the FSAA via Downsampling. My GTX 295 hates that as downsampling renders the image at a higher resolution than what is displayed. for example 1920*1200 is rendered at 3840*2400

Thanks anyway as the graphics look amazing

Hopefully FXAA is possible but for now we have to rely on downsampling.

John

[Power5]

Because its not... ((CPU Based))

It means that this AA algorithm is pure CPU based (no GPU resources were used). FXAA is applied to a frame after it was formed by GPU (MLAA works similarly). The author provided DX9 library but basically it can work with every DX version.

I am confused. Is this CPU or GPU based AA in game?

[Vardant]

FXAA was already in F3AR and DNF, done by NVIDIA, so it has to be GPU based.

[Sgt.McRuff]

I was thinking same thing, I thought it would be rare to see WoT mention once in a thread, but multiple times made me happy

Anyone got screen shots of WoT with it on and off?

[kl0012]

FXAA was already in F3AR and DNF, done by NVIDIA, so it has to be GPU based.

This wrapper works even on Intel's IGP. The performance hit in Torchlight is minimal (down from 95 fps to 88 fps).

Without wrapper:


With wrapper:

[Vardant]

Yeah, it is not vendor specific.

[kl0012]

I am confused. Is this CPU or GPU based AA in game?

I suppose it is CPU based. The author by self said that he has a basic knowledge in shader programming (but probably good enough to know how to call wrapper function from shader code). There is also good article about how to implement MLAA on CPU with minimum performance degradation.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...pu-to-the-cpu/
Since both, MLAA and FXAA are post-processing techniques (similar algorithms), I guess it is much easier to implement it on CPU, then writing GPU specific code.

[Vardant]

An important aspect of FXAA to note is that it is compatible with NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. In his blog, Mr. Lottes answers the "Why FXAA?" question with the following:

Wanted something which handles sub-pixel aliasing better than MLAA, something which didn't require compute, something which runs on DX9 level hardware, and something which runs in a single full-screen pixel shader pass. Basically the simplest and easiest thing to integrate and use.

So does FXAA use DirectCompute?
No, FXAA is just a post-processing shader. It is independent of any GPU Compute API, which was Lottes goal. FXAA is to be an efficient alternative to traditional anti-aliasing where MSAA is either impractical (too costly) or ineffective (shader aliasing) while having broad compatibility and simple integration. While we can neither speculate nor comment on the ease of integration, we can measure performance and examine image quality.

Note, there are also many different versions of FXAA: FXAA 1 (which was described in the NVIDIA DX11 SDK white paper you mentioned), FXAA 2 which was designed for the Xbox 360, and FXAA 3 of which there are two algorithms, FXAA 3 Quality for the PC and FXAA 3 Console designed for the Xbox 360 and PS3. Performance has changed between versions: FXAA 3 has some major performance advantages over FXAA 1. A typical 720p video frame can be processed with FXAA 3 Quality in around 0.21 milliseconds on a GTX 480 with the default settings in DX11. Performance will also vary between DX9 and DX11 for the same settings (DX11 being faster due to gather4 and programmable offsets).

The FXAA in FEAR3 is based on FXAA 1. FXAA 1 was also used in Duke Nukem Forever, Age of Conan, Crysis 2 (with their temporal 2x supersampling) and Brink.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...ing_technology