• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What's going on with Nintendo games and their lack of anti-aliasing?

F

family_guy

Member
I mean I know it was bad on 3DS and Wii for obvious reasons, but Wii U and Switch? I just don't get it. Just recently picked up a Switch and I have been less than impressed with two of the major releases, Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I personally think Breath of the Wild is unimpressive overall. It looks like a last gen game texture wise, which wouldn't be so bad if they cleaned up the jaggies. I mean Okami HD is more appealing to my eyes and that's a PS3 game. Okay Zelda is open world, but I don't think that should be an excuse. Mario Kart 8, it's harder to notice when you're playing, but it's still there, and it's more noticeable with the replays. There's a bunch of last gen games that have it so what's happening with Nintendo? Do they just not care because I don't think technically there's a reason to prevent them from adding it.
 
E

Emitan

Member
family_guy said:
I mean I know it was bad on 3DS and Wii for obvious reasons, but Wii U and Switch? I just don't get it. Just recently picked up a Switch and I have been less than impressed with two of the major releases, Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I personally think Breath of the Wild is unimpressive overall. It looks like a last gen game texture wise, which wouldn't be so bad if they cleaned up the jaggies. I mean Okami HD is more appealing to my eyes and that's a PS3 game. Okay Zelda is open world, but I don't think that should be an excuse. Mario Kart 8, it's harder to notice when you're playing, but it's still there, and it's more noticeable with the replays. There's a bunch of last gen games that have it so what's happening with Nintendo? Do they just not care because I don't think technically there's a reason to prevent them from adding it.
Click to expand...

It's a PS2 game being downscaled from 4k.
 
B

BlueMagic

Member
nah it's not that the hardware is limited and they prioritize other aspects, I'm pretty sure they have it off just because they want to
 
V

VDenter

Banned
See the thing with Nintendo at times is that they have to take baby steps in regards to features and just about all things that would make sense in 2017.
 
F

Fahzgoolin

Banned
Breath of the Wild's low res textures would be acceptable if the draw distance was greater that 100 feet.

It's booty butt cheeks.

SDF-1 said:
I sometimes wonder if its revenge for all the folk that complained about the blurry AA solution on the N64.
Click to expand...

Lol

Or maybe it's a "marketplace disconnect."
 
S

SDF-1

Banned
I sometimes wonder if its revenge for all the folk that complained about the blurry AA solution on the N64.
 
J

James Scott

Banned
Mario Kart 8D is 1080p 60fps. While it was fairly noticeable on Wii U it looks great on Switch.
I imagine the lack of AA/low amount of AA is a mix between wanting a sharper image and smoother performance
 
R

rrs

Member
Botw runs under native resolution and has way way more things on screen than a PS2 remaster at high resolution
 
C

Crimsonclaw111

Member
In Mario Kart's case, I guess it's to keep the 60fps at all times. Zelda is a bit pitiful because it isn't even 1080p combined with lack of AA.

In general I guess it's because of their 60fps goals. But I agree, their games look rough around the edges (pun intended) at times.
 
S

Skittzo0413

Member
I barely even notice aliasing in MK8D since it's 1080p. The resolution bump takes care of a lot of that.

It is for sure noticeable in BotW in screenshots but I don't tend to see it in motion. Nintendo probably cares more about how the game looks in motion than it looks in screenshots.
 
G

Griss

Member
Yeah, the textures and IQ in Botw is absolutely horrid, especially when you've got TP HD and WW HD on Wii U with much better IQ. It's one of the few major negatives to the game - the first hour I played of BotW it really distracted me how poor the game looked.

Luckily I got over it and the phenomenal art design of a lot of the areas won me over. The great plateau does the engine no favours at all.

James Scott said:
Mario Kart 8D is 1080p 60fps. While it was fairly noticeable on Wii U it looks great on Switch.
I imagine the lack of AA/low amount of AA is a mix between wanting a sharper image and smoother performance
Click to expand...

The bolded is what I think as well. It's consistent across all of their games so it must be a technical decision made somewhere by one of their top guys.
 
K

K' Dash

Member
Nice Stealth Zelda Hate thread, I mostly play in 4K on my PC and I find Zelda BOTW on the most beautiful games I ever played.

Nintendo priorities are elsewhere and that's fine, if I want to play at Max settings I have my PC and a backlog of games to play on Max settings.
 
Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Pretty sure you are not the target group of nintendo.
Dont mind its running on a freaking handheld OP.

I suggest you to get a scorpio when it's out its the best console gfx wise.

Or why not spend 3 grand on a nice gaming pc?

Or even better try to look past the "terrible" AA from the switch.and enjoy the game behind it!

I only played botw 250+ hours. Last game i played that long was borderlands 1 on the ps3.
 
G

Glix

Member
family_guy said:
I mean I know it was bad on 3DS and Wii for obvious reasons, but Wii U and Switch? I just don't get it. Just recently picked up a Switch and I have been less than impressed with two of the major releases, Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I personally think Breath of the Wild is unimpressive overall. It looks like a last gen game texture wise, which wouldn't be so bad if they cleaned up the jaggies. I mean Okami HD is more appealing to my eyes and that's a PS3 game. Okay Zelda is open world, but I don't think that should be an excuse. Mario Kart 8, it's harder to notice when you're playing, but it's still there, and it's more noticeable with the replays. There's a bunch of last gen games that have it so what's happening with Nintendo? Do they just not care because I don't think technically there's a reason to prevent them from adding it.
Click to expand...

Its unimpressive overall, but my opinion would be totally different if there were less jaggies!
It's hard to notice when you are actually playing Kart, but its still a huge problem for me!

There is no reason for them not to add it! I have no idea how resources work!

Just, a pathetic, all around terrible post and I am dumber for reading it.
 
D

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
The sharper screen makes BOTW look way worse than it really is when played in portable mode: low poly, smudgy and full of jaggies... does a disservice to the game to the point where it looks better on the crappy Wii U Gamepad to the untrained eyes.

But the game's faults are much more evident than any other games on the system "thanks" to the good screen.
Mario Kart, to name one, still looks phenomenal even in portable mode.

I mean, when you get outside on the Plateau for the first time it's almost breathtaking in TV Mode or even the crappy low-res WiiU gamepad, while it looses a lot of its gfx impact when experienced on the Switch itself, IMO.

But yeah, now that the resolution is there, just adding some AA would go a long way in making Nintendo's games even more appealing.
 
S

Safros

Member
Yeah, that's why I don't really like taking screenshots of the games. I only play in handheld mode so while the games look fine in motion, in screenshots both MK8D and Zelda don't look very good. Zelda in particular.
 
C

Crimsonclaw111

Member
Spukc said:
Pretty sure you are not the target group of nintendo.
Dont mind its running on a freaking handheld OP.

I suggest you to get a scorpio when it's out its the best console gfx wise.

Or why not spend 3 grand on a nice gaming pc?

Or even better try to look past the "terrible" AA from the switch.and enjoy the game behind it!

I only played botw 250+ hours. Last game i played that long was borderlands 1 on the ps3.
Click to expand...
People can enjoy the games and still be critical of them. I love Zelda but it looks like crap.
 
F

family_guy

Member
Spukc said:
Pretty sure you are not the target group of nintendo.
Dont mind its running on a freaking handheld OP.

I suggest you to get a scorpio when it's out its the best console gfx wise.

Or why not spend 3 grand on a nice gaming pc?

Or even better try to look past the "terrible" AA from the switch.and enjoy the game behind it!

I only played botw 250+ hours. Last game i played that long was borderlands 1 on the ps3.
Click to expand...


Got a gaming PC and a PS4. However why do I need to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars to get implementation of anti-aliasing when the Switch is perfectly capable of it?
 
S

SirPinkyNose

Member
There are several kinds of AA. FXAA is the cheapest but make the image blurry so they don't use it, SMAA is cheap but only good when you put a lot of work into it so they don't use it, MSAA and SSAA are very expensive so they need to reduce the image quality if they want to use them so they don't use them.
That's what I think.
 
P

Peltz

Member
There is some sort of post-processing in BotW. I'm not sure what it is, but it it's not as jaggie as 900p could be. I think IQ complaints are totally overblown in docked mode. XBX was Nintendo's last open world game and with that game there was a lot more to complain about regarding IQ.

MK8D looks decent and I would guess that their concern about AA is that it would cause slowdown in some areas of the game. The game looks very clean in handheld mode though so I wouldn't be surprised if there were some sort of AA implemented there. Nevertheless, at 1080p and in motion, you genuinely don't notice the jaggies.

Lots of OG PS4 games have aliasing issues too, and that has a more powerful GPU. Rocket League is shimmering all over the place for example, yet people don't complain there. I think the desire for AA is totally overrated on GAF and most people don't care about a few jaggies.
 
J

James Scott

Banned
As someone that thought 3DS games were actively ugly due to their abundance of Aliasing and occasionally got distracted by jaggies on Wii U games, I haven't been bothered on bit by Switch. The games look fantastic on the handheld. I believe MK8D is the same resolution without AA as the original on the go and it looks pretty damn amazing on there and on the TV. BOTW is a pretty massive game and for to run as well as it does on the portable is pretty crazy. Looks great on there too. I imagine they didn't have much time to optimize the docked mode seeing as in a month with pure code optimization it runs pretty well on there most of the time.

I imagine Nintendo will be targeting the 1080p range of MK8D with most of their games going forward. If they do that I don't care too much about AA
 
C

crabhammer

Member
I feel like I live in crazy town every time I see posts like this. I know what to look for when it comes to image quality, and while there are some issues with BotW's lack of anti aliasing and relatively low resolution I still thought the game was fucking gorgeous. "Looks like crap"? Yeesh

And MK8? It looked jagged as fuck when not in motion on the Wii U for sure, but docked that problem is largely gone on a 1080p display. And on handheld the screen is small enough than even 720p is enough for it to not look jagged.
 
D

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
Crimsonclaw111 said:
People can enjoy the games and still be critical of them. I love Zelda but it looks like crap.
Click to expand...

The post you've quoted is just an embarrassing childish butthurt reply, but yours ain't much better when you say Zelda "looks like crap". You just can't be taken seriously from now on, that's a pretty stupid thing to say, calling it hyperbolic would be a disservice to the hyperbolic "opinions" you see posted on the internet every day.
 
M

Massicot

Member
BotW already struggles performance-wise in heavy rain or crowded areas, I imagine the problem would be exacerbated if resources were diverted to AA. Unless it was something cheap like FXAA, which comes with a few drawbacks as well. I'm not extremely well-versed on this stuff, but I expect there was a tradeoff for not incorporating it.
 
1

10k

Banned
Do you like 60fps? Then you get no AA. Don't forget the switch is essentially a tablet with controllers. As leading as the Tegra is in the mobile gpu sector it's still a mobile gpu in a tiny form factor.
 
V

Vital Tundra

Member
I often don't mind if there is AA in 1080p games. The resolution is high enough for me not to really notice. Adding AA usually makes it a tad too blurry for me depending on the game.
 
B

Bronetta

Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Zelda looks bad? Some of you must have ridiculous standards.

I went to Breath of the Wild right after playing Horizon Zero Dawn on a PS4 Pro and I was still impressed with how good it looked and how seamless everything is.
 
R

Regiruler

Member
James Scott said:
As someone that thought 3DS games were actively ugly due to their abundance of Aliasing and occasionally got distracted by jaggies on Wii U games, I haven't been bothered on bit by Switch. The games look fantastic on the handheld. I believe MK8D is the same resolution without AA as the original on the go and it looks pretty damn amazing on there and on the TV. BOTW is a pretty massive game and for to run as well as it does on the portable is pretty crazy. Looks great on there too. I imagine they didn't have much time to optimize the docked mode seeing as in a month with pure code optimization it runs pretty well on there most of the time.

I imagine Nintendo will be targeting the 1080p range of MK8D with most of their games going forward. If they do that I don't care too much about AA
Click to expand...
Aliasing on 3DS is why games with art styles like S.T.E.A.M. and FF's exist, at the cost of not being as presentable in bullshots.
 
F

family_guy

Member
10k said:
Do you like 60fps? Then you get no AA. Don't forget the switch is essentially a tablet with controllers. As leading as the Tegra is in the mobile gpu sector it's still a mobile gpu in a tiny form factor.
Click to expand...

It's more powerful than a 360 and a PS3. I don't recall many first party games on those consoles that didn't use AA. 60fps isn't necessarily a barrier to AA.
 
C

Crimsonclaw111

Member
Dash Kappei said:
The post you've quoted is just an embarrassing childish butthurt reply, but yours ain't much better when you say Zelda "looks like crap". You just can't be taken seriously from now on, that's a pretty stupid thing to say, calling it hyperbolic would be a disservice to the hyperbolic "opinions" you see posted on the internet every day.
Click to expand...

Okay, so I exaggerated a bit. The game is certainly lacking in many areas but the presentation and gameplay makes up for it.

AA, textures, resolution, framerate at times... all substandard for a game in 2017. Don't take me seriously if you don't want to, I don't care. Just saying the game could look much better than it does.
 
Teletraan1

Teletraan1

Banned
It is a hardware intensive feature. Their hardware for whatever reason is either a bit dated or constrained by form factor like the Switch. They could apply less hardware intensive methods and often they do but they are not as effective or actively hurts IQ as seen by the vaseline smeared PS3 days. It is all compromises targeting a certain hardware level. The lower end that hardware is the more compromises you need in order to maintain your performance target.
 
M

moltonasty

Member
10k said:
Do you like 60fps? Then you get no AA. Don't forget the switch is essentially a tablet with controllers. As leading as the Tegra is in the mobile gpu sector it's still a mobile gpu in a tiny form factor.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't get people complaining about Switch performance. Just look at the damn thing, it's pretty incredible that games look as good as they do as is considering the size of the system.
 
G

gtj1092

Member
10k said:
Do you like 60fps? Then you get no AA. Don't forget the switch is essentially a tablet with controllers. As leading as the Tegra is in the mobile gpu sector it's still a mobile gpu in a tiny form factor.
Click to expand...

Zelda is 60fps?
 
I

iamaustrian

Member
Wtf?

off topic:
I can understand that someone misses AA in certain games but saying that Zelda BoTW looks like "crap" is just ridiculous. especially if you consider what is going on the screen all the time.
it's by far the most "living" open world game out there

personally I do not miss AA so far on switch. Last time I really noticed the lack of AA was Nintendo Land and wonderful 101 on WiiU.


AA, textures, resolution, framerate at times... all substandard for a game in 2017. Don't take me seriously if you don't want to, I don't care. Just saying the game could look much better than it does.
Click to expand...

it's a WiiU game ported with minimal efforts. it looks absolutly phenomenal for being basicly a "last gen" game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Nintendo reveals the top 30 most-downloaded games on the Japanese Switch eShop for 2023
Sales-Age
16
2K
tkscz replied
Nintendo 3DS And Wii U Online Servers Are Taken Down For Good
Hardware Platform
7
872
RagnarokIV replied
Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers - TotK Plus What Other Game?
24
4K
MAtgS replied
Nintendo Shares 'Most Played' Switch Games In 2023 (Europe)
Sales-Age
15
1K
Marvel14 replied
Gaming Industry is going against the current to force live service games.
Opinion 2
70
3K
DaGwaphics replied
Top Bottom