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2014 High-Res PC Screenshot Thread of the Last Hope for Image Quality

GavinUK86

Member
Smite 1600 x 900 Everything Maxed 8xAA

L1xdFrL.jpg


YOgKu2t.jpg

Holy crap, that aliasing. And that's with AA? Jeez.
 

belmonkey

Member
This was a random taken at an interval during regular gameplay. I was impressed by how this hand looked. The textures are really well done both in detail and how they fit into the game and the faction they belong to.

i3AawQq2xFVOl.png


It looks a bit better without the downsizing though.

Is it me or have they improved upon some textures in that game? At the very least, it seemed like the normal textures were made to be like those from the old ini tweaks.
 

BONKERS

Member
This is just a guess but, Smite is using Unreal Engine 3 with DirectX11 so it might be using the old AA that still produces jaggies.

ibzHmmi61hMIn9.png


Unreal Engine 4 uses FXAA.

Unreal Engine 3 also uses FXAA/MLAA. (Depending on the developer, engine version, and game. Zeno Clash II for example, has FXAA permanently on with no way to disable it short of knowing how to re-compile a new dummy FXAA shader. Other games it's often disable-able via .ini settings)

MSAA in UE3 has always been crap in pretty much every game.

UE4 also has their own Temporal AA, which works pretty well, but currently suffers from some blurring and smearing issues.


I'm currently trying to get together some stuff for a post on their new UE4 forums for a request for better AA methods built into the engine for *Everybody* to use.

Chiefly things that rely on MSAA as a catalyst for better quality. (Such as SGSSAA, SMAA S2x/4x, TXAA,etc)

Because MSAA is crap on it's own. It only handles Geometry, and often times these days very poorly at that. With a lot of times having resolve issues or just flat out missing a lot of geometry or not working well at all (See: Crysis 3, BFBC2 ,BF3/4, Pretty much every DX11 game that has it)


Let's use this as an example:


Here's Alien Breed Ep1 cropped from running at 3200x1800 (on my measly GTX 570. You can see performance with 8xMSAA is actually poorer than 8xSGSSAA in this situation)

No AA
ibeGsExfahmUZ3.png
ex2

8xMSAA
ibgoGzkZU32B6F.png
ex2


8xSGSSAA
ibk9nFdGQHF4Xh.png
ex2



This is 2014 FFS, Quality AA should be an important factor. And if UE4 included all these things by default, people could develop games from the get go around a technique that fits their needs without having to spend hours on hours of research and proper implementation.


FXAA and current MSAA aren't acceptable solutions in this day and age. When they use FXAA as an example, they only focus on Edge quality when compared to MSAA. Which is a poor comparison. FXAA treats the entire frame as a single 2D plane, it only produces acceptable results once some form of SSAA (Downsampling, and is applied PRE-Downsampling) is mixed in with it. Because it helps out with Edge quality after the resolve from downsampling. Otherwise it leaves behind a wreckage of temporal aliasing that in a situation where MSAA actually worked well, would tackle.

(IE: Any game before the PS3/360 generation. I'll use Sonic Adventure 2 as an example with the current PC HD version. 4xOGSSAA+FXAA produces worse temporal aliasing in some scenarios than just MSAA by itself does)
 

BONKERS

Member
I really hope UE4 adds TXAA as a default option.

I don't know what their current situation is, but i'd have to imagine their current Temporal AA(even though on one page of the UE4 website they say TXAA) is an option for everybody with the release of the subscription plan and the source.
 

BONKERS

Member
The only two executables are parkan2.exe (which I used) and start.exe (which doesn't show up in as running in task manager, and NVIDIA Inspector complains if I even try to use it because it's associated with another profile).

The FXAA indicator didn't seem to do anything, frame rate limiter didn't seem to do anything, vsync options don't seem to do anything. I basically have not found any indication that Inspector is affecting the game at all. I'm guessing it's D3D and not OpenGL but I don't even have hard data on that at the moment.

Is anyone an expert on Inspector and what I might be missing? I tried turning the Steam overlay off, didn't help. Turning vsync on and off in the NVIDIA control panel -does- work (once I restart the game), but the same setting in Inspector doesn't work, whether or not I close the NVIDIA control panel first. It's like it's unable to override. Inspector is running with admin privileges since it pops up the allow box when it runs.

After thinking about this again. Have you tried using MSI Afterburner's OSD to see what API the game is actually running on?

After looking it up I found "Parkan II is a Simulation game, developed by Nikita and published by 1C, which was released in Europe in 2004."

Maybe it runs on DX8 or something. Based on this http://www.1cpublishing.eu/game/parkan-2/overview Min spec is Win2000. But then again, Unreal II runs on DX8.1 and has no problems forcing AA with.
 

One3rd

Member
Thanks! Yeah me too :/ I just watched the E3 2011 Trailer again, it's a shame it got canceled...or does anybody know anything new?

It is a shame...looked like the story was taking an interesting twist in the Prey universe. And who doesn't want to be a bad-ass bounty hunter!

I'm really liking your shots, what tools are available? I know of a HUD and noclip but can the FOV be changed? [EDIT: Didn't realize this was id tech, looks like there is alot available]

Listening to the OST now...stirring music.
...

13926560336_2f161e1e17_o.jpg


13926539641_0f4b75a3f8_o.jpg
 
It is a shame...looked like the story was taking an interesting twist in the Prey universe. And who doesn't want to be a bad-ass bounty hunter!

I'm really liking your shots, what tools are available? I know of a HUD and noclip but can the FOV be changed? [EDIT: Didn't realize this was id tech, looks like there is alot available]

Listening to the OST now...stirring music....

Yeah tell me about it :/ Last thing i read was some rumor about Arkane Studios or Obsidian Entertainment working on Prey 2 becuase of some leaked emails...

I really appreciate that you like my shots :) I only set the 1080p resolution in the config file but i would have liked to stop time and fly around for better shots. I didn't know of all the twaeking possibilities neither :p Thanks for the link!

The music is awesome! Makes you believe shit is going to go down!

Btw: I really like your FEAR shots too especially that shot with the blood drop in front of Alma.
 

One3rd

Member
Yeah tell me about it :/ Last thing i read was some rumor about Arkane Studios or Obsidian Entertainment working on Prey 2 becuase of some leaked emails...

I really appreciate that you like my shots :) I only set the 1080p resolution in the config file but i would have liked to stop time and fly around for better shots. I didn't know of all the twaeking possibilities neither :p Thanks for the link!

The music is awesome! Makes you believe shit is going to go down!

Btw: I really like your FEAR shots too especially that shot with the blood drop in front of Alma.
I haven't played with the id tech engine since v1.0 and trying to get up to speed with it before continuing with the game. I'm also trying to get sikkmod 1.2 working with it, did you use this mod or is yours vanilla?

I just realized the screenshot command can be used to specify whatever render size you want at a specified MSAA setting. Try below bind for extra crisp screenshots! These are in 24-bit TGA format and will be in prey\base\screenshots. (Q. are 24-bit TGA images compressed?)


bind "F12" "screenshot 6400 3600 64"
[Edit: don't do this. make sure the screenshot resolution matches the resolution your game is running in. Post FX get clipped if these are different.]
[Edit2: Definitely don't use this command with Prey. I guess the "64" is the number of images it takes to then "blend" together into one not the amount of AA being applied as I thought. Comparisons of images at the same res with this option and without show bluring (but no aliasing) of the textures.]

Code:
[IMG]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7225/13952319501_bd6f237fbc_o.jpg[/IMG]
 

BONKERS

Member
ibx9GhsjD6Prxu.png

"Why won't you buy my chocolates good sir?!?"
iRYd0f91TGUIb.png



Also: I realize: More than 3 posts in a row. Sorry i'll wait :p

I wish I could freeze the game state , move the camera out from sam to take pictures like on the Steam Store Page
 

Durante

Member
I really hope UE4 adds TXAA as a default option.
The temporal AA in UE4 is actually really good in terms of efficiency (that is, how good it looks considering its small performance impact).

The engine also has built-in downsampling support. I'd still like native SGSSAA support though.
 

BONKERS

Member
The temporal AA in UE4 is actually really good in terms of efficiency (that is, how good it looks considering its small performance impact).

The engine also has built-in downsampling support. I'd still like native SGSSAA support though.

Would you mind helping me in my effort to make a thorough request to Epic?

My original post on G3D.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4803166&postcount=1934

If not, that's cool. :) We need good AA options (Not just one, >their TAA) available for all developers/users without hassle.


irF9vdn8Ni1uG.png

izNZQFeWeSok1.png


(All my SS3 shots have been using 8xSGSSAA @3200x1800 btw. I forgot to mention that. I get like ~20FPS I think on my 570, but still totally playable)
 

BONKERS

Member
It's amazing how good FEAR still looks. If only someone could mod in better First person gun models. Because those are really the only weak spot. <3 Monolith
 

BONKERS

Member
What am I suppose to take them in, I was told not to do BMPs

Edit : Thought PNG was for documents, will use that from now on.

Yeah, just use PNGs.


Or screencap PNGs/BMPs and then recompress them into highest quality JPGs if space is an issue.
 
This my first time posting. Hoping to contribute more.

...]

I'm also playing Origins at the moment and i'm surprised how well the txaa works in 1080p. It's not perfect and sometimes you can see extreme aliasing for some reason but most of the time it is exceptionally clean. I'd like to play in a higher res than that but i'm a sucker for the stupid physX effects and those hanging flags or carpets (or whatever those are?) are murdering my framerate on anything higher than 1080p, even at that res i can see the framerate dropping sometimes (GTX780, i7 3,7-3,9Ghz).
 
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