Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Development screen shots and videos => Topic started by: angrypig on May 12, 2012, 02:53:03 pm
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Last night i looked at the grass anti-aliasing/shimmering issue. Grass is too noisy because the FXAA algorithm has no sub-pixel information. One way to improve the quality with a small sacrifice in performance is to use of MSAA2x, which renders two samples per screen pixel and then run FXAA on the result. The MSAA 2x rendering is very efficient, and more importantly, it provides a much better base for the FXAA. The result is that grass now looks more dense and the shimmering is supressed but not eliminated. The result is comparable to MSAA 4x, in some situations is better in some not but it is faster and less memory consuming. MSAA4x is able to completely eliminate shimmering but it doesn't provide AA filtering in some situations like a sharp texture patterns. It is more GPU and memory demanding, and its demands for more GPU power and memory disqualify it for deferred rendering in future.
I have to tune FXAA parameters for MSAA 2x/FXAA combination because in this case FXAA doesn't have to be that strong...
I prepared a few HD images for comparison. (click for full image...)
no AA
(http://i.minus.com/jMy1VbxsBMm1u.png) (http://minus.com/l46UvQK6M1NSs)
FXAA
(http://i.minus.com/jWxyHScca0ALI.png) (http://minus.com/lXYtqWHg7uUoh)
MSAA 2x
(http://i.minus.com/jSmBBV2wcS8Vb.png) (http://minus.com/ljxWyfCZ588QC)
MSAA 2x + FXAA
(http://i.minus.com/jg9wdWVCtiae7.png) (http://minus.com/lMe7LGQbrsXK8)
MSAA 4x
(http://i.minus.com/jK7hhpYJ7Cvss.png) (http://minus.com/lbhDYgmwUsdhag)
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...nice. Is that Terrain self-shadowing in the Background? ;)
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Hmm it looks like terrain shadows, i didn't know it is in repository :)
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There's the dark blades I'm talking about. (When you click on one of the images)
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Did you guys just decide not to sleep this week or something?? You're on a roll with these updates...
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A drastic improvement. I wonder what sort of hit my poor 4890 is going to take.
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It's so.. Beautiful. :')
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That's impressive, great improvement.
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Hmm it looks like terrain shadows, i didn't know it is in repository :)
Will there be a function to increase the distance for showing the grass rather than drawing it a few meters away?
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I second that request. Please make sure we have a setting where we can adjust how far away it draws grass. I understand that in the few vids I've seen so far things are just getting up and running grass-wise, but already to me the grass isn't being drawn far enough away. Just a personal pet pieve. I always hate how you can see this large radius of grass popping into existence as you run.
Looking really cool though!
Take care.
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Am looking forward to testing this with the GTX 680 8)
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Has anyone tried MSAA+TAAA/Adaptive AA with Outerra? http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/anti-aliasing-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon,2868-3.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/anti-aliasing-nvidia-geforce-amd-radeon,2868-3.html)
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That is looking brilliant, It would be nice to be able to change the draw distance depending on your needs.