FXAA, MSAA (or is it SMAA?) and ATOC

[Shiro]

I'm a noob. What do those mean? Which will get me better quality - FXAA or MSAA? Which will get me better performance? (Running the game on a 7950 if it makes a difference). As for ATOC, I dunno if something's wrong here but I can't notice the difference between leaving it disabled and fully enabling it (Trees + grass or something). Which setting for ATOC is best for performance and which one is best for quality? Thanks in advance.

[Shiro]

Please if anyone could clarify this it would be most appreciated.

[/Of4O\]

Turn all AA off for decent performance.

[SupernastyPants]

AA gets rid of the jaggies around the edges of models and such. If they don't bother you, turn off all AA for the best performance.

If you want, in my opinion, the best performance coupled with great visuals on top use FXAA, it has little performance hit and does a good job of smoothing out those jaggies. It does blur textures a tad, but it is nearly impossible to notice that effect unless you plant your face directly on top of a texture.

[Shiro]

Originally posted by SupernastyPants:

AA gets rid of the jaggies around the edges of models and such. If they don't bother you, turn off all AA for the best performance.

If you want, in my opinion, the best performance coupled with great visuals on top use FXAA, it has little performance hit and does a good job of smoothing out those jaggies. It does blur textures a tad, but it is nearly impossible to notice that effect unless you plant your face directly on top of a texture.

Thanks for the answer. I'm indeed trying to find the ideal balance, since the game doesn't even look that great even with everything maxed out. And jaggies do bother me.

So, I'm assuming MSAA yields better quality whereas FXAA is more performance-oriented? I've tried them both and honestly can't see much of a difference. Or even decreased performance when selecting MSAA.

And what about ATOC (alpha to coverage)? What's supposed to be the "best quality" setting for it? And the "best performance"?

[bitcrusher]

if u hover over the setting it tells you what it does.

[The Grapist]

It's extremely highly reccomended to to go higher resolutions before using Anti Aliasing.
I run my 1920x1080 Monitor at 2560x1920 for games, that way no AA is needed, and i get even better Performance than AA enabled. Just need to make sure you have alot of GDDR.

[daze23]

all I know is SMAA is blurry

I turn MSAA off and use FXAA. ATOC looks nice, but is too much of a performance hit for me

[Ninzus]

Atoc makes the clutter and the trees look better. not needed too much since they look really good in arma 3. i turned AA off wich means atoc is off as well, use fxaa in high and post processing "low" (not so much field blur) and it works fine even if the rest is high and above.

[Dylan]

Go ahead and jsut turn AA ATOC right off. FXAA - High is a good setting wont affect performance but AA and ATOC kills fps hard. when I turn those off in arma 2 i get solid 60 fps

[Shiro]

Originally posted by Asaggynoodle:

It's extremely highly reccomended to to go higher resolutions before using Anti Aliasing.
I run my 1920x1080 Monitor at 2560x1920 for games, that way no AA is needed, and i get even better Performance than AA enabled. Just need to make sure you have alot of GDDR.

Well, that I didn't know. Will do so experimenting once I get home after the weekend, though IIRC the game's interface didn't allow me to go any higher than 1680x1050 for my aspect ratio. Is there a config file I can edit to get higher resolutions? Otherwise I'll have to take my rig to the living room.

[SkullCracker]

Originally posted by SoBrA # SILVIO SANTOS:

Originally posted by SupernastyPants:

AA gets rid of the jaggies around the edges of models and such. If they don't bother you, turn off all AA for the best performance.

If you want, in my opinion, the best performance coupled with great visuals on top use FXAA, it has little performance hit and does a good job of smoothing out those jaggies. It does blur textures a tad, but it is nearly impossible to notice that effect unless you plant your face directly on top of a texture.

Thanks for the answer. I'm indeed trying to find the ideal balance, since the game doesn't even look that great even with everything maxed out. And jaggies do bother me.

So, I'm assuming MSAA yields better quality whereas FXAA is more performance-oriented? I've tried them both and honestly can't see much of a difference. Or even decreased performance when selecting MSAA.

And what about ATOC (alpha to coverage)? What's supposed to be the "best quality" setting for it? And the "best performance"?

Game doesn't look that great. Really, and you must be smoking something. Game looks amazing maxed out. Hell it even looks amazing at low settings.

[randir14]

FXAA and SMAA work the same way but for some reason they've given too much of a sharpening filter in FXAA. If you want to use a less blurry SMAA, download SweetFX and extract it to your ArmA 3 directory (and make sure FXAA and SMAA are turned off in the game)
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/sweetfx_shader_suite_download.html

[Shiro]

Originally posted by SkullCracker:

Originally posted by SoBrA # SILVIO SANTOS:

Thanks for the answer. I'm indeed trying to find the ideal balance, since the game doesn't even look that great even with everything maxed out. And jaggies do bother me.

So, I'm assuming MSAA yields better quality whereas FXAA is more performance-oriented? I've tried them both and honestly can't see much of a difference. Or even decreased performance when selecting MSAA.

And what about ATOC (alpha to coverage)? What's supposed to be the "best quality" setting for it? And the "best performance"?

Game doesn't look that great. Really, and you must be smoking something. Game looks amazing maxed out. Hell it even looks amazing at low settings.

I guess we go by different standards, then. Textures and trees a couple hundred meters away look terrible. There's stuff popping in all the time. And animations are not great either. But I digress.

[Dwarden]

FXAA and SMAA are forms of PPAA (post process anti-aliasing), urls to author's websites are in notes since A2: OA http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg#Notes
we decided to offer you chance to decide what you like and how self, be it form of supersampling (to render game on higher resolution then downsample to viewed resolution) or todays normal GPU FSAA (known as MSAA) or these PPAA (and guess what, all 3 can be combined for overkill effect :) ok I know but some users like it)

[Ninzus]

Originally posted by randir14:

FXAA and SMAA work the same way but for some reason they've given too much of a sharpening filter in FXAA. If you want to use a less blurry SMAA, download SweetFX and extract it to your ArmA 3 directory (and make sure FXAA and SMAA are turned off in the game)
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/sweetfx_shader_suite_download.html

i'd be careful with installing things directly in the games directory.
when something comes in the wrong folder (like the addon folder where your game pbos are) you might not be able to connect to multiplayer servers anymore because the keycheck doesn't allow it.