Antialiasing SMAA

[keluvu]

Has anyone found the "Antialiasing SMAA" parameter useful in any situation or configuration?

No matter how many tests I do, I don't see a visual difference between "Disabled" and "Ultra". And I say visual, since there is a difference in performance. In "Ultra" "micro freezing", "stuttering" or whatever everyone calls it appear, but without any visual gain.

The only way I can find to reduce the flickering of all the pixels on the screen ("flickering" it is often called) is by using the "Scaling" parameter. But to reduce it as much as possible (and I say reduce, not eliminate) you have to use 400%, but this causes more "micro freezing" to appear.

And it is a decent PC, i7 13700K, 32 GB RAM DDR 5 5200Mhz, 4070ti. All storage (OS & games) is NVME pci 4.0, two different drives. As for the resolution... I have seen that it doesn't matter, the problem remains. I have tried it on:

1920 x 1080 - Full HD
3840 x 1080 - True 2K
3840 x 2160 - 4K
Edit: All set to 60Hz

Although if we took the "micro freezing / stuttering" problem out of the equation and kept the scaling at 400%, we are NOT eliminating the brutal flickering, we are just moving it away a little. The image continues to flash as if it were a nightclub, at 100% in your face and at 400% slightly further away.

You start reading in the official forum and here in the steam threads and you are amazed by this game, it seems that it requires you to be a computer engineer to be able to configure it minimally and that does not eliminate graphical problems either.

In my experience, then: If I leave it at 100%, my eyes bleed from blinking so much. If I apply SMAA to Ultra there, it is useless. If I increase the scaling, same problem as before and added that the PC starts to complain showing the dear stuttering.

Ah! and I have applied all the tricks in the config.cfg file that are mentioned in the official forum and on steam. In addition to a couple of parameters when starting the game in the Steam client.

This game is exhausting. According to what Steam shows me, I have 1,319 hours in ATS and 1,050.7 in ETS 2 and I promise that no other game makes me spend so much time trying to configure it. And I have a few years of experience working in IT, I wonder what someone with no idea about computers must suffer if they buy the game, start it and find themselves with such a party.

So I end with the initial question: Can SMAA be configured in some way to be useful?

Thanks in advance

Postscript: In case someone suggests that I use the best ATS & ETS 2 mod ever created, TAA by snowymoon, I will say that I have tried it and the result is amazingly good, it transforms both games into a fascinating experience, but it became a mod payment and that's why I assume that his thread in the official forum is no longer accessible (I had a favorite of it in my browser but now it asks for username and password).

Edit: grammar...
Edit2: Hz

[citelis730]

SMAA cannot fix the shimmering in far distance objects no matter what. Only increasing resolution and scaling improves it so go for 4K and 400%. Should be less obvious so less annoying.

[citelis730]

SCS has said long ago they are going to bring better antialiasing at some point but no idea when. It could be next version or years later.

[sagamol]

KELUVU, First of all, your post is in my opinion the most perfect explanation of trying to configure a game that out of the box, so to speak, is impossible to play and the new player will spend countless hours trying to "tweek" ALL the settings in game and also in their graphics card settings ( mine is NVIDIA CONTROL PANEL ). i am a 68 years old user of a rotary phone generation that has in principal no freaking clue where to start. I too have a decent computer and thousands of hours in both ATS and ETS2 and FSX. the other day i ran into a problem where STEAM would not recognice ORBX sceneries for my FSX afterr a scheduled update of windows and i had to call on a IT friend that by remote viewing had to fix my registry. to sum it up.... thank you for validating the issues that ETS2 and ATS have on our systems. I do believe that there is a solution to run the games in perfect order, but it has been illusive to the majority of us " simple minded" users. Have a great day!

[Backpacker]

try this: https://snowymoon.io/

[Stevejan]

Publicado originalmente por Backpacker:

try this: https://snowymoon.io/

No dont, its a paid mod now

[Backpacker]

Publicado originalmente por Stevejan:

Publicado originalmente por Backpacker:

try this: https://snowymoon.io/

No dont, its a paid mod now

yepp, 1€/month. so, you can by and leave. when the next update cames up you do the same.
but i will not make comercial for this. but it is great what it do! i use it for months and my eyes never burn or get tired. i dont understand, why SCS do not this simple thing?
a third party can do what SCS cant do`?

[mojo_musica]

Publicado originalmente por Backpacker:

Publicado originalmente por Stevejan:

No dont, its a paid mod now

yepp, 1€/month. so, you can by and leave. when the next update cames up you do the same.
but i will not make comercial for this. but it is great what it do! i use it for months and my eyes never burn or get tired. i dont understand, why SCS do not this simple thing?
a third party can do what SCS cant do`?

Who said they can't?
Read the SCS blogs, watch their videos and announcements and you'll find they are working on a major update to the game engine, which may be with us quite soon. They own and maintain their own Prism game engine, so can update it whenever they want to, in any way they want to, with no outside licenses or restrictions on development.

[mojo_musica]

Publicado originalmente por sagamol:

*snip*

Funny how I am even older than you and somehow, like the VAST majority of players, manage to run the game @60fps on a 2560x1440 monitor with every setting on high or ultra with a modest Ryzen 5 2600 CPU and an RTX 3060 12 Gb GPU.
It isn't difficult, even for a beginner, if you aren't able to do it your self, use GeForce Experience to get the settings right automatically.
"decent" computers often turn out to be 10-year old potatoes when we see the specs, PC gaming needs PC gaming levels of hardware, not a business laptop or old potato home PC.

If ATS and ETS2 are so bad, there surely must be something wrong with Steam stats and numbers of users, don't you think?

[Aspen Ridge]

I'm using a 60hz monitor @1080P and an RTX2070 Max-Q laptop card, I use 3 simple settings to get good results at 300% Scaling:

1. Set the in-game refresh rate to 59hz
2. Set the NVIDIA Control Panel framerate to 60FPS
3. Set the Power Management in NVCP to Prefer Maximum Performance.

In-game I have all my graphics settings to HIGH EXCEPT Mirrors I set to LOW.
SSAO Disabled and Anti-aliasing Disabled
Secondary Vehicle Lights Disabled
DOF Disabled
Color Correction Disabled

Not terribly complicated.

[Backpacker]

Publicado originalmente por mojo_musica:

Publicado originalmente por Backpacker:

yepp, 1€/month. so, you can by and leave. when the next update cames up you do the same.
but i will not make comercial for this. but it is great what it do! i use it for months and my eyes never burn or get tired. i dont understand, why SCS do not this simple thing?
a third party can do what SCS cant do`?

Who said they can't?
Read the SCS blogs, watch their videos and announcements and you'll find they are working on a major update to the game engine, which may be with us quite soon. They own and maintain their own Prism game engine, so can update it whenever they want to, in any way they want to, with no outside licenses or restrictions on development.

i say that after more than 10 years play this. and yeah nice SCS workt on it.......the last 2-3 years?
i want it now. so when this mod coast 1€, i will buy it. why not? i buy dlc from SCS to^^

[keluvu]

From the responses it seems that we all agree that SMAA antialiasing is completely useless.

Let me then ask other questions on the same matter.

1) If we players see that SMAA has no effect on the image, how can it be that the developers did not see it at the time of programming? Did they not test their program?

2) Was there a beta phase of any version that included this SMAA? Did the players who tried it give positive feedback? Or was it negative but they were not listened to?
It's hard to believe that this SMAA went from beta to public version in its current state.

There are other elements of the game that according to SCS are taking time to make them public because they say they are working on it so that it comes out in an optimal state... why wasn't this SMAA treated in the same way?

3) Perhaps an attempt was made to create a placebo effect on players by adding an anti aliasing option?

[Cat Whisperer]

A question regarding Aspen Ridge comments. Turned anti - aliasing off in game . What about Anti-aliasing in nvcp? These 's a few.

[Aspen Ridge]

Publicado originalmente por Cat Whisperer:

A question regarding Aspen Ridge comments. Turned anti - aliasing off in game . What about Anti-aliasing in nvcp? These 's a few.

No...the only settings I have changed in NVCP is the framerate (set to 60FPS)
and the Power Management to Prefer Maximum performance. Make sure to set these parameters in the Program Settings tab specific to ETS 2. I also make sure to set the Global Settings tab back to default values before making any changes. You only want to apply changes to ETS2 specifically.

[Cat Whisperer]

Aspen Ridge .thanks for reply.Are you saying to turn everything off or back to default in Global settings ? sorry not very pc.

[Aspen Ridge]

Publicado originalmente por Cat Whisperer:

Aspen Ridge .thanks for reply.Are you saying to turn everything off or back to default in Global settings ? sorry not very pc.

Yes..exactly...the best thing to do is reset everything back to default before making any changes (both in Global Settings and Program Settings for ETS 2)

Then...apply the changes to ONLY ETS2 specifically in Program settings.

Hope this helps...let me know .

There are also a couple of tweaks that others have used with success by making changes to the config.cfg file

Maybe you have already done these?..if not I can help you with making those changes as well.