What is TAA and why is it so awful?

[DaLagga]

So maybe I've been out of the loop, but I had never heard of this form of AA until the R6: Siege beta about a month ago. When I first loaded up the game I thought the resolution had been set to 720p or something by accident. After fiddling with the settings for a bit I simply couldn't figure out why the screen was a blurry mess. I could barely even see enemies off in the distance because everything looked smeared over. Turns out, it was all because of the worst AA method I've ever seen in my life - TAA and my experience using it in VErmintide was exactly the same. Except this time I knew well enough what the problem was.

Now, I understand that some cheaper forms of AA can have a blurring effect like FXAA. It does a decent job of getting rid of jaggies at virtually no performance cost but tends to slightly blur the image. So for people with low end GPU's who hate jaggies it kind of makes sense for it to be an option. But TAA as far as I can tell has a significant performance penalty, doesn't appear any better than FXAA for eliminating jaggies, and makes the screen so blurry that I can't imagine anyone in their right mind ever using it. So why does this awful form of AA exist? What's the point? And why can't we just have an option for some good old trustworthy MSAA without having to force it through 3rd party utilities?

[Inglu]

I think it's Temporal Anti-Aliasing, but don't quote me on that. That method tends to do be rather blurry in many implementations.

But yeah, while you do get noticeably less jaggies with TAA vs FXAA, it's in no way worth it considering how much is blurs the entire scene. Hell, even FXAA is somewhat notorious for being too blurry, but the TAA in this game is on another level entirely. So much detail gets crushed, I'm definitely not a fan.

[SkacikPL]

If you think TAA is blurry, try enabling simple TAA in game config. That's like short-sight simulator.

It's funny that even Autodesk's engine doesn't support realtime MSAA but i suppose that it has to do with the game being based on deferred rendering, which means MSAA only would apply to raw geometry unless they'd bother for a proper DX11 implementation, which given current performance of the game. Barely anybody would have the juice to run 2x or 4x.

[Midnight]

MSAA / SMAA / TXAA if you can spare the resources. Though the implementation tends to vary... a lot.

Don't bother with anything else. Well, unless you can tolerate blur more than jaggies.

[Masterhummel]

Hm, Edges look pretty fine for me. Depending on lightning, envoirement and effects like smoke the edges on rats tend to be somewhat aliased but it's not a big deal.

[Domestos]

Not sure why you are experiencing this, but on my r9 380, i get better visual experience with taa than with fxaa. Based on JUST looking at edge textures on my companion. There is no blur on anything but textures that are realy close to experience of objects. It blurs only edges for me. FXAA is too crude for me. No smooth edges. But, for my experience on my build and GPU, i can say that i have same framerate on TAA as on FXAA, no gain if i switch to any lower setting (including FXAA).

[Unchained One]

Running unofficial SLI?

[Mikeaaml]

I usually ask myself this, what do you prefer, better performance or aa, my answer is always better performance

[Zabavon]

On 1080p all ok. If you play on 720 KEK 2K16 HD go set MSAA 2x-4x and dont scream.

[Lunethex]

Temporal Anti-aliasing makes the screen more 'cinematically blurry' and that's how it hides any edginess on things. It smooths things and washes out the screen for that hilarious design.

[DaLagga]

Originally posted by Zabavon:

On 1080p all ok. If you play on 720 KEK 2K16 HD go set MSAA 2x-4x and dont scream.

You responded to a thread that Is more than a year old just so you'd have an opportunity to be a condescending jackass while completely failing at reading comprehension?

[Lunethex]

Originally posted by DaLagga:

Originally posted by Zabavon:

On 1080p all ok. If you play on 720 KEK 2K16 HD go set MSAA 2x-4x and dont scream.

You responded to a thread that Is more than a year old just so you'd have an opportunity to be a condescending jackass while completely failing at reading comprehension?

I can't believe you're even still checking it is the funny thing.

[Manperor of Mankind]

I'm actually quite grateful since I always wondered why my game looked so blurry in the distance.

[McPhail]

TAA shouldn't look blurry at all when you are standing still. "Temporal" as in TAA means that the renderer interpolates earlier frames with the current frame so that if you keep moving you can achieve a similar effect as SSAA with a minimal performance hit.

[DaLagga]

Originally posted by Lunethex:

I can't believe you're even still checking it is the funny thing.

I'm not, but it shows up in the top right corner on Steam whenever someone replies to any topic you've created for any game on Steam.