It appears that MSAA is always enabled for some people

[Kickfister]

I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it appears that MSAA is always enabled. I'm inclined to believe this because of a few reasons:

1.) Plain geometry appears to be antialiased when AA is set to off, but you can still observe plenty of shader aliasing elsewhere in the scene. You can see the shiny outline artifact that occurs from running MSAA in a deferred renderer when alpha shows up on screen such as smoke effects.
2.) In the config file, there's this line that always re-adds itself upon deletion: mat_antialias "8"
3.) When using reshade and viewing the depth buffers that are available, it warns you that one of the buffers is using MSAA.

All of these things combined tell me that somewhere in the config files or maybe not properly exposed to the user at all, MSAA is forced on in this game which is absolutely throwing performance away.

We need the option for MSAA to be exposed in an in-game menu or turned off since it's suboptimal for this type of rendering anyway.

EDIT: Alright you can force it off by going to \steamapps\common\Black Mesa\bms\cfg, opening autoexec.cfg, adding mat_antialias "1" and saving.

I'll also add that if you WANT MSAA, you can also force it by changing/adding mat_antialias with your desired value, so:
2x MSAA = mat_antialias "2"
4x MSAA = mat_antialias "4"
8x MSAA = mat_antialias "8"

EDIT 2: updated the instructions for a fix that doesn't require making a file read only.

[Celly]

This is such a useful post, it should be pinned. Thank you!

[Kickfister]

Originally posted by Celly:

This is such a useful post, it should be pinned. Thank you!

No problem. Speaking with some other users in a discord server I'm in, it seems like this doesn't affect everybody. It's probably a bug impacting some people that played an old build of the game from when it had MSAA support.

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by Oopy Doopy:

Originally posted by Celly:

This is such a useful post, it should be pinned. Thank you!

No problem. Speaking with some other users in a discord server I'm in, it seems like this doesn't affect everybody. It's probably a bug impacting some people that played an old build of the game from when it had MSAA support.

This is what I've gathered, too, but like so much else that's actually useful on this forum, it falls off the face of the planet, thus I make a post in it, and I can review my post history to troubleshoot for others.

[Just Chill]

The only line in my "config.cfg" regarding anti-aliasing I can find is this one:

mat_fxaa_enabled "1"

The line suggested by the OP is not available.
At least for me.

[thray]

Thanks Oopy Doopy. This will help folks.

[B1ackjack]

Thank you, will be sure to try once i reinstall.

[Haunted Hunter]

AAAAAnd copied, aaaaand pasted into a text file, thank you, you have done a wonderful service to your people.
It was seriously bugging my eyes out to see the outline on everything.

[Marius]

Originally posted by Just Chill:

The only line in my "config.cfg" regarding anti-aliasing I can find is this one:

mat_fxaa_enabled "1"

The line suggested by the OP is not available.
At least for me.

Just add it.

[Migz - DH]

Adding mat_antialias "1" to config.cfg didn't seem to do anything for me.
The outlines around mobs due to lights are still there.
So, some people observe even more prominent outlines than others, huh? (Or at least different outlines.)

[Sikobae]

Last I checked, MSAA isn't even supposed to WORK in deferred rendering on Direct3D 9. Not even by forcing in the NV control panel. Sounds a lot like SMAA and FXAA combined to me.

It's a damn shame though because I'd like my MS 4x back.

[BWX]

Disabling AA in game menu then using MFAA in NV control panel seems to give me best results.

[Kickfister]

Originally posted by Sikobae:

Last I checked, MSAA isn't even supposed to WORK in deferred rendering on Direct3D 9. Not even by forcing in the NV control panel. Sounds a lot like SMAA and FXAA combined to me.

It's a damn shame though because I'd like my MS 4x back.

I can assure you it works, just not well.
4xMSAA: https://puu.sh/Fk8bL/461f3c1fb2.png
Off: https://puu.sh/Fk8dv/1ada0add32.png

The problem is that MSAA only affects the geometry pass and completely ignores shader aliasing, which is the vast majority of noticeable aliasing in a deferred renderer.

[Kickfister]

Originally posted by Migz - DH:

Adding mat_antialias "1" to config.cfg didn't seem to do anything for me.
The outlines around mobs due to lights are still there.
So, some people observe even more prominent outlines than others, huh? (Or at least different outlines.)

MSAA isn't necessarily the only cause of this. It really depends on the rendering pipeline. I'm not an expert on this so I can't say for sure what's causing it if it's still there. But yeah, for example Insurgency Sandstorm, a UE4 game, exhibits similar outline effects if you use TAA and transparency covers edges (or at least it did at some point, they may have fixed it). All I can really say for sure is that there's a multitude of ways for it to happen.

[Soüp]

Thanks for the tip, MSAA seems to be stuck on in my config file too (though only at 4x, since that's what I always used.) The weird thing is, I wiped the entire config file once already for troubleshooting, and it just came back. Where else are these settings stored?

[thray]

Originally posted by Soüp:

Thanks for the tip, MSAA seems to be stuck on in my config file too (though only at 4x, since that's what I always used.) The weird thing is, I wiped the entire config file once already for troubleshooting, and it just came back. Where else are these settings stored?

My guess is you did not set it to read only or it came from the Steam Cloud.
Disable steam cloud for this game and remember to set the config file as read only.