Patch 71

[bustr]

Thanks Prof, just what I needed this weekend. Home work.

Something simple and to the point from a forum:

 I see two uses for FXAA: first, if you want AA, but the penalty of MSAA/CSAA is too high for your hardware; second, if a game heavily relies on alpha and shaders and your hardware is not godly enough for FSAA.

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Still reading about it. I found the Nvida white paper pdf. Are you then implementing it yourself and the check box allows us to enable\disable FXAA?

Now it makes sense why everything looks a little softer recently. After the current bit of research, I sat in an 88 checking\unchecking AA. Went from crisp to soft with a 2-3 FPS loss upon checking it. My AMD card was set to use the game's AA, so my question to you implementing it yourself. Otherwise I suspect I'd have to run my own injector.

I can find articles on the bloom and other effects. Now finding something labeled: Here is the reason Post Lighting Effects won't work with FSAA....

I'll get back to you if I find it. I'll keep looking for articles about FSAA.

[bustr]

Does this have something to do with it?

Multi-Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MSAA). This is what you typically have in hardware on a modern graphics card. The graphics card renders to a surface that is larger than the final image, but in shading each "cluster" of samples (that will end up in a single pixel on the final screen) the pixel shader is run only once. We save a ton of fill rate, but we still burn memory bandwidth.

This technique does not anti-alias any effects coming out of the shader, because the shader runs at 1x, so alpha cutouts are jagged. This is the most common way to run a forward-rendering game. MSAA does not work for a deferred renderer because lighting decisions are made after the MSAA is "resolved" (down-sized) to its final image size.

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Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) and Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA). These techniques analyze the image after rendering and attempt to identify and blur out stair-stepped patterns.

[Pudgie]

Here is a HARDOCP article that went into testing the various forms of AA on AMD & Nvidia cards.............

Gives a lot of data & may help to explain Hitech's choice to implement FXAA w/ the Alpha....................

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/07/18/nvidias_new_fxaa_antialiasing_technology/1#.VdfKlJBFC6I

I thought it to be a good read...........

 

PS--Note the date of this article..........this tech has been out in the wild for quite some time & under most folks radar.............

[Pudgie]

Here is the Nvidia white paper.pdf that bustr mentioned.................

Another good read on this subject.................

Enjoy!

 

[Easyscor]

One of the things I am glad to see fixed in this version of the game is the off-map arrows when someone ups from a field in the last sector column along the eastern edge of the map.

However, I notice that in the northern row of sectors, we still have the off-map arrows while the drones are still on-map.

My testing terrain is 64x64.

[Easyscor]

Something I see along the shorelines.

The base of my custom bridge is at zero elevation but near the shoreline, it highlights that the water appears to be either transparent or below zero elevation.

The ends of the bridge ramp are both at zero elevation. the terrain verts at each end of the bridge are set exactly to zero elevation as well. The ends of the (ramps) bridge meet the terrain verts at zero. The start of the first arch meets the water, also at zero elevation, but between those two points, in the breaking wave area, you can see under the structure of the bridge ramp.

It seems to me the wave animation should be above zero elevation with the basic view under the bridge block by water at zero elevation.

I hope that all made sense. Jpg looks terrible but attached and I can send your the terrain if you need it.

[hitech]

Is this a square object or simply a single object?

HiTech

[Easyscor]

It's just a single object, not a square tile object. It struck me that you can't see under it at 165' from the terrain vert line or at the vert line itself.

[Easyscor]

I don't know if anyone else will notice this so it's probably not important. Better pics of the shoreline attached.

[FLS]

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Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) and Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA). These techniques analyze the image after rendering and attempt to identify and blur out stair-stepped patterns.

So Morphological Anti-Aliasing is AMD's version of FXAA and is used by the nVidia shader on AH Alpha?

[bustr]

From reading, it looks like Hitech can write his own FXAA injector and it will work with AMD and NVIDIA based cards. MLAA is only compatible with AMD cards and requires more grunt out of the card than FXAA.

[mustng2]

Has anyone been able to make the carrier burn?  I can sink it, but it never seems to burn.  Is that intentional?

[hitech]

From reading, it looks like Hitech can write his own FXAA injector and it will work with AMD and NVIDIA based cards. MLAA is only compatible with AMD cards and requires more grunt out of the card than FXAA.

An injector is a slightly different concept that implies working out side the normal flow of events. I.E. the program is assuming it is writing to the frame buffer, but a different program intercepted it and then modifies (injects its code) and writes to the frame buffer.

AH simply uses the FXAA shader code (source is provided by nvidea) as part of its post processing .

Also some things are also displayed after the FXAA takes place, all the 2D gui text and the clip board when it is maximized (except the ICONS) is displayed after FXAA processing. As soon as I figure out how to handle some Zbuffer issues, the icons will also display post FXAA.

HiTech

[Krusty]

While flying offline I took a hit at an enemy airfield. Damage was internal fuel tank but no trail of vapors showed from external view.

Was that tank empty? Trails stop when the fuel runs out in AH.

[bustr]

An injector is a slightly different concept that implies working out side the normal flow of events. I.E. the program is assuming it is writing to the frame buffer, but a different program intercepted it and then modifies (injects its code) and writes to the frame buffer.

AH simply uses the FXAA shader code (source is provided by nvidea) as part of its post processing .

Also some things are also displayed after the FXAA takes place, all the 2D gui text and the clip board when it is maximized (except the ICONS) is displayed after FXAA processing. As soon as I figure out how to handle some Zbuffer issues, the icons will also display post FXAA.

HiTech

So SweetFX may have been slowing us down all this time. Or will if run with the alpha.