ever scroll through a game's graphical
settings menu and wondered what this
does or how about this another one these
are all forms of anti-aliasing for those
of you who do not know and video
graphics anti-aliasing is any number of
methods by which curved and slanted
edges are smooth via the process of
pixel blending for example since pixels
are rectangular in shape remember a
square is a type of rectangle curved
surfaces on screen cannot accurately be
rendered this explains the Jaggi seen
around wheels plants see at the point
so anti-aliasing seeks to reduce these
sharp edges by reducing sharpness and
blending transition zones between two
surfaces that are vertical or horizontal
but there are several types of
anti-aliasing msaa txa asmaa FXAA
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few but those
are the four we'll cover in this video
msaa or multi sampling anti-aliasing
identifies several locations within each
pixel invisible to the human eye because
we're limited by our monitors resolution
and combines those to render the final
pixel shade the process is perhaps most
noticeable at lower resolutions such as
1080p and 720p since fewer pixels yield
sharper rectangular edges but MSAA is
extremely resource intensive because it
demands multiple samples of every pixel
in question this is for every frame
rendered it also has another downfall
and that texture is only calculated once
per pixel meaning that areas inside
polygons where shaders are at play will
not be smooth to any degree in other
words the specific technique only
applies to edges and other polygons
transition zones FXAA or fast
approximate anti-aliasing
is an algorithm created with nvidia
affiliations that seeks to remedy the
shortcomings of msaa
in this case it requires significantly
less computing power you can actually
see the framerate difference here and
more conservatively analyzes polygons by
this FXAA finds and smoothes only edges
not the entire frame it also takes into
account texture smoothing around these
polygons parameters whereas MSA
overlooks these entirely a downfall of
this method however involves the loss of
visual clarity especially when objects
are in motion it often takes on the role
of motion blur to an extent it won't
look that way in every scene but when
you're moving very fast FXAA will appear
to kind of blur those edges a bit more
than you might like the next floor of
anti-aliasing is SMA
or sub-pixel morphological anti-aliasing
it's a post processing technique much
like fxaa centered on pattern detection
becoming more popular in modern games
after analyzing endpoints of diagonal
lines the method will compare these
intersections with previous ones in an
effort to minimize blur and reduce
jaggies the term sub-pixel implies
accurate reproduction since multiple
points within a single pixel remember
these are invisible to demon eye since
that resolution can't be displayed on
the screen our sampled and blended in a
sense SMA is a slight improvement over
FXAA but at the cost of resources and it
also still does not account for objects
for moving very fast on screen the last
on our list today is TxAA or temporal
anti-aliasing as its name describes the
technique seeks to reduce temporal
aliasing which occurs when a polygon on
screen moves faster than a sampling rate
basically your frame rate this
deficiency results in skipping making
gameplay feel less smooth and realistic
an optimal situation involves a frame
rate twice as high as the objects motion
rate the hardware limitations often make
this difficult to attain this is where
TxAA steps in if a ball is rolling
across the screen and only appears for
five frames TxAA will interpolate
movement and blur the path between each
rendered location but it doesn't just
stop there the method will also
typically involve strong MSAA and other
film style filters to generate intensely
vivid scenes however dynamic they may be
it's been championed by Nvidia and newer
titles such as watchdogs
notice how the floor in the background
appear more blended TxAA at times four
versus MSAA at times eight it's
definitely subtle most objects and the
foreground won't look very different but
anything that occasionally moves should
appear well blended and realistic a
downside here though of course is that
the blurring can be overbearing at times
some honestly prefer the sharpness and
don't appreciate the increased motion
blur I can't blame them all of these
have some sort of downfall whether it be
resource-intensive Nisour lack of
accountability and theory combining
several of these would be ideal but not
everyone sporting a couple of titans in
SLI if you ask me your best bet it's
SMAS available FXAA is a great
substitute and maybe even light MSAA
something low like x two it's possible I
wouldn't touch TxAA unless I absolutely
had to
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