Free AA in Crysis...well, maybe...sort of...

[brady]

So, I've been playing in the editor again specifically with the TOD settings and the flowgraph editor and happened on something kind of neat. If you tweak the DOF settings to apply a very mild DOF blur to the entire scene instead of just things that are very far away you get an effect that looks very much like the old Quincunx AA setting we use to have back in the day. There's virtually no performance hit. Sure, Quincunx wasn't all that great because it was essentially just blurring the screen, but hey, I think it looks better than nothing. I'll post some screenshots later today after I finish some school work.

[brady]

No AA
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9769/editor2008051012552960ge5.jpg
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/6757/nobluria6.jpg

No AA + Full Screen DOF Blur
http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/218/editor2008051012552096ug8.jpg
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/540/blurzoomeh2.jpg

As you can see the textures get blurred out aswell because the blur is applied to the entire image. Quincunx did the same thing to textures. However, I think I may be able to recapture some of the texture sharpness with the flowgraph image:sharpen filter. We'll see...

[brady]

Turns out the shapren filter undoes the DOF blur. So, it's either slightly blurring textures and simulated AA or sharp textures and no AA and some shimmering. Here's another set of comparisons.

http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/1267/noblurqa5.jpg

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/650/blurzk5.jpg

[HiCZoK4]

Just like GRAW !!! Nice one

[brady]

Just like GRAW !!! Nice one

Not quite. Graw uses an edge smoothing technique and probably doesn't blur the textures as much. Crysis has a built in edge AA mode but it doesn't work on all edges. This works on the entire scene and I actually really like it in game. It does a lot to get rid of shimmering and makes the image appear very smooth. Sometimes I find the very harsh edges, even with AA, a little off putting.

[FastRedPonyCar]

LOL that looks terrible! No details FTL

[SeriTonin]

Yeah I'll take some detail with jaggies over blurred with no jaggies, good find and nice info though brady, I'm sure plenty will appreciate it. =)

[brady]

Awww come on now. It doesn't look that bad. I almost prefer it over having sharp edges poking my eyes out. Crysis is the only game I can't use any level of AA on and it's just starting to wear on me a bit. I'm getting desparate...well, not enough to not run it on very high settings, but you know what I mean. Also, I think it's a little different in my case because I play Crysis on a 37" TV from about 8' away.

[dxx]

It's a nice enough idea, but it looks terrible. A similar effect can be acheived by lowering the screen res and letting our TFT monitors upscale it, and that';d probably be better, since that'd even earn a performance boost.

I do admire your nerdy investigation and experimentation skills, though. Good stuff, even if it hasn't worked out brilliantly this time.

[Soetdjuret]

Why don't just combine 4xAA and Multisampled Transparancy AA?

I play with that and i have no jaggies anywhere, not even on the vegetation (nana2)

[FastRedPonyCar]

I just run it at 1680X1060 and jaggies aren't a problem. I can see where a big TV could make things different and perhaps the blurriness that we see in the screen shots won't be as noticable from 8 feet away.

[brady]

Why don't just combine 4xAA and Multisampled Transparancy AA?

I play with that and i have no jaggies anywhere, not even on the vegetation (nana2)

Ummm...because then performance would be horrible.

[jlippo]

Why don't just combine 4xAA and Multisampled Transparancy AA?

I play with that and i have no jaggies anywhere, not even on the vegetation (nana2)
Too bad it leaves all shader aliasing.
Try 3x3SSAA with something like 800x600 resolution.
The image quality is Much better than with anything else, performance stays within playable limits with 8800GTX.

Note that you can decrease sample amounts for shadows and SSAO without decreasing image quality.