Gaming Does Anyone Else Here Dislike FXAA?

[Kirito-kun]

In case you didn't know, FXAA is a relatively new AA algorithm made by Nvidia. It seem to be getting quite popular as late, due to it's low resource consumption. However, it is always tends to make the whole screen blurry, especially textures. When removing jagged lines, it's as effective as 8x MSAA but the amount it softens the image by makes it rather irritating to have on. It's still better than no AA, but not by much. Anyone else share this view? Or instead prefer FXAA?

 

[Celice]

I actually don't think it's effective as 8xMSAA, but it might also be dependent on the game. For example, in Bioshock Infinite, all it seemed to do for me is smear the pixelated jaggies across the 3D environment, instead of blurring them away

Originally, I first think I heard of FXAA in Skyrim. I first used it in Borderlands 2, however, and I didn't really seem to notice a difference. But there is also a general cartoony style already, and the celshading borders help to mitigate the effects of edge blurring, too, so perhaps that is a more charitable example. But I also tried using FXAA in the Misery mod for Stalker: Call of Pripyat, and man, the entire screen was a blurfest. It felt like I had accidentally been running the game at a lower upscaled resolution console peasents.

I am quite pissed when this is the only available option, however (hello Bioshock snorefest).

I use DSFix for playing Dark Souls, and it includes SMAA, and I actually really like it. It seems much less invasive towards the overall screen details, and while it doesn't get rid of all the jaggies, it seems to hide them fairly well.

I'm still confused over nvidia's latest slew of AA options, like CSAA, TXAA, and all these other consonants-AA effects.

 

[PityOnU]

In case you didn't know, FXAA is a relatively new AA algorithm made by Nvidia. It seem to be getting quite popular as late, due to it's low resource consumption. However, it is always tends to make the whole screen blurry, especially textures. When removing jagged lines, it's as effective as 8x MSAA but the amount it softens the image by makes it rather irritating to have on. It's still better than no AA, but not by much. Anyone else share this view? Or instead prefer FXAA?

I've never like AA at all.

I never had the computing grunt to use it previously, but later when I could, I noticed (just like you) that all of the AA stuff only seems to blur the hell out of everything.

That's why it's pretty exciting getting the super high definition displays. The pixels are so small, you don't need any AA anymore.

 

[YayMii]

The whole point of FXAA (fast approximate antialiasing) is to reduce the jaggies without any performance hit. Sure, it doesn't look as good as even maybe 2x MSAA (it's not supposed to), but it runs much lighter. I only use it on some games because osu! made me into a framerate whore when I want to take advantage of my monitor's high refresh rates.

Just wanted to provide a breakdown of the different AA technologies, if anyone's interested:

Spoiler: wow this was much longer than I intended it to be

MSAA, QXAA, EQAA, and CSAA are post-rendering, while the other AA technologies are post-processing. Post-rendering is more accurate, while Post-processing is lighter and more efficient.

MSAA (Multisampling), aka traditional antialiasing, works by sampling the colors of pixels with adjacent pixels.
QXAA (Quincunx) is one alteration to MSAA, made by Nvidia. It uses the same tech, but reduces load by about 33% by sampling using a Qincunx pattern (a 5-point pattern, only sampling the pixel with adjacent-corner pixels).

CSAA (Coverage sampling) is made by Nvidia, and uses the same tech as MSAA, but allows a higher amount of samples with minimal performance loss by applying extra samples only to pixels that are displaying polygons, on top of an already MSAA-antialiased scene. CSAA uses 4x antialiasing as a base, while a CSAA setting with a 'Q' suffix uses 8x as a base (for example, 16x CSAA uses 4x MSAA with 12x extra coverage samples).
EQAA (Enhanced Quality) is AMD's answer to CSAA. No real difference between the two, other than the different naming scheme. The 'EQ' suffix means that the extra coverage count is equal to the the amount of base samples (4xEQ is 4x MSAA with 4x coverage samples, 8xEQ = 8x MSAA + 8 coverage samples, etc.), while the lack of an 'EQ' suffix denotes an MSAA setting (i.e. no extra coverage samples, EQAA is turned off).

FXAA (Fast approximate) is Nvidia's answer to MLAA, and does exactly what it says: It approximates the pixels to get rid of jaggies as efficiently as possible.
MLAA (Morphological) is a technology made by AMD before FXAA. Exactly the same as FXAA, aside from using a somewhat different algorithm to approximate pixels.

TXAA (Temporal) is a technology made by Nvidia, and uses a combination of a temporal filter with other filters that use information from previous frames to prevent the flickering that you sometimes see with traditional antialiasing.

SMAA (Enhanced Subpixel Morphological) is a technology made by graphics programmers at the University of Zaragoza, using an algorithm that takes some form of MLAA in combination with other technologies like supersampling, TXAA, and sometimes MSAA to render the scene as sharp as possible without being as demanding as MSAA by itself.