Gadgetory

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 reading tired of saying hey over and over if you like this video be sure to thumbs-up thumbs-down for the opposite click that subscribe button if you haven't already now we'll catch you in the next video this is sounds our studio thanks for learning with us