Does anyone use morphological filtering?

[Velvetmeds]

Wondering if it's worth using on a 5850. Any framerate impact? Does it look better on?

 

[INSTG8R]

The only game I have found it useful on so far is GTA IV. Takes the jaggies of that game nicely and I don't notice any real loss in performance with it on.

It's not something you want to leave on tho as it will make your browser's text etc. look blurry.

 

[karnak]

Games I use it on right now are World of Tanks and Starcraft 2. It also works great on older games that don't support traditional AA methods, such as Bioshock 1 and 2. I've gotten used to my browser looking different too now, just played around with fonts and font size and now I pretty much leave MLAA on all the time.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Most of my friends who have used it quite cause they got sick of having to manually go in and change it on or off depending on the game. I really wish AMD would stop being so pig headed about copying nvidia's per application settings. MLAA still has too many compatibility issues to be left on for everything.

 

[RejZoR]

Most of my friends who have used it quite cause they got sick of having to manually go in and change it on or off depending on the game. I really wish AMD would stop being so pig headed about copying nvidia's per application settings. MLAA still has too many compatibility issues to be left on for everything.

So not true. I use MLAA for everything. It just filters the best and gives the best performance plus i don't have to bother with each individual game. I just leave it on. I also don't see any compatibility problems other than image tearing in some games (like Bioshock 2) despite having V-Sync enabled. But since Cat 10.10 was also using MLAA and didn't have the tearing in the same games i think it can be fixed.

In fact MLAA is the only reason why i've instantly decided for AMD again when my HD5850 died because of my stupidity. GeForce 560 Ti is pribably a better bang for buck right now but it doesn't have a MLAA so that was a deal breaker for me. I just can't imagine games without it.
And since it works in all games regardless of the engine used i'm enjoying all games jaggy free.
Even NFS Hot Pursuit 2010 where ppl were complaining over lack of FSAA. What FSAA? With MLAA pretty much all important edges are nicely smooth.

MLAA is imo the biggest advancement in image quality in the last 5 years.

Why?
- it's independent
- incredible smoothing (sometimes like 24x FSAA by looking at edges)
- filters transparent textures as well
- still very high performance
- works in pretty much every game that uses Direct3D or OpenGL without any need to fiddle with settings

There was 3Dc+ and TruForm and those SmartShaders and NVIDIA has PhysX and bunch of similar stuff but all this only works in a very limited set of games in a very limited form.
I don't want these features to be useful in 3 games but useless in other 300. I want it to work in every game like MLAA does. And that's the reason why MLAA will remain where all the before mentioned features are gone or are slowly dying.

 

[cadaveca]

There was 3Dc+ and TruForm and those SmartShaders and NVIDIA has PhysX and bunch of similar stuff but all this only works in a very limited set of games in a very limited form.

3Dc is texture compression on the vga. This allowed 128/256MB cards store more data locally(in VRAM).

TruForm is basically tesselation in like DX8.

Smartshaders is taking work off of the CPU, and putting it on the GPU. A la DX10/11.

Not exactly as limited as you think, perhaps?

The only apt compare of rarely used technologies is Phys-X, as the other three were very much forward-looking technologies that are standard practice today.


That said, I think MLAA sucks balls. There's no reason I see that it's really needed, nor does it really offer "seemless" implementations. MAke it work, without it screwing up my desktop, and I'd have a different opinion, but no feature should break regular usage of a product.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

@RejZoR

That's radically different from what I've seen. My friend on 11.4 got as far as 2 games before running into incompatibilities. Out of all the options in CCC I'd say that one needs a per application setting the most.

 

[RejZoR]

Sorry but you're talking rubbish. MLAA had some problems in the first drivers by bluring hardware accelerated windows but now i haven't seen a single such problem in any application with latest drivers. In fact only apps that ever had problems for me were Steam and GWL.

I know what those technologies were and did, but are they still around? I don't remember 3Dc to ever gone past few concepts, TruForm was gone long before we got Tessellation, SmartShaders were half useful even in it's time (and i only remember HDRish to be useful and actually good smartshader which only worked in OGL anyway). MLAA on the other hand has very little problems but it offers so much in exchange. Regular FSAA required special profiles for newer games and we had to wait for transparent textures filtering. MLAA does all that from day 1.
It's just a great technlogy that will only get better over time and used even more.

NVIDIA so far only features 1 such feature (Ambiance Occlusion) that works in most games without any special need to recode it. I always want companies to do more of such "generic" features and less very specific ones like PhysX. Sure they look nice but they are useless in 99% of the games. And that makes those technologies useless. MLAA on the other hand works in 99% of cases and not in that 1%. So it's a great feature.

I mean i have MLAA and 16x Anisotropic filtering enabled at all times and i don't ever have to open CCC these days. I just play with great image quality and still very high performance, because it just works.

 

[cadaveca]

Regular FSAA required special profiles for newer games

Why?

Let's start there.




MLAA causes issues in FireFox. I use it (Firefox)on a daily basis = MLAA fails. I probably use my computer for very different things than you do, so it really shouldn't be shocking that some users have issues others don't.

 

[RejZoR]

I'm using Firefox as well and i'm not seeing any problems. If you think slightly smudged text, it's because of Firefox itself and not MLAA...

Why new games require profiles? Bioshock 1 couldn't use FSAA until later on when they added support for it. Then you could force FSAA inside CCC and then use it in game. I think it was similar for STALKER. And quite some other games. Not all but quite some.

 

[Velvetmeds]

i turned it on and am gonna try it for a few days

Firefox looks normal, nothing changed

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

MLAA works fine on every game ive got and improves them all a gr8 deal.... i have not had so much of an issue with the blury text as i use my brains and switch automatically via software between gamein profiles and a reg lookin at text profile,, which tho taking all of 10 mins to set up wasnt hard.

 

[cadaveca]

I'm using Firefox as well and i'm not seeing any problems. If you think slightly smudged text, it's because of Firefox itself and not MLAA...

Are you sure? To me, it's fine, until I enable MLAA. I don't care who's programming is at fault, I KNOW it's enabling MLAA that causes the blur.

Why new games require profiles? Bioshock 1 couldn't use FSAA until later on when they added support for it. Then you could force FSAA inside CCC and then use it in game. I think it was similar for STALKER. And quite some other games. Not all but quite some.

I've been mentioning this fairly often as of late. It's called deffered rendering.


See, I understand what MLAA is, and why in some situations, it's the only option.

However, I am of the opinion, that MLAA is the WRONG fix, in it's current implementation.


You can argue with me all you like, my opinion isn't going to change. MLAA still sucks, and always will, as there will ALWAYS be problems with it until AMD builds a proper profile database for every single app out there, that specifically enables or disabled features automatically. They are half-way there, maybe not even that far, and Like 3Dc, Truform, and SmartShaders, it might eventually be a standard that everyone uses.

 

[Velvetmeds]

Hmm even though Firefox works perfectly fine, windows live messenger does not, it does get all blurry

 

[FierceRed]

Are you sure? To me, it's fine, until I enable MLAA. I don't care who's programming is at fault, I KNOW it's enabling MLAA that causes the blur.



I've been mentioning this fairly often as of late. It's called deffered rendering.


See, I understand what MLAA is, and why in some situations, it's the only option.

However, I am of the opinion, that MLAA is the WRONG fix, in it's current implementation.


You can argue with me all you like, my opinion isn't going to change. MLAA still sucks, and always will, as there will ALWAYS be problems with it until AMD builds a proper profile database for every single app out there, that specifically enables or disabled features automatically. They are half-way there, maybe not even that far, and Like 3Dc, Truform, and SmartShaders, it might eventually be a standard that everyone uses.

Heya cadaveca,

This is the second time I've seen you mention deferred rendering with any sort of authority on these forums. I have to admit, you've got me intellectually curious.

While I no doubt can google my ass off and dive head first into the deep end of what you're talking about, would you mind giving me a quick overview of what deferred rendering is (and I presume alternate frame rendering is a similar technique?) and its relation to MLAA, thus why MLAA is good or bad in its current form?

I don't mind a PM if you're unwilling to post a huge message slightly off thread topic. Cheers!

 

[cadaveca]

Heya cadaveca,

This is the second time I've seen you mention deferred rendering with any sort of authority on these forums. I have to admit, you've got me intellectually curious.

While I no doubt can google my ass off and dive head first into the deep end of what you're talking about, would you mind giving me a quick overview of what deferred rendering is (and I presume alternate frame rendering is a similar technique?) and its relation to MLAA, thus why MLAA is good or bad in its current form?

I don't mind a PM if you're unwilling to post a huge message slightly off thread topic. Cheers!

Nah, it's totally on-topic.

First, I'll point you to a recent news article posted here about nVidia's alternative, as MSAA just doesn't work with deferred rendering engines.

http://www.techpowerup.com/139529/N...uction-Antialiasing-to-Compete-with-MLAA.html



Of course, that precedes me linking you to nVida's paper on thier own technique, which may do a far better job than I do explaining why these alternative AA modes are needed:

http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/SRAAI3D11/Chajdas11SRAA.pdf

The reason I think MLAA's implementation is not correct, is simply because it is applied as a global setting, rather than per-application. It should be quite easy for AMD to test apps to confirm whether MLAA has a negative desired effect or not, and place them within a "restricted app list", or create a list where MLAA is enabled only for the apps within the list.


Of course, in my opinion, these AA "algorithyms" are the way of the future, and one of the two techniques posed by AMD and NVidia will be set as the standard when using deferred rendering.

remember the Batman AA game's issues with AA from AMD, and now it was enabled on nVidia cards only? Similar things going on here.

 

[cq842000]

I've used it for certain games that have no native AA support, and for the most part I'm happy with it. Fallout New Vegas seems to like it as there is less of a performance hit with it on.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

builds a proper profile database for every single app out there, that specifically enables or disabled features automatically

imho you are wrong and right as i see it it works. on all my games just fine, text can occasionally get blury but not that bad, but your mostly wrong as id rather decide whats on and whats not as would many in user adjustable profiles "which is in catalyst / radeonpro, moaning cos ya too lazy to set your own on TPU, tweek man enjoy i try my damdest to wring my 5870's neck

profiles would i admit help noobs lol

 

[cadaveca]

Sure, that's definitely valid. I guess I'm at teh age that when i pay for something, I expect it to jsut work...because that's what i paid for...I really hate paying for problems, done that far too much over the years.

 

[Athlonite]

so far I've found MLAA to be somewhere inbetween 4x an 6x FSAA but without the huge fps hit say like with 4x FSAA + edge detect so I use MLAA and leave aa turned off in games

as for MLAA messing with live messenger i believe it's not MLAA but the fonts used within live apps
and hotmail I've no probs with blurry fonts and what have you using Opera 11.10

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

When it works properly I've seen it do better than any AA setting. Crysis for example has a lot of complex trees, 16xaa sucks compared to MLAA at dealing with foliage like that.

 

[Over_Lord]

What font combination should I use while using Chrome browser to leave MLAA on all the time but to get rid of this blurring of text?

I use MLAA too, best implemented AA ever, and performance hit is nowhere near FSAA but image quality, spot on. Use it in all games, in-game AA at 0, rest of settings maxed. MLAA by drivers on.

I'm happy I bought an AMD card.

 

[Velvetmeds]

Hmm that's odd. Maybe it works like you are saying with other games, but Crysis (the first) definitely does not like morpho AA + 0x in-game AA. Runs worse than 4x in game AA and looks worse too.

I'll try other games when i have the time.

Just for reference, could you guys mention games where you think Morpho makes a really good difference?

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

MLAA was the selling point for me. Works great for dead space 1 and 2, bioshock 1, 2, starcraft 2 and crysis. Some games its great especially for games with no aa and in some cases better than the ingame aa. I can't decide if its good for bc2 or fallout3, I'm still deciding. I love that its a post process filter and I don't mind the three mouse clicks it takes to enable or disable.

 

[swaaye]

I go for SSAA or MSAA if possible.

MLAA has problems with motion and it reshapes things it shouldn't like text....