- Windows 10 Anti Aliasing
- Best Anti Aliasing
- Types Of Anti Aliasing
- Elite Dangerous Vr Anti Aliasing
- Anti-aliasing Fxaa
- Anti Aliasing Msaa
- Elite Dangerous is a demanding game, you don't want such customizations (that you normally won't see anyway while playing ED) taking up precious resources in the background. Setup Controllers I'm a fan of the X52 ( Pro or normal ) since it's the same joystick the in-game model is based on.
- Dec 15, 2015 Anti-aliasing works. It was just SMAA that was broken. And i think they said they had that fixed for 1.5. Possibly other things have been fixed as well that didn't make patch notes. But no need to be on a downer, FD have done an awesome job with the fixes and content updates. Let them have their moment of sunshine before bringing on the rainclouds.
- Anti-aliasing FXAA, MLAAX2, MLAAX4, SMAA Remappable controls Yes Gamepad support Yes (including flight controllers) Elite: Dangerous ran at a solid 60 FPS in all scenarios with everything pushed.
While I really like ED, There's 1 thing that really annoys me, The aliasing and pixel crawling. Could we please in a future update have the option of having TAA.temporal anti-aliasing. as the current AA method is just not good enough. I know we can simply run it at a higher resolution or downsample but then that costs a lot more performance than simply using a better AA method.
- See also: Elite Dangerous and Guides
Getting Started
First and foremost, make sure that you know how to put on the headset properly! Dial in the correct IPD and set eye relief at the proper distance. Check and adjust fit for maximum clarity, sharpness, and comfort every time you put on the headset.
Download and install ED Profiler. Use it to select a VR profile and HUD preset without having to edit any config files.
Settings depend on your PC, though, most of all on its graphics card. NVIDIA users can use GeForce Experience to see recommended settings for 'Elite Dangerous: Horizons VR' in the game optimizer and create a VR profile based on that with EDProfiler (that's what I did - here's my profile for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti).
EDProfiler also comes with two VR-optimized GUI color presets ('Dr. Kaii's Spiritual Teal' and 'Grnbrg's VR Green'). These make text much more readable without ruining NPC portraits (since there's only one GUI color palette, so it needs to be optimized accordingly, i. e. 'avatar friendly').
I also always activate SteamVR's Night Mode (available inside VR via Settings on bottom right of VR Dashboard, first page, top checkbox). This dims the headset until 5:00 AM or until SteamVR is restarted, so it unfortunately has to be reactivated manually each time. It reduces glare, god rays and eye strain by reducing the overall brightness. If necessary, you can compensate by raising Gamma a little in ED's graphics options.
Also set 'Dashboard/Interface Brightness' to minimum in ED's graphics options or ship's functions (right panel). Makes text much more crisp and legible.
For optimum resolution, raise 'HMD Quality' in the game, not the in-game setting called 'Supersampling'. Or just use SteamVR's own supersampling (RenderTargetMultiplier - until it can be configured within SteamVR without editing config files, use OpenVR Advanced Settings, which is an essential SteamVR tool that you should have anyways for all its other benefits), which is multiplied with HMD Quality, but affects other games as well (personally, with my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, I've kept HMD Quality at 1 and set RenderTargetMultiplier to 1.4).
When using ED's HMD Quality or SteamVR's RenderTargetMultiplier > 1, consider turning in-game Anti-Aliasing off. Both are a form of supersampling which is an anti-aliasing method, so additional anti-aliasing is likely redundant and only reduces performance with little to no visual gain.
Tweaks to Settings to Achieve the Best Quality and Performance
Steam: Elite Dangerous - Properties: Ensure that 'Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game' and 'Use Desktop Game Theatre while SteamVR is active' are OFF.
SteamVR Settings (via right-click menu of SteamVR tray icon): Performance: Allow asynchronous reprojection ON, Allow interleaved reprojection OFF! Developer: Direct Mode ENABLED, Enable Always-on Reprojection ON! Restart SteamVR for changes to take effect.
If you customized SteamVR, I suggest you reset Background, Environment, Base Station, and Controller to default. Elite Dangerous is a demanding game, you don't want such customizations (that you normally won't see anyway while playing ED) taking up precious resources in the background.
Setup Controllers
I'm a fan of the X52 (Pro or normal) since it's the same joystick the in-game model is based on. With the proper control setup and placement, your in-game hand will mirror your real one exactly, greatly enhancing immersion/presence.
I've made sure that the bindings match the in-game buttons as closely as possible so when I push a button on the real stick, my in-game representation pushes the same button on the virtual stick. I achieve amazing presence that way, it really feels like I'm inside the cockpit and piloting my spaceship myself (instead of merely remotely controlling the pilot).
I have bound pretty much all important actions on the HOTAS, thanks to Elite's built-in shift-button support (i. e. binding button combinations). That way I have no need to use a keyboard for anything except chat or galaxy search.
Later I replaced the X52 throttle with a Thrustmaster stand-alone throttle which I like much better. It has an analog stick for thrusters and more buttons/hats which are also placed better, and not such an annoying detent (I added my own velcro center detent).
Make sure to enable full throttle range in ED's control options if you want your virtual throttle to mirror the real one. Except for supercruise, where there's no reverse speed, real and virtual throttle will then match.
(Addendum: Personally, I'm not using the throttle to control speed anymore, I actually went even further and turned Elite Dangerous into a real workout by controlling the throttle with an exercise bike that works as a game controller.. Yes, my spaceship is now pedal-powered! ;))
Windows 10 Anti Aliasing
Set up like that, ED in VR is pure bliss! Especially if you fly a ship with a panoramic canopy, e. g. Keelback or Asp (get one ASAP), or something intimate like a ship-launched fighter. And remember that VR gives you 'space legs' in a way, so don't just sit there, get up and walk around your cockpit or stand next to your seat while hovering in front of a white dwarf, during long-range flights within a system or when auto-docking. Those are some of the best VR experiences I ever had (and I've been into it since 2014 with Oculus DK2, now with HTC Vive, it's even better)!
Solutions to Few Annoyances
If driving the SRV makes you sick, turn on the comfort options in ED's graphics options: 'Reduce Camera Shake', 'Vehicle Motion Blackout' and 'Vehicle Maintain Horizon Camera'. Especially that last one makes a huge difference in how comfortable planetary driving feels in VR.
Galaxy/System Map: I have no problem using it in VR since it's nicely mapped to my HOTAS. However, it's vital to pivot the map a bit before using it, only then will you see where the selection cursor really is in 3D space.
Oh, and remember you can press Ctrl+V to paste into the search box. I like to plan my routes online and copy & paste the destination instead of typing it in (even bound Ctrl+V to a button on my HOTAS).
Tools that Will Improve Your VR Experience
Put any window into your cockpit as a virtual screen that can be placed anywhere within the cockpit. Some use cases are watching your favorite movies/series or clips/streams during long trips or while grinding credits, bringing up a web browser or text editor for taking notes, planning routes or checking prices, or displaying a webcam that's aimed at your keyboard. Although there's another solution for typing in VR:
Get a virtual keyboard into your cockpit that you operate with the motion controllers. Works like OpenVRDesktopDisplayPortal, i. e. you place the keyboard in a fixed position inside the cockpit, e. g. below the radar, so it's always in the same place (and auto-hides when not in use).
Control your ship like a proper sci-fi commander with your voice. I recommend using it in conjunction with one of the HCS voice packs, my favorite being Verity (the ship's actual voice since it's spoken by the same voice actress as the ship computer's).
Actually I also bought Astra which inclues a so-called 'Multi-Crew' profile (not to be confused with ED 2.3's Multicrew feature) that provides compatibility with multiple voice packs at the same time, including EDDI. This uses text-to-speech to let your ship AI give you lots of useful information verbally (e. g. system state, bounties collected, etc.) and even optionally act automatically upon state changes (e. g. if your shields go down, shield boosters can be disabled temporarily, so they recharge faster).
This isn't VR-specific, of course, so I'm digressing - and it's pretty advanced so you really need to check it out for yourself to learn about the possibilities and how to use them. But it's so useful and doesn't get mentioned very often, that's why I wanted to bring it up to let you know about this.
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Old games had it good. There were no shaders, or lightmaps or anti-aliasing woes – just two dimensions of graphical wonder, fueled by pixelated style. It was blocky, sure, but that was all there was. Who knew we’d come to loathe those jagged edges we once viewed with awe? NVIDIA has a good comparison of what anti-aliasing does to otherwise jagged pixels.
This is where anti-aliasing comes in. It’s a technique used to smooth otherwise jagged lines or textures by blending the color of an edge with the color of pixels around it. The result should be a more pleasing and realistic appearance, depending on the intensity of the effect. In fact, modern 3D gaming has relied on some form of anti-aliasing for over a decade now, first appearing in the now-defunct line of 3dfx Voodoo cards. We’ve come a long way since those early days, however – but that doesn’t mean things are any easier to understand.
Supersampling or Full-Scene Anti-aliasing (FSAA)
This is the oldest form of anti-aliasing, and fairly rudimentary compared to more modern techniques. With this approach, individual pixels are divided into multiple coverage samples. By analyzing the color of the pixels surrounding each of these samples, an average is produced, which determines the original pixel’s over-all color.
Best Anti Aliasing
However, analyzing a single pixel is no good for making precise corrections to an edge or line; for supersampling to work, a game is rendered at a much higher resolution than what is being displayed on screen. For example, rendering an image at 4xFSAA would render an image four times as large. This allows more precise color data to be deduced from each sample, and results in smoother lines and edges than usual.
in every frame – before it is downsampled back to the intended resolution. This means a card must effectively render every scene four times over, which isn’t terribly effective in terms of performance.
Multi-sampling Anti-aliasing (MSAA)
While FSAA filtering may have been inefficient, the concept of analyzing individual pixels for coverage and color samples was a novel idea. It just needed to be implemented differently. With MSAA, instead of sampling one pixel on a much larger scale, two or more adjacent pixels are sampled together while rendering an image at its intended size. Because multiple pixels are being sample together, coverage points can be shared between them. For example, at 4xFSAA, a single pixel would require four different sample areas. But at 4xMSAA the same amount of sample areas can be split amongst two or more pixels. The advantage is that a coverage samples are reused for adjacent pixels – so, in other words, if you have a large group of similarly colored pixels, not every pixel will need to be analyzed, freeing up computational power for other tasks.
Of course, because not every pixel is analyzed equally, MSAA isn’t quite as accurate as conventional FSAA – but it’s pretty damn close. For example, while MSAA is good at smoothing the edges and lines, it isn't as effective at smoothing textures or color detail. Nevertheless, this is a considered an acceptable tradeoff considering the performance gained, and as a result, MSAA is basically the norm within games these days; numerous tests have shown that AMD and NVIDIA cards both perform similarly where this style of smoothing is used.
Coverage-sampled anti-aliasing (CSAA) and Custom-filter anti-aliasing (CFAA)
But for all its benefits over FSAA, MSAA is still an old style of pixel smoothing, and doesn’t take advantage of modern hardware as efficiently as it could. Thus, both NVIDIA and AMD have developed their own successors – CSAA and CFAA respectively.
Both techniques work in a similar manner, in that they can both store more coverage information about a pixel without increasing strain on the GPU. For example, with MSAA, if a pixel is sampled in four different places, four different pieces of color information are stored. However, when you move to 8xMSAA, color information is now being saved for all eight of those coverage samples. Inconsequential at first glance, perhaps, but not when applied to thousands of pixels per frame. That’s a lot of processing bandwidth.
Initially, AMD's CFAA filtered edges a little too well. In this screenshot from Xbitlabs, the fence should actually continue into the horizon, but instead appears invisible.
The ‘Q’ stands for Quality
Types Of Anti Aliasing
It’s a common misconception that, the higher the anti-aliasing multiplier, the smoother your game will appear. But as you’re about to see with NVIDIA’s CSAA, that isn’t always the case. If you recall, CSAA is optimized to look very similar to MSAA, but place less load on your GPU by sampling fewer colors per coverage area. This is great in terms of performance, but can result in decreased color accuracy and video quality. Thus, for those wanting the best of both worlds, there is a special ‘Q’ option under certain CSAA modes. 8xQ CSAA, for example, increases the number of color samples from four back to eight – just as you’d get with 8xMSAA – but with less of a performance hit.
An example of AMD edge-filtering technique — better at smoothing edges while maintaining the same number of coverage samples.
Elite Dangerous Vr Anti Aliasing
Similarly, AMD’s CFAA filter can also be misleading. Though Catalyst lists the companies edge-detect technology as available via 12x and 24x options, neither is capturing any more data than other anti-aliasing techniques. Both are actually similar to 4x and 8x MSAA, but with AMD’s edge detection algorithm providing improved line filtering – though the same amount of color and coverage samples.
What does it all mean?
Next time you load up your favorite game, don’t be afraid – anti-aliasing is there to help, not hinder. Everything may sound like a great deal of jargon, but at its most basic, all anti-aliasing works the same, smoothing jagged edges for a more realistic look. The challenge is finding what works best, not just for your game, but your graphics card too.
Anti-aliasing Fxaa
What type of anti-aliasing do you use, and do you find it makes a difference? Do some games perform better with different settings than others? We want to know what you think. Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below.Anti Aliasing Msaa
Diagrams via Bit-Tech.net. NVIDIA, AMD.