Antialiasing in The Witcher 2

[haldolium.418]

Antialiasing in The Witcher 2

Your latest rather shallow PR-Dev-Diary didnt reveal much about truly interesting topics when it comes to PC gaming and modern hardware. My and others highest concern* is the possibility of no antialiasing due to deferred rendering or other technics. I don't want that. If anything seperates the PC from other plattforms in these days it is downsampling or antialiasing. Games getting richer on shaders and details, alpha shit and so on, yet often lacking the ability to get a clear picture without the constant flimmering. It is necessary that you at CD Project concider this topic seriously. I as a consumer have the feeling, that it is irrelevant to 90% of game developers but as proven many many times, not impossible at all. Even games with deferred rendering do get antialiasing. Please make sure The Witcher 2 will have that possibility too, since it is one feature seperating the game from the rest. Thanks. *argumentum e contrario I completely trust in anything else regarding the design and technics of your game.

 

[chaosapiant]

I find that with a high enough resolution, depth of field and HDR effect, that most anti aliasing to me is unnoticeable. I can enable AA in Mass Effect, for example, but I can barely tell a difference because of all the other post processing effects going on. Just my two cents though.

 

[soldiergeralt]

agreed. the reason many developers have moved away from anti aliasing is because increased resolution and detail is making it obsolete. add on the fact that anti-aliasing offers relatively little visual improvement for such a resource drain.

 

[vilgefortze]

The concepts of infinity and zero being what they are, digital devices will always have some degree of aliasing. AA should never be done away with. I often use external large displays when I play high config games. And I notice the difference AA makes. If someone doesn't notice the difference, switch it off to reduce resource drain. Why think of abandoning it altogether?

 

[Irx]

I don't agree that AA is obsolete, and the difference in ME is very noticable, at least to me - as is the fact that you have to force it through video drivers control panel instead of just checking in game options. DoF and HDR can certainly mask it, but not nearly completely.

 

[Arkray_gog]

AA is not obsolete, who said that? I can notice the difference of it on or off. And before not implementing AA I would get rid of the deep of field effect that hurts the eyes and is completely useless, or I still don't know what is the purpose of it a part of making me dizzy.

 

[haldolium.418]

I find that with a high enough resolution, depth of field and HDR effect, that most anti aliasing to me is unnoticeable. I can enable AA in Mass Effect, for example, but I can barely tell a difference because of all the other post processing effects going on. Just my two cents though.

agreed. the reason many developers have moved away from anti aliasing is because increased resolution and detail is making it obsolete. add on the fact that anti-aliasing offers relatively little visual improvement for such a resource drain.

It's sad that you don't notice the difference, but techincaly and visual wise there is a huge one. If you'd have the opportunity to witness the effect on a good monitor (IPS-Panel or better) you might even change your opinion. You are not entirley incorrect (sadly you see that as a positive thing, which it isnt in any way. Its not even a solution or alternative) post processing effects are MISSused to make-up for the lack of antialiasing in many games. However high resolution doesnt help in any case, cause it is not a static picture you're staring at, it moves and therefore aliasing creates flickering and a bumpy image. In addition it is a matter of the engine and the content itself. While Mass Effect for example has a lot of static, clean "sterile" geometry, especially fantasy RPGs do have a lot of vegetation. The Witcher 2 als has rather few space ships and more woods I'd assume Though since you've mentioned Mass Effect, the splash screen from the second one is a very good example for the necessarity of antialiasing as shown here:No AA at all:http://www.abload.de/img/me2_noaahxio.png8xSuperSampling:http://www.abload.de/img/me2_8xssaauz45.pngThe smaller objects in the scene get, the higher is the risk to not only flickering (in some cases like Crysis or Risen its simply unacceptable) but even losing information. Antialiasing is vital to the look of the game and the game experience. Once you played a game perfectly smoothed via downsampling or supersampling AA with 60FPS you know what I mean. And since CD Project RED is so proud of their engine, they should take this matter serious in my opinion. It is almost the only reason to actually buy "highend" hardware these days.