PC Drivers & Software

[trunks0]

Is it just me or could the Anti-Aliasing settings use an update? The idea that we can only force any of the AA modes on ancient titles at this point is kind of annoying. I mean I get it, it can't always be done, but take a game like "Riverbond". This game has no AA settings in game. And because it's a DX11 title, none of the driver side AA modes can be forced

If nothing else, it would be great if MLAA was updated to work like it used to. Where it could be forced driver side on-top of almost anything.

- A long time, Radeon user.

Trunks0

[hitbm47]

Hi @trunks0 

Although I agree with you, I do not know if you saw this guide I wrote today:

https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-software/windows-10-directx9-anti-aliasing-fix-mostly-for-most-...

From my experience, the MLAA option only works for DirectX11 games and I explain how to get the other AA options working for DirectX9 titles again.

Another option that I use in some games is to enable "Virtual Super Resolution" in Radeon Settings in the display tab. This allows you to select higher than native resolutions and works similar to Super Sampling but generally performs better with the only problem sometimes being the HUD, or tweaking resolutions in game .ini or config files.

Kind regards

[trunks0]

Nice little guide,  bookmarking it for reference :). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for Riverbond. (which is free at the moment from EPIC, if you wanted to take a peek) .

Using VSR for AA is a common workaround. It's essentially super-sampling at that point. Unfortunately the VSR option has not shown up for me in ages. That could be do to me using a 32:9 aspect monitor though. Luckily, my CHG90 monitor does support a 4k input. So I can just switch to 4k and let the monitor down sample that to 1920x1080. Not as good as actual VSR, but it's something at least.

[hitbm47]

Hi @trunks0 

Thank you, I hope it will be able to help some people.

I just claimed riverbond and will see when I can look into it. That's the thing I am trying to explain to other unsympathetic persons on the other thread here where AMD keeps losing features that worked before, and they simply reply with we should buy new cards every year to keep support.

Do you mean your monitor supports 4K input but is actually only a 1920x1080 panel? Judging from the date of the game, I doubt it will use DX9, but rather DX11 and the art-style of the game looks like it aims to be pixelated, or are you experiencing extreme aliasing?

Kind regards

[trunks0]

Super aware :). I may not post here really... but I've been a member, and mod/supermod, of Rage3D's forums for decades at this point. Figured I just give a nudge here on their official forum.

The monitor is a Samsung CHG90, it's native resolution is 3840x1080. It has an increasingly common feature of being able to accept 3840x2160. It's really to allow you to connect a console and use a resolution greater than 1080p. But I don't use it for that and it just occasionally comes in handy for PC use

As for the game. Yeah, the aliasing is pretty noticeable due to the art style.

[Chester1994]

I have never been a fan of driver-forced settings. I have always found them to be either buggy or they would simply not work. On the other hand, I would tell the devs of said game to implement said feature for their game.

Maybe I´m living in the 2000s, I don´t know...

On the other hand: isn´t ReShade able to force AA in DX11 titles? I have never tried it on DX 11, but I think it might be useful. I´ve used it in several games and performance-wise it´s quite good.

[hitbm47]

@trunks0  are you able the play the game at 60FPS if you use your native resolution? There shouldn't be too much aliasing at 4K.

Like @Chester1994 described, reshade might be one of the best options, I think Nvidia even integrated it into their graphics overlay to switch between reshade's in real-time.

Other than that, the only other option I see is in using Virtual Super Resolution, but for this game it seems like you might have to set the desktop resolution to 4K for it to work in this game. You can also try to enable "GPU Scaling" and then "Center Scaled" and "Integer Scaling" to allow the downsampled image to display natively on your 3840x1080 monitor.

[trunks0]

Yes... nVidia can also force MSAA and other variants of driver side AA in this game(and others. Riverbond is just an example). Which is why I made this thread, this needs to be updated to work properly again if for no other reason than it does on the competition.

p.s. Worth noting that Radeons used to have something like ReShade WAY back with a feature call "ATi SmartShader". Was kinda cool to be able to add an Bloom/HDR effect to almost any game back in the early 2000's. Love it if that came back, but that's probably kind of a big ask vs fixing driver side AA to work properly again.

[hitbm47]

@trunks0 

There is another utility that I was trying to remember in which I believe you could also inject anti-aliasing.

It has a lot of features; such as, frame-rate limiting, reshade (if I remember correctly), etc., and it is even downloadable from Steam, not sure about Epic games, but you can download it separately and use it on individual games.

It is called Special_K, here is a thread on Steam where the developers weighed in on helping a user to get it working with non-steam games:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1157970/discussions/0/2284960483096347179/

Hope this helps, I would just restart my computer after stopping the Special_K injection.

EDIT: Here is another reference to the SpecialK mods page:

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/Kaldaien

[hitbm47]

@trunks0 

Good news, I was able to get SMAA to work through ReShade and SpecialK, it took me 30-60minutes to figure out, but it is actually quite straight forward once you figure it out,

I am unfortunately not going to describe all the steps at this moment, but here is an important guide from SpecialK on how to integrate ReShade with it through the Plugin: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/SpecialK/ReShade

In addition, I typed MSAA SMAA when I configured the ReShade installer as they describe and it gave me the appropriate package for enabling either FXAA or MSAA SMAA (which should be the better one).

Therefore, it is possible and I can confirmed it removed most of the Aliasing.

Furthermore, from a quick look it even seemed as if you could change the VSync Intervals in SpecialK, meaning you can limit a game to console smoothness 30FPS (2 VSync Intervals) and enable a 30FPS CPU limit, something AMD has not implemented for non- FreeSync users after all these years.

Chill at 30FPS stutters with VSync, and FRTC does not work with VSync and results in screen-tearing without VSync.

EDIT:

Just so you know I am telling the truth, here is an image after SpecialK & Reshade injection with MSAA SMAA (after further quick reading I also saw you can use DgVoodoo 2 with SpecialK to allow it to work with older games by wrapping them to DX11 or DX12 with DgVoodoo 2):

Kind regards

[trunks0]

Nice! I kinda expect ReShade to work. Little tricky at first as you found out. But another example where MLAA doesn't work and should... Apex:Legends. It's a DX11 game, Source engine base technically, and because it's on-line you really don't want to risk your account using ReShade as it could very well trigger the Anti-Cheat system and get you banned

[hitbm47]

@trunks0  I agree, one should be careful in using it with multiplayer games.

It has been a few years since I played APEX Legends, but I suppose I will download it again at some point and see if the in-game AA works for me.

But, I do agree that we need working Anti Aliasing options in the Radeon Software again. I'll see if I can describe the steps better later if you think you need help and want to use this method with Riverbond.

[trunks0]

In game TAA works just fine in Apex Legends. Just another example where the AA, in this case MLAA, being forced by the driver should work and doesn't. Also doesn't work in Half-Life 2. Either to override the in-game, enhance it or apply MLAA.

Worse yet, it used to work in Half-Life 2 and other source games. Now it doesn't

-LateEdit- I probably should have popped this in General Discussion. But figured since this doesn't work, it kinda belonged here.

[hitbm47]

@trunks0  no it does not belong in general discussions, you were right to post in here since it is a driver issue / software feature that needs attention development-side.

Strange that MLAA does not work in Half-Life 2, since I have recently experienced it only working in DX9 games and not in DX11 games such as Apex Legends.

I am quite positive that Half-life 2's AA should work by using the "disable fullscreen optimization" methods I posted in that thread which I created and linked here yesterday.

I will check later since I also have Half-life 2 and it is DX9.

[trunks0]

The built in AA works. However, you used to be able to over-ride it or enhance it. Along with MLAA working. Now none of that works and only the built-in works.

Oh and if could, mind providing an example of a game, or better yet games, where MLAA has worked for you? Love to try and make sure it's not just me lol.

[trunks0]

*bump*

Please give the AA in the drivers some love AMD. This sux that we can't use driver side AA like people can on other GPU's. Really makes those times you want to install an old game, patch it up, install mods and then get let down that you can't always do the final touch that brings it all together with some 4 or 8 Super or Multi sampling AA.

[hitbm47]

Hi @trunks0 

Excuse me for only replying now, I still have to test the Half-Life 2 issue, but I am confident that "disabling fullscreen optimizations" should allow you to override the Anti Aliasing preset since it is a DirectX9 rendered game.

MLAA I made a mistake and found that it only works in DX9 games and not DX11 with the driver override, and usually did not require the "disable fullscreen optimization method".

But, I do agree that this needs to be attended to from AMD.

[hitbm47]

Hi again @trunks0 ,

So in my negligence, when overriding the AA options for Half Life 2 I forgot to "disable fullscreen optimizations" and luckily it still works for Half Life 2 and I'll share some screenshots of it. What I noticed in some DirectX9 games with the AMD driver as opposed to Nvidia's driver is that you have to disable the in-game Anti Aliasing in addition to enabling Anti Aliasing in the driver, which is what I did for Half Life 2 episode 2.

Here is a screenshot of in-game AA disabled (you are going to have to zoom the images, since the browser super-samples them to fit in the HTML image divider <div />):

Here is a screenshot of driver 4x eq Adaptive Multi-sampling:

Here is a screenshot of Morphological AA in-driver enabled (please note that I disabled the 4x eq before testing only MLAA and note the rounding of the MSI Afterburner font):

Unfortunately, I do not have APEX installed, but from my testing MLAA does not work with post DX9 games.

[Psyhix69]

Somehow I managed to get the "Morphological AA" working in Apex Legends in March 2022, but after a driver update it stopped working (or maybe after windows update... don't know).

Morphological AA:

Morphologica AA

TSAA:

Build-in TSAA

Once it stopped working I can't get it to work again. Don't know if this is a driver issue or windows or something else...

[trunks0]

That's weird. All kinda brings it back to the point that the AA options need to be worked on as they aren't working properly.