Crysis 3 - Return of real PC Anti-Aliasing (MSAA)

[moonbogg]

What are you guys taking away from this as of yet? Do you smell a console port or is this a genuine deal? If i don't make sense its because i just SLAMMED a rockstar and my head is spinnin.

 

[Ajay]

What are you guys taking away from this as of yet? Do you smell a console port or is this a genuine deal? If i don't make sense its because i just SLAMMED a rockstar and my head is spinnin.

LOL! Looks like the real deal to me, like they have a core group plus small teams dedicated to each platform. I don't know what Crytek's structure really is though.

 

[Fx1]

I can get 60 fps on Very high with TXAA and that looks good enough for me.

7970 seems ok for a beta

 

[SirPauly]

You completely evaded the point I made. FXAA and TXAA provide worse IQ in this game than MSAA. If this game was a forward+ with a traditional 15-18% MSAA performance hit, you wouldn't even need to think about using FXAA/TXAA as a last resort. FXAA/MLAA and TXAA are 'poor man's AA modes' in this case. The only reason you'd use those in Crysis 3 is if your GPU can't handle MSAA/SMAA/SSAA.

TXAA offers superior image quality when the context is temporal and movement. You're basing image quality more-so on clarity when the war or battle of image quality is with movement to me.

 

[RussianSensation]

TXAA offers superior image quality when the context is temporal and movement. You're basing image quality more-so on clarity when the war or battle of image quality is with movement to me.

Ok, can you please explain why do people spend hundreds of dollars on 2560x1440/1600 displays, buy $800-1000 GPUs and install high resolution mods/texture packs if level of detail and clarity were not some the most important aspects of achieving crisp graphics on the PC? They do this to improve the level of detail and clarity to guarantee an experience far above what the consoles offer.

Did you forget that the whole point of anti-aliasing filters was to remove jaggies, but to do so in a way that does not materially impact the level of detail/clarity in a game? Any AA filter that significantly compromises on clarity/sharpness/texture level of detail is an automatic fail since it goes against everything PC gaming has been striving to achieve in the last 10 years, especially compared to consoles that use post-AA filters due to performance constraints. Using your definition of a "good" AA filter, one can create a massive blur-filter across the entire screen until the picture looks like a painting and it would solve your jaggies problem. Then you end up with a game that has no jaggies but looks like a console game - that's the direction TXAA is going actually. It's trying to achieve the "Hollywood" blurry rendered look in games that are not cartoons. It's pretty remarkable how NV is spinning this as a next generation AA filter. Did NV forget we don't play games at 24 fps like Hollywood movies and PC games don't look like How To Train Your Dragon?

What you are saying is you'd consider sacrificing clarity and level of details to remove jaggies like so:

NV's post-processed AA filter on PS3

vs. accepting some level of jaggies but retain the full clarity intended by the artists/developers:

Traditional MSAA mode applied

If so, I would wager you are by far in the minority of most PC gamers. Most PC gamers can't stand console game look because it's considerably more blurry, lacking crisp textures and losing a tremendous amount of higher level of details that PC titles offer. TXAA takes us a lot closer to console level graphics because it blurs the entire picture, thus negating the benefits of high-resolution textures/mods, high resolution monitors, and expensive graphics cards. In fact, TXAA actually works against AF because it even blurs ground textures. It's pretty amazing to me that NV is pushing TXAA as some savior AA mode when it's completely counter-intuitive to all the technologies and progress made on the PC to make games look sharper over the last decade. The idea that TXAA in its current implementation is making MSAA outdated is laughable in every way imaginable to anyone who values IQ, especially considering that both its performance and overall IQ are noticeably inferior in Crysis 3. If you had a forward+ game engine, you could apply MSAA+Transparency AA. With SMAA in Crysis 3, TXAA is basically irrelevant.

Step One: Get some thick plastic.
Step Two: Cover monitor with said plastic.
Step Three: There is your TXAA filter!

TXAA might be good for a cartoony game that looks like Toy Story but not games that are trying to look realistic.

 

[notty22]

Someone is on a mission. So the community should follow, Dirt Showdown, a game that was derided by someone at one point, and now held as a shining example of how it's supposed to be done. Sorry don't see the logic or point.

edit: I was reading
Crysis 3 General Discussion > Crysis 3 Questions You Want Answered!
SMAA: Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Antialiasing



http://vimeo.com/31247769

 

[AnandThenMan]

TXAA is being championed by the NV because it masks the lack of horsepower needed to do the more intensive (and much better looking) routines. Which is fine, but what I don't get is why some go all fanboy and pretend it's the best thing ever. It looks like crap, in static shots AND in motion.

 

[f1sherman]

Someone is on a mission. So the community should follow, Dirt Showdown, a game that was derided by someone at one point, and now held as a shining example of how it's supposed to be done. Sorry don't see the logic or point.

You've missed anti-AMD conspiracy part:

It's pretty obvious why NV isn't promoting forward+ lighting game engines with developers. Their existing GK104 GPU generation tanks when Compute shaders need to do any work. Additionally, because traditional MSAA doesn't work properly with deferred lighting engines, it results in an exponentially large performance hit on AMD cards. The end result is both NV and AMD GPUs take a huge performance hit with MSAA but NV tends to do a little better. The problem is we gamers suffer because even with NV there is still a > 30% performance hit most of the time.

Poor gamers...only 8 antialiasing modes in Crysis 3.

Must be NVIDIA shoving TXAA down their throats

 

[notty22]

Who is championing though? Anymore than the text blurring morphological AA that AMD introduced. It's there for some to use. Maybe those without, 2 or 3 current gen, Halo cards.

 

[notty22]

Never mind.

 

[f1sherman]

Well If I recall well...there were couple of laughs regarding AMD drivers,

and then RS went with "ALL HAIL Forward+, sneaky NV promoting TXAA. Instead of F+"

 

[rgallant]

just saying

looks like a gtx590 is playable at 2560x1600 ,so 580 sli + 50%[@900mz] and only at 2560x1440 should be good to go .
-depending on vram used.

 

[notty22]

I do/did not know whether C3 is TWIMTBP game or not, so I did a search.
Here is a cached version of a now removed AMD page. I guess they pulled it.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...3/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

 

[DiogoDX]

I do/did not know whether C3 is TWIMTBP game or not, so I did a search.
Here is a cached version of a now removed AMD page. I guess they pulled it.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...3/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

The game appears on the online blog.

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2013/01/29/crysis3-best-with-cat-132/

The game is TWIMTBP but AMD have a deal with EA. So seems that the game will have support from both like BF3.

A quote from a AMD rep in overclock.net forum:

Everyone must also keep in mind that Crytek decided to join AMD Gaming Evolved relatively late in the Crysis 3 development process. We've had developers on-site with Crytek around the clock since that point, and we're working together to squeeze every last drop out of Radeon architectures on this title. For example, GCN is one of the reasons Crytek made the switch. It's important to us and them that everything is hunky dory but, compared to other titles at this point in their development cycle, we've all had less time to do that work. So we're doing a little catchup this week and next, applying that spit polish, and making damn sure everything is smooth for launch.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1354904/official-catalyst-13-2-beta-thread/90#post_19170865

 

[notty22]

Thanks DiogoDX, so C3 is also a GE title. And we don't have to feed the politics/ conspiracies yet ! As pointed out for a beta from the AMD GE blog

There will naturally be some kinks to work out and, most importantly, game performance is definitely not final!

 

[Firestorm007]

So let me get this straight; someone points out the deficiencies on these aa modes, and all of a sudden, we're back to labeling people/motives. What an absolute joke. If this progress, than pc gaming has sunk even lower. I prefer msaa and if it starts to drop fps by ridiculous margins for both vendors, well, something is very wrong.

 

[notty22]

So let me get this straight; someone points out the deficiencies on these aa modes, and all of a sudden, we're back to labeling people/motives. What an absolute joke. If this progress, than pc gaming has sunk even lower. I prefer msaa and if it starts to drop fps by ridiculous margins for both vendors, well, something is very wrong.

Of course you want to see things a certain way. The only time you seem to chime in.

 

[chimaxi83]

If only people stopped being so simple minded, turning everything into AMD vs Nvidia. If only.

 

[RussianSensation]

Someone is on a mission. So the community should follow, Dirt Showdown, a game that was derided by someone at one point, and now held as a shining example of how it's supposed to be done. Sorry don't see the logic or point.

I said Dirt Showdown's performance hit when enabling the Global illumination setting was not worth its performance hit (I did criticize this setting's performance penalty) but I didn't criticize the way in which F+ MSAA was implemented in Dirt Showdown. It is actually done very efficiently as a result of the F+ model and using compute shaders. NV's problem in that game was that its compute shaders aren't even fast enough for the global illumination or contact hardening shadows settings that also happen to use Compute Shaders. However, set aside the global illumin./contact hardening shadows and look at how well the MSAA works in Dirt Showdown in the context of its performance hit. You wouldn't want this in future games? You would rather keep spending $500 on new GPUs because SMAA/MSAA drops your performance 33-52%?

Ok here is my point: Crytek promised us a game with next generation graphics that will melt our PCs, presumably because of it having next gen graphics. I don't see anything of the sort. The only thing that's melting an HD7970GE/GTX680's performance is the mind-boggling anti-aliasing penalty typically incurred under deferred lighting game engines. It is not so much the next generation graphics that are pushing these GPUs as seen by their ability to easily go > 50 fps without AA. When you first fired up Far Cry 1 or Crysis 1, the reason you needed a GPU upgrade was not because of some SMAA/MSAA setting. It was because their graphics were revolutionary for the time.

In other words, the reason I brought up Dirt Showdown is if Crysis 3 was coded with a F+ game engine, then GTX680/HD7970GE would be hitting way higher FPS with MSAA and then it would have been obvious that Crytek completely failed to deliver on their promise of next generation graphics (or as they claimed that C3 will be the best looking PC game for at least 2 years).

What Crytek has done here is they have taken Crysis 2, barely improved the graphics, but instead added native AF support, and a bunch of AA modes and included "high resolution" textures natively instead of a patch like they did with Crysis 2. This native SMAA/MSAA support on VHQ level that drops performance 20-30 fps. So now Crytek can say "Yes, we melted your PC." No **** Sherlock!! What did you expect with a deferred lighting game engine? Ok but despite melting our GPUs, Crytek didn't actually deliver on their promise of making this a PC game with next gen graphics.

Even if you look at the in-game options menus, it's nearly a carbon copy of Crysis 2. Crysis 3 is just another console port with minor tweaks I listed regarding Crytek adding a high rez texture option & native AF/AA modes.

Crysis 2

Crysis 3

Crytek is pulling a marketing wool over our eyes and saying "Look, the performance cripples even $500 cards like GTX680/7970GE -- it's a next generation game!!" You can't see that the performance drops from 57 fps on an HD7970GE to 27 fps with just 1 setting and it happens to be anti-aliasing? What's AA have anything to do with next generation PC graphics? Nothing.

This does not look like a next generation PC game:

The main reason the game runs like a dog is because those geniuses decided to force SMAA/MSAA on a deferred lighting game engine, not because the game looks like this. In other words Crytek is full of it.

You've missed anti-AMD conspiracy part:
Poor gamers...only 8 antialiasing modes in Crysis 3.
Must be NVIDIA shoving TXAA down their throats

It's not an anti-AMD conspiracy theory. It's about doing what's best for PC gamers in terms of a balance between graphics quality and performance level. If you are going to go full out for graphics and claim you will bring next gen graphics, you better deliver then. If right now you turn on MSAA, you lose almost 20 fps on a GTX680 to an unplayable 34 fps and 30 fps on an HD7970GE to an unplayable 27 fps. That's acceptable to you? Did it not occur to you that if the game was made with an F+ codepath that a GTX680 would play it fine with MSAA? Guess what happens then: NV can't promote their next $500-600 GPU to entice you to upgrade to be able to play games like Crysis 3 smoothly. It's in their best interest to make sure you upgrade and buy their next GPU. Why would they want to promote a more efficient way to code games, especially not when a more efficient coding path requires the use of compute shaders that happen to work slower on their GPUs than their competitor's? So what that 8 AA modes were added? The entire engine is horribly inefficient when using them.

I call it how I see it. Compute shaders can be used to accelerate graphical effects that normally would run slower using traditional methods. So let's use/promote those methods. Instead, PC gamers keep accepting this BS from developers that a huge performance penalty is a part of the game (i.e., the game of how developers are coding these games and "working closely" with GPU makers to make sure we get a "good" experience). It's one thing to cripple GPUs because the game looks gorgeous and completely another thing because you can't code / optimize the game engine properly.

Look at the graphics of Crysis 3 and tell me it's acceptable that HD7970GE and GTX680 run this game at 27-34 fps at 1080P with 4xMSAA given its level of graphics. Don't worry, NV will gladly sell you a $900 Titan in a couple months to solve your "performance issues." It's going to be an even more impactful marketing technique if Titan is shipped with a free copy of Crysis 3 as a bundle to make you feel like that $900 upgrade was worth it.

Looks 95% like Crysis 2, runs at 32 fps on a $500 GPU:

I have no problem spending $400-500 for another GPU but when a game still runs like a dog on $800 worth of GPUs but my jaw doesn't hit the floor from its graphics, there is a problem -- an optimization problem.

 

[Firestorm007]

Of course you want to see things a certain way. The only time you seem to chime in.

Not really. Just calling a spade a spade. I was merely commenting on your hypocrisy.

 

[omeds]

Looks. Like. Ass.

 

[tviceman]

Am I the only person who basically quit caring about anti aliasing? It was a much more needed option 5+ years ago when 1440x900 and lower were the most popular resolutions. Since I have been at 1920x1200 or better for several years now, I basically quit caring if my video card has enough horse power for AA. It's always the first setting I turn down or off when I want higher fps and in fast moving twitch games, just like Crysis 3, it's just not that noticeable until you're in between firefights snapping pics of foliage.

 

[notty22]

Not really. Just calling a spade a spade. I was merely commenting on your hypocrisy.

Let's see what comes from the horses mouth next.:whiste:

 

[PowerK]

http://gamegpu.ru/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/Crysis 3 beta/crysis_3-beta hq 2560.jpg

Lol, on high settings HD 7970 GHz can't win against GTX 660 Ti.

Does the beta client come with a offline benchmark tool ? How exactly did they benchmark when it is in fact a "multiplayer" game (consistency) ?

 

[f1sherman]

Look at the graphics of Crysis 3 and tell me it's acceptable that HD7970GE and GTX680 run this game at 27-34 fps at 1080P with 4xMSAA given its level of graphics.

Few things that you are forgetting:

• game is still in BETA
  
• AMD driver (the thing that usually needs 6 months or so to mature) is BETA.
  Early BETA when it comes to C3, because by their own admission AMD hasn't been in touch with Crytek and Crysis 3 for very long.
  
• NV driver is BETA

Your own benchmark link suggests that GTX 680 at 1080p, VHQ, 4xMSAA, runs the game at 43fps avg and 33fps minimum.

Regarding the game looks. Suffice to say pretty much everyone out there is still Crytek's bitch, when it comes to engine capabilities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp5bSZmaQto