MFAA - on or off? And Shader Cache question

[kendo]

Does anyone know if there is benefit from using MFAA (Multi-Frame Sampled AA) for il-2 BOS?

 

From nVidia Tweak Guide:

Spoiler

 

"MFAA for short, is designed to provide MSAA-like Antialiasing quality at a much lower performance cost. It does this by using sample patterns that aren't fixed, as they are with traditional AA, rather MFAA's sample patterns can be customized to vary from frame to frame, or even within a frame, to remain optimal.

 

The available options for this setting are Off or On. To enable MFAA in a particular game, that game must first support MFAA. [note: I believe this is out of date and that it can now be used with any DX11 game] If a game supports MFAA, then to implement it you must first set the Multi-Frame Sampled AA setting to On, then launch the game and select a level of MSAA to apply. Once MSAA is enabled at 2x or above, MFAA comes into effect, increasing the quality of your chosen MSAA level without a drop in performance. For example, if you enable MFAA in the NVCP, then select 2x MSAA in a game, you will get the equivalent of 4x MSAA quality without any extra drop in performance; set 4x MSAA in the game and MFAA will convert it to 8x MSAA quality for free, and so on."

 

 

I have read different opinions - both that there is no performance cost and so it can just be set globally to 'On', but also that it may negatively affect the CPU in certain cases resulting in a performance hit.

 

I have tried both on and off in pre-4.006 il-2, and didn't see any benefit - actually felt there may have been a slight hit when 'On' (I use Vsync and so fps locked to monitor refresh).

 

With 4.006 and new deferred shading I'm unsure again. Does anyone have any definitive advice here? Or can a dev comment? With the increased hit from using MSAA, it could be useful to know

 

Thanks. 

 

Also, a second question. nVidia (and I suspect AMD) has a Shader cache option. Would there be benefit after a big update such as 4.006 to clear that temporarily so that any new shaders are fully loaded? Could that prevent possible glitches?

Edited May 30, 2020 by kendo

[Retnek]

31 minutes ago, kendo said:

Does anyone know if there is benefit from using MFAA (Multi-Frame Sampled AA) for il-2 BOS?

Easy to check it out yourself: choose FXAA and start a quick-mission on the Moscow-map or Stalingrad-map with your enemies spawning 10 km ago. Long range > 5 km (or so) you see those contacts as black dots going on and off. And the landscape near the horizon is flickering more or less. Try the same using MSAA. Most people prefer MSAA, maybe enhanced with settings in Nvidia-Control-Panel or the Nvidia-Inspector.

[kendo]

Thanks for reply Retnek, but I'm talking about MFAA, not MSAA. (I know too many different types - it gets confusing.)

 

It's this setting in nVidia:

 

 

Explained in the spoiler what MFAA does - if it works it will give better MSAA quality for lower performance hit.

 

Trying it on my own PC,  I don't see any visual or performance improvement from having it on. In fact things seem just a little bit smoother with it off (less microstutters)

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by kendo

[Lusekofte]

On the early days I read that any AA should be done by the software itself. 
But I guess that was in the stoneage 

There where topics about what should be on and global 

[VR-DriftaholiC]

I've only tested in VR and saw no improvement. As I understand a driver level override won't work if it's not implemented by the developers. Though you can set the game to MSAA X4 and then run a benchmark with MFAA on and off to see if you see a performance improvement that would indicate it's working.

 

MFAA isn't better quality it's more like: MSAA 4X > MSAA 4X w/MFAA > MSAA 2X  > MSAA 2X w/ MFAA

 

So MSAA 4X  with MFAA can give nearly the quality of MSAA 4X with maybe a litter less movement artifacts and some better performance because you're only sampling each frame at 2X but then also sampling in the opposing 2X samples of the past frame as well. 

Edited May 31, 2020 by VR-DriftaholiC

[Retnek]

22 hours ago, kendo said:

Thanks for reply Retnek, but I'm talking about MFAA, not MSAA. (I know too many different types - it gets confusing.)

Sorry for not reading ... GOOD question. I'll try that option and let you know. Afaik that option somehow needs or at least interacts with MSAA. And long ago there has been a reason not to use it. Can't remember that, so it's worth some reading and testing.

 

PS: here it is - in this thread are some good reasons not to use it:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/81drsj/is_mfaa_dead/

 

Anyhow, I'm curious to check the effect of it, I'll try.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Retnek

[kendo]

Did some more testing and again, see no difference in visual quality or fps using MFAA with MSAA set to x4. So have reverted to keeping MFAA switched off.

 

The sim is looking really good now though. Setting Anistropic Filtering to x16, and Antialiasing Gamma Correction to Off in nVidia seems to help visually (for me anyway). (AF for the cockpits and ground textures - subtle improvement. Gamma correction off for the antenna wires)

[Retnek]

8 hours ago, kendo said:

.... So have reverted to keeping MFAA switched off ...

 

... Anisotropic Filtering to x16 ... for the cockpits and ground textures

 

... Anti-aliasing Gamma Correction to Off for the antenna wires

MFAA - same here, can't see any impact, not for the picture or the FPS: off

 

Anisotropic Filtering via Nvidia-Control-Panel plus MSAA in-game, right? It seems to make the contacts show up a bit later: application-control

 

Anti-aliasing Gamma Correction - can't see an impact on the (any-time ever always) jagged antenna wires , but it might light up my far-off contacts (> 5-6 km distance) while I need them as dark as possible: off

 

Anti-aliasing mode via Nvidia-Control-Panel - I used "enhance" with Multisample or 2x Supersample quite often. But now it seems to reduce the contrast for far-off contacts a bit: off

 

All in all it feels the graphic settings before the last quick patch have been a bit better for my rig. 4.006d or e are somewhat reduced to detect contacts. BUT that's very difficult for me to check out now. I bet if some-one makes a blind-test with me I wont detect most of those changes. Compared to other factors like me being tired, eyes being tired, background light in the PC-room etc pp most of this Nvidia-fine-tuning might not be that relevant at all.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Retnek
typo (as always)

[kendo]

I know what you mean. Detecting differences - we can fool ourselves very easily.

 

Any effects from those settings are pretty subtle, but I'll keep them for now at least.

 

I've also switched off Low Latency Mode, where previously 'On' seemed to help me a little in busy Career missions, now it seems not to at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[VR-DriftaholiC]

14 hours ago, kendo said:

Did some more testing and again, see no difference in visual quality or fps using MFAA with MSAA set to x4. So have reverted to keeping MFAA switched off.

 

The sim is looking really good now though. Setting Anistropic Filtering to x16, and Antialiasing Gamma Correction to Off in nVidia seems to help visually (for me anyway). (AF for the cockpits and ground textures - subtle improvement. Gamma correction off for the antenna wires)

Thanks for verifying everything I read says MFAA needs to be enabled by the developers. Personally it's old tech and with the advent of 4K AA isn't needed.