Disable Anti-Alialising on planes option

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

Dear IL2 Team,

 

as you may already know, AA significantly decreases the visibility of medium to long range contacts, making it less than desirable for spotting contacts.

 

If you are not already aware of it, the VR-enhancer mod by @C6_lefuneste features the ability to disable AA for other planes, and given that it has been added by a member of the community, I would appreciate it if it was also added as a native in game solution.

Alternatively, I think the perfect solution to this would be a selectable plane AA distance, outside of which AA won‘t be applied to planes.
This way, we can benefit of the eye candy without losing the ability to spot in the distance. 

 

Kind regards

 

Edit: Link to the quoted mod

 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by So_ein_Feuerball

[SharpeXB]

Turning off AA makes the game and/or the planes look like garbage. And it doesn’t make spotting or IDing better since whole prices of them can alias out of view. What a terrible idea, no thanks ?

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Turning off AA makes the game and/or the planes look like garbage. And it doesn’t make spotting or IDing better since whole prices of them can alias out of view. What a terrible idea, no thanks ?

If you read my original post carefully, you may notice that I agree with you regarding the visual quality of AA off.
 

But I very much disagree with the spotting part. AA noticeably reduces the visibility of planes against the ground and the sky. This is especially so in VR, and this impression is corroborated by the majority of people I‘ve asked.

 

But then again, opinions differ, which is why I suggested there being an option to disable AA on planes only. 
 

As for IDing, I think this would be remedied if my second suggestion  were implemented. With AA on planes activated spotting only becomes an issue at medium to long distances after all.

Edited May 22, 2023 by FTCChilliBalls

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

90% of ppl that i asked, fly with AA off, for better spotting.

 

Yes , game looks pretty bad, but its our only way for see something. 

 

[SharpeXB]

7 hours ago, FTCChilliBalls said:

But then again, opinions differ, which is why I suggested there being an option to disable AA on planes only. 

Which is funny because this game used to have a terrible bug where the AA would disappear on planes as they flew in front of clouds. Now you’re essentially asking for that bug as an option.

I can’t agree about the lack of AA helping with spotting, Cliffs of Dover originally lacked AA and this made spotting the aircraft terrible because entire pieces of them such as wings etc would just vanish with the aliasing. Without AA the planes turn into a jagged mess which makes them disappear into terrain. 

I don’t think we want any options which encourage players to look at an ugly game. 

38 minutes ago, GOA_Karaya_VR said:

90% of ppl that i asked, fly with AA off, for better spotting.

 

Yes , game looks pretty bad, but it’s our only way for see something. 

 please let’s not encourage this behavior. 

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Which is funny because this game used to have a terrible bug where the AA would disappear on planes as they flew in front of clouds. Now you’re essentially asking for that bug as an option.

I can’t agree about the lack of AA helping with spotting, Cliffs of Dover originally lacked AA and this made spotting the aircraft terrible because entire pieces of them such as wings etc would just vanish with the aliasing. Without AA the planes turn into a jagged mess which makes them disappear into terrain. 

I don’t think we want any options which encourage players to look at an ugly game. 

 please let’s not encourage this behavior. 

 

Sadly,  by the moment that i'm writting this, there is no other method that we can use for improve the contact visibility. 

 

Yes, it looks pretty crappy without aa, but what we can do?

[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, GOA_Karaya_VR said:

 

Sadly,  by the moment that i'm writting this, there is no other method that we can use for improve the contact visibility. 

 

Yes, it looks pretty crappy without aa, but what we can do?

The visibility in this game is really good, I’m not sure why you think it needs so much more work. 

[MAJ_Boatswain]

37 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

The visibility in this game is really good, I’m not sure why you think it needs so much more work. 

 

Ther is a very noticeable difference here that really plays into your periphery ability to 'pick out' a target against the context of a moving background.  The one on the right - with no AA at all, is much more noticeable because of how dark and sharp the pixel is.  

It doesn't look as smooth - and has much less defined detail - but your eye would pick it out much sooner against a low-contrast background, than the image on the left.



But there's another issue at work here as well that plays even more against your spotting - Your resolution.  Running at 4k resolution will render contacts that are so small on the screen at certain Levels of Detail that your eye simply cannot pick them out of a detailed background.  Couple that with the AA and you've got a very slightly less grey pixel, that is nano-meters across - going against a large pixel at lower resolution, that has a sharp contrast to it with defined edging on a lower resolution.  

It absolutely makes a difference, more than AA does. But AA does make a difference. This has been community tested dozens of times and any idle search on youtube will render comparisons.


The big issue is that IL2 does not scale the physical screen-size of it's Levels of Detail to your resolution.  This means that a LoD noting a single pixel on a 1080p screen may be 4 nanometers across.  That exact same level of detail object on a 4k screen will be points of a nanometer across.  To equate the spotting ability of your human eye in picking detail on the screen, you'd need a screen at least 4x the physical size of the 1080p screen you're referencing.  

If you're playing on a 32-inch monitor, you'd need one over 100 inches to come close to the spotting ability you had at that lower resolution. 

Until the game takes into account the smaller pixel-sizes of higher resolutions, the biggest detriment to spotting is playing at high resolution. 2nd biggest, is anti-aliasing.  

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, MAJ_Boatswain said:

 

Ther is a very noticeable difference here that really plays into your periphery ability to 'pick out' a target against the context of a moving background.  The one on the right - with no AA at all, is much more noticeable because of how dark and sharp the pixel is.  

It doesn't look as smooth - and has much less defined detail - but your eye would pick it out much sooner against a low-contrast background, than the image on the left.



But there's another issue at work here as well that plays even more against your spotting - Your resolution.  Running at 4k resolution will render contacts that are so small on the screen at certain Levels of Detail that your eye simply cannot pick them out of a detailed background.  Couple that with the AA and you've got a very slightly less grey pixel, that is nano-meters across - going against a large pixel at lower resolution, that has a sharp contrast to it with defined edging on a lower resolution.  

It absolutely makes a difference, more than AA does. But AA does make a difference. This has been community tested dozens of times and any idle search on youtube will render comparisons.


The big issue is that IL2 does not scale the physical screen-size of it's Levels of Detail to your resolution.  This means that a LoD noting a single pixel on a 1080p screen may be 4 nanometers across.  That exact same level of detail object on a 4k screen will be points of a nanometer across.  To equate the spotting ability of your human eye in picking detail on the screen, you'd need a screen at least 4x the physical size of the 1080p screen you're referencing.  

If you're playing on a 32-inch monitor, you'd need one over 100 inches to come close to the spotting ability you had at that lower resolution. 

Until the game takes into account the smaller pixel-sizes of higher resolutions, the biggest detriment to spotting is playing at high resolution. 2nd biggest, is anti-aliasing.  

All the targets in that video look easily visible in the game. The 0x AA one just looks jagged and messy and will be harder to ID. Do a test against ground texture and see what 0x AA looks like against the flickering terrain. And again all this does is make the game look like ?

Edited May 23, 2023 by SharpeXB

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

When AA is set to  2x  , biplane wings do disappear when the coulds are behind them. Clouds extreme, ultra present. Tested at@3440x1440

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

19 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I can’t agree about the lack of AA helping with spotting, Cliffs of Dover originally lacked AA and this made spotting the aircraft terrible because entire pieces of them such as wings etc would just vanish with the aliasing. Without AA the planes turn into a jagged mess which makes them disappear into terrain. 

I‘m not sure how valid a comparison between the implementations in different engines is. 
 

What you write also disagrees with my own experience as well as the anecdotal experiences from those I have asked.

 

According to those two anecdotal sources, the AA implementation, both MSAA and FXAA, in the GB engine significantly reduces the visibility of contacts by smearing the edges of the contacts with the surrounding scenery, against the sky but especially against the ground.

 

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

13 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

All the targets in that video look easily visible in the game. The 0x AA one just looks jagged and messy and will be harder to ID. Do a test against ground texture and see what 0x AA looks like against the flickering terrain. And again all this does is make the game look like ?

The game looks like ( that ) without AA, but at least you can spot something , its not our fault that we have to degrate the quality of the game for been better aware of the enemy or any contact.

 

But you cant asure that AA on and AA off dont make a diference ( Look closely the video that Boatswaines upload ).

[MAJ_Boatswain]

17 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

All the targets in that video look easily visible in the game. The 0x AA one just looks jagged and messy and will be harder to ID. Do a test against ground texture and see what 0x AA looks like against the flickering terrain. And again all this does is make the game look like ?

Not sure what you're attempting to argue for, here.  The factual evidence is posted in several forum posts, youtube, discord and elsewhere.  

Perhaps you're misunderstanding us. 
1. The images you're seeing are zoomed in. Of course they look easily discernable in that video.  You must be able to take what you're seeing in the video, and visualize it in a practical game scenario.  
2. No one is saying that aircraft are not visible - they are saying it is more difficult to discern them from the background with anti-aliasing.  

That is because of how anti-aliasing works - by using averages of color and contrast from other pixels around the edges of objects to blend them for a softer edge. 

As an example - 

1. Take a light-grey background.  
2. Put two single-pixel dots spaced apart on it.
3. Make one dot a dark black, and sharp
4. Make the other a grey dot, and fuzzy
5. Which one will your eye notice first?  

Yes, they can both be seen - but in the landscape and context of head tracking, and movement, anyone would spot the darker, more contrasted pixels faster.  That's not an opinion. That's science. It is why you have trouble reading grey text on a grey background, why you have trouble seeing at night, it is why humans have used any source of light besides the sun since pre-history...our eyes have evolved to pick out objects that represent contrast to their surroundings. It is why camouflage works.  Our eyes have trouble separating the similar colors of a target, from the background it is made to resemble. 

When you have an aliasing program that blends edges, it does that by lowering the contrast between those edges for a softer feel. Larger objects are still easily seen - but smaller, pixelated objects do blend, per the design, and intent, of that program.  And your eyes, as such, lose a little bit of their ability to notice those objects outright, when they are presented against a moving, dynamic background.  

[SharpeXB]

13 hours ago, FTCChilliBalls said:

I‘m not sure how valid a comparison between the implementations in different engines is. 
 

What you write also disagrees with my own experience as well as the anecdotal experiences from those I have asked.

 

According to those two anecdotal sources, the AA implementation, both MSAA and FXAA, in the GB engine significantly reduces the visibility of contacts by smearing the edges of the contacts with the surrounding scenery, against the sky but especially against the ground.

 

Why anecdotal sources? You can’t tell for yourself? 
When I mention CloD I’m referring to the 2011 vanilla version. I don’t know how the TF one is. 

9 hours ago, GOA_Karaya_VR said:

The game looks like ( that ) without AA, but at least you can spot something , its not our fault that we have to degrate the quality of the game for been better aware of the enemy or any contact.

 

But you cant asure that AA on and AA off dont make a diference ( Look closely the video that Boatswaines upload ).

I saw the Boatswaines video. All the examples look visible to me. 

6 hours ago, MAJ_Boatswain said:

Not sure what you're attempting to argue for, here.  The factual evidence is posted in several forum posts, youtube, discord and elsewhere.  

Perhaps you're misunderstanding us. 
1. The images you're seeing are zoomed in. Of course they look easily discernable in that video.  You must be able to take what you're seeing in the video, and visualize it in a practical game scenario.  
2. No one is saying that aircraft are not visible - they are saying it is more difficult to discern them from the background with anti-aliasing.  

That is because of how anti-aliasing works - by using averages of color and contrast from other pixels around the edges of objects to blend them for a softer edge. 

As an example - 

1. Take a light-grey background.  
2. Put two single-pixel dots spaced apart on it.
3. Make one dot a dark black, and sharp
4. Make the other a grey dot, and fuzzy
5. Which one will your eye notice first?  

Yes, they can both be seen - but in the landscape and context of head tracking, and movement, anyone would spot the darker, more contrasted pixels faster.  That's not an opinion. That's science. It is why you have trouble reading grey text on a grey background, why you have trouble seeing at night, it is why humans have used any source of light besides the sun since pre-history...our eyes have evolved to pick out objects that represent contrast to their surroundings. It is why camouflage works.  Our eyes have trouble separating the similar colors of a target, from the background it is made to resemble. 

When you have an aliasing program that blends edges, it does that by lowering the contrast between those edges for a softer feel. Larger objects are still easily seen - but smaller, pixelated objects do blend, per the design, and intent, of that program.  And your eyes, as such, lose a little bit of their ability to notice those objects outright, when they are presented against a moving, dynamic background.  

Yeah but 0xAA looks like ?You can write a big analysis of it but it still looks like ?

antialiasing blends edges and makes the aircraft outline more discernible 

Hey do whatever you will. I would prefer the game doesn’t look horrible. 
Nothing the devs do will stop people from complaining about this stuff so I’m sure they’re done with it, you’re on your own. 

Edited May 24, 2023 by SharpeXB

[GOA_Karaya_VR]

34 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Why anecdotal sources? You can’t tell for yourself? 
When I mention CloD I’m referring to the 2011 vanilla version. I don’t know how the TF one is. 

I saw the Boatswaines video. All the examples look visible to me. 

Yeah but 0xAA looks like ?You can write a big analysis of it but it still looks like ?

antialiasing blends edges and makes the aircraft outline more discernible 

Hey do whatever you will. I would prefer the game doesn’t look horrible. 
Nothing the devs do will stop people from complaining about this stuff so I’m sure they’re done with it, you’re on your own. 

 

 

[SharpeXB]

18 minutes ago, GOA_Karaya_VR said:

 

 

All those examples are equally visible in the game when they’re moving. An aircraft 1 mile away is easy to see in this game. 

Edited May 24, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Enceladus828]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

When I mention CloD I’m referring to the 2011 vanilla version. I don’t know how the TF one is.

It's great, lightyears better than the 2011 version.

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

15 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Why anecdotal sources? You can’t tell for yourself? 

The term anecdotal includes my own word, which seems to not be enough for you.

Additionally, you are the first person I have encountered who claims that AA doesn‘t reduce contact visibility in the GB engine.

 

Quote

When I mention CloD I’m referring to the 2011 vanilla version. I don’t know how the TF one is. 

 

And again, CLOD uses a completely different game engine than GB, you can‘t just compare the two. There‘s a multitude of possible differences which could interfere with visibility.

 

  

14 hours ago, GOA_Karaya_VR said:

 

 

As for this, it is quite obvious that the uppermost plane is the most visible of the three.

Visible as opposed to recognisable, there being a difference between the two terms.

 

The top most picture contrasts the most agains the background,

whereas the lower right one is the least contrasting one.

 

Furthermore, this difference is quite noticeable at only 1km distance. 

That is not the distance I am talking about.

 

Quote

Yeah but 0xAA looks like ?You can write a big analysis of it but it still looks like ?

[...]I would prefer the game doesn’t look horrible. 

The entire point being that the game would not look "?", 

if the devs implemented the option of having AA on on anything but the planes.

Edited May 24, 2023 by FTCChilliBalls

[SharpeXB]

4 hours ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

And again, CLOD uses a completely different game engine than GB, you can‘t just compare the two.

The lack of AA observed there has a similar effect. That was the only one of these games where I thought the spotting was so horrible it just couldn’t be played. And a big part of that was the lack of AA. So when I see people doing that intentionally

now it’s just laughable to me. I already know what a flight sim looks like in 1080p with 0xAA. No thanks. 

4 hours ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

The entire point being that the game would not look "?", 

if the devs implemented the option of having AA on on anything but the planes.

Again the game literally used to have this bug and it was pretty awful to look at. 
 

Suit yourself and make the game look like ?but don’t expect many people to agree with you. 

Edited May 24, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Enceladus828]

Quote

And again, CLOD uses a completely different game engine than GB, you can‘t just compare the two.

 

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

The lack of AA observed there has a similar effect. That was the only one of these games where I thought the spotting was so horrible it just couldn’t be played. And a big part of that was the lack of AA. So when I see people doing that intentionally now it’s just laughable to me. I already know what a flight sim looks like in 1080p with 0xAA. No thanks. 

I find it very strange that you declared here that "Whatever state it’s in now, CloD shouldn’t be held up as an example of anything except what not to do when making a flight sim." yet you are listing the comparisons between GBs and CloD ?

 

And seriously man, do you think it's really worth continuing in this thread?? Maybe it's best for a man in his mid-50s to just to let it go.

[LukeFF]

Tone down some of the comments, please, or this one is going to be locked. 

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

9 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Again the game literally used to have this bug and it was pretty awful to look at. 

Maybe you could quantify your claims a bit more?

Because as of yet you've only been stating opinions through emojis,

which I find rather uninformative aside from your aversion.

 

How would the game look worse than it does currently without AA?

Are there any averse effects on the visuals of the game aside from those we already see when playing without AA?

Because if not, I'd be perfectly happy with that solution.   

 

Additionally, if you tried out the mod I linked in the original post of this thread,

you could check whether what I am proposing even looks like the bug you're referring to.

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

Maybe you could quantify your claims a bit more?

The game literally used to do what the OP asked for (AA on planes turned off in front of clouds), people complained that it looked pretty awful. I agree. So I think it’s odd to ask for that again. 

5 hours ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

Are there any averse effects on the visuals of the game aside from those we already see when playing without AA?

I wouldn’t want to see any more encouragement for the players to make the game look awful or be encouraged to do that myself. Right now if you feel this 0xAA exploit it worth anything you still have to face the compromise of the overall game looking bad. 

 

5 hours ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

Additionally, if you tried out the mod I linked in the original post of this thread,

No I try to avoid using mods. It doesn’t seem like a bad solution but that’s a different game with a different issue. 

5 hours ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

Because as of yet you've only been stating opinions through emojis

Sometimes words can’t covey how bad I think a game looks without AA ?

[SharpeXB]

On 5/22/2023 at 7:42 PM, MAJ_Boatswain said:

 

Ther is a very noticeable difference here that really plays into your periphery ability to 'pick out' a target against the context of a moving background.  The one on the right - with no AA at all, is much more noticeable because of how dark and sharp the pixel is.  

It doesn't look as smooth - and has much less defined detail - but your eye would pick it out much sooner against a low-contrast background, than the image on the left.



But there's another issue at work here as well that plays even more against your spotting - Your resolution.  Running at 4k resolution will render contacts that are so small on the screen at certain Levels of Detail that your eye simply cannot pick them out of a detailed background.  Couple that with the AA and you've got a very slightly less grey pixel, that is nano-meters across - going against a large pixel at lower resolution, that has a sharp contrast to it with defined edging on a lower resolution.  

It absolutely makes a difference, more than AA does. But AA does make a difference. This has been community tested dozens of times and any idle search on youtube will render comparisons.


The big issue is that IL2 does not scale the physical screen-size of it's Levels of Detail to your resolution.  This means that a LoD noting a single pixel on a 1080p screen may be 4 nanometers across.  That exact same level of detail object on a 4k screen will be points of a nanometer across.  To equate the spotting ability of your human eye in picking detail on the screen, you'd need a screen at least 4x the physical size of the 1080p screen you're referencing.  

If you're playing on a 32-inch monitor, you'd need one over 100 inches to come close to the spotting ability you had at that lower resolution. 

Until the game takes into account the smaller pixel-sizes of higher resolutions, the biggest detriment to spotting is playing at high resolution. 2nd biggest, is anti-aliasing.  

What’s confusing about that example is it’s mixing DSR with the AA which, first makes the effect of AA alone hard to distinguish and second DSR is in itself a form of AA. In my experience with DSR it simply doesn’t add that much clarity and comes at a huge performance cost. Not really worthwhile IMO
It’s worth noting the AA in this game goes up to 8x. Why not test that?

Edited May 25, 2023 by SharpeXB

[FTC_ChilliBalls]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

The game literally used to do what the OP asked for (AA on planes turned off in front of clouds), people complained that it looked pretty awful. I agree.

I am the OP ?

 

Tbh, I‘m not quite sure whether the bug you‘re referring to is exactly applicable to the situation, especially since it only occurred in front of clouds. Would need dev confirmation IMO.

 

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

I wouldn’t want to see any more encouragement for the players to make the game look awful or be encouraged to do that myself. Right now if you feel this 0xAA exploit it worth anything you still have to face the compromise of the overall game looking bad. 

Tbh unless you force AA on, there‘ll be people who, understandably, won‘t use it. I rather see it the other way around, as AA is an option which increases visual fidelity at the cost of contact visibility.

 

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

No I try to avoid using mods. It doesn’t seem like a bad solution but that’s a different game with a different issue. 

 

Totally understandable, I usually also try to avoid them like the pest for MP compatibility‘s sake, but I don’t think your vehemence against the feature I would like to see as an option in the unmodded game is pretty insubstantial unless you actually tried it.

Edited May 25, 2023 by FTC_ChilliBalls

[RNAS10_Mitchell]

Watching this thread with much interest (please don't lock it) as my squad mates tend to see contacts earlier than I do.  If there is a legitimate way to change that, I'd like to know about it.

[SharpeXB]

16 minutes ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

Tbh, I‘m not quite sure whether the bug you‘re referring to is exactly applicable to the situation, especially since it only occurred in front of clouds. Would need dev confirmation IMO.

It literally created the effect you’re asking for when aircraft were in front of clouds. 

 

17 minutes ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

AA is an option which increases visual fidelity at the cost of contact visibility.

Have you tried 8xAA? Visually fidelity and spotting should go hand in hand IMO. The game shouldn’t give incentive for people to lower their graphics or use outdated screens. That may be wishful thinking…

19 minutes ago, FTC_ChilliBalls said:

I don’t think your vehemence against the feature I would like to see as an option in the unmodded game is pretty insubstantial unless you actually tried it.

The DCS mod is an attempted solution to a problem that doesn’t exist in IL-2 mainly that DCS uses a pixel sized sprite over distant aircraft. I don’t believe IL-2 does that, nor should it. 

[356thFS_Melonfish]

Pretty simple way to answer this, throw a poll up:

Do you fly with AA on or off?

What resolution do you fly?

Do you use VR

Is spotting easier with AA on or off?

 

Should give you a decent dataset to work from.