Downsampling and FSX with nVidia card

Please ignore if already discussed.

 

 

I have been experimenting with the  technique of downsampling of my monitor to improve the visual appearance of FSX with a minimal setting of in-game AA. 

 

 

This is a tweak for those simmers that are still seeing jagged edges and shimmering even using the excellent graphics set up details provided by Word Not Allowed, ******* and NickN and/or others.  Their tweaks should always be used first, and if the picture quality is still poor downsampling could be worth a try.

 

Note: AA doesn't always work in the game or when you use the nvidia control panel and/or nvidia inspector, so this is  a technique that utilises the resources of the gpu and ensures that AA is applied giving in many cases superior AA to the settings mentioned in the above.

 

 

Downsampling is a simple tweak by instructing your gpu to render FSX at a higher resolution than your monitor's native resolution and then downscale it to fit.  Doing this sharpens the image and as a by product removes jaggies.  There are downsides to downsampling including frame rates, text size, and the fact that it won't work with all gpu's or monitors.

 

 

The technique looks interesting – and is set up via the nvidia control panel.  So say I have a monitor with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 you can set a a downsampling resolution of say 2560 x 1440 (it has to be in proportion of say 1.33, 1.4, 1,5 and so on) and when that is rendered by the video card it is downsampled back to the native resolution and this makes the picture much sharper and if set up correctly with little loss of frame rates.  You can keep raising the resolution until the tweak fails or choose one that gives you the best results.  This is for nvidia cards only and the more powerful the better – my GTX560TI could only manage 1.33 x the native resolution but my GTX 670 went up to 1.5 times.
 

 

 

On my rig I have set my nvidia inspector settings to the nvidia defaults and AA to 'application controlled' with minimal AA settings.  All other settings are left untouched. 

 

 

In the nvidia control panel I have set AA settings to application controlled and again minimal AA settings.  Then I choose "Let the 3D application decide" and apply that.

 

In FSX tick the Anti Aliasing box (and try it without).

In the frs.cfg under Display: 'Mode' enter the new resolution and also try the native resolution

 

 

You apply downsampling via the nvidia control panel as described fully in this link:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

 

 

This second link does the same but it is much more technical than the first and shows more manual settings, for those that want to fine tune their settings..  I only used the first technique.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=346325
 

 

This may not work on all monitors but if it does it could remove some of the jaggy/shimmering effects seen in FSX and give reasonable frame rates.

 

It should work in FS9 too.

 

 

It is very easy to reverse and doesn't usually cause any problems.
Regards

 

pH

Does this have to be corrected before you use another game or can it be set for only FSX?

 

 

Sent from my Apple communications device.

Unfortunately it applies to everything - but is easily reset by clicking a box in the nvidia control panel.

pH

I've been using downsampling for other games like Theatre of War and Achtung Panzer: Operation Star. It works very well and does really help with the graphics quality especially if the anti-aliasing doesn't work with the video card (660 Ti for me) or within the game like it doesn't for these two games.

Doesn't work in windowed mode though. Almost gave it a try :(

 

 

Sent from my Apple communications device.

 

 

You apply downsampling via the nvidia control panel as described fully in this link:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

 

Quoting from that link:

 

"Performance.
What kind of performance to expect? Roughly speaking your performance will be 1/N, where N is supersample value or "how many times more pixels you're rendering".
Example : When downsampling from 3840x2160 to 1920x1080, which is technically 4XSSAA, you're rendering 4 times as many pixels at 3840x2160 as you are at 1920x1080, so you'll be getting 1/4th performace. E.g, if you have 120 fps at 1920x1080 you'll get 30 fps at 3840x2160 in game X ( barring vram limitations, other bottle necks and everything in between )."

 

There would not be too many FSXers having 120 fps to play with.

Even starting at 1.33, 60 fps will come down to 34.

 

gb.

Isn't this just what SparseGridSuperSamlingAA does anyway?  

What is the difference?

Psolk

 

Isn't this just what SparseGridSuperSamlingAA does anyway?  

What is the difference?

 

 

It is more than that in some games there is no guarantee that external applied AA settings will work and this one will because it is hardware drtiven plus the effects here are applied to the whole image and not to just the edges.

 

To William JSS above - I was wrong this tweak only applies to a game where you set the downsampling resolution - in any game or app if you leave the resolution settings at native or recommended then it is not applied.

 

gboz as I say in my original post performance can be affected - - but if you have a powerful graphics card then this may not be as significant as one thinks remembering that the cpu performance will not be affected.  AFAIK the performance would take a greater hit in those games using the gpu for some of the processing.  On a GTX 670 I do see a hit of about 20% when I het above 1.5 x the resoltion but 1.25 x has no effect and still looks OK.

 

pH

 

 

On a GTX 670 I do see a hit of about 20% when I het above 1.5 x the resoltion but 1.25 x has no effect and still looks OK.

 

Ok, good to hear that.

 

gb.