Ups and Downs on using 4-8SSAA vs 2SSAA

[edpatino 1,960]

Hi:

Probably this topic has been discussed before, but just want to get some ideas about the main advantages and disadvantages of using 4xSSAA or even 8xSSAA vs 2xSSAA, regarding sharpness, FPS and overall experience in P3Dv4.4-v4.3?.

Anticipated thanks.

Cheers, Ed

[Bob Scott 7,716]

This is going to be heavily dependent on screen size and resolution.

4xSSAA kills most of the sparkles and flashing in the distance, where 2X doesn't seem to help that much.  Either is fine w/r/t sharpness.

SSAA at any level is a performance killer with Dynamic Lighting...I use 4xMSAA at night/dawn/dusk when DL is on.

I use 4xSSAA in daytime with Dynamic Lighting off, and with either my old twin 1080Ti SLI setup or my current 2080Ti, I can maintain 30 fps to a 4K monitor even with complex acft+scenery and heavy clouds.

All that said, it's trivially easy to change the AA settings on-the-fly, so I'd recommend you do some back-and-forth swapping to see for yourself what effects it has on your system.  If you have an airport that has lots of small objects like light poles that tend to do the flashy-thing, that's what I would use as a test scenario.

Regards

[PurdueKev 159]

I concur with w6kd - this is SO dependent on your GPU and what resolution you are running.  My experience is pretty similar on my Titan Xp (though I only have a 2440p monitor, not 4k) - I don't see much performance benefit to 2xSSAA over 4xSSAA, but 4xSSAA is definitely much better at eliminating shimmers.  It seems to be a reasonable compromise if you aren't running Dynamic Lighting and your GPU can handle it. 8xSSAA looks gorgeous but is a bit of a 'bridge too far" in terms of performance impact.

Personally I like a seeing sharper, clearer image over lots of objects, so I prefer to back off on autogen density when I need more performance headroom rather than back off on my AA settings.

Your 1080Ti should be able to handle 4xSSAA in a lot of scenarios as the specs are basically similar to my Titan Xp.

Edited January 10, 2019 by PurdueKev

[SunDevil56 183]

8 hours ago, w6kd said:

SSAA at any level is a performance killer with Dynamic Lighting...I use 4xMSAA at night/dawn/dusk when DL is on.

I use 4xSSAA in daytime with Dynamic Lighting off, and with either my old twin 1080Ti SLI setup or my current 2080Ti, I can maintain 30 fps to a 4K monitor even with complex acft+scenery and heavy clouds.

All that said, it's trivially easy to change the AA settings on-the-fly, so I'd recommend you do some back-and-forth swapping to see for yourself what effects it has on your system.  If you have an airport that has lots of small objects like light poles that tend to do the flashy-thing, that's what I would use as a test scenario.

Regards

 

Great info Bob, thanks for posting it....😎

I'm definitely going to have to experiment with these different settings "on the fly" as you said.

[Mikelab6 89]

My observation about SSAA : yes, the shimmers are gone but the VC panel is not as clear as without SSAA, so I like more to use max MSAA setting.

Mike

[Mace 1,902]

On 1/10/2019 at 11:49 AM, edpatino said:

Hi:

Probably this topic has been discussed before, but just want to get some ideas about the main advantages and disadvantages of using 4xSSAA or even 8xSSAA vs 2xSSAA, regarding sharpness, FPS and overall experience in P3Dv4.4-v4.3?.

Anticipated thanks.

Cheers, Ed

For me, since I run 4K I presently feel that the pro's of SSAA do not outweigh the cons.  So my 'typical' settings profile includes 8xMSAA instead and is overall pretty conservative.

Some people say you don't need any AA with 4K, but I find I notice improvement with a little AA applied.