Monday, January 31st 2011

NVIDIA Developing Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing to Compete with MLAA

NVIDIA is developing its own antialiasing (AA) technology to rival morphological antialiasing (MLAA). The subpixel reconstruction antialiasing (SRAA) NVIDIA is currently conducting research on aims to provide better image quality with minimal performance penalty. It "combines single-pixel (1x) shading with subpixel visibility to create antialiased images without increasing the shading cost," as NVIDIA puts it in its research abstract. SRAA is suited for rendering engines that don't use multisample antialiasing (MSAA) since they use deferred shading. For such renderers, SRAA works as a post-processing layer, just like MLAA.

Where SRAA defers from MLAA is that the new algorithm can better respect geometric boundaries and has a fixed runtime independent of scene and image complexity. SRAA benefits shading-bound applications. "For example, our implementation evaluates SRAA in 1.8 ms (1280x720) to yield antialiasing quality comparable to 4-16x shading. Thus SRAA would produce a net speedup over supersampling for applications that spend 1 ms or more on shading; for comparison, most modern games spend 5-10 ms shading. We also describe simplifications that increase performance by reducing quality," claims NVIDIA.
Source: NVIDIA Research
Add your own comment

33 Comments on NVIDIA Developing Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing to Compete with MLAA

#26
Bjorn_Of_Iceland
RejZoRWell, with PhysX its another story because in that case you need a reason for developers to take time and develop with PhysX. Where in SRAA, it doesn't matter. It just works in any game.
Meaning they do not depend on 3rd party developers and as such don't need the attention from the entire user base. It would be nice to have SRAA at least on GeForce 400 series and above, but i don't think it will happen.
Ambient Occlusion is also another example as well..
ViperXTRfrom what i understand, this SRAA is post processing based, similar to MLAA. ITs only applied when the full image/frame is already rendered by the GPU. AMD used DirecCompute for their MLAA and takes advantage of the parallel processing of their GPU to do this post process effect costing much less resources from the GPU. nVidia would prolly use their own CUDA engine to enable this effect. (traditional AA is usually handled by the ROPs in the end of the render pipeline)
I guess that would mean g80 and above if they used their cuda framework for it.
Posted on Reply
#27
Unregistered
Jack DophThat's mainly a driver issue I found.
The current driver (11.1) has removed all those oddities for me :)
I see no difference. The text is still fracked up....:shadedshu
#28
Jack Doph
TAViXI see no difference. The text is still fracked up....:shadedshu
How odd :/
Posted on Reply
#29
Bundy
I don't think nvidia need to do this to win me back. If they can make it work then yes ok I'd take it but I buy on gaming performance value for money, not how tricky the AA can be.
Posted on Reply
#30
Unregistered
MLAA is a blessing for games like Metro, NFS:Hot Pursuit, or Dead Space 2. I think nvidia knows this...
#31
bear jesus
TAViXMLAA is a blessing for games like Metro, NFS:Hot Pursuit, or Dead Space 2. I think nvidia knows this...
That is very true, there are a bunch of games that don't even work with forced AA so having a filter that comes at the end means even those games can have some form of AA making them look much better.
Posted on Reply
#32
ZoneDymo
TAViXMLAA is a blessing for games like Metro, NFS:Hot Pursuit, or Dead Space 2. I think nvidia knows this...
Adding to this list:

AvsP
GTA 4 (+ episodes)
Arma 2
Borderlands
Mafia 2
Posted on Reply
#33
RejZoR
I just play everything with just MLAA ever since it got introduced. The result is similar to 4x or 8x FSAA, yet it's as demanding as 4x or even less. And just works in every game, be it Defense Grid, Sol Survivor, BioShock, NFS Hot Pursuit... but it also works perfectly in AvP, Half-Life 2.
Though it's funny in GTA Vice City. During the day cycle it's not working well, but during the night it's working great. Or vice versa. It seems to be based on the contrast difference during each day cycle.

Anyway, whatever they'll make i'm all for it. Ambient Occlusion is also a good addition on NVIDIA's end that i miss on Radeons. Can't wait to see SRAA in action :)
Posted on Reply
Add your own comment
Nov 25th, 2024 15:38 EST change timezone

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts