Guild Wars 2

Hi Folks,

I just wanted to let you know that the famous AA settings for GW2 website How-To has been updated. This guide will help with the following:

• Get better AA than the games in-game FXAA
• More performance than ArenaNet’s FXAA settings
• Less in-game Blur than FXAA
• Legal (this will NOT get you banned, this is NOT an injector)
• Does not require any file modifications to the game or your operating system
• Easy instructions

URL:
http://ipkonfig.com/guild-wars-2-bringing-antialiasing-to-the-game

I have been using it since last year and have found it to be extremely helpful. GW2 never looked so good! (please bookmark the URL above as ArenaNet despises ipKonfig.com and will remove this thread)

Sample image with GridSuperSampling

This only works for nVidia.

Do you know of a similar ATI solution?

God Of Fissures.8627:

This only works for nVidia.

Do you know of a similar ATI solution?

I have heard that ATI cards will allow you to set the Force AA setting and works. Give that a try.

since apparently this doesn’t work with AMD/ATI cards I’m gonna give this a try with my graphics drivers and see if I can get any results lol

FXAA is pretty light weight in terms of frame rate drop. So I don’t what you are talking about poor performance. Blurring, well that’s understandable it is a “fake” anti-alias method being a post process filter that’s run on the completed frame rather than something like MSAA which is done while the frame is being rendered. Same way DoF blur is done (FXAA that is).

FXAA guesses at what is a valid edge by changes in the luminescence of adjacent pixels and if it exceeds a threshold it’s classified as an edge and blurred (layman’s version). It’s quick, doesn’t use much frame memory if any and like a lot of things in GPUs over the years, a quick and dirty way to get a good approximation of the effect you are going for, much like how AF was done over the years but now is actually pretty darn accurate (every see the old colored “star burst” pictures from AF tests) due to the raw horsepower of a pile of simple FPP and a lot of graphics memory bandwidth.

Go outside and look around at the world. Then put on thick glasses and look around. That’s FXAA. It does nothing but add, as you said, fake AA.

It’s much like the episode on Happy Days when Mr. Cunningham bought a color filter card to place on his black and white television in hopes of making it look like his TV was a color unit. FXAA does the same thing.

As for performance I have very, very high standards for what a game should produce. My system, too, is not the same as yours. I gain around 15fps using the AA above in areas where there is fog and other terrain anomalies. Not all systems will react, but these settings are far superior than ArenaNet’s lacking attempt. Nvidia would even agree.

One area I laugh at, and its one of many, is the wood floor in the Broker building in LA. No matter what AA is used the floor is so jagged and has shown no effort whatsoever by ArenaNet to polish the games smooth look. Too much time went into the games brush stroke look when all that work could have been complementing their artwork with better in-game AA.

To me when companies use FXAA they are simply looking for a cheap fix without effort.

Wait so you are telling me that turning FXAA off you are getting 15fps more? Or that when you force one of the other “standard” AA methods that you lose 15fps? Because FXAA is only a fancy filter run over the completed frame, it shouldn’t take much time at all and that’s the point of it. Fewer jaggies for little loss in performance but with occasional mistakes causing blurring of textures.

You get what’s on the tin, the good and the bad. That’s why companies are embracing it. Anything that doesn’t lower performance in those benchmarks every site uses. Gaming benchmarks sell cards so nVidia and AMD is asking devs to add FXAA so the AA/AF ultra setting benchmarks look better than if they used MSAA.

My poor 680s cry when I force anti aliasing like that =(.

With 4x MSAA, 4x SGSSAA and -1.000 Negative LOD to compensate for blur.

Crawford.4135:

It’s much like the episode on Happy Days when Mr. Cunningham bought a color filter card to place on his black and white television in hopes of making it look like his TV was a color unit. FXAA does the same thing.

Yet more proof that I’m old: not only do I know exactly what you’re referring to, but I actually saw that episode when it was first broadcast.

Conversely, all the young folk here likely have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to.

I’m old.