FXAA or TAA - can't decide

XomRhoK · May 2020

TAA looks more realistic

asuzab16_ESO wrote: »

The TAA one actually looks sharper (I was expecting the opposite...), the antialiasing is much better and more importantly, the flickering is completely gone.

Try to check at the new character pick screen, if you will look at trees and tower at the background you can clearly see difference in all options: None, FXAA, TAA. With TAA i have flickering at background tower.
As i mentioned above TAA remove flickering from shining metal armor, but adds to towers and roofs, it can be clearly see on towers and roofs in Summerset.

virtus753 · May 2020

mikikatze wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

I'd like to give TAA more time to grow on me, but switching back to FXAA to compare seems to have done away with (or at least vastly reduced) the stutter that was occurring every time a mob dropped dead. I don't know why TAA would cause such a thing, or if it was some ridiculously strange coincidence, but it was like night and day between the two settings for me.

Same for me. Game felt completely broken after the upgrade, even though it played fine on PTS. After switching just back and forth between these two options it ran smoothly again.

As for the general question, no preference.

Thanks for confirming this. I thought I was going crazy.

Dr_Sinister · May 2020

Do you want to run smooth = No AA

Do you want 20 fps = AA

If you want to use TAA or FXAA, lower your shadows and draw distance to make up for the fps loss
With TAA off I have roughly 100 fps(capped) That's at 4k

With TAA on I have about 40 fps/ That's at 4k as well

virtus753 · May 2020

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

Do you want to run smooth = No AA

Do you want 20 fps = AA

If you want to use TAA or FXAA, lower your shadows and draw distance to make up for the fps loss
With TAA off I have roughly 100 fps(capped) That's at 4k

With TAA on I have about 40 fps/ That's at 4k as well

I understand that AA takes its toll on performance and lowers fps across the board. What I don’t understand is why TAA would introduce or severely exacerbate a stutter that occurs when mobs die, especially when xp gains appear on screen, while FXAA does not (or not nearly so noticeably). Other than that, TAA was running fine for me.

Dr_Sinister · May 2020

virtus753 wrote: »

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

Do you want to run smooth = No AA

Do you want 20 fps = AA

If you want to use TAA or FXAA, lower your shadows and draw distance to make up for the fps loss
With TAA off I have roughly 100 fps(capped) That's at 4k

With TAA on I have about 40 fps/ That's at 4k as well

I understand that AA takes its toll on performance and lowers fps across the board. What I don’t understand is why TAA would introduce or severely exacerbate a stutter that occurs when mobs die, especially when xp gains appear on screen, while FXAA does not (or not nearly so noticeably). Other than that, TAA was running fine for me.

What are you system specs including screen resolution?

virtus753 · May 2020

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

Do you want to run smooth = No AA

Do you want 20 fps = AA

If you want to use TAA or FXAA, lower your shadows and draw distance to make up for the fps loss
With TAA off I have roughly 100 fps(capped) That's at 4k

With TAA on I have about 40 fps/ That's at 4k as well

I understand that AA takes its toll on performance and lowers fps across the board. What I don’t understand is why TAA would introduce or severely exacerbate a stutter that occurs when mobs die, especially when xp gains appear on screen, while FXAA does not (or not nearly so noticeably). Other than that, TAA was running fine for me.

What are you system specs including screen resolution?

1080p Acer monitor (set to 144Hz)
Radeon RX480 4GB
i3-6100
16GB 3000Mhz RAM (DDR4, I think, if that matters here)
Windows 10

It’s a budget build from three and a half years ago (bottlenecked by the CPU, from what I understand) and will be getting a proper upgrade this fall. It can still maintain 90+ fps with high textures outside of densely packed cities and Cyro fights, provided I have shadows and reflections on low, turn off the bloom/grass/rays/additional effects, etc.

My curiosity is mainly that I’d heard FXAA is more expensive, while TAA should be less so. Is that in terms of GPU only, and the TAA is more taxing on the CPU? If so, why the enormous stutter in that one situation? I’d love to know what goes on behind the scenes in terms of killing a mob/displaying xp that causes things to choke with TAA but not FXAA. I understand some of the theoretical differences between the two but can’t see what might be causing the stutter.

Thanks for your insights.

Dr_Sinister · May 2020

virtus753 wrote: »

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

Do you want to run smooth = No AA

Do you want 20 fps = AA

If you want to use TAA or FXAA, lower your shadows and draw distance to make up for the fps loss
With TAA off I have roughly 100 fps(capped) That's at 4k

With TAA on I have about 40 fps/ That's at 4k as well

I understand that AA takes its toll on performance and lowers fps across the board. What I don’t understand is why TAA would introduce or severely exacerbate a stutter that occurs when mobs die, especially when xp gains appear on screen, while FXAA does not (or not nearly so noticeably). Other than that, TAA was running fine for me.

What are you system specs including screen resolution?

1080p Acer monitor (set to 144Hz)
Radeon RX480 4GB
i3-6100
16GB 3000Mhz RAM (DDR4, I think, if that matters here)
Windows 10

It’s a budget build from three and a half years ago (bottlenecked by the CPU, from what I understand) and will be getting a proper upgrade this fall. It can still maintain 90+ fps with high textures outside of densely packed cities and Cyro fights, provided I have shadows and reflections on low, turn off the bloom/grass/rays/additional effects, etc.

My curiosity is mainly that I’d heard FXAA is more expensive, while TAA should be less so. Is that in terms of GPU only, and the TAA is more taxing on the CPU? If so, why the enormous stutter in that one situation? I’d love to know what goes on behind the scenes in terms of killing a mob/displaying xp that causes things to choke with TAA but not FXAA. I understand some of the theoretical differences between the two but can’t see what might be causing the stutter.

Thanks for your insights.

With your setup, no AA is beneficial and not going to change much in terms of visual appearance.

adilazimdegilx · May 2020

TAA looks more realistic

For comparison:

Performance hits,
FXAA - 0-1%
TAA - 1-3%
4K_NOAA - 35%
4K_TAA - 36-40%

For me, addition of TAA is really nice as it is noticeable better than FXAA on some edges. But it seems to darken the blacks. It does not bother me too much though. Bigger problem for TAA is it causes 'Flickering' on distant blurry or edgy objects like trees with leaves. It is very noticable on character selection screen where we now have a distant blurry building behind (Greymorr patch). While moving this also gets less noticable so it does not affect gameplay much.

virtus753 · May 2020

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Dr_Sinister wrote: »

Do you want to run smooth = No AA

Do you want 20 fps = AA

If you want to use TAA or FXAA, lower your shadows and draw distance to make up for the fps loss
With TAA off I have roughly 100 fps(capped) That's at 4k

With TAA on I have about 40 fps/ That's at 4k as well

I understand that AA takes its toll on performance and lowers fps across the board. What I don’t understand is why TAA would introduce or severely exacerbate a stutter that occurs when mobs die, especially when xp gains appear on screen, while FXAA does not (or not nearly so noticeably). Other than that, TAA was running fine for me.

What are you system specs including screen resolution?

1080p Acer monitor (set to 144Hz)
Radeon RX480 4GB
i3-6100
16GB 3000Mhz RAM (DDR4, I think, if that matters here)
Windows 10

It’s a budget build from three and a half years ago (bottlenecked by the CPU, from what I understand) and will be getting a proper upgrade this fall. It can still maintain 90+ fps with high textures outside of densely packed cities and Cyro fights, provided I have shadows and reflections on low, turn off the bloom/grass/rays/additional effects, etc.

My curiosity is mainly that I’d heard FXAA is more expensive, while TAA should be less so. Is that in terms of GPU only, and the TAA is more taxing on the CPU? If so, why the enormous stutter in that one situation? I’d love to know what goes on behind the scenes in terms of killing a mob/displaying xp that causes things to choke with TAA but not FXAA. I understand some of the theoretical differences between the two but can’t see what might be causing the stutter.

Thanks for your insights.

With your setup, no AA is beneficial and not going to change much in terms of visual appearance.

Thanks for the reply. I do see a difference with TAA as opposed to FXAA, but it’s not what I would call better. Just different. So I will probably just turn it off.

scorpius2k1 · May 2020

RefLiberty wrote: »

Hello.
In order to take a break from Performance, Vampire, MA weapons, buffs/nerfs and other important subjects, maybe you can help me by voting what looks better for you, FXAA or newly added TAA.

I know fair enough about both options, how they work and behave performance vise, my question is purely from visual perspective.

TL;DR - FXAA is good for static images. But with moving objects, it´s usually better to use TAA or MSAA (not in ESO yet, but you can force it from your GPU control panel). I personally prefer TAA and glad to see they added this in ESO.

Neither one should be referenced as "more realistic" tbh. If you want to know which is best in terms of anti-aliasing rough lines, then TAA is what you would want. The difference between FXAA and TAA are slight, but TAA will be a little more noticeably cleaner, especially since it renders with moving objects better. TAA will have more of a performance impact than FXAA as well. If you have a PC built within the last few years just use TAA, otherwise FXAA. Also, consider what resolution you are using when choosing these options. Higher than 1080p you wont notice the difference from either as much.

Now, if we could just get SATURATION & BLUE HUE tone controls as well as SHARPNESS in the VIDEO SETTINGS we could really make ESO look so much more alive and not have to use ReShade to fix the dull textures & colors. If you could pass this along @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom I know several of us would love these simple options.
.

ne.ga.kurai_ESO · May 2020

Do yourself a favor and go to a zone with snow or any other transparency effects. Anything that is moving through frame is a hot mess.

RMerlin · May 2020

TAA looks more realistic

TAA looks sharper to me, I noticed it particularly when looking at stone roads as I experimented with it.

b101uk · May 2020

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

TL;DR - FXAA is good for static images. But with moving objects, it´s usually better to use TAA or MSAA (not in ESO yet, but you can force it from your GPU control panel). I personally prefer TAA and glad to see they added this in ESO......

as a rule of thumb, TAA is the most lickily to cause ghosting in fast moving scenes, for example racing games where you are in the virtual drivers seat within a vehicle, as you have a static element (the cabin) and the external moving element of the scenery, thus tends to cause ghosting on the back edges of the windscreen A-pillars, that is because TAA is highly reliant on the FPS and the sample rate relative to the object relative speeds in the scene and their proximity to your POV.

the above is something FXAA doesn't suffer from, instead with FXAA you tend to get more scintillation in the middle distance under the exact same circumstance.

so when it comes to fast moving scenes:
TAA = risk of ghosting especially if your FPS fluctuates, but no scintillation in the middle distance.
FXAA = no risk of ghosting even with low FPS or large fluctuations, but an amount of scintillation in the middle distance.

Highlor3 · June 2020

I remember someone from ZOS said (live/devstream or pts patch notes) that TAA comes with sharpening in ESO. In other games TAA is blurrier than FXAA, and also has some motion blur as side effect.
I would like if they implement a sharpening slide or presets (low, medium and high), also a saturation (as said above) and a contrast/brightness setting.