Prehistoric Hunt

Prehistoric Hunt

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Graphics Guide: AA & AO
By Drakeema
AA or AO..? This guide will help you decide!
   
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<Graphics Are For Sissies>
Anti-aliasing (AA)
There are 4 flavors to choose from when it comes to anti-aliasing. Here is the run-down:

  • Off:
    (+) The cleanest, most crisp image. Texture clarity/sharpness and color are 100% correct. Fastest performance!
    (-) The most jagged, "noisy" image.

  • FXAA: [Fast approximate anti-aliasing]
    (+) The highest performance AA method.
    (-) The most blurry image.

  • SMAA: [Enhanced subpixel morphological anti-aliasing]
    (+) The sharpest AA image, with the most accurate texture color of the 3 methods.
    (-) Not as jag-free as TAA. Not as fast as FXAA.

  • TAA: [Temporal anti-aliasing]
    (+) The strongest anti-aliasing method, with the least jagged image both while moving and/or still.
    (-) Not as clean of image as SMAA. Slight, but noticeable "ghosting"/motion blur. "X-ray" artifacting. Causes noticeable texture lightening, color oversaturation, and shadow blowout. The most intensive anti-aliasing method.

*Of course, you could probably over-ride these with any AA options available through nVidia/AMD software.
__AA - Examples & Comparison
Ambient Occlusion (AO)
We also have several flafors of AO to select from. Here do be the run-down:

  • Off:
    (+) Fastest performance and brightest image.
    (-) No added visual benefit from realtime, filter-based AO shadows.

  • HBAO Low / Medium / High: [horizon based ambient occlusion]
    (+) Slight surface shading definition enhancements, by apparent highlighting of upper surfaces.
    (-) Entirely minimal and useless effect, from its implementation in-game.

  • SSAO Low / High: [screenspace ambient occlusion]
    (+) Adds relatively convincing shadows, with relatively decent performance.
    (-) The shadows are not very accurate, being merely a screenspace filter, and adds a noticeable performance hit. "Flashlight" artifacting. Blatantly obvious, Inaccurate shadows will occur.
__AO - Examples & Comparison
AO Stationary Test 1:
https://youtu.be/ux6XDthkG-o
Post Processing (PP) - It's Gross
It adds some special effects that actually look cool, but mostly it makes everything super dark and ugly. I'm not a fan. It's too bad we can't customize which effects we can use, in order to add HDR or bloom but not shadow inundation, for example.

Post Processing = OFF
<Conclusion & Recommendations>
So, what settings would I recommend?
  • AA - SMAA (best texture color & sharpness), TAA (most jag-free geometry)
  • AO - Off / SSAO Low
  • Post Processing - OFF

What would I not recommend?
  • AA - Off / FXAA
  • AO - HBAO / SSAO H
  • Post Processing - ON
*Known Artifacts
Here are known artifacts that occur with certain settings:


*As of version 0.92.03.