Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering in Unreal

[ividyon]

LH's post states you should be looking for these settings in your video card control panel, rather than Unreal's options.

[NaPaliShore]

LH's post states you should be looking for these settings in your video card control panel, rather than Unreal's options.

Good point! I guess I should read things more carefully, especially if I'm going to quote them in my post!

I'm using an ATI Radeon HD 7750 card, and there is no comparable setting that shows up in the Catalyst Control Center. However, a little research turned up the fact that for AMD/ATI cards the setting is called "Flip Queue Size" rather than "Max Pre-Render Limit" or "Max Pre-Rendered Frames". In order to tweak that setting you need to get a 3rd party tweaking tool like ATI Tray Tools or RadeonPro.

The default driver settings for "Flip Queue Size" is 3, so my system was already using a setting of 3. I still get some "stuttering" with VSync on, with a "Flip Queue Size" setting of 3, so I tried turning it down to 1, and that helped - but I'd still get a brief hesitation every 4-5 seconds on the couple maps I was playtesting on (basically I think it repeats a frame if the game is unable to keep on a pace of exactly 60 fps). So for now I'm going to stick with VSync off and "Flip Queue Size" up at 3.

However, there are a lot of different variables at play in a given game, and so many settings one could tweak, that it's frankly all over my head at this point. Some people seem to claim that the "Max Pre-Render"/"Flip Queue Size" settings only matter for DirectX games (at least for Nvidia graphics cards, but mine is an AMD/ATI card), but others seem to find that it does make significant differences for OpenGL games (one example that comes up a lot is QuakeLive)... I use the OpenGL renderers for Unreal 227i and UT 4.36, and I do notice some differences in performance between different "Flip Queue Size" settings with VSync enabled... Maybe one day I'll experiment some more with settings (especially once 120hz LCD monitors get cheaper), but for now I'll stick with what I've been doing, since I have managed to get a fluid/responsive game with very minimal tearing.

For those who are interested, and might understand the technical stuff better than me, these seem to be some interesting discussions about the issue:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2803/7
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2322148
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/506150/pre-render-38-opengl-gathering-infos-regarding-pre-render-settings-and-nvidia-drivers/
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?266112-AMD-Flip-Queue-Size-Nvidia-Maximum-Pre-rendered-Frames

[Dr.Flay]

You will find lots of helpful info on GL and nVidia because it is an nVidia project, and works best with them.

As an ATI user, you need to use DirectX 9+ renderers.
OpenGL does not use the RAM on ATI GFX cards, so unless you have an onboard chip with shared RAM it will not run at full speed.

Using the driver options for AA and AF, allows you to use the newer faster modes than enabling it in-game.
RadeonPro is very handy for setting up a profile, but mostly I just recommend people start at the half-way point of whatever the card does.

[NaPaliShore]

As an ATI user, you need to use DirectX 9+ renderers.
OpenGL does not use the RAM on ATI GFX cards, so unless you have an onboard chip with shared RAM it will not run at full speed.

Using the driver options for AA and AF, allows you to use the newer faster modes than enabling it in-game.
RadeonPro is very handy for setting up a profile, but mostly I just recommend people start at the half-way point of whatever the card does.

Thanks for the tips! That's interesting - I don't understand all the new AA and AF and other graphics modes, but it's good to know that they are there in the video driver settings. I tried turning some of them on in RadeonPro but my framerates dropped down into the 20s and 30s, when using "Direct 3D9 Support" under GameRenderDevice in 227i, with VSync on. I suppose I'd have to learn a lot more about those settings and probably experiment a lot, in order to get playable framerates. (Probably would need to research what my video card's capabilities are, in order to know what would constitute "the half-way point of what it does"... I also couldn't tell in a very obvious way what those settings were doing when I turned them on - not knowing what to look for, in terms of visual improvements in the game.

I did try some tests with just enabling the AA and AF setting in-game, without messing with the video driver settings, and it seems like the best looking "playable" option for me is to use Direct 3D9 with SwapInterval=1 and AF on (16x) but AA off, as I can still get good framerates though there is some mouse input lag that is borderline problematic. (I'm using the Extreme End S3TC textures from from UnrealTexture.com. My PC is running Windows 8, 64bit version, with a Core i5-3330 CPU, and 8GM of RAM, in addition to the Radeon HD 7750.)

But the option that still feels the best, playability-wise (especially if I have to do combat), because of the great responsiveness and lack of mouse input lag, is when I use OpenGL with Vsync off and the framerate capped at 150 fps. (I can turn on AA and use 8x sampling, as well as 16x AF, with no framerate hit, under OpenGL, as long as VSync is off.)

So I guess if there are eye-candy maps without much combat then I could use Direct 3D9 with VSync (as a kind of "sightseeing mode"), but otherwise I'm currently still happiest with my "old" settings using the OpenGL renderer.

Maybe I could somehow figure out how to tweak everything to get better framerates and minimize input lag, by using the right combination of video driver settings and game settings. But really whenever I turn on VSync I seem to get that mouse input lag - so I don't know how to solve that issue, unless I just really need to set up that stuff outside the game, via the video driver settings, and to figure out which "fancy new" modes I can use, and which to leave turned off or turned down.... Given that these newer modes are supposed to be "faster", I must be doing something wrong to get such a huge slowdown in fps when turning on random AA modes and vsync settings. Is there some kind of tweak guide for these settings, that would help me to match up the needs of Unreal 227i with the capabilities of my Radeon HD 7750?

Thanks again to everyone for all the great tips!

[Dr.Flay]

It is useful to know you are using the hi-res replacement textures.
They will show the difference between the GFX and system RAM more, as the idea is that the huge S3TC textures can be stored and used natively on the GFX card.

Only some of the new AA and AF modes are faster. Unfortunately they never think it important to give you any info on the differences in the driver GUI.
Try the Adaptive AA setting enabled, and set to "Performance", with the main AA set to 4x and one of the first 3 AA modes (Box, Narrow and Wide-tent).

Note:
AA is to reduce jagged edges on low-res renders or displays.
The higher resolution screen-modes you use, the less need there is for AA.

I would say also, if you are not suffering with tearing screens as you turn and move, then you don't need Vsync.
(There is only ever 1 reason I enable Vsync, and that is for watching films.)
Vsync will make everything wait for the monitor to finish drawing.
If the action has changed, then tough, you still gotta wait for the display to finish the old frame before rendering the correct/current frame.
"Vsync on" will almost always slow things down.

Personally I feel that I mostly benefit from AA on in Unreal, as the pace of action in UT does not give me time to see anything that may be jagged, so I leave it off.

[NaPaliShore]

Try the Adaptive AA setting enabled, and set to "Performance", with the main AA set to 4x and one of the first 3 AA modes (Box, Narrow and Wide-tent).

I would say also, if you are not suffering with tearing screens as you turn and move, then you don't need Vsync.

Thanks so much for walking me through this and recommending those settings!

I set up the closest approximations I could find to those settings in my RadeonPro profile for Unreal 227i:

http://imgur.com/oRY3dsi

(For some reason the "[IMG]" tag is not working for me - is that something that is still being fixed on the new site?)

And it does seem to make things looks better, under both Direct 3D9 and also OpenGL.
And by turning off Vsync altogether the mouse lag is not such a significant factor using either renderer.

Now the Direct3D9 renderer gives the best image quality, with quite acceptable input responsiveness - definitely playable for normal situations. And now OpenGL looks better, and is incredibly responsive - definitely better for pinpoint accuracy while running around and spinning around in tight quarters. So I basically have 2 quite playable options, with their own different strengths and weaknesses, whereas before I would only have used Direct3D to show off the visuals of the game, but not to face real opponents/monsters (such was the lag due to VSync).

Even now, the only way to get "near perfect" image quality is to use VSync with Direct3D, but with my current settings there is no major tearing even with Vsync off - at most there is a bit of mirage-like "shimmering" at times when moving around and panning/turning near a large wall, and also some visual glitching in areas with flickering litghing (like the lighting strikes in the Unreal pre-game flyby, or the area where you meet the first 2 brutes in Nyleve. (In those areas with the flickery lighting, with Vsync off the engine sometimes seems to render a frame halfway between the "lit" and "unlit" frames, with alternating horizontal bands of lighter and darker regions, in places where the lighting should have been uniform.)

Anyway, I'm quite happy with these improved settings - all the advice is greatly appreciated!

[Dr.Flay]

Well you either have top quality, or smooth gameplay so you'll eventually find your own compromise.
The best guide to use for the new renderers is over at UT99.org, written by Raynor
http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=373
As they are the same branch of renderers, everything is valid.

[ividyon]

I set up the closest approximations I could find to those settings in my RadeonPro profile for Unreal 227i:

http://imgur.com/oRY3dsi

(For some reason the "[IMG]" tag is not working for me - is that something that is still being fixed on the new site?)

No, nothing changed there. You need to use the direct link to the image file, rather than a link to imgur's picture view, like so:

Code: Select all

[img]http://i.imgur.com/oRY3dsi.jpg[/img]

Or, better, use the [sshot] tag to make a small preview, like so:

[Carbon]

Well you either have top quality, or smooth gameplay so you'll eventually find your own compromise.

Never settle!

16xAF, 24xAA, supersampling, 150+ FPS.

[Dr.Flay]

Hehe nice
Yeah but how much horse-power required to do that ?

[Semfry]

Yeah I go full supersampling on games like the original Unreal now too, but it's little complex to set up right now and depends on the make of your graphics card.

[Carbon]

Hehe nice
Yeah but how much horse-power required to do that ?

4770k @ 4.0 GHz, Asus R9 280x TOP 3GB. A bit of power I guess, but I have been running Unreal like this for some time now and using the extreme end textures with OGL rendering. I have to say that with all of this going on, it is still a really beautiful game, even speaking comparatively.

I run UT2K3, 2K4 and UT3 with similar settings (12xAA SS) without issue. The cool thing about older games I suppose...you can crank things up to the max. As the resolution climbs (I am at 1920x1200) this becomes overkill I guess, but what the heck.