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MSAA vs Increased Pixel Density


obious

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Hi All,

Simply put, does anyone know if adding x2 MSAA looks ‘as good’ as increasing pixel density by a certain amount (is there an equivalent; ie adding x2MSAA is the same as increasing PD to 1.2 etc)? I’m currently running a HP Reverb and 100% Steam res with 0 MSAA and am wondering what would be better, adding x2 MSAA or increasing PD to 1.2-1.5 in SteamVR.

Anyone have any thoughts? 

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From my observations, increasing pixel density does very little to correct shimmering effects and comes with a major performance hit.  I run MSAA of 4X on my machine, with DCS PD set at 0.7, and Steam VR set to whatever it defaults to for supersampling (haven't been on it in a while, but I think it was defaulting to around 150% last time I looked).  Runs well and looks as good as it possibly can on my Reverb G2.  If I push anything higher, it starts to impact performance, and I don't see any visual benefit from it.

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Why not trying by yourself? I cant think on a better way to see the differences.

Increasing resolution have a very low impact on reducing shimmering unless you make a notable increase but, in exchange, you will see the details and screens better, MSAA will reduce the shimmering but will make the picture blurrier

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With open composite I get better performance and image quality running lower resolution with MSAA.

Running the reverb at 2600 wide resolution with 2xMSAA + MFAA gives less shimmering than the reverb at 3160 wide resolution with no MSAA.

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On 9/21/2022 at 12:19 PM, edmuss said:

With open composite I get better performance and image quality running lower resolution with MSAA.

Running the reverb at 2600 wide resolution with 2xMSAA + MFAA gives less shimmering than the reverb at 3160 wide resolution with no MSAA.

How do you know what res you’re running with OpenXR? The slider in OpenXR Toolkit only shows percentage and not overall pixels being rendered like SteamVR does

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5 minutes ago, obious said:

How do you know what res you’re running with OpenXR? The slider in OpenXR Toolkit only shows percentage and not overall pixels being rendered like SteamVR does

The second tab of the openxr tools desktop app will show the current resolution that the headset it running at, alternatively you've overridden the resolution in-game using the toolkit then it will stat what resolution it's set to (rather than a percentage).

My preference is to leave the desktop app resolution at default and override it with the toolkit.

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Super sampling is an alternative to anti-aliasing but the result depends greatly on the native resolution of your HMD.  Lower resolution HMD will still show significant shimmering compared to high resolution HMD when super sampling.  the perfect cure to aliasing is infinite resolution but unfortunately, the hardware will never reach this.  Your eyes have a resolution of 576k if you consider the full filed of view and that is partially why we do not notice any aliasing when looking at a scene. There are other factors at play but basically high resolution is the cure.  Low resolution requires anti-aliasing processing to reduce shimmers and jagged edges.

With lower resolution HMD, MSAA will be the better solution to aliasing.

Also, super sampling has a limit and if you push it beyond, you will significantly reduce your FPS with no benefit.

I would suggest to use 2xMSAA with a bit of super sampling but not by tweaking the DCS PD value as it lacks precision.  Setting the PD to 1.1 is equal to 121% super sampling, 1.2 is equal to 144% super sampling, etc...  This does not offer much precision compared to SteamVR's "Resolution per eye" slider which has 2% increments.  Use super sampling to improve the clarity of the image and let MSAA take care of shimmers.

 

 

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Finding the limit is pretty much hardware dependent.  The way I do it is increase super sampling until I see no difference in clarity.

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18 hours ago, WipeUout said:

Finding the limit is pretty much hardware dependent.  The way I do it is increase super sampling until I see no difference in clarity.

Thats a Rog, good advice.

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