MSAA not working...hideous shimmering!

[LizardKingYB]

3 hours ago, Czar66 said:

For comparison, these are with DLAA only (recent, un-edited), perhaps it is what's been expected MSAA to be:

We need same for MSAA or kill ghosting... P.S. Amazing shots

[Czar66]

38 minutes ago, LizardKingYB said:

We need same for MSAA or kill ghosting... P.S. Amazing shots

Thank you

Perhaps you would be looking for SSAA (available in DCS) instead of MSAA, as the later is a lower budget solution as always been.
SSAA weights are much higher than MSAA over the GPU side, keep it in mind.

[Flappie]

15 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

Perhaps you would be looking for SSAA (available in DCS) instead of MSAA, as the later is a lower budget solution as always been.
SSAA weights are much higher than MSAA over the GPU side, keep it in mind.

Sure, but some of us still have old GPUs (1080Ti here).

[Czar66]

1 hour ago, Flappie said:

Sure, but some of us still have old GPUs (1080Ti here).

Yep, around the same horsepower here too. SSAA is a no-go for me and likely will continue that way.

I'm happy with DLAA and can live with the ghosting that, at least, doesn't affect combat here.  Maybe a card that has DLSS can be a good bump in image one day to enable DLAA.

Edited February 8 by Czar66

[LizardKingYB]

1 hour ago, Czar66 said:

Yep, around the same horsepower here too. SSAA is a no-go for me and likely will continue that way.

I'm happy with DLAA and can live with the ghosting that, at least, doesn't affect combat here.  Maybe a card that has DLSS can be a good bump in image one day to enable DLAA.

Depends on which card. I have 3070 and I'm here too)

[Scotch75]

I'm running a 3060 and use DLAA as the best image compromise (I have i5-6600K, 64GB ram). Even if I use the latest DLSS, it introduces far worse ghosting and poor cockpit instrument images. This running on 1080p, TrackIR5.
Cheers!


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[[DE] T-Bone]

On 2/8/2025 at 4:10 PM, Czar66 said:

Hi. I've been following this thread for a few weeks now and I think some complaints about MSAA at 4x are a bit unrealistic.
MSAA is a 'not so great' anti aliasing method. It is expensive and, since DCS pre World, it produced shimmering.

All these images you're running with MSAA on. Notice that MSAA can't cover some angles with geometry, while others, especially the shot on the tower, MSAA successfuly makes a smooth diagonal line on that lower rail section.

MSAA has been always like this. Its algorithm makes that effect.
I can't speak about the lower center shimmer on that lens rim in the Apache cockpit, as I don't own the module, but the rest is on par to what MSAA had provided throughout the years.

The method is quite old, although one of that preserves image quality best, trading a few shimmering here and there.

SSAA in the other hand is much more powerful than MSAA, if I remember correctly.

What I wrote is not related to be unable to turn MSAA on. Either 2x or 4x. I didn't had this issue.
What I point out is how MSAA lacks in the anti aliasing department. It is still good for pixel perfect spotting dots, but you're not getting Temporal Anti Aliasing or Downscaling solution like images.

Personal preference, I'm running with DLAA, even in 1080p with the sharpen slider just on the right spot. It produces a better image that what it would be with MSAA 4X, imo.
If you apply any sharpen filter on MSAA the problem of aliased geometry worsen.

This is a good read: 

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/31801/what-are-the-differences-between-the-different-anti-aliasing-multisampling-set

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Anti-aliasing_(AA)

A few examples un edited with MSAA 4x. Old shots, circa 2020-2021...

I never played DCS without MSAA before DLAA arrived.

Thanks for your detailed explanation and the examples, I think I'll have to live with it.

Unfortunately it is a very unsatisfactory picture with MSAA and TAA+FSR is not an option with the excessive ghosting.

I hope that the implementation of Vulkan and hopefully the newer FSR versions that will follow will help, otherwise it is very unsatisfactory as an AMD user.

Edited February 13 by [DE] T-Bone
typo

[Lixma 06]

AMD user here - it's definitely got worse, it never used to be like this - even after the switch to deferred rendering.

This is 1440p and MSAAx4 selected in DCS options -

Edited February 13 by Lixma 06

[UnderTaker2003]

I just made an account to say that I have the same issue...but mine is much more severe plus when flying low even on an empty mission,I see black smudges over the horizon where clouds meet the mountains

Funny thing is that black thingie doesn't show up when in f2 view or over the sea

Specs:
Ryzen 5 7600x
Rx6900xt
32gb 5200mt/s ddr5 ram
Ga271 monitor

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[UnderTaker2003]

here is another shot

Screen_250211_121231.bmp

[Flappie]

Hi @UnderTaker2003, this looks like a very old issue (2021). It was fixed the same year.

It seems that you can reproduce this issue at will. Can you please record a short DCS track showing this black artifact?

[UnderTaker2003]

On 2/17/2025 at 3:04 PM, Flappie said:

Hi @UnderTaker2003, this looks like a very old issue (2021). It was fixed the same year.

It seems that you can reproduce this issue at will. Can you please record a short DCS track showing this black artifact?

Well I don't know if a track file would be helpful bcz that black dot depends on the camera angle and zoom level as well as aircraft position...but if you want to reproduce the error it's easy 

 

 

 

Just make a mission on Caucasus for example and make the weather cloudy and set the base cloud altitude to 2km or less then try to fly low with MSAA 4 times looking over the horizon...also it doesn't appear over the sea or in f2 view 

[UnderTaker2003]

@Flappie here are some tracks i just made using 25.3.1 amd drivers...needless to say you would need an amd gpu to recreate these issues

black_smudge.trk horrible_aliasing.trk dcs.log

[Flappie]

Thanks, @UnderTaker2003. Antialising looks "OK" to me. It has its limits as stated previously by user @Czar66.

I tried to reproduce the black smudge issue with my NVIDIA GPU (you never know) but I couldn't. I'll now ask my fellow testers with AMD GPUs to try and replicate the issue.

[GumidekCZ]

17 hours ago, Flappie said:

Thanks, @UnderTaker2003. Antialising looks "OK" to me. It has its limits as stated previously by user @Czar66.

I tried to reproduce the black smudge issue with my NVIDIA GPU (you never know) but I couldn't. I'll now ask my fellow testers with AMD GPUs to try and replicate the issue.

I think this may be really the problem of AMD GPUs. We need to compare exact screens AMD vs Nvidia with same graphic setting, where sharp 3d model edges or map watter edge are almost (not exactly) horizontal.

[UnderTaker2003]

18 hours ago, Flappie said:

Thanks, @UnderTaker2003. Antialising looks "OK" to me. It has its limits as stated previously by user @Czar66.

I tried to reproduce the black smudge issue with my NVIDIA GPU (you never know) but I couldn't. I'll now ask my fellow testers with AMD GPUs to try and replicate the issue.

@Flappie the anti aliasing is NOT ok...its terrible. the shadows on the cockpit have huge staircase problems...taa is not implemented correctly and it will only look half decent on 4k+ resolution which nullifies the existence of taa (being a cheaper aa). we also dont have FSRAA (fsr upscaling from native resolution to the native resolution). shimmering is terrible and its even visible in your biggest content creator growling sidewinder...

[Leva80]

13 minutes ago, UnderTaker2003 said:

@Flappie the anti aliasing is NOT ok...its terrible. the shadows on the cockpit have huge staircase problems...taa is not implemented correctly and it will only look half decent on 4k+ resolution which nullifies the existence of taa (being a cheaper aa). we also dont have FSRAA (fsr upscaling from native resolution to the native resolution). shimmering is terrible and its even visible in your biggest content creator growling sidewinder...

Agreed. AMD users seem to get the shaft in DCS. Shimmering and aliasing is terrible. Seemed to get worse sometime last year after one of the updates. MSAA does very little, if anything, to help. 

[UnderTaker2003]

@Flappie heres another black smudge and my dcs log...sometimes those black smudges are really big and they depend on the position of aircraft, in cockpit camera and zoom level

in the log i see the error "mainDepthBuffer" missing along side othe errors...seem concerning

dcs.log

Edited March 12 by UnderTaker2003

[UnderTaker2003]

one other thing that i like to add is that recently i tested the game with vulcan api...although the anti aliasing was crap BUT it fixed the black smudge problem i had. thought i should point it out

[Flappie]

On 3/12/2025 at 7:00 PM, UnderTaker2003 said:

shimmering is terrible and its even visible in your biggest content creator growling sidewinder...

Just to make it clear: I'm not part of ED, I'm a volunteering tester. When I say "MSAA is OK", please don't think ED say so. It's my own opinion.

1 hour ago, UnderTaker2003 said:

one other thing that i like to add is that recently i tested the game with vulcan api...although the anti aliasing was crap BUT it fixed the black smudge problem i had. thought i should point it out

Thanks for your feedback. How do you choose between DirectX and Vulkan?

[MAXsenna]

Thanks for your feedback. How do you choose between DirectX and Vulkan?

You add a 3rd party software that intercepts the data and push it threw Vulkan instead of DirectX. Not tested it myself. Not needed when DCS supports Vulkan natively, and will probably be quite the different experience!

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[UnderTaker2003]

10 hours ago, Flappie said:

Just to make it clear: I'm not part of ED, I'm a volunteering tester. When I say "MSAA is OK", please don't think ED say so. It's my own opinion.

Thanks for your feedback. How do you choose between DirectX and Vulkan?

https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk

[Flappie]

@UnderTaker2003 Are you running DCS from Linux?

[UnderTaker2003]

On 3/14/2025 at 10:04 PM, Flappie said:

@UnderTaker2003 Are you running DCS from Linux?

No I'm running on windows 11

 

I just downloaded the file from that repository and copy all the files from x64 folder to the bin or bin-mt folder in dcs and it works...but it also destroies any fog and cloud... especially contrails of aircrafts and missile smoke

 

On a whole different note when I open my dcs logs regardless of the settings, in line 193 it tries to initiate dx11renderer but there's always 1 error with shaders I'll copy the line here:

 

"DX11Renderer initialization (w:2560 h:1440 fullscrn:1 vsync:0 adapter:0 monitor:0 shaderErrors:1)"

 

And then a few line after that I get mainDepthBuffer, uiTargetColor and uiTargetDepth errors.

 

I thought well maybe the file "dx11backend" in bin or bin-mt folder was corrupted so I deleted it and did a repair which downloaded it again but it didn't fix it

Edited March 16 by UnderTaker2003

[Flappie]

58 minutes ago, UnderTaker2003 said:

I just downloaded the file from that repository and copy all the files from x64 folder to the bin or bin-mt folder in dcs and it works...but it also destroies any fog and cloud... especially contrails of aircrafts and missile smoke

No wonder why the black smudge disappeared since it seems to be generated by clouds.

We all get the same error messages. These were reported a while ago:

2025-03-15 11:18:31.168 INFO    DX11BACKEND (15272): DX11Renderer initialization (w:3440 h:1440 fullscrn:1 vsync:0 adapter:0 monitor:0 shaderErrors:1)
  ...
2025-03-15 11:18:33.722 ERROR_ONCE DX11BACKEND (15272): render target 'mainDepthBuffer' not found
2025-03-15 11:18:33.799 ERROR_ONCE DX11BACKEND (15272): render target 'uiTargetColor' not found
2025-03-15 11:18:33.799 ERROR_ONCE DX11BACKEND (15272): render target 'uiTargetDepth' not found