More on God of War III Antialiasing

Naty from realtimerendering writes : "Since my recent post discussing the antialiasing method used in God of War III, Cedric Perthuis (a graphics programmer on the God of War III development team) was kind enough to email some additional details on how the technique was developed"

[PLASTICA-MAN]

are the weapons of Kratos !

[Icyhot]

Yup Cell is a beast. Couldn't see a single jaggie in GOW3. Hope this tech percolates to all the development studios... It seems to have a better effect than 4xMSAA which is remarkable.

Lol I remember a time when people use to say PS3 can't do AA since GPU isn't capable. Lol and look at now, Cell is producing a far better AA than the competition could dream off. 360 actually has to drop the resolution to do 4xAA (like in Alan Wakes case), but PS3 games run butter smooth at 720P and 60FPS with the best AA.

[whateva]

now it's starting to Kick even GPU's ass @ it's own task.

[MexicanAppleThief]

Awesome, we need more articles like this. And let's not forget the fact that this is Santa Monica's first crack at the PS3's hardware.

Can't wait to see what else they got cooking up.

[MmaFanQc]

did they lied to me?

[DeepInterludium]

Yep, GoW3 was so smooth, perhaps the best IQ of any console game ever all at 720P with a high framerate.

Sad that some releases this gen are still only managing 540p.

[BannedForNineYears]

Naughty Dog put some of the GPU load onto the CPU...CPU >>>> GPU. xD
CPUs are not meant to do that. xD

[Redrum059]

the reason why ps3 exclusives are looking so good altogether is because sony is using its 1st party devs two work together in projects. for example, sony will send guys from santa monica to help naughty dog on uncharted3, just an example although very likely to happen. since sony owns them, sony has them working together. im sure the 360 can pull of some realy badazz zhit if they get guys from epic to work with bingie on halo reach or vise versa on gears3, but so far i havent heard such thing with 360devs.

and just like GOW3 has lots of epic motion going on at the same time in gameplay, Uncharted2 has sequences that are a bit similar. so maybe they have worked together already. watch sliding sequence below, srry not the best quality.

Edit: minimal spoiler alert.

[Greywulf]

Everyone knows.

Its great to see how the playstation is capable of these things..

yet multiplatform developers claim its impossible.

It only does....The impossible?

[Bathyj]

Nice point MexicanAppleThief that a lot of people dont really appreciate or realise.

GoD of War 3 is a first wave game for Santa Monica on this generatin of Hardware, same as Killzone was, Uncharted, inFamous, Motorstorm, GT5P (well GT5 is, kinda). Some of those games already have sequels and look at the improvement made in one game.

What will Guerilla, Naughty Dog, Insomniac and Santa Monica among others, be cable of come 2013?

[Christopher]

That takes way too much skill. Seriously, the streamlining and attention to detail they must have taken with the whole game on an assembly language level is just ridiculous. And this has less to do with the platform and a whole heck of a lot more to do with some awesome developers.

[IHateYouFanboys]

the AA in God of War 3 is very good, no doubt, but there is still lots of noticeable aliasing. the method of AA they used works wonders for still images, but not as well in motion.

just makes you wonder, if sony hadve give the PS3 a better GPU, imagine what they couldve done with all the extra CPU power they have to use on AA?

[Beefstew4u]

Man... if Sony had given it a better GPU and some more RAM, 4xAA would be child's play =D. I can't wait to see the next generation of consoles... can't even begin to imagine the graphics they will be able to pull off.

[evrfighter]

The aliasing was blurry but present. I'd say it was comparable to about 4xAA which is still pretty good.

However this came at the cost of using a fixed camera angle which I hope is not part of this "new wave".

sacrificing the camera for some AA is a step back imo.

[UP]

the camera excuse is stupid and is getting old.

[Bathyj]

The camera in GoW has always been fixed and its never been a problem before. You're just a troll and everyone knows it.

The only "new wave" of games you're worried about are the wave of Sony titles that you never get to play, leaving everything else in its dust.

[raztad]

@evrfight

Man you need to let it go. How the fvck did you manage to mix AA and the "fixed" camera?

I see you skipped the previous iterations of the game. FYI the camera always has been non-user controllable in GoW games, it has nothing to do with MLAA.

@ihatefanboys

"lots of noticeable aliasing"? odd, it got to be your copy. Mine is really smooth and aliasing is almost non-existent. GoW3 AA is in the WORST case equivalent to 4xMSAA. If you want better AA I strongly suggest you to build a good gaming rig, consoles is not the right hardware for you.

@cgoodno

Thats nothing. I read SSM devels saying the PS3 is much easier to code for than the PS2 and yet they managed to have the best looking game ever on that platform: GoW2. However dont forget MLAA is extremely heavy on the CPU, it can not be done efficiently with a regular general purpose CPU.

[DaTruth]

The level was created and then the camera angles were put in for gameplay purposes. When you switch sides you can see what was hidden from another angle.

There's no hidden low res areas. Please read more before commenting out of ignorance.

[Dacapn]

Just say you didn't play the game because to everyone who has played it, you sound like you're going off hearsay and youtube videos. The game has bonus content, and in the level design portion you would see that the levels are created then the camera angles are chosen afterwards like someone mentioned above.

Even if you didn't watch the developer diaries, if you played the game there are two things that would make this very obvious: first the books you interact with in the game that are all over the place allow you to move the camera and zoom in and out as you please. Second, there's a part in the game where you revisit an area from a different angle.

[IHateYouFanboys]

@raztad,

who said i dont have a gaming PC? i certainly didnt......you mustve come up with that yourself lol. im a gamer, not a fanboy. i buy every console, and upgrade my PC whenever theres a game i cant play.

God of War 3 has aliasing. fact. yes, it has anti-aliasing, but its not 100% effective. is it good anti-aliasing? damn straight it is. is it perfect? no. but people on here are saying that it has NO aliasing, and that is just not true. honestly, i swear half the people on here dont even understand what aliasing is, so of course they dont see it - they dont know what theyre looking for.

[Traveler]

Ahh I love GOW3...such a beautiful game.

[raztad]

@ihatefan

True. You didnt tell that, but no reasons for me tu assume either way so my suggestion seemed appropriated.

BTW, IMO GoW3 AA is almost flawless, specially if you game at a safe distance from your TV. I think GoW3 level AA (4xMSAA or better) is more than enough for future PS3 games. I still dream though first party devels can squeeze more out of the PS3 and give us fully 1080p games, as someone pointed out bellow, resolution makes for most of the aliasing problem, 720p is great but 1080p would be incredible. GT5 may be the first running natively at 1080p, @60fps.

[Digital-_-Smoke]

motafoking beast

[raztad]

Now it's time for SSM to share this tech. I want all my future games (at least Sony's) to look as smooth as GoW3 does.

"So instead of waiting for the results next frame, we are using the SPUs as parallel coprocessors of the RSX and we use the time we would have spent on the RSX to start the next frame. With 3 ms or 4 ms of SPU latency at most, we are faster than the original 6ms of RSX time we saved."

So the MLAA tech ended up being faster (and equivalent to 4xMSAA) than 2xMSAA provided by the RSX . Amazing coding achievement, and shows how powerful the Cell is.

[shazui123]

A number of sources have stated that this could be compared to 16-32x MSAA in some cases in terms of quality. This article states that "the quality became significantly higher than MSAA2x or even MSAA4x" keyword here is higher (when referring to quality)

[thewhoopimen]

According to digital foundry, the MLAA technique is comparable to 16xMSAA on a good implementation. And that was when they were talking about Saboteur which had some motion artifact, HUD, and edge detection issues. Santa Monica Studios was more than able to overcome those problems with GOWIII. That's mighty impressive considering most mid-level GPUS would grind to halt at that high of an equivalent MSAA.

I see current Radeon 4800-5800s being able to do this but nothing less.

When you look at it that way... this implementation is VERY impressive for a 4-5 year old console.

[CobraKai]

They totally need to share the wealth. All that work for one game would be a shame. This has, in my opinion, THE BEST AA I have seen in a console game and would like to see more games use this technique. What's really scary is how they say that GOW3 uses 50% of the PS3 power. I can't even imagine what they can do next.

[evrfighter]

"the MLAA technique is comparable to 16xMSAA"

there would be various levels of MLAA much like there are various levels of MSAA.

it's not a one size fits all.

[raztad]

@guys above
I would love to agree with the 16xMSAA but I cant. Dont take DF too seriously. They are amateurs. Read the article. The Saboteour was NOT using MLAA, debunking DF initial theory. The very GoW3 devel said they achieved the equivalent to full 4xMSAA.

EDIT1:
@bellow
Is that true? I gave it a quick read. I'll read it again. Thanks.

You are right,

"the quality became significantly higher than MSAA2x or even MSAA4x on all our still shots,"

[thewhoopimen]

Actually the article said they went beyond 4xMSAA. Still very impressive :)

[ALFAxD_CENTAURO]

1st Party Developers are the geniuses, besides the quality they can bring.

[Nathan123]

Really impressed with the clean look this MLAA provides.

Just compare the GOW3 demo which runs with 2xMSAA and GOW3 final version which runs on MLAA and 1 can see a massive difference in the jagged edges smoothing.

The 1 thing I hate about console games is the lack of AA and Jagged Edges, but it looks like I won't have to worry at least in PS3 Exclusives case.

[xg-ei8ht]

I wouldn't mind AA on BFBC2, don't get me wrong it doesn't look bad, but this would rock it even further.

[Gago]

a poor mans MSAA

[shazui123]

lol. MSAA can't hold a candle to MLAA unless you apply an inordinate number of samples like 16x which ruins performance anyway. Other games are a poor mans graphical showpiece ;) (with the exception of maybe UC2, GT5 and crysis. Possibly also crysis 2 but only the PC version, the console versions can't compare to even KZ2)

[i_am_interested]

that must be why youre a game programmer, or even more impressive a console game programmer

oh wait, youre neither? youre just some guy who plays games?

[shazui123]

You don't need to be a programmer to recognise the quality of this. I'm sure weve all played PC games at various resolutions and AA settings. We can see for ourselves that, at 720p, the image isnt as crisp as in GOW3 without at least 8xMSAA (from personal experience) However there have been at least 3 articles stating that you need between 16 and 32 sample MSAA to compare to MLAA. 32 sample AA isnt available on most nvidia cards today and even so it makes games unplayable.

[i_am_interested]

obviously he's not a console programmer, let alone a game programmer

maybe if he was he'd understand how invaluable gpu time is in closed system but he doesnt because he probably thinks that any company that can get a game running at 1920x1200 at 60fps with 16x msaa ON A PC is the best developer ever, wow what an accomplishment that is

[TheBand1t]

He's just asshurt that God of War III > Bayonetta.

[hoops]

It's not a poor mans MSAA. It's quite the ingenius way of getting around MSAA. It does not work all the time as MLAA blurs the lines, but when it does work it looks great. This is a great comprimise for restraints on consoles.
Expect to see more games using MLAA

[killzowner]

can hardly be credited with getting a game to run at 1920x1200 @ 60fps with 16xAA. Hardware companies like ATI/Nvidia however, can be credited with this. PC devs hardly optimise their games at all, it's being more and more left down to consumers to buy stupidly expensive equipment in order to run games well, hence why crysis was a laughing stock. Considering all this untapped power in PCs I wonder why people willingly go out and spend thousands on them for gaming when there's only one game: crysis, that looks better than UC2, GOW3, KZ2, Heavy Rain, GT5 etc. and its a pretty mediocre game gameplay-wise anyway.
It boils down to paying thousands for multiplats that look worse than the aforementioned titles anyway and are generally rated lower too (this goes for crysis as well however crysis is considered to look better), or paying 200 pounds for a ps3 that can play all those multiplats (however looking slightly worse) and superior exclusives too.

[killzowner]

The MLAA used in GOW3 doesn't have a visible blurring of the lines and this is the most improved form of MLAA. The one used in the Saboteur noticably blurred the image in places but this was improved upon by the GOW3 devs and the only artifact remaining is a slight "grain" effect that appears on the edge of SOME HUDs and only SOMEtimes.

[Letros]

Still looks playable to me,

http://media.bestofmicro.co...

32x AA is complete overkill at that resolution though, beyond 8x you won't notice any difference.

MLAA is a solid solution to 720p aliased feed. Would be nice to kick it on for any game though, right? =P

@below, regardless, high AA is not necessary, you realize that when you actually play a game at a high resolution the need for AA goes down drastically, hell I play PC games at 60fps 1080p 8xAA(except for Crysis which needs no AA due to its shaders) and there's not a jaggie in sight, unlike my console games...next gen though should fix that. But I agree with you it should be a standard on PS3.

[killzowner]

thats CSAA and not MSAA and you have to purchase a GTX 480 to get that performance LOL. You couldn't waste your money more. MLAA is more than a solid solution, it should be the new standard for PS3 games

[swiftshot93]

This is absolutely staggering technology, Im really amazed by this. Its really too bad that this seems a bit too advanced and expensive for other developers to adopt, but at the least Im hoping first party developers will.

[RememberThe357]

That gives me the inclination that this is a technique that Sony's entire first party will be able to take advantage of. That would be great because GoW3 looks freakin amazing.

[The real killer]

Guys, the RSX is also a part of the Cell architecture ;)

[thief]

My understanding is:
PS3 graphics card > 360 graphics card (if you ignore the EDRAM)

360 graphics card + EDRAM > PS3 graphics card, BUT the 360 game has to run below 720p to fit the framebuffer

PS3 graphics card + dedicated hard drive + Blu-ray + Cell >>> 360 graphics card + DVD + lacking compulsory hard drive + 360 Procesor

PS3 architecture + PS3 1st party developers >>>>>>>&a mp;g t;> 360 architecture + 360 1st party developers

[killzowner]

the ps3's ram > 360's ram (256mb of ram running at the same frequency as the 360's but theres also 256mb of XDR ram running at 3.2ghz or 3 and a half times that of the 360's ram
SPUs>360 equivalent (there is none)

[ALFAxD_CENTAURO]

Are you saying EDRAM is better than XDR RAM?

EDRAM is inferior than XDR.
EDRAM you can found that in consoles like Wii, PS2, PSP and Xbox 360.

PS3 have the XDR.

XDR technology is better by far. Available for PS3 and other devices.

[STK026]

I believe what he's saying is that both the 360 and the PS3 have 512mn of RAM, but unlike the RSX, the X360's GPU also has EDRAM. He's not saying it's better, but rather than it's better to have it than not have it.

[yewles1]

ALFA, Embedded DRAM is a different ballgame than standard DRAM. The EDRAM in the 360 is 250GB/s data bandwidth, compared to the XDR's 25.6GB/s. The PS2's 4MB EDRAM was 48GB/s. It's expensive (because it's custom), thus in such small, cache-like quantity.

[The real killer]

RSX much powerful (RAW)

Also much better RAM technology like XDR ;)

[IHateYouFanboys]

the 360s GPU is better than the PS3s. this is not debatable. you will not find an article by a credible source saying otherwise, because its simply not true.

with the memory of these consoles, speed is not the deciding performance factor. do a bit of reading on the bottlenecks that the bus speed of the PS3 creates and youll see why the 360s lower speed RAM actually performs better in general.

[hoops]

I don't know anyone paying HTOUSANDS for a gaming rig. You can build a gaming PC rig for $800 that is significatly faster then the PS3 and Xbox360...and runs all games at 1080p. Something these consoles barely do.
As for paying thousands for multiplats? Untrue...and to top it off, those multiplats on the PC cost anywhere from $10-$15 cheaper then the console version and the PC version is superior in almost every case. Not always...but mostly. And that PC is not just used for gaming...

Now Crysis..I find that console only users say Crysis gameplay is mediocre. Odd how a "mediorce game gets a 91% overall metacritic score and gets critical priase in most reviews for not just graphics and physics but that very gameplay you say is mediocre.
Btw. A $800 PC will run Crysis at High levels now.

As for MLAA. You're correct. GOD3 implementation of it is solid, however as I stated before, the process STILL blurrs lines and does not always work especially if a game is high in contrast and uses lots of motion blurr.
MLAA however is a fantastic way for Anti Alaising for consoles

[MmaFanQc]

no.

[ikkeweer]

I don't want to build, I wanna buy and play (which pretty much means I'll be screwed if I buy my PC-rig). Thats from a casual-gamer point of view.

[divideby0]

can you really put a LEGIT gaming rig together for 800 bucks...just the OS, graphics card and mother board is gonna run you every bit of 3/4 of that.
I keep reading these prices and I try but I cant do it for 800, unless I dont use licensed software or think about a monitor

[STK026]

And, may I know why you have to take in consideration a monitor for your gaming PC, but not your TV for a game console? As for the OS, you can get it pretty cheap if you happen to be a student or use one you already have (if you do).

As for the GPU, it will be one if not the most expensive part, however, you don't need the latest one to play games at 1080p and higher with a solid frame rate, furthermore, ATi has been releasing some solid and quite affordable GPUs lately.

Also, considering a PC is upgradable, you can go for a dual or quad core, which for the former, are quite inexpensive. There's no need to go for a six cores just yet for gaming, although it's nice if you can afford it.

[thewhoopimen]

My impression this generation is that short of Crysis 1 and 2, the PC market doesn't have the number of comparable IQ quality games as what Sony is churning out. It's actually advantageous for you to buy a PS3 and check out what I'm talking about. The First party stuff from Sony is amazing even given the lower res. The budget these dev teams get to work with far outstrip what most of the PC developers have to work with. It shows in the texture detail and polish.

Since we're talking about pricing comparisons. I challenge you to find me a 2006 specced rig at $500-600 that does 16xMSAA at 720p running at the same IQ of detail or better. Obviously it might be a no-brainer these days in 2010. But a PC from 4-5 years ago? Tough call and that's why the PS3 hardware and devs continue to impress me. I mean seriously... envelopes are being pushed on a console. That is such a headshaker.

[Mr Logic]

Hear me out. I used to be a PC gamer, but I just can't do it anymore. Why? Because it f*cking sucks. I can go out put a game in my PS3 and I know it will play. I have a decent gaming PC built about a year ago that easily handles most games on med/high settings. I recently went out and bought The Saboteur because I found it for cheap. Put it in, install, load up, and start playing. 5 minutes in it freezes. Okay, no big deal. I restart the PC and start again. 5 minutes later it freezes again. I go online and see that there is an issue with ATI cards and Saboteur and to play I have to for some reason shut down 3 of my CPU cores which gives me horrible loading and performance. This makes the game actually look worse than the console counterparts despite it being on my PC which is much more powerful.

The lack of plug and play compatibility that insures my game will work has driven me away from PC gaming.

[DrDreadlox]

Gaming on pc is a chore not a hobby. Some people might care to deal with all the extra crap for slightly better graphics but most of us just wants to just pop in a disc and play.

Not only do u have to deal with hardware failures and software bugs (also present on consoles), but other pains in the ass such as Windows, drivers, incompatibility issues. It's simply not worth it for me anymore, my gaming time is limited already as is.

[DaTruth]

Multiplats suck in any resolution. They are just cheap games thrown together and dropped on any platform unoptimized.

$h1t is still Sh1t even if you smooth all the edges and change the colour to baby blue.

[clarkdef]

Stop calling them rigs, thats a truck man. Anyway PC is the way to go when buying multiplats. The PC is far beyond the 360 and PS3, you really notice that on a big TV. However I still believe you need a PS3 because the exclusives are that good.

As for the jaggles GoW3 did have jaggles, they were not too bad but I did notice them, but did I really give a SH!T?...No I didn't as I think its the best looking game out there anyways, no matter how good the multi plats look on PC.

[hoops]

Can you play more then 5% of games at 1080p with 4xAA on a console? No.

Can you play more then 5% of games above 60fps that look like Crysis or Killzone or Gears or GOD3? No.

Can you play WOW. No.

Can you play Star Craft 2? No.

Will you play Rage gimped? Yes.

Crysis 2 gimped? Yes.

Does the PS3 supprot Tessalation? No.

Can you play Guild Wars? No.

Can you play Project Offset? No. The consoles would mostly implode.

Can you play any RTS game at stable frame rates on a Console at HD levels? No.

Can you play ALL your games on 3 or more monitors and in 3D at 1080p or above? No.

Do these consoles have a game modding community and free mods? No.

FYI: The OC has 5x more exclusive games just for the PC then the entire PS3 and Xbox360 exclusive line.

Now you can list all the PS3 and Xbox360 exclusive games....most of which run at 30fps and under 720p with little to no AA.

And in the end...Its best to own all systems AS I DO so I dont miss out on great games like GOD3 and Alan Wake and Project Offset...

Edit:

And you can build a gaming rig for $800 that is fully legit...Moreover, you can buy off the shelf gaming PC's for $800 that you do not have to configure.

http://www.icct.us/index.ph...

There are SOOO many sits you can go to and get gaming rigs for under $1000 that are more powerful then these consoles. The miscinception is you need a $3000 gaming rig.....So untrue

[ikkeweer]

ehm, why would I want to play my game on 3 monitors?
If a game asked for me to do that, I wouldn't buy it in the first place, I'd ask them to fix their game first and try and put all the data in one screen.

[shazui123]

can the consoles play starcraft, guild wars, WOW? no, but do I give a crap when they're/will be rated lower than almost every console exclusive in existance and be heralded as lesser quality games?

As for console games running at 720p/30fps with no "tesselation" (which is one technique in programming that hasn't made hardly any damn difference so far) is that a bad thing, considering they look better than every pc game bar crysis? no

You're a stupid fanboy who doesn't know what he's talking about. I happen to own an Asus G73JH and a "gaming" rig. I and everyone else that I know realises that my ps3 games are superior to my pc games, why can't you? did you sink too much money into PC gaming only to realise there are superior games on platforms that cost only £200?
btw an $800 rig will not be capable of eyefinity, tesselation and 1080p @ 60fps anyway, so wheres your argument again?

@ thewhoopimen: thats my take on it too, and I am a ps3 and pc gamer. Crysis just doesnt match up to UC2, KZ2, GOW3, LBP, MGS4 etc. and PC fanboys herald it as the best game around, when in fact, its only the best excclusive game for their platform. Console owners are treated to much better games IMHO

[bjornbear]

no

[The real killer]

You are a poor boy.

I'm a PC gamer and i tell you that 99% from PC games will over throne in graphics over the PS3 and that's Crysis you hear me.

Second, did i mention Physic/ligthing and atmosphere with intense gameplay? No that's why crysis own Killzone 2 graphics by a little bit. GOW3 and Uncharted 2 over throne Crysis graphics.

Crysis is the only game you can compare with the PS3 that's why the 1%, the PC use old PC architecture that can't match with the Cell architecture, take that boy with your dumb crap answers.

The PS3 can also easy play RTS with mouse and keyboard if developers support it the PS3 can easy handle that.

[thehitman]

you mentioned show any graphical wowness or technical wowness they are just good games. (xcept ofc the only excpetion crysis)

Who wants to play rage people would play WoW if it looked like a wii game and high tessellation pcs have a problem with and in some form is capable on the ps3. However on PC you cant get GoTY like Uncharted/LBP/Best shooters like KZ2 or recently GoW3. Hell you cant even get FF so I would refrain from making game comparisons because even though there are a lot of good games on PC that I play also majority dont hold a candle in terms of quality.