About AA

  • Thread starter Ian Bell
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Ian Bell

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Bit of a heads up on the choices we had to make regarding anti aliasing in Shift 2.

The new render engine for Shift 2 as well as having a full HDR range is also completely deferred. I think this is the first of its type in a racer and came with some benefits as well as trade-offs. We were able to go nuts on the night lighting and multiple cast real time shadows because of being deferred but the trade-off is that AA becomes a bit of a bitch to do. You can't run standard MSAA in the normal way. We used morphological antialiasing on the PC and consoles. The PC settings for medium is edge detect and for high also reads depth information. On PS3 we run post processed MLAA totally on SPU.

If we didn't have the night racing we could have gotten away with an enhanced Shift 1 render setup with the increased range and contrast and used simple MSAA (4x on 360 and quincunx on PS3).

Edit, should mention that the PC AA will eat CPU time as it's the only place we can run it on a fully deferred engine.
 
I like the graphics as they are, especially the night racing. You really do get that anxious feeling. Thanks for posting, Ian :)
 
Thanks for the detailed explanation Ian!

Are you guys working with NVIDIA at all for an optimized driver / settings to handle the new AA better and add SLI support for PC?

I purchased a GTX 590 and was surprised that I had to turn off AA to get an acceptable framerate on my Triple Screen @6040x1080 comparable to Shift 1 (Note: SLI is not currently working).
 
Thanks for the detailed explanation Ian!

Are you guys working with NVIDIA at all for an optimized driver / settings to handle the new AA better and add SLI support for PC?

I purchased a GTX 590 and was surprised that I had to turn off AA to get an acceptable framerate on my Triple Screen @6040x1080 comparable to Shift 1 (Note: SLI is not currently working).

Yup, we have engineers at both Nvidia and AMD late on in the project who give us direct feedback.

That is a monster resolution to be fair :) We do an awful lot of work with cute shaders per pixel that obviously multiplies at higher res.

What CPU are you running? The AA will hit that directly.

I run a 580 here and I do know we worked hard on SLI compatibility late on. I'm not sure we had a 590 though. I'll check with our PC lead and bug list and get back ;)
 
Hello - What about the graphic quality issues being reported at various forums? It seems you need some serious horsepower to get smooth frame rates.
 
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Yup, we have engineers at both Nvidia and AMD late on in the project who give us direct feedback.

That is a monster resolution to be fair :) We do an awful lot of work with cute shaders per pixel that obviously multiplies at higher res.

What CPU are you running? The AA will hit that directly.

I run a 580 here and I do know we worked hard on SLI compatibility late on. I'm not sure we had a 590 though. I'll check with our PC lead and bug list and get back ;)


Ian,

I'm running an I7 920 Quad CPU with 6gb ram - getting 45-55fps @6040x1080 with AA off, 4x AF, textures set to medium, shadows low, reflections low and Blur off. (everything else on High)

I also had to set Render frames ahead = 0 in NVIDIA control panel and disabled Damage or I would get bad stuttering when any AI collisions occurred.

If SLI was working I could probably run everything on High + AA :sly:


Please have your PC lead check this thread at racedepartment forum - I found numerous posts about SLI not working properly with ANY Nvidia cards on current drivers with Shift 2 when searching google for any help.

http://www.racedepartment.com/need-for-speed-shift-2-unleashed/51880-sli-fix.html

After tweaking my Steering settings I got the cars to handle very well on XBOX and PC and made sevearal posts on forums to share my settings and uploaded some videos to Youtube....

One last Q - any chance of Thrustmaster T500RS support on PS3?


Here's a video you might like of my Triple Screen setup running Shift 2:

PS. Love the excellent FIA GT1 + FIA GT3 Liveries!!!

 
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Ian,

I'm running an I7 920 Quad CPU with 6gb ram - getting 45-55fps @6040x1080 with AA off, 4x AF, textures set to medium, shadows low, reflections low and Blur off. (everything else on High)

I also had to set Render frames ahead = 0 in NVIDIA control panel and disabled Damage or I would get bad stuttering when any AI collisions occurred.

If SLI was working I could probably run everything on High + AA :sly:


Please have your PC lead check this thread at racedepartment forum - I found numerous posts about SLI not working properly with ANY Nvidia cards on current drivers with Shift 2 when searching google for any help.

http://www.racedepartment.com/need-for-speed-shift-2-unleashed/51880-sli-fix.html

After tweaking my Steering settings I got the cars to handle very well on XBOX and PC and made sevearal posts on forums to share my settings and uploaded some videos to Youtube....

One last Q - any chance of Thrustmaster T500RS support on PS3?


Here's a video you might like of my Triple Screen setup running Shift 2:

PS. Love the excellent FIA GT1 + FIA GT3 Liveries!!!



Thanks Raudi.

Our PC lead has the link ;)
 
Thanks Ian for taking the time to clarify this issue... I've been trying to make people aware that Shift2 relied in deferred rendering and that it was the cause of the AA issues guys thought they were having.

Unfortunately, most players were expecting Shift2 to behave exactly like past-gen titles do.

Congrats on another great title. Your team set a new benchmark for both visuals and audio in the racing genre 👍
 
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Hi Ian;

I think I speak for most us here when I say it's a pleasure to have your direct input. Thanks for dropping by to share your insights. 👍

The AA issue relates directly to me. I'm just about to pull the trigger on a faster GPU for my PC so I can turn AA back up and still get good fps. But from what you're saying I take it that PC users should upgrade their CPUs instead (if they want to use the in-game AA)?

Addressable issues aside, I think you guys have done a really good job with this title. The more I play it, the more I like it. To me, a sim is successful when it reminds me of the real thing. In real life, I used to have a Z4 M and driving your interpretation in Shift2 makes me miss having the old girl like mad. A totally under-appreciated car, that is. Whoever did the modeling on that car really captured its behavior and the little idiosyncrasies. Same goes for your E36 M3 and also your S4. Well done.

Looking forward to the upcoming patch and thanks again.


///M-Spec / AvusSilber
 
Hi Ian;

I think I speak for most us here when I say it's a pleasure to have your direct input. Thanks for dropping by to share your insights. 👍

The AA issue relates directly to me. I'm just about to pull the trigger on a faster GPU for my PC so I can turn AA back up and still get good fps. But from what you're saying I take it that PC users should upgrade their CPUs instead (if they want to use the in-game AA)?

Addressable issues aside, I think you guys have done a really good job with this title. The more I play it, the more I like it. To me, a sim is successful when it reminds me of the real thing. In real life, I used to have a Z4 M and driving your interpretation in Shift2 makes me miss having the old girl like mad. A totally under-appreciated car, that is. Whoever did the modeling on that car really captured its behavior and the little idiosyncrasies. Same goes for your E36 M3 and also your S4. Well done.

Looking forward to the upcoming patch and thanks again.


///M-Spec / AvusSilber

Thanks ;)

Correct yes. We're working with Intel to create a more efficient MLAA option that should see almost zero hit on quad core systems. All being well we'll push it out to a patch very soon.

Thanks for the kind words.

PS, I took a Z4M on a road trip from London via Paris, Biarritz. Andorra, Barcelona, Cote D'azure and through to Venice a few years back. Awesome car! You can imagine how strict my wife and I had to be with the luggage though :)
 
Thanks ;)

Correct yes. We're working with Intel to create a more efficient MLAA option that should see almost zero hit on quad core systems. All being well we'll push it out to a patch very soon.

I hope it won't be optimized only on systems with intel cpus because my fps decrease below 25 with AA on "Normal" on my amd 1090 hexa core :guilty:
 
The AA issue relates directly to me. I'm just about to pull the trigger on a faster GPU for my PC so I can turn AA back up and still get good fps. But from what you're saying I take it that PC users should upgrade their CPUs instead (if they want to use the in-game AA)?
I've found that turning the in-game AA off and forcing it in the control panel doesn't work either so it has to be something about the games engine.

However, if Adaptive AA(ATI) or Transparency AA(nvidia) is enabled it should look and run better than when using the games AA. It worked for me so just thought I'd share that as a good way to keep performance up and enhance quality.
 
If this happens to be the real Ian Bell, I have a question regarding the PC version.

The "-loose" command does not work currently, which makes modding very difficult to do when it comes to cars/visuals/etc. Is this something that could be patched in, to make the -loose command work properly as it did in Shift 1?
 
Thanks ;)

Correct yes. We're working with Intel to create a more efficient MLAA option that should see almost zero hit on quad core systems. All being well we'll push it out to a patch very soon.

Thanks for the kind words.

PS, I took a Z4M on a road trip from London via Paris, Biarritz. Andorra, Barcelona, Cote D'azure and through to Venice a few years back. Awesome car! You can imagine how strict my wife and I had to be with the luggage though :)


"HELP IS ON THE WAY" :lol: 👍


Ian, can you comment on if support for the Thrustmaster T500RS wheel on PS3 version of Shift 2 is coming with any future updates?
 

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