Not sure if this is the right place to post, but..
Since my laptop can run up to x4 AA without ATI powerplay, i tried it and it did lower my framerate which i had expected, BUT i see no difference between X4 AA and 0 AA. I dont get the concept of this, can any1 tell me where to look for the differences, because i dont think it is worth it to turn on AA?

I don't know what to tell you. I really couldn't tell the difference between various AA, AF, and FXAA settings in terms of visual quality but they sure hurt my frames. I just turned them all off. The frames I save allow me to turn a bunch of other stuff to max.

I shot 4 pics in game. with AA off to 8x. It cuts down the saw tooth edge. This shot is of the roof ridge in town. I run my game at 4x ultra. No real need for 8x on my screen. http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198017827225/screenshots/

^ Make sure you blow those pics up to full size. Look at the edges of the wooden beam right behind the reticle . Good example right there.

That doesn't really have any connection to what you would perceive in normal gameplay. About all that will tell you is how nice screenshots will look.

Higher resolutions will make AA harder to detect. FXAA does a fair enough job at a high resolution like 2560x1600 where enabling supersampling AA is pretty much a waste of effort. Except for screenshots, of course.

Oh you can "perceive" the jaggies during "normal game play." it turns the screen into a blurry mess! i play with 4x ssaa and it is by far the best visual (aside from 8x) I can perceive! I ran the game with no aa, fxaa, injecture, different resolution. the game has been running and looking better for me at a lower resolution (1280x720) with 4x ssaa, then with 1920x1080, 8x msaa.


as for not seeing any difference(op) if your forcing aa from ccc (if thats what you are using) it doesn't apply the aa. it has to be turned on through the game.

I did FXAA for about a week. Was hard on my eye's. It added a odd blur. Then I decided to work with AA after i saw some AA benchmark test's for Skyrim. At 4x AA. It dosen't put any real demand on my computer. The game feels and looks crisp. Best of all no eye strain for me.

My screen is 60hz and game runs at 60 fps. An epic in-town battle of 20 giants and 50 guards will not drop my fps on Ultra 4x.

If i needed fps. I would drop screen rez first before I would drop AA. Not everyone or rig is the same. Best keep tweeking till you find what works best for you.

Skyrim have too many objects with alpha test, they can't be antialiased by MSAA, perhaps that's the problem some people don't see difference. Transparensity antialiasing is buggy, because some textures are improperly drawed, but as i know, some mods have them edited, so topic starte can enable this feature. Non modified fxaa is blurry, but it's easy to tweak to fix problem. The best quality of course ssaa (supersampling), but it's very slow. Most balanced is to use msaa x2 or x4 together with fxaa like mods or with transparensity antialiasing, then msaa will handle areas where fxaa can't work and fxaa where msaa can't. Also Skyrim does not have geometry where you can see difference between msaa x4 or greater, so don't waste performance for nothing and be objective human.

OP, you are lucky. Turn AA off and thank God or the stars or whatever that you don't see any need for it.

The edges of models. It's most noticeable on the models that show upon the loading screen because they contrast against the background.

However, if you play on high resolutions like 1920*1080, then you'll barely notice it during normal play unless you're really focussing on those edges.

Edited for typos

This.

1920x1080, I've got mine set to 2xAA, down from 4x and I really can't tell the difference while I'm playing. Yes, if you stop and stare at roofs in Whiterun, you might see the odd jaggie but my days of Whiterun Tourism are behind me now. I also turned off FXAA as I prefer the sharpness you get without. Player preferences, obviously.

@OP

Like someone mentioned before, you cannot force AA via the CCC alone, you can only enhance it. This is done best buy putting whatever AA value you want into the skyrimprefs file, AND turning the Catalyst to override and applying the type of AA you want. I believe the Catalyst AA either will not exceed the value you designate in the skyrimprefs file, or it will not exceed 2X. You can turn the Catalyst to enhance, but the performance hit is worse for some reason, from my experience.

@Skyrim Folks,
This is a good topic and I think this is the right place to ask this question. I really love the adaptive/transparency anti aliasing and the smooth look it gives the foliage as opposed to the shimmering edges of the vanilla Skyrim. But, like someone mentioned before, applying that sort of anti aliasing causes weird things to happen. Is there any way to deal with this? I mean, are there any mods out that have fixed the textures causing these problems? Is there any way to apply this anti aliasing through an injector that won't cause problems?

It's very hard to believe for me that someone can't see the difference between AA on and off as the difference is so glaringly obvious (at least between no AA and 2x or 4x AA, higher AA settings hardly make a difference unless you play on a >30" monitor). Personally I hate playing games without AA, they look like a mess to me. If you don't see it that's of course good for you since you can waste the performance somewhere else or just play with a better framerate.


I've only made a fix for the steel helmet, can be found here:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1988

Other stuff is harder to fix, like the plants for example. There are probably a lot of small errors I didn't notice or find yet as well. Bethesda's new alpha property settings and their often less than optimal alpha channels are to blame.

I saw a fix for the adaptive msaa somewhere online. alas when i went looking for it again i could never find it. it looked kind of involved to do it, but i believe the adaptive (x8)does look better(minus the texture pops)then fxaa, and comparable to ssaa (x4) with out the frame hit.

if someone knows the post im referring too, a link would be greatly appreciated!

The difference between having AA and not having AA even when the scene is in motion is very, very noticeable, especially when it comes to chainlink fences and stairs etc.

@OP:
First, use FRAPS and watch whether there is any difference in FPS when you enable/disable AA

If there is a difference, AA definitely has been turned on. If you can't see the difference, turn it off and enjoy smoother game

If there is no difference, there are 2 scenarios:
1) Your PC is too awesome to be slowed by a weakling named AA
2) AA was not enabled at all

Also, make sure to disable FXAA beforehand. The beast did its job so well at applying AA I thank whatever God inspired its creator

I run at 1920x1080 and I can really noticed jagged edges. I just think 4x AA plus some low transparency mulitsampling (or FXAA) really makes a huge difference when I'm playing. For me it's one of the highest visual improvements, but also one of the most costly. I'd love to run 4x Transparency AA too but that reduces my FPS into the 30s in foggy areas which I'm not wiling to put up with the mouse lag for.

Keep in mind though that the resolution you play at will look different on various size monitors. The difference in AA or no AA at 1920*1080 on a 19 inch monitor will be far less obvious than on a 50 inch monitor.

The performance hit between 2 x AA and 4 x AA is almost nothing. If you do use AA you might as well use 4 x AA unless you really need that extra 1 or 2 fps. The difference between 4 x AA and 8 x AA is very high on the other hand and you wouldn't notice the difference anyway unless you got hawk eyes or plan to turn screen shots into very large posters.

Turning AA off seems to cause a shimmering effect under certain lighting conditions for me so I keep it on.

higher resolutions on small screens aren't going to notice the effect of FSAA as much .... plus skyrim you mostly MUST use Super Sampling for everything to be properly AntiAilaized.

I don't notice the difference in skyrim in individual AA setting increases, but going from 0 to 8x is a very noticeable bump in visual fidelity. The one game I really see the differences in AA is bf3 with fences and the skinnier towers, each setting seems to take off about 1/4 of the staircase!

I actually just realized this today and bumped down my MSAA to x2. Honestly... I may as well just play at 0 MSAA. Vanilla FXAA is way to blurry... if you say it can be modified though I'll have to look into it.

Well, if you're old enough to have presbyopia (50 or so) you have a built in "soft focus" that makes it hard to see jaggies, especially if the scene is moving. Personally, I can see the difference if I squint and stare at a roof of a building but in normal play I don't really notice any difference. This may be the case for a number of people who hang out around here.

FSAA is very noticeable even for people that generally don't see it with 1080p at lets say a 55" HDTV..... however FSAA on a 17" at 1080p becomes significantly less apparent.

All depends on the size of the pixel and how close the pixels are to each other.

If you don't notice the difference then don't turn it on, it's that simple. Aliasing on objects stands out like a sore thumb for me, maybe because I look at the fidelity more, since it's what I enjoy in a game.

There are so many different things one can tweak. What i found to be the BIGGEST change for the Shimmering Objects....was a setting in my TV.

"Dynamic Contrast"....turn it OFF if you have that setting. (or very low).

Using a 32 " HDTV (toshiba) and for the life of me I could not get rid if that Shimmer. It was maddening. One day I stopped at a spot where i could see it, by barely moving my mouse, Went into the TV settings and fiddled with every setting i could find. Found IT "Dynamic Contrast" by turning this down I got rid of all the Shimmering on edges I had. Turn it back up and it is hideous...

I know this thread was about AA but the shimmer gets mentioned along with AA.