HDR+AA on 7-Series?? Possible? Lookin' for ideas....

[digmouse]

EM....We know if we enable MSAA on NV 6&7 Series Cards then we get HDR disabled since the buffer zone(correct?? poor english~~~) taken by AA actions. But recently in China I got to know sb. managed to enable HDR+AA in next-generations games such as Elder Scroll 4 and Splinter Cell Double Agent, using his own patch for 7-Series cards. And for weeks we engaged serious discussion on it.....between A---and N users.
Screenshots in ES4:
XFX 7900GS with such a patch
(Since I'm not authorized to post images, the links of the screenshots are given below)

http://bbs.ccidnet.com/attachment/Mon_0701/44_308398_f959f6712692acc.jpg

http://bbs.ccidnet.com/attachment/Mon_0701/44_308398_476756fb627fcf4.jpg

http://bbs.ccidnet.com/attachment/Mon_0701/44_308398_b23ae6cfed5e9a2.jpg

http://bbs.ccidnet.com/attachment/Mon_0701/44_308398_ed3328a5e7d2cb8.jpg

http://bbs.ccidnet.com/attachment/Mon_0701/44_308398_f1e5823792e2be0.jpg

http://photo.bababian.com/20070120/0C98E7BC4A6B1E006A9D8306F74531BB.jpg

Patch:http://filexoom.com/files/2006/10/15/25426/My Documents/Files/HDR_SSAA_Oblivion.rar
Producer of the patch is jhj9 from pcinlife.com/jhj from bbs.pcpop.com, both Chinese forums, if further information is required, PM me or contact my MSN:digmouse@hotmail.com

 

[Heyyou27]

Likely, they're simply using a version of Super Sampling antialiasing with HDR which has been done before in titles like Age of Empires III. The negative effect of this, which is clearly visible in that screenshot is the performance hit. So sure, if I really wanted to play Oblivion with HDR and antialiasing on my Geforce 7 series card, I suppose I could drop the resolution to 800x600 or something.

 

[Natecannon]

I'm considering trying it out for shits and giggles, but I'm skeptical of the file... hmm, whats a boy to do.

 

[Bloated]

just buy an ATI or an 8xxx series anything less and your screwed no matter how much you don't want to be.... literally end of story.

yes you can possibly get a 7xxx series card to run the better IQ and no it will not be playable and it will never be as high an IQ as anything else that was designed specifically to do it.

 

[digmouse]

em guys, in fact the purpose of my post is looking for some professional guys to test this patch and give us a clear explanation. The author says he "changes the codes of the creating and displaying of the 3D surface to create a larger rendering surface than the available surfaces, and then make it smaller to enable HDR+SSAA"(translated from the authors original post, may not be very accurate)

My opinion is doubtful:if it's just HDR+SSAA, even Int HDR+SSAA, it makes no sense, just as the HDR solution in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, any SM2.0 card can make it, and if it's really FP HDR+SSAA, even the NV engineers cant make it, how did he do that?? You know, he cant even post it in English~~~~~(And i think he even dont dare)

The author says about the "patch"

"Please use the original version(1.0) of ES4;
use Window mode to play;
first launch the patch, click LOAD, and then launch the game"

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

em guys, in fact the purpose of my post is looking for some professional guys to test this patch and give us a clear explanation. The author says he "changes the codes of the creating and displaying of the 3D surface to create a larger rendering surface than the available surfaces, and then make it smaller to enable HDR+SSAA"(translated from the authors original post, may not be very accurate)

Which describes the process of SSAA, but in software, not hardware. Which is similar to AOE3's implementation.

My opinion is doubtful:if it's just HDR+SSAA, even Int HDR+SSAA, it makes no sense, just as the HDR solution in Half Life 2: Lost Coast, any SM2.0 card can make it,

Not necessarily, he doesn't mention changing the HDR implementation itself which would remain FP16 only so it's nothing like HL2 which is combination FP and int HDR.

and if it's really FP HDR+SSAA, even the NV engineers cant make it, how did he do that??

This has been discussed before, they can make it, but not how you think they can make it. They can do FP16HDR with int8 outputs and then run through the ROP again for either MSAA or SSAA but it's not something worthwhile because the penalty of performance would be terrible if they bothered, so why do that for a slow solution, just to say you can? As for FP16HDR + SSAA in software, once again it's has to be done by the app, and unless nVidia convinced Bethesda to add it, it doesn't happen, a mod by a user to enable it is like the super-texture mods out there, benefit from users, but not supported officially.

You know, he cant even post it in English~~~~~(And i think he even dont dare)

Well that last part was wonderful English with which to criticize him. :roll:

BTW, if you research it enough you'll see that in December he looked into the widely available 'FAKE HDR' patch that allows integer based bloom tweaking using ini value changes, along with AA.

If his patch enables software SSAA like it sounds then it makes sense, but like HY27 mentioned, likely at a heavy performance penalty (likely worse than AOE3 which was likely optimized by M$).

 

[Mr_Bluntman]

Yeah it looks like it's just bloom+FSAA.

It's impossible to do FSAA+HDR on GeForce 6 and 7 because the ROPs cannot do both at the same time because of them using the same resources.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah it's hardware limited, but it could do SSAA in software like I mentioned, and like the author of the patch suggests he did.

Based on the chronology of his posts it looks like he didn't like the results of the 'fakeHDR' and decided to make a software SSAA style solution.

 

[digmouse]

Em, thanks cool guys, then our last question is whether it's FP16HDR+SSAA or Int HDR+SSAA?? Can Tom's promote a more professional test to realize it?? That's my final purpose.....

 

[digmouse]

So we got explanations now:it's a kind of software emulation of SSAA to enable FP HDR+AA?? em....why not use Int HDR+MSAA???I dont think it's harder to make ES4 into Int HDR

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Sure it's harder, you'd have to rewrite alot in order to get it close to HL2's implementation of int8 HDR and have it look great. Now as for using integer to get close, the 'FakeHDR' patch out there that jhj9 was looking at in December essentially achieve int8HDR+MSAA.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/theelderscrollsivoblivion/download.html?sid=6148079

There has since been an improvement of "FakeHDR with SUN" which is a little closer to the FP16 version.

 

[digmouse]

Anybody has downloaded the patch and test it? I wanna know their opinions

 

[digmouse]

Just "dirty business".......... technological, in fact nv knows it's possible to enable hdr with AA on 7-series,but considering it may affect 8-series~~~~~~
if I just want a HDR effect with AA, I may use the official Bloom+AA solution, no such great visual difference, but with a much better performance

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yeah I'd like to see an official statement from nV that FP16-HDR+AA is possible in the GF7 hardware, because it's not possible. Only seperately through software+hardware or else FP16 blending and then int8 MSAA. FP16 throughout is not possible in hardware.

That nV isn't making an effort to do a two-pass PF16+int8 solution for hardware is not surprising. If anything it would be better for them to get the game devs to add the software SSAA plus hardware FP16-HDR.