TAA also makes games super blurry & its starting to be forced.

[Hybred]

TAA & Persistence Blur

So this forum is dedicated to motion clarity, however it typically only talks about persistence blur (which is very important, and I am very dedicated to solving that issue as well, either via 1000hz panels with async warp or innovations to BFI such as ULMB 2)

However -- there are other issues contributing to poor motion clarity that also need addressed such as TAA (temporal anti-aliasing) which is an anti-aliasing solutions that uses past frame information to better detect what is aliasing and isn't. The problem is keeping this past frame information can lead to ghosting and blurring in motion.

It's sort of funny how it mirrors the issue of persistence blur, where the ghosting is like crosstalk or response times (overshoot), and the blur aspect is from keeping past frame information like a sample and hold display keeping the image on screen instead of strobing it.

Both result in significant image quality issues, but obviously they do so to attain other aspects of quality such as in BFI's case - flicker free, brighter image, and TAA's goal to reduce aliasing even further than other anti-aliasing methods. It really comes down to an individuals own preference, which will vary from display to display (some will have worse BFI implementations than others) and game to game (some games may have too much aliasing with TAA off, some games won't. Most games will also have very blurry TAA but a select few may actually put the time into it to make it look good in motion)

The reason this is also an issue is because more and more games these days are not providing an off/non-temporal option for anti-aliasing, if they provide any option at all its always "Low" and "High" (MW3, Battlefield 2042, Halo Infinite, 95% of UE5 games, etc) which means TAA is being forced onto people and is why modern gaming is so blurry and soft. It would be nice to achieve the following

Solutions

1) Advocate for non-temporal options to be provided like SMAA, or even just off, having an alternative solution would be better but the ultimate goal is to not have it forced onto people

2) Provide developer resources and knowledge on the best ways to correctly implement TAA to reduce blurring whether it's in stationary or in motion (if you know, if not I have a lot of documentation & knowledge on that)

3) Advocate for developers to expose TAA options in game so people can find their own balance of blur & anti-aliasing, if TAA is important for their render pipeline and they don't wish to put work into getting the game to look pretty with it off. This would include exposing things like "Current Frame Weight", the "Sample Count", the "TAA History Reprojection", and "Filter Size" to the user

Theirs a subreddit dedicated to the topic called r/****TAA (which has a vulgar name that triggers a defensive response, which I do not like) but theirs also another one that encompasses both issues (persistence blur and TAA) with a more PG name called r/MotionClarity if you need more information or would like to help bring awareness I recommend joining but it would be cool if we could discuss that here more, is the reason were not because we'd like to focus on one issue at a time and leave the other to other people? Is it because of ignorance of the issue? Either way thanks for reading

Here's a informative video with more examples & detailed information/solutions if you want to learn more https://youtu.be/YEtX_Z7zZSY

TAA (Top) vs No TAA (Bottom)

TAAImage.jpg (1.73 MiB) Viewed 6054 times

[Dalek]

I remember seeing FXAA for the first time and thinking wow, this game looks blurry. Why is it even implemented? SMAA and TAA also make games look blurry, so I just end up disabling anti-aliasing to get the sharpest possible experience.

But there are indeed some games that force it like Alien: Isolation, had to refund that game because it was too blurry. A Plague Tale: Requium is also another game that forces anti-aliasing (not sure if it's TAA or SMAA) but you can disable it via .ini file. For some reason they didn't add an option in the graphics/video menu to disable it.

I've honestly never understood these other anti-aliasing methods. Do people not see how unsharp the quality of everything is? it's borderline trickery that makes you think there's something wrong with your vision. I don't care if they reduce resources, it's the equivalent of lowering render scaling to around 80% to my eyes.

The ONLY decent anti-aliasing method is and was MSAA. It should always be an option in games, but sadly over the past decade MSAA is rarely implemented now.

[jorimt]

The ONLY decent anti-aliasing method is and was MSAA. It should always be an option in games, but sadly over the past decade MSAA is rarely implemented now.

There's a simple reason; MSAA can't cover the majority of aliasing in deffered-rendered games. It's really only effective on simple geometric edges in traditional forward-rendered games, hence the "need" for temporal forms of AA.

Modern games almost look broken without some form of TAA (shimmering galore), but the side-effect of TAA/DLSS/DLAA (etc) are artifacts like smearing, ghosting, and/or blur, and due to the temporal blending of these reconstructive techniques, it's difficult to balance coverage, sharpness, and artifact levels all at once.

No real easy or straight-forward answer on this one, unfortunately...

[Hybred]

The ONLY decent anti-aliasing method is and was MSAA. It should always be an option in games, but sadly over the past decade MSAA is rarely implemented now.

There's a simple reason; MSAA can't cover the majority of aliasing in deffered-rendered games. It's really only effective on simple geometric edges in traditional forward-rendered games, hence the "need" for temporal forms of AA.

Modern games almost look broken without some form of TAA (shimmering galore), but the side-effect of TAA/DLSS/DLAA (etc) are artifacts like smearing, ghosting, and/or blur, and due to the temporal blending of these reconstructive techniques, it's difficult to balance coverage, sharpness, and artifact levels all at once.

No real easy or straight-forward answer on this one, unfortunately...

Yes anti-aliasing is tricky, however the answer is quite simple & easier than you think (look at the solution section) TAA can be fine when done right or if you just give the users control over temporal settings, because everyone can find their optimal balance. But doing this requires advocacy and education.

Death Stranding for example has good TAA, and they have public documentation about how they built it and their reasoning behind each decision, it is temporally stable and it doesn't blur much in motion.

TAA is only awful because it's such a dynamic and variable solution that's very easy to mess up, in an industry where crunch is common, developers do the bare minimum because they're burnt out and most people are blissfully unaware it has motion issues to begin with means it's going to get screwed up a lot. Most developers don't even test their TAA in motion.

TAA is not as awful as it seems, and it doesn't have to remain a double edged sword, we shouldn't just throw our hands up in the air and accept it. I'm a game developer and I've been pushing for change on the inside, I just need people on the outside to let them know this is actually something a decent amount of people care about.

[jorimt]

TAA is not as awful as it seems, and it doesn't have to remain a double edged sword, we shouldn't just throw our hands up in the air and accept it. I'm a game developer and I've been pushing for change on the inside, I just need people on the outside to let them know this is actually something a decent amount of people care about.

Aware and understood, but when I said "No real easy or straight-forward answer on this one, unfortunately...," I was referring to the fact that you're having to make your topic in the first place; if it was a given, there'd be no need for a discussion, let alone a push.

I agree temporal-type AA can be good, and the quality level can be more standardized, and there can be user-level controls that can make it better, that's just a lot of "cans," so the trick will be turning those into "is."

Let's hope as temporal reconstructive techniques become more necessary (especially with the recent advent and normalization of RT usage) that it will require the industry to push for more standardization in this respect, because, yes, it is starting to harm motion clarity more often than not (which is ironic given the recent advancements in max refresh rate monitors and adjoining framerate amplification techniques).

[Hybred]

TAA is not as awful as it seems, and it doesn't have to remain a double edged sword, we shouldn't just throw our hands up in the air and accept it. I'm a game developer and I've been pushing for change on the inside, I just need people on the outside to let them know this is actually something a decent amount of people care about.

Aware and understood, but when I said "No real easy or straight-forward answer on this one, unfortunately...," I was referring to the fact that you're having to make your topic in the first place; if it was a given, there'd be no need for a discussion, let alone a push.

I agree temporal-type AA can be good, and the quality level can be more standardized, and there can be user-level controls that can make it better, that's just a lot of "cans," so the trick will be turning those into "is."

Let's hope as temporal reconstructive techniques become more necessary (especially with the recent advent and normalization of RT usage) that it will require the industry to push for more standardization in this respect, because, yes, it is starting to harm motion clarity more often than not (which is ironic given the recent advancements in max refresh rate monitors and adjoining framerate amplification techniques).

If that's what you mean by that then yes I agree, I'm just saying it's not *technically* hard to do, some games won't even provide basic FOV sliders despite how easy it is, the industry is just stubborn but ultimately is willing to conform it just needs an incentive such as a decent chunk of people wanting it and secondly to be made aware it's an issue in the first place, which is the point of advocacy; awareness.

Without Blur Busters for example we would probably have less black frame insertion displays or worse implementations of them. You guys have helped a lot in this regard. I just made a YouTube video today for example and did some advocacy on reddit and it netted me 1000+ views so far - so I'm going to continue to work on this forefront, I just wanted to mention it here because any help is appreciated & we all want the same thing in the end which is a clear image, regardless of the reason it's being caused. Thank you for commenting

[jorimt]

I'm just saying it's not *technically* hard to do, some games won't even provide basic FOV sliders despite how easy it is, the industry is just stubborn but ultimately is willing to conform it just needs an incentive such as a decent chunk of people wanting it and secondly to be made aware it's an issue in the first place, which is the point of advocacy; awareness.

No disagreement here.

Alex Battaglia over at Digital Foundry has been vocal on more standardized graphical settings menus/naming, and inclusion of more basic features as well.

Without Blur Busters for example we would probably have less black frame insertion displays or worse implementations of them. You guys have helped a lot in this regard. I just made a YouTube video today for example and did some advocacy on reddit and it netted me 1000+ views so far - so I'm going to continue to work on this forefront, I just wanted to mention it here because any help is appreciated & we all want the same thing in the end which is a clear image, regardless of the reason it's being caused.

All the more power to you.

It is a bit of an awkward phase in the industry where the market seems to be pushing for more motion clarity and input responsiveness than ever before, while simultaneously building the latest titles with engines (and GPU vendors) utilizing more and more methods (temporal reconstruction, ray tracing, etc) that are re-introducing the very motion blur artifacts and inflated render time latency we were trying to get away from in the first place.

Ironic, for sure.

[Dalek]

The ONLY decent anti-aliasing method is and was MSAA. It should always be an option in games, but sadly over the past decade MSAA is rarely implemented now.

There's a simple reason; MSAA can't cover the majority of aliasing in deffered-rendered games. It's really only effective on simple geometric edges in traditional forward-rendered games, hence the "need" for temporal forms of AA.

Modern games almost look broken without some form of TAA (shimmering galore), but the side-effect of TAA/DLSS/DLAA (etc) are artifacts like smearing, ghosting, and/or blur, and due to the temporal blending of these reconstructive techniques, it's difficult to balance coverage, sharpness, and artifact levels all at once.

No real easy or straight-forward answer on this one, unfortunately...

Interesting, I never knew that. Thank you for the insight.

[Kyouki]

I've been in the subreddit for some time and for my long-standing quest of what and why my eyes tear up from some video game's.

Thanks to blurbusters and the TAA subreddit, I have figured out that I have a pretty bad case of blur-sensitivity in my eyes. Reducing where blur potentially may come from helps my eyes a lot (among other settings like Chromatic Abbreviation)

@jorimt, thank you for the clear definition and insight I can share to my non or lesser technical knowledge friends. Are you aware of any alternatives for the deferred rendered engine's/games?

[Dalek]

(among other settings like Chromatic Abbreviation)

Yes, chromatic abbreviation is also another annoyance. GTA V is a great example of this where it cannot be turned off, unless you use a third-party mod. Even then, disabling it actually made LOD look sketchy in the distance.