IS NVIDIA Image Quality A Joke, Or Is It Just Me

It (Clamp setting) never cured this problem in rF1 for almost 10 years. We have been battling this plague for a long, long time. rF1 is old enough you can just use serious SS on it. That's just too big a hit in rF2 for even the highest end currently available machines. Some day, rF2 will be in the same position as rF1 (current hardware will run it no problem)-in the meantime, the Alt + M is a godsend...as soon as they make it sticky or include it in .PLR.

 

Like Marc said for RF1 and other ISI engine based sims just use supersampling for AMD, or multisample + same amount of sparse f3id supersampling with NVIDIA.

2x is much better with AMD, but 4x is real good with NVIDIA too.

Alt-M for now in RF2, unless you got the power for MSAA + SGSSAA.

 

Look at the screenshots, 4xMSAA + 4x SGSSAA looks much worse compared to correctly filtered textures.
Especially the powerlines on the left. I totally prefer the visuals from the GTX285 (which even produced more fps with lower input lag compared to the GTX770 with MSAA and SGSSAA).

 

Alt + M isn't a cure-all. It just helps (doesn't solve) one of the most annoying issues that plague most tracks--jaggies on the white lines and Armco. It does it with no performance penalty. The ONLY way to get "proper" graphics in rF1 or rF2 is with heavy super sampling. I agree with Robert that SGSSAA looks worse in several contexts than lower settings, but it, too, helps with the most obvious jaggies, which is why it's a popular choice. If you are looking at every detail in the scene, and the scene is moving (in game, not a screen shot), then you will sadly discover only super sampling addresses all the issues. All the conversation here shouldn't be debating that, it's only a question of since we can't run heavy SS and get a useable frame rate, what are the other compromises and which ones are best?

 

What's interesting is that there is still no answer why Roberts gtx 285 was cranking out great quality by default.

 

Because Clamp was working with older GPUs. It's an issue by Nvidia.

I posted in their forums HERE, they most probably won't reply to a single post though and we need to bump that thread and make our voices heard. Of course games like Battlefield & Co have a higher priority for Nvidia due to the bigger playerbase, but if we don't voice our issues, they can't fix them.

 

Looks like this Thread saved me from buying a 780GTX over a AMD R9 290.........because all the people tell me actual Nvidia Cards are better and faster with rf2.........

I still use my old AMD 4890 but sooner or later it will be replaced.

Now some "History" for the younger folks or so.......:

I had exactly the same graphical Problems back in the days of F1 Challenge, GT Legends and GTR with my last Nvidia Card since then!! It was a 7800 GT.
Same behaviour with AA and AF enabled and Filtering Quality on High, you either had annoying flickering on white Lines, Fences, Guardrails etc... because the image was too sharp with AA and AF enabled and Clamp setting off, or with Clamp on you had extremly nasty and 20 meters before your car dissapearing blurry white lines on the trackside and an overall blurry " Wall " moving in the distance, it was a joke. Then when you tried to raise the AA and AF settings higher than 4xAA and 8x AF the Fps went down to unplayable with those Cards.

I posted it back then on the RaceSimCentral Forums before it sadly went down, ( you remember that one???) but i never made a backup of that thread, Grmblllll, but i found 2 old Screenshots from GTL, both with the same Resolution and AA + AF Settings, one with Clamp on, the other Clamp off:

View attachment 12103 View attachment 12104

If i remember correct , the only solution was to correct something in the dds Tracktextures from the Tracks, but i cant remember the exact Details.......

I had then to switch over to ATI/AMD. And all those Problems were gone with ISI based Simulations.

So, i thought after all these Years it wouldnt be a Problem anymore between ISI and Nvidia, but after reading this thread.............
Can't believe this still isn't fixed for Nvidia Cards after all those Years..............

I think if i buy a 780 GTX and am forced to activate all these Fps Hungry AA Methods, to get a nice Clean Image or use ALT + M, a AMD R9 290 will deliver the same Fps or better with the same or better Image Quality..............or not? What do you Guys think???

Should i better go for AMD than Nvidia???

 

It's not as bad as it was back then, because of higher resolution textures and better filtering. Things are still more blurry in the distance if you look at them closely, but nothing like that.

 

I highly doubt that you'll get a higher framerate at the same visual quality using an AMD card to be honest. Besides, the visual quality is nothing like on your screenshots if Clamp would actually work. Alt+M is basically the same technique.

Take these as an example. There are no fps hungry AA methods involved, only Multisampling:



Besides, AMD cards suffer from the same oversharpening issue, so you are NOT safe there, at least from what I heard from a friend who is using one. I don't know if he has tools for more in-depth tweaking of the catalyst drivers, but using the options available, he suffers from the same oversharpened textures.

These two screenshots are coming from a HD 6870, not the newest card, but you get the idea. The quality with Alt+M is lower compared to the Nvidia shots. Even the car in the foreground is blurred a lot.

HD6870, 4xMSAA, 16xAF:


HD6870, 4xMSAA, 16xAF, Alt+M:


Once again, no matter if you're using heavy Supersampling methods on an AMD or Nvidia card, they can only reduce the flickering, but not get rid of it. Applying a monstrous AA method over an image with wrong texture filtering still does not cure the root of the issue. If you take 2 images with the exact same issues, and one being simply in a four times higher resolution, resizing this one afterwards to the size of the smaller one will make it look better of course than the naturally smaller image. The wrong filtering though was still there and is not fixed, which is unnecessary.

 

Only super-sampling will cure the problems on either AMD or NVidia. And AMD have much worse base performance, so FPS will be lower for the equivalent level of quality. Even the top NVidia cards can't run enough super-sampling at (typically) high resolutions and maintain playable frame rates, so avoid AMD if you are trying to accomplish both with no jaggies or oversharpening issues.

 

It does not. It reduces the noticeable symptoms, but AA itself has nothing to do with texture filtering (if it doesn't use custom MipMap LOD settings automatically like the 32xS mode).

ISI and Nvidia (and maybe even AMD, can't speak for current AMD GPUs because I don't have one to test) need to get together to fix the MipMapping LOD on newer GPUs. It's broken somewhere between the game engine, the driver and the GPU in use. Overriding the LOD Bias in the driver does not work, so it's a bug, and that's what's causing the jaggies in textures.

 

Thanks for your efforts Roberts. Can you then confirm if alt+m is exactly the same as the quality on you gtx 285 picture?

 

I can't confirm because I gave my old GTX285 away but if I had to guess, I'd say it comes pretty close. The power lines in Sebring in rFactor 2 look as good as with the GTX285 before now using Alt+M, there are no ugly jaggies and interruptions like in the 4xMSAA + 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling image, so it's perfectly fine for me.

 

You are correct, but when used, as expected, with half-decent AA, SS looks better than any option without it in terms of addressing all the annoying jaggies, shimmering, flickering, etc.

 

Crap, i finally found myself "temporarily so lucky to have found an Argument" for one GFX Brand to go.......... but now i can begin by Zero again ;-P

Are you sure that AMD Cards are the same amount oversharped than Nvidia, because " only" a friend told you he had the "same" Problems.
Pls can anyone confirm this?, because of my own, but only on older Cards based experience, AMD had still the less flickery image....

Anybody can tell me how much base ( do you mean without any AA and AF on??) difference between AMD or Nvidia in rf2 in Fps??? Do we speak about big ( +15-25 or more Fps) or small(+5-10 Fps) differences?

I wish i could compare myself an R9 980 to a 780 GTX with exactly the same AA and AF settings (for Example 4xAA 16xAF) and resolution....and like you said if Clamp doesnt work on Nvidia anyway then there will be no difference if enabled or not.

This make me nuts, i still can't decide, i hope one day i can................

 

I think you are uploading the "thumbnails" instead of the pics themselves as the pics posted are tiny, impossible to see anything.

 

NVIDIA's supersampling methods seem overly optimized as they sometimes seem to miss some things here and there, I'm pretty sure AMDs more brute-force type of Supersampling would do a better job on those power lines, especially at 4x.

 

Works here. You did try clicking on them, right?

But still the texture filtering is the cause of the problem, which AA doesn't solve. It's just less noticeable. We wouldn't need to use Supersampling for most stuff if the texture filtering wasn't so off. The margin of error becomes smaller when using a higher res (Supersampling), but the error is still there. Multisampling with correct texture filtering has a lot less flickering and Aliasing on textures than Multisampling+Supersampling with our current incorrect oversharpened texture filtering. Plus, it runs much smoother of course.

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/11597-EnduranceRacingX-by-URD

 

Ive never seen a track that didn't require supersampling in ISI based sims. You're telling me it's 100% down to just the texture filtering? So every single modder for every single track in F1 Challenge 99-02, GTR1, GTR2, GT Legends, Race 07/Race Injection, GTR Evo, RFactor 1, RFactor 2, Game Stock Car, etc. etc. uses oversharpened texture filtering? Out of thousands of tracks not 1 single person made one single track with "proper", non-oversharpened texture filtering?

I find it extremely hard to believe that it's down to, and only down to, people using oversharpened texture filtering when every single track in the history of every single ISI engine based game has this problem.