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morphine
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Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm crazy

Wed Mar 11, 2015 5:40 pm

... which I am, but let's put that tiny problem aside for now. Besides, what's the point in being crazy if you can't enjoy the ride?

I postulated (and promptly got mocked by our Glorious Leader), that with insanely high PPI, you wouldn't need any anti-aliasing or more importantly, any texture filtering at all. Point sampling would be enough. I also say that we don't even need to get into nano-scale pixels for that, as long as we're talking a hypothetical monitor at your regular viewing distance (and not VR goggles).

Let's talk about this, even if just for gerbil feces and giggles.
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 5:48 pm

Well, has anyone ever tried to estimate the "PPI" of human vision? Can it even be done?

Once and if you can create a display and generate an image at PPI greater than human viewing thresholds, AA goes away. Anisotropic will be with us forever I fear.
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auxy
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 5:59 pm

You can test this with id tech-derived games, which will let you set the GL texturing mode to GL_NEAREST for pure point sampling mode -- no texture filtering at all.

It actually looks sort of neat in a cool, retro way, like Quake 1 on software mode, and with, say, SMAA, it really looks sort of okayish! (*‘∀‘)
 
Melvar
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:10 pm

This would probably be true at extremely high resolutions assuming all texture data was similarly extreme. You'd need a high enough resolution for all of the different types of aliasing and moire patterns to average out to smooth rather than sparkly. We're not talking Retina here, we're talking literally microscopic pixels. IMO 4K isn't much closer to this than 1080p in terms of total distance from goal, it's that far from where we are now.

You'd still need MIP-mapping unless you got rid of textures and just went with flat shaded polygons. You wouldn't need AF if the resolution was high enough that you couldn't see the MIP level transitions.
 
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:26 pm

Melvar wrote:
This would probably be true at extremely high resolutions assuming all texture data was similarly extreme. You'd need a high enough resolution for all of the different types of aliasing and moire patterns to average out to smooth rather than sparkly. We're not talking Retina here, we're talking literally microscopic pixels. IMO 4K isn't much closer to this than 1080p in terms of total distance from goal, it's that far from where we are now.

You'd still need MIP-mapping unless you got rid of textures and just went with flat shaded polygons. You wouldn't need AF if the resolution was high enough that you couldn't see the MIP level transitions.


This.

Textures would need to be incredibly high resolution and you'd still end up with aliasing of some kind without any filtering.

I do wonder though, what impact does texture filtering and AF have on modern graphics cards with super high resolution textures?
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Forge
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:34 pm

I'm with Morphine. I got a Retina Macbook Pro from work, and if I run a simple game on it, so that the 'Iris 5100' graphics can actually keep up, the lines look PHENOMENAL. With just a little bit of light edge AA for particularly high-contrast borders and some texture filtering, I'd say the actual delivery-of-picture-to-screen-to-eyes part of the toolchain was effectively perfect, just make it bigger until everyone was satisfied that their FOV was full enough.
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ozzuneoj
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:46 pm

Forge wrote:
I'm with Morphine. I got a Retina Macbook Pro from work, and if I run a simple game on it, so that the 'Iris 5100' graphics can actually keep up, the lines look PHENOMENAL. With just a little bit of light edge AA for particularly high-contrast borders and some texture filtering, I'd say the actual delivery-of-picture-to-screen-to-eyes part of the toolchain was effectively perfect, just make it bigger until everyone was satisfied that their FOV was full enough.

I think he was suggesting that you could go without texture filtering at all.

I'm all for not needing AA, but to eliminate the need for texture filtering you'd basically have to have every texture in game be at least 4k resolution and never able to be get so close to them that they were bigger than 1:1 on the screen.

EDIT: And you'd still have aliasing at a distance most likely, depending on the texture.
Last edited by ozzuneoj on Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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auxy
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:46 pm

ozzuneoj wrote:
I do wonder though, what impact does texture filtering and AF have on modern graphics cards with super high resolution textures?
Sounds like a good subject for the next auxy investigative report! (*‘∀‘)
 
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:47 pm

Think of this.

You have a 2x2 texture :
black:white
white:black

And you stretch it over your 19000x12000 super high res screen.
With point sampling you will the screen divided into 4 square.

With bi linear , even on a 1366x768, you will see a smooth gradient.

So if the game is using smooth texture for sky, or other features. they will look horribly chunky.
Also for high def texture, without filtering they will shimmer like crazy with point sampling.


And for edges, GPU have very efficient method that perform better then oversampling/super-sampling.

So even with a retina display you want to continue to fully use AA in all shape or form, because it would otherwise mitigate the benefit of having a higher def screen.
 
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 6:53 pm

cray cray
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:14 pm

I've noticed that I don't have to use as much AA to get the same image quality when going from 768p 15.6" to 1080p 14". Even after bumping MSAA from 8x to 2x.

You would probably have to go to (or beyond) 8K or 16K to get to a point where AA doesn't have a major image quality effect, at least compared to using it on 768p.

On something like an 80" TV compared to a standard desktop/laptop screen at +16K resolution, you're probably going to be sitting far away enough to not notice much aliasing.
 
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:18 pm

The need for edge AA is independent of display resolution. High pixel densities can help, but we still have AA on ~220 PPI phones and tablets, and that's still a good thing.
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 7:18 pm

SCOTT'S TYRANNY HAS GONE ON TOO LONG!

WE NEED A NEW OWNER OF TECHREPORT!!

WHAT'S THAT I HEAR???
sweatshopking! sweatshopking! sweatshopking!

SOUNDS LIKE A CHANT! BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?! IT'S GETTING LOUDER!!

SWEATSHOPKING!SWEATSHOPKING!!SWEATSHOPKING!!
 
Melvar
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:10 pm

I've been thinking about this, and the conclusion I've come to is that textures themselves are technically a filter in this context, simulating what should really be higher resolution geometry.
 
Kougar
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:26 pm

Sort of a side-topic to this discussion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't 4x AA been built into modern GPUs for a few generations now? Specifically there's no performance hit for enabling 4x AA on a modern GPU?

I ask partly to make sure I remembered that right, and also because I'm curious just how much AA we're discussing here. Off my very limited knowledge on the subject if we are just discussing AA then I'd agree with morphine. But texture filtering includes other things like Anisotropic Filtering, so I think the real question is just what kinds of texture filtering would uber resolutions make obsolete, if any?
 
Mikael33
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Sat Mar 14, 2015 7:32 pm

Kougar wrote:
Sort of a side-topic to this discussion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't 4x AA been built into modern GPUs for a few generations now? Specifically there's no performance hit for enabling 4x AA on a modern GPU?

I ask partly to make sure I remembered that right, and also because I'm curious just how much AA we're discussing here. Off my very limited knowledge on the subject if we are just discussing AA then I'd agree with morphine. But texture filtering includes other things like Anisotropic Filtering, so I think the real question is just what kinds of texture filtering would uber resolutions make obsolete, if any?

No, MSSA still isn't free unless you're cpu limited, shader based AA like FXAA and SMAA are free or close to it, however.
 
Melvar
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Sat Mar 14, 2015 9:03 pm

Kougar wrote:
Sort of a side-topic to this discussion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't 4x AA been built into modern GPUs for a few generations now? Specifically there's no performance hit for enabling 4x AA on a modern GPU?

Are you sure you aren't thinking of anisotropic filtering? That used to be a big performance hit on old GPUs, but even 16x AF is practically free on modern GPUs.
 
auxy
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Sat Mar 14, 2015 11:15 pm

Melvar wrote:
Kougar wrote:
Sort of a side-topic to this discussion. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't 4x AA been built into modern GPUs for a few generations now? Specifically there's no performance hit for enabling 4x AA on a modern GPU?

Are you sure you aren't thinking of anisotropic filtering? That used to be a big performance hit on old GPUs, but even 16x AF is practically free on modern GPUs.

He's probably thinking about the Xbox 360, where 4x MSAA can be done "for free" thanks to the high-bandwidth eDRAM. However, as GPUs don't (yet) have that luxury, no kind of MSAA is "for free". Sadly. ;つД`)
 
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:26 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
Well, has anyone ever tried to estimate the "PPI" of human vision? Can it even be done?


Maybe ;)

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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:28 pm

Damage wrote:
cray cray



OH

The OX Bellows ;)
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anotherengineer
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:35 pm

morphine wrote:
.I postulated (and promptly got mocked by our Glorious Leader), that with insanely high PPI, you wouldn't need any anti-aliasing or more importantly, any texture filtering at all. Point sampling would be enough. I also say that we don't even need to get into nano-scale pixels for that, as long as we're talking a hypothetical monitor at your regular viewing distance (and not VR goggles).

Let's talk about this, even if just for gerbil feces and giggles.


Pretty easy to test in reality.
Get a 23.6", 4k monitor and a 23.6", 1080p monitor. So that would give you double the pixels horizontally and vertically, in about the same area.

Set 4k to 0AA and 1080 to 4xAA and let us know what you think ;) CS:S might be good game to test, I remember power lines used to be pretty jagged on 0xAA on that game.
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Forge
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:39 pm

I'm game. Who is going to chip in against costs?
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ChronoReverse
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:56 pm

Our smartphones are already at way higher PPI and still need AA to remove jaggies. So we'll need even higher PPI before we can eliminate AA and frankly, that's basically just SuperSampling it away.


As for Texture Filtering, you'd need supremely high resolution textures as well as high PPI. Considering it's nearly free nowadays I'm not even sure why you'd bother. Think about how much easier it is to use even crappy Bilinear for resizing an image vs making the image (arbitrarily large number) times higher resolution..
 
C-A_99
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Re: Über-high PPI w/o texture filtering - Damage says I'm cr

Fri Mar 20, 2015 2:25 pm

That part on the texture filtering may not be so far-fetched. Super Smash Bros. 3DS already omits a lot of texture filtering in the environmental art which is only really noticeable when pausing and zooming in, although this really only works because of how low-resolution the 3DS's screen is.

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