Put together a rather lengthy post over on the eVGA forums detailing some of the discoveries around AA quality using the various AA injectors and in-game AA for 'Cliffs of Dover'.

Doesn't look like there is a good way to copy and paste it over here and keep the formatting - but should be pretty easy to read on that link, and any discussion or questions could happen here.

Key take-away is:
- Don't mix SMAA with the in-game AA
- I don't really know why you'd use the in-game AA at all, given the excellent AA injectors out there
- New injectors coming out this year could be pretty cool!

Thanks. What do the injection methods do to the cockpit text?

Good question!

Here are the comparisons...


No AA:


In-game 2xAA:


FXAA:


SMAA:


By and large, no amount of in-game AA has any impact on text quality at all. They appear to be per-pixel identical.

FXAA and SMAA definitely 'blur' the text some, but not in a makes-it-harder-to-read way. Actually, the effect is very much like the OS's "font smoothing", and really improves readability of the text.

Great, I'll have a go.

Nice , i'm using the fxaa tweak but have not played with it via the ini file at all, much more acceptable than what is not provided in game, hoping Timothy's 4.0 version can step it up a bit within CloD.

I don't know about it not degrading the text quality in game, when I was using the FXAA (latest ones, with the shader settings) it degraded the text to the point I couldn't stand it. Little white dots appeared randomly on the server messages, and the lines had become too thin. It was a pain to read.

Not knowing how to adjust the colors properly also made it un-useable for me. While I like the idea of being able to tweak the color palette, I simply do not understand what I'm doing enough to improve it graphics. I was hurting it (purple skies, black trees, orange tint to everything).

Also, I may have had both in-game AA and FXAA running, which caused Launcher.exe crashes very quickly (i7 920 @ 4.1Ghz, 12GB DDR3 RAM @1480ghz, GTX 560Ti+2GB running 1680x1050). I have since removed all injected FXAA, and haven't had a crash since.

I loved it when I was first using it, but later versions got overly complex, and without a better understanding of what it's doing, it was wrecking the game for me. Not saying its the cause of my problems, but it's removal has helped my system.

It might be the over-sharpening that was enabled by default causing your issue.

The default filters applied (in the injFX_Settings.h file) looked something like this:

// Comment to deactivate an effect.
// Example: To disable the tonemap effect, use // in front of #define USE_TONEMAP
#define USE_ANTI_ALIASING
#define USE_PRE_SHARPEN
//#define USE_BLOOM *NOT WORKING
#define USE_TECHNICOLOR
#define USE_TONEMAP
#define USE_SEPIA
//#define USE_VIGNETTE
#define USE_POST_SHARPEN
//#define USE_FINAL_LIMITER

I really didn't find most of those effects interesting or useful at all, so just flat-out disabled everything that wasn't AA:
// Comment to deactivate an effect.
// Example: To disable the tonemap effect, use // in front of #define USE_TONEMAP
#define USE_ANTI_ALIASING
//#define USE_PRE_SHARPEN
//#define USE_BLOOM *NOT WORKING
//#define USE_TECHNICOLOR
//#define USE_TONEMAP
//#define USE_SEPIA
//#define USE_VIGNETTE
//#define USE_POST_SHARPEN
//#define USE_FINAL_LIMITER

Thanks for post Xander,

You mention both FXAA and SMAA, do they accomplish the same thing/what are the differences? Is one better for one sim, and the other better for others?

Cheesehawk makes a point, that some people may be intimidated to install it given his experience (call it misguided tweaking?). It is VERY easy to use JSGME and these post-FX AA mods. If you don't like it, deactivate the mod via JSGME and remove it from the Mods folder.

These apps are worth trying, they really make a difference if you have a low to mid range system.

FXAA and SMAA do the same thing, yes.

Ostensibly, FXAA is based on one of the nVidia developer's hobby work...but it's vendor-agnostic (works on ATI and nVidia cards). SMAA is ATI's "post-anti-aliasing world" take on the same basic idea (shader-based AA), and an external developer used some of the concepts of FXAA injection to implement the SMAA logic. Again, it works on vendors from either manufacturer.

There is an offside chance that one of the methods works better for the vendor it is most closely tied with? I have no idea, though - my testing showed no difference in performance between them (and such a very slight hit from 'no AA at all').

As to JSGME - yup, that's what I used to enable/disable them. I suppose if mod complexity is a concern, the SMAA implementation has the smallest number of files - just 4, and the .ini file has all of, like, 2 lines to customize in it. Do note, per screenshot examples, that if you wanted to enable SMAA you *really need to disable the in-game AA*. The two just look...weird together.

Can we use this when we fly online or would we get banned by steam?