Weird long-range "LOD" on thin towers

[UltimateBawb 1]

I've noticed that despite nearly everything being absolutely gorgeous when this game is maxed out, thin towers (radio towers, those modular military buildings, etc.) are very spotty and/or grainy. The only setting I can find to affect this is 'sampling,' and only at 200% sampling (essentially the maximum with anti-aliasing on) does the problem fully disappear. Observe the center radio tower in these screenshots:

http://imgur.com/a/gj6Yn

Increasing sampling destroys most GPU's, and is a pretty inefficient way of handling such a simple issue. Could this not be solved by changing the model's LOD at distance?

[windies 11]

Because of the way MSAA works it doesn't anti-alias the edges of objects like that. You will notice it on other things like the links in a chain link fence for instance as well. When you increase the sampling you're basically doing FSAA which anti-aliases the entire scene irregardless of if the specific area needs to be anti-aliased or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-scene_anti-aliasing#Super_sampling_.2F_full-scene_anti-aliasing

[UltimateBawb 1]

Because of the way MSAA works it doesn't anti-alias the edges of objects like that. You will notice it on other things like the links in a chain link fence for instance as well. When you increase the sampling you're basically doing FSAA which anti-aliases the entire scene irregardless of if the specific area needs to be anti-aliased or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-scene_anti-aliasing#Super_sampling_.2F_full-scene_anti-aliasing

Wouldn't the 8X FSAA which was enabled when taking those screens fix it then?

[windies 11]

Wouldn't the 8X FSAA which was enabled when taking those screens fix it then?

The AA used in ArmA or any game for that matter is not FSAA. Changing your 3D resolution is true FSAA in a nutshell, that's why I was saying that it fixed it because it Anti-aliases the entire scene rather than the "intelligent" way that MSAA does it. There is no such thing as 8x FSAA as 8x FSAA would literally be rendering the game at 15360x8640 assuming a standard resolution of 1920x1080. Read the 2 stubs in anti-aliasing I linked to better understand it.

Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA)

This type of anti-aliasing is essentially a 'budget' version of supersampling. To reduce the stress that SSAA/FSAA puts on a system, Multisampling optimises the process by evaluating each pixel only once, with true supersampling only occurring at the edges of a rendered object, and to depth values. This results in a similar (but less drastic) improvement in visual quality whilst reducing the load put on the system to render and downscale such high resolutions.

So in other words when you use MSAA you are only anti-aliasing the edges, not the whole scene whereas by increasing your 3D resolution you are anti-aliasing the entire scene irregardless of edges and such.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Windies

[UltimateBawb 1]

The AA used in ArmA or any game for that matter is not FSAA. Changing your 3D resolution is true FSAA in a nutshell, that's why I was saying that it fixed it because it Anti-aliases the entire scene rather than the "intelligent" way that MSAA does it. There is no such thing as 8x FSAA as 8x FSAA would literally be rendering the game at 15360x8640 assuming a standard resolution of 1920x1080. Read the 2 stubs in anti-aliasing I linked to better understand it.

So in other words when you use MSAA you are only anti-aliasing the edges, not the whole scene whereas by increasing your 3D resolution you are anti-aliasing the entire scene irregardless of edges and such.

Okay, that makes sense then. So in other words, we're screwed and there's no way to solve this issue past increasing sampling?

[TSAndrey 1]

It's a bug. It's been there since the Alpha. Shame it hasn't been fixed though